J. Robb - Vengeance in Death

"Immigration records, screen four," Roarke told her.

"Yeah, he's visited our fair city a time or two," Eve noted. "Let's log these dates, and we'll see if we can find out what he was up to while he was here. Were the brothers close?"

"The Rileys were like wild dogs. They'd have torn out each other's throat for the same bone, but they'd form a pack against an outsider."

"Well, let's take a good, close look at all four of them."

By three a.m. she was losing her edge. The data and images on screen began to blur and run together. Names and faces, motives and murder. When she felt herself drifting to sleep where she stood, Eve pressed her fingers hard against her burning eyes.

"Coffee," she muttered, but found herself staring at the AutoChef without a clue how to operate it.

"Sleep." Roarke pressed a mechanism that had a bed sliding out of the wall.

"No, I just have to catch my second wind. We've got it down to ten possibles. And I want to look harder at that Francis Rowan who became a priest. We can – "

"Take a break." He came up behind her, guided her toward the bed. "We're tired."

"Okay, we'll take a nap. An hour." Head and body seemed to float apart as she slid onto the bed. "You lie down too."

"I will." He lay beside her, gathered her close. He could feel her fall into sleep, a lazy tumble that had the arm she'd tossed around his waist going limp.

He stared at the screens a moment longer, into the void of his past. He'd separated himself from that, from them. The boy from Dublin's sad alleys had made himself rich, successful, respected, but he'd never forgotten what it was to be poor, a failure and disdained.

And he knew, as he lay in the soft bed on smooth linen sheets in a magnificent house in a city he'd made his home, that he would have to go back.

What he might find there, and in himself, troubled him.

"Lights out," he ordered, and willed himself to follow Eve into sleep.

It was the beep of an incoming transmission that woke them both three hours later. Roarke swore when Eve jerked up and the top of her head caught him smartly on the jaw.

"Oh, sorry." She rubbed her head. "Is that yours or mine?''

"Mine." Gingerly he rotated his jaw. "It's a warning alarm. I have a conference call set up for six-thirty."

"I've got McNab and Peabody here at seven. Christ." She scrubbed her hands over her face and, when her fingers dipped below her eyes, studied him. "How come you never look ragged in the morning?"

"Just one of those little gifts from God." He scooped back his hair, which managed to look sexily tousled. "I'll shower in here, save time. I should be finished up with this call by the time McNab gets here. I'd like to work with him this morning."

"Roarke – "

"The transmission didn't come from this house. So I have an electronic leak somewhere. I know the setup here, in and out. He doesn't." He added a bit of charm to his smile. "I've worked with Feeney."

"That's different." But since she couldn't explain how it was different, she shrugged. "McNab has to clear it. I won't order him to work with a civilian."

"Fair enough."

By eight, Eve had Peabody installed in a temporary office down the hall from her own. It was actually a small and elegant sitting room off a sweeping guest bedroom, but it was equipped with a tidy little communication and information center for the convenience of overnight associates who often visited.

Peabody gawked at the original pen-and-ink drawings covering the walls, the hand-knotted area rug, the deep silver cushions spread over an S-shaped settee.

"Pretty grand work space."

"Don't get used to it," Eve warned. "I want to be back at Central by next week. I want this closed."

"Sure, but I'll just enjoy this while it lasts." She'd already eyed the mini AutoChef and speculated on what it might offer. "How many rooms are in this place?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think they mate at night and make more little rooms that grow into big rooms, and mate at night -" Eve stopped herself, shook her head. "I didn't get much sleep. I'm punchy. I've got data here that needs a fresh eye and organizing."

"I got eight straight. My eye's fresh."

"Don't be smug." Eve pinched the bridge of her nose. "This data is unofficial, Peabody, but I think our man's in here, somewhere. There's a temporary block on this computer so that your work will bypass CompuGuard. I'm working on a way around that, but until I figure it out, there's no fancy way to put this. I'm asking you to break the law."

Peabody considered for a moment. "Is that AutoChef fully stocked?"

Eve had to smile. "Around here? They always are. I have to get something to Whitney by this afternoon. I'm putting what I can together. Since this guy doesn't wait long between hits, we're in a squeeze."

"Then I better get to work."

Eve left her to it, but when she walked into her office, she found McNab and Roarke huddled together. The snazzy black armor of her computer was on the floor. Its guts were exposed, its dignity in ruins. Her desk 'link was in several unidentifiable pieces.

"What the hell are you two doing?"

"Men's work," Roarke said and flashed her a grin. His hair was tied back, his sleeves rolled up, and he looked to be having the time of his life.

She would have mentioned men and their toys, but decided it would be a waste of breath.

"If you don't get this back together, I'm taking over your office."

"Help yourself. You see here, Ian? If we interface this it should open the whole system long enough for us to see if there's a leak."

"Don't you have a thing that does that?" she demanded. "A scanner?"

"This is the best way to keep a scan from showing up." McNab spared her a look that clearly told her she was in the way. "We can search, and nobody – especially our mystery caller – will know we're looking."

Intrigued now, Eve moved closer. "So he stays confident. That's good. What does this do?"

"Don't touch anything." McNab nearly smacked her hand before he remembered she outranked him. "Sir."

"I wasn't going to touch anything." Annoyed, Eve jammed her hands into her pockets. "Why'd you take my 'link apart?"

"Because," McNab began with sighing patience, "that's where the transmissions come through, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but – "

"Eve. Darling." Roarke paused in his work long enough to pat her cheek. "Go away."

"Fine. I'll just go do some real cop work." She maintained dignity until she slammed the office door.

"Whoa, she's going to make you pay for that one."

"You don't know the half of it," Roarke murmured. "Let's run this, Ian, first level. See what we find."

On her own, Eve struggled with the wording and tone of her official report. If she used the Marlena connection so that she could give Whitney the names of the men who'd killed her – justify the investigation of their families – she'd lock Roarke into it.

All the men had been murdered, all their cases remained open. So far even the International Center for Criminal Activity hadn't connected those murders. Could she use them now, and sell Whitney and the chief of police, the media, on one of those murders being the motive for her current investigation?

Maybe, if she was good enough, if she could lie with conviction and logic.

Step one: Build the facts and evidence that Summerset was being used. She needed Mira's findings to polish that up.

Step two: Build a logical theory that the setup was motivated by revenge – mistakenly targeted revenge. To do that she had to build a reasonable case that the six men who died had died by separate hands, for separate causes.

They had all been part of the crime community, had all associated with undesirables. Their deaths had been spread out over three years and had all been caused by different means.