“Yes, to set your mind at ease.”
“Thanks. I’ve got to get going.”
“Lieutenant?”
“What?”
He cupped her face in his hands, gently touched his lips to her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth. “I love you.”
Everything inside her shifted, shimmered, settled. “I know. Even though I’m not a French redhead with a rich daddy. How much did you take her for?”
“In what area?”
She laughed, shook her head. “Never mind.” But at the door she stopped, looked back at him. “I love you, too. Oh, and Galahad just copped your bacon.”
She strode down the hall, but caught the mild exasperation in Roarke’s voice. “Haven’t we discussed that sort of behavior?” It made her smirk a little as she took the steps in a jog.
At the bottom, lurking as she thought of it, was Summerset. He held her leather jacket between one long thumb and one bony finger. “I will assume you’ll be home for the evening meal unless I hear to the contrary.”
“Assume all you want.” She took the jacket, but glanced back up the stairs as she shrugged into it. “I need you a minute.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Stuff the attitude back up your pointy nose,” she suggested, but she kept her voice lowered. She aimed a finger at the front door, then swung it open. “Come on.”
“I have several tasks on this morning’s schedule,” he began.
“Quiet.” She shut the door behind him, drew in a breath of sweet spring air. “You’ve been with him for a long time, and you know all there is to know. First give me your take on Mick Connelly.”
“I’m not in the habit of gossiping about houseguests.”
“Goddamn it.” She rapped a fist on his chest, an impatient gesture that caused Summerset to show his teeth. “Do I look like I want a cozy gossip here? Somebody wants to shake Roarke. I don’t know why, I don’t know the bottom line, but someone’s looking to cause him trouble. Give me your take on Connelly.”
Summerset’s eyes, which had gone black as onyx at the fist to his chest, narrowed. Considered her. “He was wild as they all were. They were wild times. My understanding was he had a difficult home life, but then all of them did. Some worse than others. He came around when Roarke settled in with me. Polite enough, if rough around the edges. Hungry, but they were all hungry.”
“Did he ever square off with Roarke?”
“There were words and fists at one time or another between all of them. Mick would have cut off his fingers for Roarke. Any of them would. Mick looked up to him. Roarke took a beating for him once, from the cops,” Summerset added with a sneer. “When Mick fumbled a pass off after a pocket dip.”
“Okay. All right.” She relaxed a little.
“This is about the chambermaid.”
“Yeah. I want you to use that yard-long nose of yours for something other than looking down at inferiors. Sniff around, past and present. If you catch a whiff of anything, anything that’s off, contact me. You can monitor Roarke without putting his back up. He expects you to know where he is. Make sure you do.”
Summerset put a hand on her arm to stop her from turning away. “Is he in any sort of physical jeopardy?”
“If I thought he was, he wouldn’t get out of the house even if I had to drug him and put him in restraints.”
Forced to be satisfied with that, Summerset watched her go down the steps to where her increasingly dilapidated city-issue vehicle was parked.
Eve imagined the steam gushing out of her ears as she marched through the detective’s bull pen and on to her office. Her ’link light was blinking busily from messages and her computer was beeping from fresh incoming data.
She ignored both and began riffling through her drawers.
“Sir? McNab—”
“I want a riot laser,” Eve snapped at Peabody. “Full body armor.” She yanked a six-inch combat knife from its leather sheath and watched, with glee, as its wicked serrated edge caught the sunlight through her little window.