Secrets in Death (In Death #45)(105)

One and the same.

She dragged at his zipper, desperate now, greedy now. Her hands raced over his chest, his back, his hips, as he stripped.

As desperate, as greedy as she, he pushed her back, drove into her. Thrusting hard, deep, over and over, with her long legs hooked around him like chains so he was steeped, he was lost. With his blood racing under his skin, her hands clutched in his hair, her eyes fixed on his, he let himself go into the madness.

Then through it, with her, into the bliss.

When her body went lax, he simply had no choice but to drop his weight on her. He wasn’t sure he had a muscle or bone left in him.

Her voice, when she spoke, came both husky and smug.

“Command center sex. I’ve been saving it up.”

“Saving it up?” He wondered if his brains had been scrambled.

“Until the first Summerset-free night. It was worth it.”

He managed a laugh. “I’m in no position to argue.”

“Maybe we could just slide to the floor, then try to get up again in two or three days.” She locked her arms around him a moment in a tight hug. “Except.”

“Except.” He eased up enough to look down at her. “You know, now every time Summerset goes on holiday, I’ll be expecting command center sex.”

“I figure we mix it up, that way you’ll never know.” After a long sigh, she poked a finger into his chest. “I’ve got to get dressed. I’ve got that work.”

He reached over, picked up a discarded scrap of lace, offered it.

“Get real, pal. I can’t work in that. Or these purple boots.”

“I have a new and extreme fondness for those boots. What do you say we shower, get into comfortable clothes. We can have a meal while you catch me up on the investigation.”

“I want spaghetti, and big, fat meatballs.”

“I could use the same.”

He made her laugh by plucking her up again, tossing her over his shoulder before he started out of the room.

“Now you’re looking for shower sex.”

“And I know just where to find it.”

*

Over the meal, and a little wine, she filled him in and explained how she intended to approach the data.

“I need to pull out any five ratings from the books, cross-check them with the financial ledger. Some of them might not have made the initial payment, and they all have to be checked. Not all of them are from New York, or New Jersey, or within an easy distance. She hit some, I’ve already seen, from other areas, even out of the country. I need to separate those out, check travel.”

They cleared the table together. “I can help with that.”

“I was hoping you would. It’s going to be a long slog. I want to look for anybody we might be able to connect with Lari Jane Mercury. It’s a long shot she dipped into that pool, but I’m betting she started this business of hers a long time back. Why else change her face? She was of age, nobody could have forced her back to Kansas.”

“It’s just as likely, for someone like her, the appeal of remaking herself, sloughing off all the old—and improving on her looks was enough.”

“She looked okay before, but yeah. Yeah, vanity. She died a knockout. Still, it’s a thread to tug.”

With the dishes in the machine, she walked back into the office where the cat lay in front of the fire, his back to the room.

“I’m pretty good at reading Galahad’s body language. He’s a little pissed off at us.”

Roarke gave the cat a thoughtful study. “Well, we did pay more attention to each other than we did to him.”

“He was working with you when I got here.”

“He was, wasn’t he? And how did we thank him? We had command center and shower sex, pasta and meatballs, and he got low-cal kibble.”

Put that way, it sounded just wrong.

“Maybe a little tuna wouldn’t hurt. It makes us patsies,” Eve admitted, “but…”

“We are his patsies, aren’t we? I’ll get it,” Roarke told her. “You can start setting us up, and I expect we’ll need a pot of coffee.”

“Got it covered.” She walked over to the cat, stared down at him as he studiously ignored her. “Do you want tuna or not, fat boy?”

He rolled over, eyed her, eyed Roarke. Then followed Roarke into the kitchen as if doing them a favor.

“Patsies,” Eve grumbled, walking over to program the coffee and set up.

They fell into the rhythm of the work. It could still surprise her how easily he adapted to the elemental tedium of cop drudgery. The reading, analyzing, checking, rechecking, all that comprised so much of the job.

He worked on her auxiliary while the tuna-content cat dozed on her sleep chair. For nearly an hour they worked in silence, each studying and assessing the names, the lives, of those Mars had targeted.

“I’m sending you two batches,” Roarke told her. “Those I find more than an hour’s commute outside the city, and a second, smaller group who ranked a five and aren’t on her financial ledger.”

She leaned back, poured more coffee for both of them. “I’ll fold it into what I have. Business-brain question.”

“I happen to have one of those.”

“What I’m seeing here when you go through her payment schedules are some she started collecting from four or five years ago. A scattering of six years ago. And there are some names that drop off. A check shows me two of them are deceased, but the others aren’t. She marks the last payment shown with a red check mark. When I add them up, the cumulative amounts vary, just as the monthly payments varied, so that eliminates a final amount she might have designated.”