to put those bruises on her. They looked pretty fresh.”
“They lied about that to get rid of us. Nothing to see here,” Peabody muttered. “But how do you wind it all back to Gwen Huffman and Ariel Byrd?”
“I don’t know yet, but we’re damn sure going to find out.”
“Dallas, we have to get Ella Foxx out of that place.”
“Yes, we do.”
“We could send some officers to Brooklyn—work with the locals—and interview any Foxx still living there who was there during the birth year. It’s a start.”
“If you were connected to someone who took off, went missing, whatever, you’d file a report, so we start there. But I can promise you Savannah Grimsley still looks at her brother’s data now and again. Just hoping he’s updated it.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“Reach out to Brooklyn anyway, check on missing persons. Do the same in the other boroughs. Let’s be thorough.”
Maybe they’d find one, Eve thought as Peabody got to work again. Maybe. But she doubted it. They’d wiped her data because nobody would notice or care. Because they could.
And they’d made her invisible.
Wasn’t it another kind of murder? You could still breathe, walk, talk, eat, sleep. But you no longer existed because someone killed your identity.
When she finally reached the city, when she finally reached her own gates, Eve felt a knot of tension loosen in her guts.
“There’s nothing, Dallas, no MP reports filed on Ella Foxx, Alice Foxx, Ella Alice Foxx. Just nothing. But maybe we should start interviewing—”
“What if her parents, her family, whoever had control of her are members? True believers who shoved their daughter into that place before she had a choice? What do you think will happen to her if we ask questions, hit on the right people, and word gets back to Wilkey and the order?”
“For her own parents to do something like that to her, to trap her that way, to let her just not exist and be afraid, not be able to ask for help? It’s so hard to imagine what kind of people would do that to their own kid, their own family. I just can’t—”
It hit her, quick and hard. “I’m sorry. God, that was stupid. I’m wound up, but that was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t normal for me, it’s not normal for her.”
Eve pulled up at the house, sat a minute. “She took a risk dropping that note in my lap, so I’m going to say she wasn’t shoved into the group, or joined the group, as a kid, not too young anyway. I’d never have done that, looked to a cop for help, because he’d drummed it into me that the cops would hurt me, throw me into a hole, in the dark. But she knows better.”
Eve got out of the car, let out a long breath. “We’re not going to let her down.”
She walked in to a looming Summerset and the waiting Galahad. “Lieutenant, Detective Peabody. I’m informed we’re expecting other members of the NYPSD this evening. I’ll send them to your office as they arrive.”
She started straight upstairs with the cat trotting beside her. Then paused, looked back. “You were in Dublin at the end of the Urbans, and after. Any rumbles of Natural Order?”
“They gained no foothold there. I did have my own contacts, however, and there were murmurs about them. I regret to say I and many others considered them no more than a flash in the pan. We were wrong.”
She nodded, started up again.
“Detective Peabody, may I say your hair is quite fetching.”
Peabody grinned back at Summerset. “Yeah? Thanks.”
She had to quick time it to catch up with Eve and the cat.
“What the hell flashes in a pan?” Eve demanded.
“I … don’t actually know.”
“See? See? That’s why that kind of stupid saying doesn’t make any sense.”
“Now I have to look it up.” Peabody pulled out her PPC as she followed Eve. “Oh, oh, it’s from flintlocks—you know, muskets—and they had these little pans for the gunpowder. And if it went off without the bullet or the ball thing, the gunpowder just, well, flashed in the pan.”
“And that makes it make sense?”
“Well, sort of. Not really,” Peabody decided.
Eve turned into her office. “Update the board. I’ll do the book. Get coffee or whatever if you want it.”
“I’m coffee’d out, and hoping you have low-cal fizzies.”
As Peabody headed into the kitchen and the AutoChef, Eve sat at her command center.
“Score!” Peabody called from the kitchen. “And there’s Yancy—he’s just finished. He’ll be here within fifteen.”
Peabody came out