Creation in Death (In Death #25)(23)

“I know that. Just like you know I’m going to pay you back.”

Nadine cocked a brow. “Being pretty damn smart, I’m not going to say no. A one-on-one exclusive with you.”

“After he’s bagged, not before.”

“Deal. A live appearance on Now.”

“Don’t push it.”

Nadine laughed. “By any member of your team you choose—with portions of that exclusive—and did I mention extensive—interview by you to run during the show. Recorded prior.”

Eve thought it through. “I can work with that.”

“Okay. To get details, I need details.” Nadine pulled out her recorder, cocked her head. “All right?”

“All right.”

T here was something unnerving on some visceral level about working in a cop shop. It was an interesting experience, Roarke thought, but very, very strange for someone with his…colorful background.

He’d worked with cops—in addition to his own—a number of times now, had had cops in his home professionally and socially. But working in a war room in the core of Cop Central for the best part of a day, well, that was a different kettle.

They came and went, he noted. Clipping into the room, clipping out again, communicating for the most part in that cop speak that was oddly formal, as clipped as their footsteps and somehow colorful all at the same time.

He was flanked by McNab whom he had great fondness for, and the dark, curvy, and sloe-eyed Callendar. They might sit, or stand and walk—almost dance—around as they worked. Slogging through data, searching for just one vital byte. Busy bees in their busy hive.

As for colorful, well, excepting their captain, it appeared the e-division went for the flashy. McNab with his bright yellow jeans, the turquoise shirt with what appeared to be flying turtles winging across it. He had his long blond hair sleeked back in a tail and secured with a thick yellow band. On either side of his thin, pretty face, his earlobes were weighted down with a complex series of hoops and studs.

Roarke wondered why, honestly, anyone would wish to have that many holes punched into his flesh.

But the boy had a way about him, and was damn clever at this job.

The girl, for she looked barely twenty, was an unknown. She had burnt honey skin, masses and masses of black curly hair pinned in a multitude of hanks with a neon rainbow of clips. Silver hoops he could have punched his fists through hung at her ears. She wore baggy, multipocketed pants in bleeding colors of lavender and pink with a snug green sweater that exclaimed E-GODS! across her rather impressive br**sts.

She had long, emerald-colored nails, and when she went to manual they clicked against the keys like mad castanets.

She, like McNab, appeared to be tireless—brightly wrapped bundles of energy barely contained so that something on them constantly jiggled or bounced. A foot, a head, shoulders, ass.

Fascinating.

“Yo, Blondie-Boy,” she called out and McNab glanced over his shoulder.

“You talking to me, D-Cup?”

“You’re up. Liquid.”

“Can do. You want?” he said to Roarke. “Something to drink.”

“Yes, thanks.”

“Buzz or no buzz?”

It took Roarke a moment to translate, and in that moment he felt very old. “Could use the buzz.”

“On it.” As McNab bounced out of the room, Callendar sent Roarke a quick and pretty smile.

“So, you’re like absolutely packed, right? Doing the backstroke in the megawealth. What’s that like?”

“Satisfying,” he decided.

“Betcha.” With a push of her feet, she sent her chair skidding over so she could see his screen. “Wow. Multitudinous data with simo searches and cross. You got secondary recog going, too?”

This, he could easily translate. “I do. Checking like names, anagrams, cross dates. Lay it down for a spread, go deep for ancestry and other potential connects.”

“Smart. McNab said you were frosty in there. Serious mining.” She looked back at her own station. “All around.”

She slid back to her work, and jiggling her shoulders to some internal tune, went back to the task at hand.

Amused, he turned back to his own work, then stopped when Eve and Feeney came in.

Gia Rossi, he thought, as the name, the idea of her that he’d made himself set aside, pushed once again into the forefront of his mind.

His eyes met Eve’s, so he pushed back from the work to walk to her.

“We need to update the team regarding Rossi,” Eve said. “Those in the field will be briefed via ’link. We need to factor your connection in.”

“Understood.”

“Okay, then.”

Peabody came in, sent Roarke a quiet, sympathetic look. She crossed over to insert a new data disc.

“We have an update,” Eve announced, and the clacking, the bouncing, the voices, and shuffling ceased. “We have reason to believe a woman reported as missing since Thursday night was abducted by our unsub. Rossi, Gia.”

Peabody ordered the image and data on screen. “Age thirty-one, brown and brown, height five feet, five inches, one hundred and twenty-two pounds. She was last seen leaving her place of employment, a fitness center called BodyWorks on West Forty-sixth. Captain Feeney.”

“Rossi’s ex-husband,” Feeney began, “one Riley, Jaymes, notified the police at oh-eight-hundred Friday morning. Per procedure, she wasn’t formally listed as missing until the twenty-four-hour time limit had passed. The subject did not return home as expected on Thursday night where she was scheduled to meet her ex who, according to his statement, was there to drop off the dog they had joint custody of.”