13

“That was just weird.” eve went straight to her desk to check any incomings the minute

Summerset led Nixie out of the office.

Roarke poured the last of the coffee from the pot into his cup before he rose. “Spending twenty minutes over breakfast is considered fairly normal in some primitive societies.”

“And now I'm behind.” She scanned the ME reports on Knight andPreston, the preliminaries on the security and electronics on the safe house. “I've got to get out of here.”

“Let me see what I've got for you first.”

“Roarke? She saw the board.”

“Bloody hell. When-”

“I told Summerset to send her up, so I can't even blame him. I wasn't thinking-was just a little annoyed that I was going to have to deal with her before I got to work. And then-” She shook her head. “By the time I thought of it, hauled ass up here, it was too late.”

He set the coffee down, forgot it. “How did she handle it?”

“She's got more spine than you'd expect from a kid. But she's not going to forget it-ever. I'll need to tell Mira.” With no other target handy, she kicked her desk. “Shit, shit, shit! How could I be that stupid?”

No need to ask how Eve was handling it, he thought. “It's not your fault, or not exclusively. It's on all of us. We're not used to having a child in the house. I didn't think of it either. She might have wandered in here last night when she was coming up to see me. I never gave it a thought.”

“We're supposed to be smarter than this, aren't we? You know, responsible?”

“I suppose we are.” And he wondered just how hard he'd be kicking himself if Nixie had come through Eve's office to come to him the night before. “Still it is a bit like diving straight into the pool without learning first how to swim a bloody stroke.”

“We need to get her with the Dysons, with people who know what they're doing with a nine-year-old girl. She's already got a cargo ship of issues she'll have to work through. I don't want to add to them.”

“You'll want them here and that's fine,” he said before she could speak. “The sooner the better, I'd say, for her sake.”

“I'll put a call through to them, ask them to meet me at Central.”

“Let me get you the search results from last night.”

He moved into his office, called for the results on screen and on disc. “Nineteen names,” he mused. “More than you might expect, I'd think. Natural causes would cut that back considerably, but…”

“A lot of names.” She turned to study the wall screen. “Five that cross with both of them. The Swishers weren't the first,” she said again. “No way I buy that. I'll take these in, give them a run.”

“I can help you out in… later,” he decided when he checked the time. “I'm behind myself. I've work I have to get to here, then I have some meetings in midtown starting at nine.”

“You said you'd work from here.”

“No, I said we'd argue about it this morning.” He reached out, skimmed a finger down her chin. “My work can't stop any more than yours, Lieutenant-and if someone's paying attention, they might wonder why I'm hunkered down here when I should be out and about. I'll promise you to be careful, very. No unnecessary chances.”

“We might have different definitions of unnecessary chances.”

“Not so very much. Come here.”

“I am here.”

“A bit closer than that.” With a laugh he yanked her forward, into his arms. “I'll worry about you, you worry about me.” He rubbed his cheek to hers. “And we're even.”

“You let something happen to yourself, I'll kick your ass.”

“Ditto.”

Since she had to be satisfied with that, Eve fought the traffic downtown. Even the sky seemed more crowded this morning, jammed with sky trams and airbuses and the traffic copters that struggled to keep things moving.

However quicker they claimed it was to use the sky routes, she'd stick with the creep and stink of the streets.

She fought her way downColumbus and straight into a fresh logjam caused by a glide-cart that had overturned into the street. A number of pedestrians were helping themselves to the tubes and food supplies that were rolling on the asphalt while the operator jumped up and down like a man on springs.

For a moment she regretted she didn't have the time to wade in to the potential riot. It would've been an entertaining way to start the day. Instead, she called the incident in, and solved her own commute dilemma by blasting her sirens-wow! look at those assholes scramble -and hit vertical mode.

Okay, she admitted, she loved her new ride.

She breezed over the jam-caught a glimpse of the glide-cart operator shaking a fist into the air-then settled back down three blocks south in relatively reasonable traffic. She decided to trust auto long enough to make the calls on her list. She left messages for the Dysons, for Mira, reserved a conference room for ten, and left more voice mails for each member of the team she wanted in attendance.

And thought how much of this drone work she'd been able to avoid whenPeabody had been her aide rather than her partner.

When she got to Central, there wasPeabody right outside the bull pen, fit up against McNab like they were two pieces in some strange and perverted jigsaw puzzle.

“I actually had breakfast this morning.” Eve stopped beside them. “This is the sort of thing that could make me boot.”

“Just kissing my sweetie good-bye,”Peabody said, and made exaggerated kissy noises against McNab's lips.

“Definitely booting material. This is a cop shop, not a sex club. Save it for after shift.”

“Still two minutes before shift.” McNab gavePeabody 's butt a squeeze. “See you later, She-Body.”

“Bye, Detective Stud.”

“Oh, please.” Eve pressed a hand to her uneasy belly. “I want to keep the waffles down.”

“Waffles?”Peabody spun on the heels of her checked airskids. “You had waffles. What's the occasion?”

“Just another day inParadise. My office.”

“Tell me about the waffles,”Peabody begged as she scurried after Eve. “Were they the kind with strawberries and whipped cream all over them, or the kind you just drown in syrup? I'm dieting, sort of. I had a low-cal nutridrink for breakfast. It's disgusting, but it won't expand my ass.”

“Peabody, I've observed-unwillingly and with considerable regret-that the person you have chosen to cohabitate with appears to have a nearly unnatural fondness for your ass.”

“Yeah.” She smiled, dreamily. “He does, doesn't he?”

“So why-I ask unwillingly and with some regret-are you so obsessed with the size and shape of that particular part of your anatomy?”

“I've got the body type and metabolism that means I have to watch it or you'll be able to serve a five-course meal off the shelf of that particular part of my anatomy. It's a matter of pride. Not all of us are preordained to go through life skinny as a snake.”

“Now that we've cleared that up, I want coffee.”

She'd planned to wait a couple of beats, then givePeabody the Look of Destruction. But her partner moved directly to the AutoChef and programmed. “I guess what happened last night with Knight andPreston got me and McNab both thinking, and just appreciating what we've got. Knowing what can happen sort of makes the moment more intense. He doesn't usually walk me to Division.”

She handed coffee to Eve, took one for herself. “We just wanted a few minutes more.”

“Understood.” And because it was, Eve gestured to the chair before she leaned back against her desk. “I left you a message, as well as leaving one for the rest of the team. Conference Room C, ten hundred. We'll brief, and hope Yancy's got a better picture of our suspects. Meanwhile, I have some names to be run. Potentials. Morris worked on Knight andPreston last night. Nothing new or unexpected there. Stun took them down, knife took them out. Tox was clear. I'm waiting for the lab to confirm thatPreston 's weapon was fired before he went down.”