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“I’ve got stuff to do, people to see.”

“Just a suggestion, but you’ll probably want to dress first.”

“Why aren’t you?”

“Aren’t I?”

“Why aren’t you wearing one of your six million suits?”

“I’m sure I have no more than five million, three hundred suits. And I’m not wearing one of them because it seemed overly formal considering we have people arriving today.”

“You’re not working.” She stepped out, grabbed the coffee. “Has the stock market obliterated overnight?”

“On the contrary, it’s up. I can afford to buy another suit. Here you are.” He handed her a robe. “You can wear that while you have some breakfast. I’ll have another cup of coffee myself.”

“I have to contact Feeney, the commander, and check in with the droids on Avril. I have to write a report, check the forensics on Samuels.”

“Busy, busy, busy.” He strolled out and toward the AutoChef. And back, he thought with some relief. The exhausted woman had regenerated into the cop. “What you want’s a nice bowl of oatmeal.”

“No sane person wants a bowl of oatmeal.”

“Fortified.”

She wouldn’t laugh. “Let’s go back to the beginning. You can’t set sleep mode without telling me.”

“When my wife comes home weeping from exhaustion and stress, I’m going to see that she gets some rest.” He glanced back, and there was that steel in his eyes. The kind that warned her arguing would end in a fight. “And she’s lucky I did nothing more than darken the room to see she got some.” He crossed to the seating area with a bowl, set it down on the table.

“Now, you’d better sit down and eat that, or we’re going to start the day with one hell of a fight.”

“Figured that already,” she grumbled.

“And your schedule’s already so full.”

She came as close as she ever did to pouting when she studied the oatmeal. “It’s got disgusting lumps.”

“It certainly doesn’t. What it’s got is apples and blueberries.”

“Blueberries?”

“Sit down and eat them like a good girl.”

“Soon as there’s room in my schedule, I’m going to punch you for that.” But she sat, contemplated the bowl. It looked to her as if perfectly good fruit had been buried in mush. “Technically, I’ve been on shift since eight. But I’m entitled by regs, unless requested otherwise by a superior, to take eight hours between duty. It was after two when I left the Icove place.”

“Have you decided to become a clock watcher?”

“Peabody and McNab had put in for vacation time, starting today. I told her to go.”

“Depleting your team by two.” He nodded, sat. “All within the confines of regulations, all perfectly aboveboard. The pace will slow. Add the holiday and it slows more. What do you intend to do with the time?”

“I already started doing it. I broke Code Blue. I met with Nadine and gave her everything.” She poked a spoon into the oatmeal, lifted it, let the goop dribble out again. “I disobeyed a direct order, a priority order, and am prepared to lie through my teeth about it. I’m dragging my heels to give Avril Icove time to figure out how to disengage the bracelets, get the kids, and poof. And hoping they’ll give me Deena’s location, or at least the location or locations of operations.”

“If you continue to beat yourself up over it, we’re going to start the day with a fight after all.”

“I’ve got no right to make decisions based on emotion, to circumvent orders, ignore my duty.”

“You’re wrong, Eve, on so many counts. First, you’re not making this decision based on emotion, or not solely. You’re basing it on instinct, experience, and your bone-deep sense of justice.”

“Cops don’t make the rules.”

“Bollocks. You may not write them, but you edit them every day, to suit the situation. You have to because if the law, the rules, the spirit of them doesn’t adjust and flex, it dies.”

She’d told herself essentially the same a dozen times already. “I didn’t tell Peabody all of this, but some. And I said I didn’t think I’d have been able to play this the way I am, even five years ago. She said I would have.”

“Our Peabody is astute. Do you remember