“Dallas.”
“Hello, Lieutenant.” Roarke’s face filled her screen, and almost immediately shifted from an easy smile to puzzlement. “Where are you? The zoo?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Wanting to cut out some of the background noise, she stepped out into the hall. “Everything okay?”
“Well enough. Eve, I ha
ve to go out of town for a few days.”
“Oh.” It wasn’t unusual for him to have to buzz around the planet, or off it. The man had interests all over the developed universe. But the timing was poor. “If you could—”
“I have to go to Ireland,” he said before she could finish. “I need to go back, and deal with this.”
Stupid, she thought immediately. Stupid to have this blindside her. Of course he’d need to go back. “Look, okay, I can see how you’d feel that, but I’m in the middle of things here. I need to stick with this until I close the case, then I can take some time. I’ll put in for it when I get back to Central.”
“I need to deal with this myself.”
She opened her mouth, ordered herself to breathe before she spoke. “Right.”
“Eve, it has to be done, and isn’t something you need to worry about. I don’t want you to worry about it, or me. I’m sorry to leave you to handle Summerset, and I’ll try to make it as quick as I can.”
She kept her face blank, her voice even for both their sakes. “When are you leaving?”
“Now. Immediately. Fact is, I’m on the shuttle now. I can’t tell you precisely where I’ll be—I don’t know yet. But I’ll have my personal ’link with me. You’ll be able to reach me anytime.”
“You knew you were going.” She lowered her voice, turning her back on the corridor as students rushed by behind her. “You knew this morning.”
“I had to see to some details first.”
“But you’d already made up your mind to go.”
“I had, yes.”
“And you’re telling me like this so I can’t do anything to stop you.”
“Eve, you wouldn’t stop me. And I won’t have to put your work in a holding pattern so you can come along and nurse me through this.”
“Is that what you did when you went with me to Dallas? Nursed me through it?”
Frustration ran over his face. “That was a different matter.”
“Oh yeah, with you being a man and all, with unbreakable balls. I keep forgetting.”
“I have to go.” He spoke coolly now. “I’ll let you know where I am as soon as I can manage, and I’ll be back in a few days. Probably sooner. You can kick my unbreakable balls then. Meanwhile, I love you. Ridiculously.”
“Roarke—” But he’d already ended the transmission. “Damn it. Damn it.” She kicked the wall, twice.
She marched back into the rehearsal room and vented her frustration by stalking through the slinking tigers and leaping chimps.
The instructor was a pencil-thin woman with a high shock of blue hair. “Ah,” she said, “and here we have the lone wolf.”
“Shut them down,” Eve ordered.
“Class is in progress.”
“Shut them down.” Eve whipped out her badge. “Now.”
“Oh damn it, not another Illegals sweep. Stop!” For a thin woman, she had a big voice, and her order shut off the din.