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“Not a chance. If I leave you on your own, I’ll come back in a few hours and find you facedown at your desk, snoring.”

“I don’t snore.”

“Wake the dead.”

“I do not.” Did she?

He only smiled, then wandered off to study the Willowby side of the board. “You’ve gathered quite a bit in a short amount of time.”

“Nothing that points to where she is and why. In the Italian case, they never found the woman, or the kid.”

“They didn’t have you.” Nor had his mother, he thought. She’d had no one, and there was nothing that could change it. He turned to Eve. “Look at you. You’re running on empty, and pushing at two fronts.”

“It may already be too late for her.” She nodded at Tandy’s photo. “Pushing’s all I can do.”

When her ’link signaled, she spun around to answer. “Dallas.”

“Triveti. I am returning to you.”

His accent was thick and exotic, his face lean and handsome. “Thank you for getting back to me so quickly, Inspector.”

“I am pleased. My English, scuzi, it is small.”

“My Italian’s smaller.” She glanced toward Roarke. “I have someone with me who can help if we get in a bind. You investigated a Missing Persons case a couple years ago. A pregnant woman.”

“Sophia Belego. You have the same.”

“Tandy Willowby,” she told him, and gave him the bones of the case, with Roarke refining some of the details in Italian when the Inspector expressed confusion.

“Like yours, my Sophia, she had no close family, no ties to the city where she disappeared in. She left her—momento—her, ah banking account. It had not been used, or her credit cards, since the time of her disappearing. Her clothes, her possessions remained in her apartment. In this place, her neighbor speaks to her that morning when she is leaving. The statement says that Sophia was—what is lieto?”

“Happy,” Roarke translated.

“Si, she is happy and full of excite. She is going to see her dottore.”

“Doctor,” Roarke translated.

“And she will shop for the baby. She sees the dottore, and is well. Healthy. Her spirits are good, and she makes the appuntamento?”

“Appointment.”

“Appointment,” Triveti repeated, “in one week. She is very great with child, you see?”

“Yes,” Eve told him.

“But she does not shop for the baby, not in Rome. I am talking to everyone in these places. Some, they know her from other times, but not from that day. She is not seen after she leaves the dottore. There is none of her at transportation—bus, train, shuttle. There is no use of her passport, and I find it in her apartment. There are no messages, no communications that take me to leads.”

“Nothing in the hospitals, the birthing centers, the morgues?”

“Nothing. I look for the father of the child, but no one knows. Not in Rome, not in Florence. In all our efforts, she is not found.”

Using Roarke, Eve took Triveti through the steps again, squeezed out a few more details. She requested a copy of his file, and agreed to reciprocate with hers.

After, she sat frowning at the notes she’d taken. “I need to write all this up.”

“Sleep first.”

“I told the LT in MPU that I’d copy her all reports and notes. I need to—”

“You think she’s sitting by her comp waiting for your report at…” he glanced at his wrist unit, “…four forty-eight on bloody Sunday morning.”

“No, but—”

“Don’t make me haul your ass up and drag you to bed. I’m tired, and I might rap your head against the wall on the way. I’d hate to damage the paint.”

“Ha-ha. Okay, okay. Just let me try Applebee one more time. Listen, listen, if she’s gone off to see him, I can go to bed with a clear head.”

“You know damn well she hasn’t. One more, and that’s the end of it.”

“You get bitchy when you’re tired.”

“I get bitchier yet when I watch you run yourself into the ground.”

She tried Aaron again, and again got voice mail. “Damn it.”

“Bed. Sleep. Or being in a bitchy frame of mind, I might hold you down and pour a tranq into you.”

“You and what army?” She got to her feet, and the ensuing head rush told her he was right. She needed to put the circuits on pause for