Computer engaged. How may I assist you?
As it was the same husky female voice he'd installed in her home unit, Eve felt obliged to give him a baleful stare. "Who the hell is this?"
"You don't recognize it, do you?"
"Should I?"
"It's you, darling. After sex."
"Get out."
He laughed again, a quick rumble of amusement. "Get the directions, Lieutenant, before we end up in Michigan."
"That isn't my voice," she muttered, but began to worry about it as she read off the address.
A holographic map shimmered into place on the windscreen, the most direct route blinking in red.
"Isn't that handy?" Roarke commented. "This is our exit."
The sudden sharp turn at ninety miles an hour had Eve jerking back in the seat. She would hurt him later, she promised herself as he careened down the ramp. Hurt him really, really bad.
If they lived long enough.
• • • •
Wilson McRae lived in a tidy white house in a line of other tidy white houses, all centered on thumb-sized lawns. Each driveway was a glossy black, and though the grass was winter withered, it was trimmed neatly and uncluttered.
The road ran straight as a ruler with young maple trees planted every twelve feet.
"It's like something out of a horror video," Eve commented.
"Darling, you're such an urbanite."
"No, really. There was this one where aliens invade, you know, undercover and all, and they'd—what do you call it—zombiedized the people. So they all dressed alike and walked alike. Ate the same stuff at the same time of day."
Her gaze shifted from house to house suspiciously while Roarke looked on in amusement. "They're kind of like…hives, you know? Don't you expect to see all these doors open at exactly the same moment and have people who look exactly the same way walk out of these exactly the same houses?"
He sat back in the snazzy car and studied her. "Eve, you're scaring me."
"See?" She laughed as she climbed out her side. "Creepy place, if you ask me. I bet you don't even know you're being zombiedized when it's happening."
"Probably not. You go first."
She snickered and didn't feel the least foolish to have her hand linked with his as they started up the perfectly straight walkway to the white door. "I got the personal background on him. Nothing jars. Eight years married, one kid and another on the way. House is mortgaged and well within their financial scope. I couldn't find any sudden influx of income to indicate he'd been paid off."
"You're banking that he's straight."
"I've got to hope he is and can give me a handle. I don't have any authority," she added. "He doesn't have to talk to me. I can't check in with the local cops, I can't use any cop-to-cop pressure."
"Try charm," Roarke suggested.
"You're the one with the charm."
"True. Try anyway."
"How's this?" She smiled winningly.
"You're scaring me again."