He had a way, just that way, of making her insides curl. His lips warm on her skin, and those wild blue eyes looking over their joined hands into hers made her wish she had a hundred ten minutes just to be. As long as he could just be along with her.
“It’s pretty damn good,” she told him.
“Why don’t I get us a meal,” he suggested, “and you can tell me about those probabilities.”
“I’ll get it. It’s got to be my turn by now. You can go ahead and look them over if you want.”
She stepped back, turned. And saw, as she realized now he would have seen, her photo on the board. “Oh, Jesus. Jesus.” Appalled, she gripped a handful of her own hair and tugged. “Listen, this was stupid. I’m stupid. I only put this up there to-”
“Don’t call yourself stupid, for you’re far from it most of the time.” His tone was cool and even. “I’m more than happy to let you know when you are stupid. It’s not a problem for me.”
“Yeah, you’ve made that clear in the past. But this was just so-”
She broke off again when he held up a hand. “You put yourself there because you have to be objective, and more-you have to be able to see yourself as he does. Not only as you are, but as he sees you. If you don’t, you may be careless.”
“Okay, yeah.” She slid her hands into her pockets. “Got it in one. Are you okay with this?”
“Does it help you if I’m not okay with it? Obviously not. So I’ll deal with it. And I’ll kill him if he hurts you.”
“Hey, hey.”
“I’m not meaning the garden variety of bumps, bruises, and occasional bites,” he added with a glance at her leg, “you seem to incur on an alarmingly regular basis.”
“I hold my own,” she snapped back, oddly insulted. “And you’ve taken some hits yourself, pal.” Her eyes narrowed when he held up a finger. “Oh, I really hate when you do that.”
“Pity. If he manages to get past your guard, past me, and all the rest, and causes you real harm, I’ll do him with my own hands and in my own way. You’ll have to be okay with that, as that’s as much who and what I am and it’s who and what you are that put your own face up there.”
“He won’t get past my guard.”
“Then we won’t have a problem, will we? What’s for dinner?”
She wanted to argue, but she couldn’t find any room to maneuver. So she shrugged and stalked off toward the kitchen. “I want carbs.”
The man was exasperating. One minute he was kissing her hand in the sort of quietly romantic gesture that turned her to putty, and the next he was telling her he’d do murder in that calm, cool voice that was scarier than a blaster to the temple.
And the hell of it was, she thought as the cat bumped his head against her leg, he meant both those things absolutely. Hell, he was both of those things absolutely.
She ordered spaghetti and meatballs, leaned back on the counter, and sighed. He might be exasperating, complicated, dangerous, and difficult, but she loved every piece of the puzzle that made him.
She gave the now desperate Galahad a portion from each plate-fair was fair-before carrying them back into the office. She saw he’d correctly interpreted her carbs as spaghetti, and had opened a bottle of red. He sat, sipping, and scanning her comp screen.
“Maybe he’ll cause you real harm.” Eve set the plates on her desk. “Then I’ll kill him.”
“Works for me. Interesting questions posed here, Lieutenant.” As if it were any casual meal-and for them perhaps it was-Roarke expertly wound noodles around his fork. “Interesting percentages.”
“Probability’s high Mira hit it with the reasons he’s come back to New York, and the reason he’s targeted me. Also in the high range he’s connected to opera professionally. I’m not sure I agree.”
“Why?”
“Has to be a lot of work, right? Focus, energy, dedication. And in most cases, a lot of interaction with others. Factor it in, sure,” she said, studying the display on-screen, “but when I rolled it around during my thinking time, it doesn’t fit for me. He’s no team player. My gauge is he likes his quiet time. You could, on some level, call his killings performances, but that’s not how I see them. They’re more intimate. Just between him and the vic until he’s done.”
“A duet.”
“A duet. Hmm.” She rolled that around, too. “Yeah, okay, a duet, I can see that. One man, one woman, the dynamics there, extremely personal. A performance, okay, without an audience, too intimate to share. Because, I think, at some time he was intimately connected to the woman all the rest represent. Yeah. They were a duet.”
“And his partner was killed.”
“Derailed his train. That’s why I think he uses chemicals to rein himself in for long periods-or conversely to free himself for short ones. There, the computer and I agree. So, I look for types of medications that can suppress homicidal urges. And if he’s sick, as we’re theorizing, he may be taking meds for whatever his condition might be. Do you know Tomas Pella?”
“The name’s not familiar, no.”
“He seemed to know you.”
“I know a great many people.”
“And a great many more know you, I get that. He used to own some restaurants in Little Italy. Sold them shortly after the time all this started nine years ago.”
“I might have bought them, or one of them. I’ll check the records.”
“How about Hugh Klok, antiquities dealer. You buy a lot of old stuff.”
“Doesn’t ring.”
“I’ll do a run on him. One of the others Newkirk remembered from the prior was this guy who did taxidermy. You know, stuffed dead animals.”
“Which always begs the question: Why in the bloody hell?”
“Yeah, what’s with that?” Eve slanted her gaze over to Galahad, who’d wandered back in to sit and wash up after his meal. “I mean, would you want…you know, when he uses up his nine?”
“Good God, no. Not only, well, creepy would be the word, wouldn’t it, for us, but bloody humiliating for him.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think. I liked the idea of the taxidermy guy for the symbolism. House of death and blah. But he’s clear. Lives on Vegas II, and has for four years. Checked out. So anyway, you want the background on these other two, and the third I questioned today, Dobbins?”
“I’m sure it’s as much sparkling dinner conversation as the philosophy of taxidermy and dead cats. Go ahead.”
D owntown in their apartment, Peabody and McNab worked on dueling computers. Because he worked better with noise and she didn’t care, the air blasted with trash rock and revisionist rap. She sat, hunched over, tuning most of it out and picking her way through a complicated search.
He was up and down like a restless puppy, alternately snapping out directives and singing lyrics. She didn’t know how anyone could get any work done that way. But she also knew he not only could, he had to.
The remnants of the Chinese delivery they’d ordered were scattered around both their workstations. Peabody was already wishing she’d resisted that last egg roll.
When she finally found the data she was after, tears blurred her eyes. The hot prick of tears warned her she was overtired and her resistance was bottoming out.
“Hey, hey, She-Body!” McNab caught the look on her face. “Music off. Computer, save and pause. What’s wrong, honey?”
“It’s so sad. It just makes me so sad.”
“What does?” He’d already come behind her to pat and rub her shoulders.
It was a pretty good deal, she thought, to have somebody there to pet you when you were shaky. “I found Therese-Therese Di Vecchio Pella. Tomas Pella’s wife, one of the guys Dallas and I talked to today.”
“Yeah, from Old Newkirk’s notes, from the first go-round.”
“They got married in April. They were with the Home Force. He was a corporal, she was a medic. And see, look.” She tapped the comp screen. “In July she was dispatched to this area, on the edge of SoHo and Tribeca. An explosion, mostly civilian casualties. There was still firing in the sector, but she went in. She was wearing the red cross-the medic symbol. But she got hit by sniper fire when she tried to reach the wounded. She was only twenty. She was trying to help wounded civilians, and they killed her.”