Purity in Death (In Death #15)(68)

"Kiss my ass."

"It's one of my favorite recreational activities. I don't want to fight with you, She-Body. I just think we could both use a little time, a little space. I care about you, Dee. I really care about you."

It made her eyes sting again. He never called her Dee. She kept her lips pressed tightly together, afraid she might start sobbing. Certain the killing expression she worked onto her face would have made her lieutenant proud, she turned her head.

Then she sat up like a rocket coming off the launching pad, and stared. "You're scratching your arm."

"What?"

Very slowly, trembling only a little, she pointed. He followed the direction and saw he'd been scratching absently at his right arm. "So, it itches. What I'm trying to say . . ."

His body went very still. He'd have sworn his own heart stopped. "It itches," he managed. "It feels like a bunch of needles under the skin. Oh Christ."

"It's waking up." She hurled herself out of bed to kneel beside his chair. "What about your leg? Can you feel anything?"

"Yeah, yeah, I-" The itch grew maddening, and his heart began to hammer. "Help me out, will you? Right along the hip. I can't reach. Ahhhh."

"I have to call Summerset."

"Stop scratching and I'll kill you."

"Can you move your fingers, toes, anything?"

"I don't know." He bore down, tried to ignore the sensation in his biceps, in his thigh that was like being pricked with a thousand hot needles. "I don't think so."

"Do you feel this?" She pressed her thumb against his thigh, and thought she felt a muscle quiver.

"Yeah." He fought back the hot flood of emotion that gushed into his throat. "Why don't you shift that grip a few inches to the left? Distract me before I start screaming from this itching."

"Your dick never went numb."

A tear spilled off her cheek, plopped on his hand. And he knew the sweetest sensation he would ever feel was that warm, wet tear against his awakening hand.

"I love you, Peabody."

She looked up at him, with surprise. "Look, don't get crazy-"

"I love you." He laid his good hand on her cheek. "I figured I'd lost my chance to tell you that. I'm not going to risk missing it again. Don't say anything, okay? Maybe you could just give it a chance to settle in."

She moistened her lips. "I could do that. I need to get Summerset up here. He should . . . do something. Probably." When she straightened, her knees wobbled. And she turned and cracked her shin smartly on the bed. "Shit. Shit. Wow."

She limped to the house 'link while McNab scratched his throbbing arm and grinned after her.

***

By seven-thirty, Eve was pumping in the caffeine again. Second cup in hand, she headed for the lab for a quick check-in with Roarke before the rest of the team poured into her office.

She was nearly through the door when she heard his voice.

She'd heard that icy tone before-the kind that sliced straight through the belly, spilling out the guts before the victim registered the pain.

Though the victim in this case was a minor, nobody was going to call Child Services.

"Is there something about the rules of this household and your current position in it that's eluded you?" Roarke posed the question the way a cat lurks outside a mouse-hole.

With lethal patience and the gleam of fangs.

"Look, what's the BFD?"

And the kid, Eve thought with a shake of her head, was responding like the mouse stupid enough to think it could outwait or outwit the cat. Foolish, foolish boy, she mused. You are dead meat already.

"You'll mind your tone when you speak to me, James. I'll tolerate a certain amount of idiocy from you due to your age, but I'll tolerate no sass whatsoever. Are we clear on that particular point?"

"Yeah, okay, but I just don't-"

Eve couldn't see Roarke's face, but she could clearly envision the look in his eye. One that had Jamie swallowing back whatever he'd been about to say, and revising it.

"Yes, sir."

"That's good. Saves time and heartache. Now, I'll explain the big f**king deal to you, in words that should be easily understood. Because I gave you a specific order, and when I give specific orders, they're to be followed. And that's the end of it. Any part of that hazy for you?"

"People are supposed to think for themselves."

"That they are. And people who work for me are to do as I tell them. Or they don't work for me any longer. If you're going to sulk over it, take yourself off elsewhere so I don't have to look at you."

"I'm almost eighteen."

Roarke eased a hip onto a work counter. "A man, are you? Then behave as one, and not like a boy who's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar."

"I could've gotten more data."

"You could've crashed that impressive brain of yours. The fact is, Jamie, I've plans for you that don't include going to your memorial."

Jamie's shoulders hunched now, his gaze lowered. He kicked idly at the base of the workstation with the toe of his ancient airboot. "I'd've been careful."

"Careful? Careful isn't trying to sneak into the lab in the middle of the night to boot up an infected computer without anyone at control, without anyone monitoring. What that is, is arrogant and it's stupid. I'll tolerate a bit of arrogance, even admire it. But stupidity's another matter. Beyond all that, you disobeyed an order."