Obsession in Death (In Death 40)

When she eased back, he took her hand. “We’ll get through this, Eve.”

“Yeah, we’ll get through it.”

• • •

Clearer, steadier—she preferred the mild soreness from a good fight and exceptional sex to the dragging headache and irritation—she brought the disc files to Roarke’s computer lab.

EDD couldn’t boast better, she thought—then frowned when Roarke opened a bottle of wine.

“You wanted sweat and sex,” he pointed out. “I wanted a glass of wine when I got home. You got yours.”

She couldn’t argue with that, but she’d keep her own to one glass for the same reason she’d dressed in a shirt and trousers, and strapped her weapon harness back on. If and when Dispatch contacted her, she wanted to be ready to roll.

“I’ve got correspondence—mine and Nadine’s. It’s already had a first purge, eliminating what can be eliminated. What I’m looking to do is a search and analysis using these and the two crime scene messages.”

“Looking for key words and phrases, syntax, grammar.”

“Yeah. It’s a lot, but it’s less than it would’ve been without the first eliminations.”

“We can run this a few ways,” he told her. “I’ll set it up to cross yours and Nadine’s, and that will pop out matches, even if they haven’t come from the same name or location. Pure content match. And we’ll run another on yours, a third on Nadine’s, those against the messages—names, locations.”

“Good. That’s good. It’s thorough.”

“It won’t take long to set it up. It may take considerable time for the search and analysis. I’ll put them on auto, and the comp will alert when we have—say ten potentials on each?”

“Five. The sooner I start running them, the better.”

“Five, then.”

“I’ll do one. I can do one,” she insisted, a little miffed by his amused glance. “And yeah, it’ll take me as long to do one as it does for you to do the other two, but then they’ll all be done.”

She took the discs of her own correspondence, chose a comp, got started.

He finished his assignment, enjoyed his wine while she fought her way through the last of the programming.

“Done.” Nearly as relieved as she might have been to avoid a midair collision, she shoved her hands through her hair, then hell, took a gulp of wine. “And you should check to make sure I didn’t screw it up.”

“You didn’t. I had my eye on you.” He gave her shoulder a rub. “We’ll let the machines do their work—which they won’t do faster for being scowled at. We’ll get some food, and you can tell me what progress you made today. We may hit on another angle. This one?” He nodded toward the computers. “Is a good one.”

“Okay, yeah. Okay. I had to bring my division in on it,” she said as they started out. “It was going to leak—and it did—so I wanted them up to date.”

“They’d have heard bits and pieces, along with speculation and inaccuracies. It’s good they heard it all, and from you.”

“Now they’re juggling—Jenkinson’s word—taking different angles on this along with their own caseloads.”

“As it should be,” Roarke said. “As you would have done for any of them if they needed it. It’s not just detectives and officers in the same division, Lieutenant. It’s a unit, and it’s yours.”

“They’re a little pissed off about the whole thing.”

“As it should be,” he repeated.

• • •

They ate thick, chunky soup, hunks of crusty bread, while she filled him in.

And while she filled him in, the brown-clad, nondescript delivery person strode toward the chosen address. It was hard to keep a spring out of the step.

People bustled right on by—who paid attention? Oh, it had been genius, this method. Pride swelled.