Witness in Death (In Death #10)(73)

"All right. I'll join you."

"Uh-uh. I'm not showering with you, ace. I know your games."

"I won't lay a hand on you."

He didn't say anything about his mouth.

"What do you do? Take a pill?"

Limber, refreshed, and utterly satisfied, Roarke buttoned his shirt. "You're stimulation enough."

"Apparently."

He took her hand, led her to the elevator, requested her office.

The cat was stretched across her sleep chair and gave a twitch of his tail when they walked in.

"Coffee?" Roarke asked.

"Yeah, thanks."

The minute he turned toward the kitchen, Galahad leaped down and bolted into the room ahead of him. Eve heard the single demanding meow.

She sat at her desk, stared at her computer, tapped her fingers.

"Computer, Draco case file. Cross-reference task. Find and list any and all connections, professional, personal, medical, financial, criminal, civil, between cast members."

Working...

"I assumed you ran that already."

She glanced over as Roarke came back with coffee. "I'm running it again, with a few added details.

"Computer, highlight any name with sealed files, all areas."

That information requires authorization. Please submit same...

"Would you like me to get around that little hitch for you?"

She made a low sound, a definite warning. Roarke merely shrugged and sipped his coffee.

"Authorization Code Yellow, slash Dallas, slash five-oh-six. Request from Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, regarding double homicide. You are authorized to flag sealeds."

Authorization correct. Sealeds will be flagged. Data contained in sealed files requires warrant, signed and dated, for access...

"Did I ask you to access the data? Just flag the damned sealeds."

Working... Multitask process will require approximately eight minutes, thirty seconds...

"Then get started. And no," she said to Roarke. "We're not opening the sealeds."

"My goodness, Lieutenant, I don't believe I suggested anything of the kind."

"You think you and McNab scammed me on that warrant today?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." He eased a hip onto the desk. "I did give Ian some advice, but it was of a personal nature. Man talk."

"Yeah, right." She tipped back in her chair, eyed him over her coffee cup. "You and McNab sat around talking about women and sports."

"I don't believe we got to sports. He had a woman on his mind."

Eve's sneer vanished. "You talked to him about Peabody? Damn it, Roarke."

"I could hardly slap him back. He's so pitifully smitten."

"Oh." She winced. "Don't use that word."

"It fits. In fact, if he took my advice..." He turned his wrist, glanced at the unit fastened there. "They should be well into their first date by now."

"Date? Date? Why did you do that? Why did you go and do something like that? Couldn't you leave it alone? They'd have had sex until they burned out on it, and everything would go back to normal."

He angled his head. "That didn't work for us, did it?"

"We don't work together." Then, when his eyes brightened with pure amusement, she showed her teeth. "Officially. You start mixing cops and romance and case files and gooey looks at briefings, you've got nothing but a mess. Next thing you know, Peabody will be wearing lip dye and smelly girl stuff and dragging body skimmers under her uniform."

She dropped her head in her hands. "Then they'll have tiffs and misunderstandings that have nothing whatsoever to do with the job. They'll come at me from both sides, and before you know it, they'll be telling me things I absolutely do not want to know. And when they break it off and decide they hate each other down to the guts, I'll have to hear about that, too, and why they can't possibly work together, or breathe the same air, until I have no choice, absolutely no choice, but to kick both of their asses."

"Eve, your sunny view on life never fails to lift my spirits."

"And -- " She poked him in the chest. "It's all your fault."

He grabbed her finger, nipped it, not so gently. "If that's the case, I'm going to insist they name their first child after me."

"Are you trying to make me crazy?"

"Well, darling, it's so easy, I find it difficult to resist. Why don't you put the entire matter out of your mind before it gives you a headache? Your data's coming up."

She shot him one fierce look, then turned to the screen.

Connections within connections, she thought as she scanned. Lives bumping up against lives. And every time they did, they left a little mark. Sometimes the mark was a bruise that never fully healed.

"Well, well, this didn't come up before. Michael Proctor's mother was an actress. She had a small part in a play. Twenty-four years ago." Eve sat back. "And just look who was onstage with her. Draco, Stiles, Mansfield, Rothchild. That correlates to the trouble between Draco and Stiles. Where's Anja Carvell?" she murmured.

"Perhaps she had, or has, a stage name."

"Maybe. No sealeds on Proctor's mother." She ordered the computer to do a run on one Natalie Brooks.