The way she was feeling, she figured the bad guys had best take a day off.
"You look rested, Lieutenant." Roarke leaned on the jamb of the doorway between their home offices.
"Ready to rock," she said, watching him over the rim of her coffee cup. "I guess you've got a lot of catching up to do."
"I made a pretty good start on that."
She snorted. "Yeah, not bad, but I was thinking of work."
"Ah. I've made a start on that as well." He crossed over, caged her in between his body and the desk. Leaning over, he stroked the cat who'd draped himself over the 'link like a rag.
"You're crowding me, pal, and I'm on the clock here."
"Not for five minutes yet."
She angled her head to look at her wrist unit. "You're right. Five minutes." She slid her arms around his waist. "We ought to be able to…" Just as she caught his bottom lip between her teeth, she heard the approaching footsteps, the unmistakable clomp of cop shoes. " Peabody 's early."
"Let's pretend we didn't hear her." Roarke nibbled at her mouth. "That we can't see her." Traced it with his tongue. "That we don't even know her name."
"That's a good plan except – " When he put sincere effort into the kiss, she was pretty sure she could feel her heart melting. "Down boy," she murmured just as Peabody strode into the room.
"Oh. Um. Ahem."
Roarke turned, picked up Galahad to scratch his ears. "Hello, Peabody."
"Hi. Welcome home. Maybe I'll just go in the kitchen there and get some coffee… and stuff."
But when she started by, Roarke reached out, lifted her chin with a finger, and studied her face. It was pale, the eyes heavy and chased by shadows. "You look tired."
"Guess I didn't sleep very well." She muttered, "Need that coffee." Then she hurried away.
"Eve."
"Don't." She held up a finger at Roarke's quiet tone. "I don't want to talk about that now. I don't ever want to talk about it, but I especially don't want to talk about it now. And if anybody had listened to me when I said she and McNab getting tangled was going to screw things up, we wouldn'thave to talk about it, would we?"
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're talking about it."
"Oh, shut up. All I know is she's going to suck it in and do the job, and so is he." She gave the desk one bad-tempered little kick before walking around behind it. "Now go away."
"You're worried about her."
"Damn it, you think I can't see she's hurt? That it doesn't get to me?"
"I know you can, and I know it does."
She opened her mouth, then heard more footsteps in the hallway. "Let it go," she muttered. " Peabody." She lifted her voice. "Feeney's here. Coffee light and sweet."
"How'd you know it was me?" Feeney demanded as he came inside.
"You shuffle."
"Hell I do."
"Hell you don't. You shuffle, Peabody clomps, McNab prances."
"If I wore some of the shoes he does, I'd prance, too. Hey, Roarke, didn't know you were back."
"Just. I'll be working at home for another hour or so," he told Eve. "Then I'll be in the midtown offices. The book stays here," he added. "You're welcome to take it on disc if you need it."
"What book?" Feeney asked.
"Poetry. Seems our guy took his umbrella name from a poem some guy named Keats wrote a couple hundred years ago."
"Bet it doesn't even rhyme. You take Springsteen, McCartney, Lennon. Those boys knew how to rhyme. Classic shit."
"Not only doesn't it rhyme, but it's weird and depressing and mostly stupid."
"With that canny analysis, I'll leave you to work." Carrying the cat, Roarke started toward his office. "I believe I hear McNab's prance."
He might have been wearing candy-apple red airboots, but he didn't look any perkier than Peabody. Doing her best to ignore it, Eve sat on the edge of her desk and updated them.
"That explains why we didn't have any luck at the cyber-joints either," McNab put in. "It didn't make sense that nobody'd seen this dude."
"We can do some morphing probabilities," Feeney mused. "Most possible face structures, colorings, combos. But basically we'll be working without a visual ID."
"I ran some probabilities myself. It's most likely we're looking for a single male between twenty-five and forty. Upper income bracket, advanced education, with some sort of sexual dysfunction or perversion. It's most probable he lives in the city. Feeney, where'd he get the high-priced illegals?"
"Dealers with Rabbit cater to a small, exclusive clientele. Aren't that many of them. Only one in the city I know of, but I can check with Illegals to see if there's more. Nobody deals in Whore that I know of. Just isn't cost effective."
"But at one time it was used in sex therapy, and for LC training?"
"Yeah, but the price tag was too high, and the substance too unpredictable."
"Okay." But it gave her more threads to pull. "We'll back off the cyber-joints for now. McNab, start on the morphings. Feeney, see what you can find out from Illegals. Once I hammer Dickhead into identifying brands of the putty and enhancers, the wig, we'll have that trail to follow. I got a tag on the wine. My source tells me there were three thousand and fifty bottles of that label and vintage sold in this borough. Peabody and I will run that down, and we'll see if we can nail down the pink roses. The guy spends money – wine, flowers, enhancements, illegals – then he's left a trail. We're going to find it. Peabody, you're with me."
When they were in the car, Eve took a long breath. "If you're having trouble sleeping, take a pill."
"That's some advice coming from you."
"Then consider it an order."
"Yes, sir."
"This is really pissing me off." Eve punched it, roared up the drive.
Peabody 's chin jutted out so far, Eve was surprised it didn't spear through the windshield. "I apologize if my personal difficulties are an annoyance to you, Lieutenant."
"If you can't do better sarcasm than that, give it up." She swung through the gates, then slammed on the brakes. "Do you want time off?"
"No, sir."
"Don'tsir me, Peabody, in that tone or I'll kick your ass right here and now."
"I don't know what's wrong with me." Her voice went watery. "I don't evenlike McNab. He's annoying and he's a jerk and he'sstupid. So what if the sex was great? And maybe we had some laughs. Big deal. It's not like we were serious or anything. It's not like it gives him the right to give me ultimatums or make insulting comments and draw asshole conclusions."
"Have you slept with Charles yet?"
"What?" Peabody actually blushed. "No."
"Maybe you should. Maybe, I can't believe I'm having this conversation, maybe if you relieved some stress in that area you'd get your head settled right. Or something."
"We're… Charles and I are friends."
"Yeah. You're friends with a very high-priced sexual professional. Seems to me he'd be willing to help you out."
"It's not the same as loaning me twenty till payday." Then she sighed. "But maybe I should think about it."
"Think fast. We're going to see him."
Peabody came straight up out of the seat. "What? Now?"
"Officially," Eve said and started the car again. "He's an expert on sex, right? Let's see what the expert knows about sexual illegals."
The sexual expert had the morning off. He answered the door wearing blue silk pajama bottoms.
As man-candy went, he was a caloric binge. Eve thought it was easy to see why he had so many clients paying for a nibble.
"Lieutenant, Delia. What an attractive sight to wake up to."
"Sorry to roust you," Eve told him. "Got a minute?"
"For you, Lieutenant Sugar, I have hours." He stepped back to let them in. "Why don't we have breakfast? I've got crepes stocked in the AutoChef."