Chapter One

Lt. Eve Dallas was in a right pisser of a mood.  As if her own personal embarrassment over the past 36 hours wasn’t enough, the goddamn world had to go into crisis!  Now her computer refused to even show her a login screen, much less let her access important information.  She let out a distraught growl and began kicking her desk.  But once she started a seed of fury expanded and suddenly she had a full-sized rage going.

Peabody snuck a look into Dallas’ home office and pulled back to consider her options.  First, her Lieutenant could take her, so physical intervention was out.  Second, her partner had every right to be having a temper tantrum, since every electronic device in the world was on the blink due to the worst sun spots in recent history.  And third, Dallas had come back from her surprise junket to Tokyo to see her husband without having accomplished that goal.  And that was what worried Peabody the most.
  
  Hearing a slight sound, Peabody looked over her shoulder at Summerset.  He motioned her to another room down the hall.  Peabody swung her head in for another assessing look.  Her LT was done kicking.  She was now throwing things off the balcony and cursing continually.  The computer made enough noise that she was certain even McNab wasn’t going to be able to put it back together again.  Discretion being wiser, Peabody joined Summerset in the room down the hall.

“What’s set her off, “ Roarke’s majordomo asked, eyebrows raised as what may very well be a desk chair hitting the flagstones three floors below could be heard breaking.  He’d seen the Lieutenant in foul moods and foul behavior, but this seemed rather the worst of them.

Peabody winced at the sound of what was probably the Autochef heading for a recycler in its dead future.  She had great respect for Dallas’ privacy, but figured that Summerset would hear about the situation eventually.  As soon as the sun spots died down and global satellites were in action, he’d no doubt be hearing about it from half a dozen sources.  “Roarke didn’t make it back to the hotel.  At all.”  She kept her own thoughts about that out of her report.  “She caught her transpo before the flight ban.  I guess it was a long flight back from Japan.”  The last sarcasm was for her.   Gotta keep her hand in.

Summerset wasn’t as good as Roarke at hiding his thoughts Peabody decided, hunching her shoulders at the squeal of very distressed metal possibly one of the aforementioned electronics that were currently wacky.  But she saw in his face two things clearly before he pokered up.  Worry over Roarke, then really worried over Roarke.  Peabody figured Summerset should be worried because if Roarke was alive, he was about to be very sorry he was.

“Peabody!”  The shout could probably be heard at the front gates.

“Sir!”  Peabody zipped into the office doorway, observing accurately that the place had been truly trashed.

Dallas stood in the now mostly empty office, fists in her hair, eyes squeezed shut, banging her head on the desk that had proved too heavy for her to throw out of the house.  She took a deep breath, quieted her voice to a near whisper.  This wasn’t hard since her rant over the last ten minutes had strained her vocal chords.  “Peabody, get my car running.  I don’t care how, just get it running, and I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.  I’m sure there’ll be rioting downtown, so that’s the best we can do without a tank.  Tell Summerset to get both of us riot gear, an extra stunner each, stun batons, whatever the hell else might work in this clusterfucked world.”  She stormed toward the elevator, decided it would be just too happy to freeze with her somewhere between floors, and chose to jog to her room.

The closet Roarke had filled to exploding with things she didn’t really want had an old NYPSD duffle hidden under several pairs of shoes encrusted with glitters.  The real kind.  They should have been locked up in a vault, but no one had seemed to be concerned when they appeared there, so she’d figured it was a safe hiding place.  Into the duffle she crammed a handful of underwear, socks, support tanks, two pair of jeans and three shirts, an extra pair of brown boots.  In the current situation, Eve didn’t fool herself that hiding her weapon would be any kind of good idea, so she didn’t need one of the jackets swarming over her head.  Besides, she was taking her new leather jacket to combat the chill of the October days.

“Lieutenant.”

Eve looked out and up.  Summerset was standing in the double doorway thin as a cadaver on short rations, black butler uniform creased to perfection, greyed hair and sallow complexion at odds with his steely grey eyes as he watched her packing her bag.  “I’m going to need some cash.”  If it wasn’t such a goddamn state of emergency she’d have cut her own throat before she asked him.  Literally.  But Eve knew, yes knew, that whatever computers ran cash machines and banks wouldn’t be up and running any time soon.  She could have gotten in to any one of the household safes, at least the ones that weren’t electronic and if she could remember the combinations of the old fashioned ones, but she had no intention of letting him think she was taking money from Roarke.  He could damn well give it to her or not.

Pushing to her feet, Eve hurried to the bathroom that was five times bigger than her office at Cop Central.  Grabbed bottles of Stay-Up and pain blockers.  She’d need both.  Time was getting short.  If Peabody couldn’t get her vehicle working, and why weren’t they working? goddamnsonofabitch things!, they’d have to hoof it.  She’d wasted time with that little bout of insanity in her office.  Time to cop up.  She shoved the bottles into the duffle, grabbed the cash held out to her in neatly wrapped bundles and stuffed them into her jeans pockets, not bothering to acknowledge Summerset further despite his efforts to engage her.

“Lieutenant Dallas!”  He grabbed her arm, spinning her as Eve started to storm out of the room.

Eve didn’t break his neck for him for the only reason she could process at this moment; she had a job for his ugly ass.  “Take care of Galahad for me.  And these.”  She yanked the chain off her neck, passing the unflawed Giant’s Tear diamond and Saint Jude’s medal onto his outstretched hand as she yanked free of those bony fingers.  “And this.”  She pulled off her wedding ring.  It hadn’t occurred to her before this moment that it was probably worth a hell of a lot of money.  Gold usually was.  “Did you get Peabody those supplies?”  Since he didn’t bother to reply, staring down at the symbols of her meaning to Roarke, she assumed he had.  She hefted the duffle bag over her shoulder.

Turning, Eve ran down the hallways, down the stairs of the beautiful old mansion, and out to her waiting, and running, vehicle.