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been running out of options. I might have put it to bed anyway, but I kept thinking about that kid hanging himself.”
She began to pace restlessly. “No predisposition there, either. No obvious motive, no known enemies. He just has himself a snack and makes a noose. Then I heard about the senator. That makes three suicides without logical explanations. Now, for people like Fitzhugh and the senator, with their kind of financial base, there’s counseling at the snap of a finger. Or in cases of terminal illness—physical or emotional—voluntary self-termination facilities. But they took themselves out in bloody and painful ways. Doesn’t fit.”
Roarke nodded. “Go on.”
“And the ME on Fitzhugh came up with this unexplained abnormality. I wanted to see if, on the off chance, the kid had anything like it.” She gestured to the screen. “He does. Now I need to know what put it there.”
Roarke shifted his eyes back to the screen. “Genetic flaw?”
“Possibly, but the computer says unlikely. At least it’s never come across anything like it before—through heredity, mutation, or outside causes.” She moved behind the console, scrolled the screen. “See there, in the projection of possible mental affects? Behavioral alterations. Pattern unknown. A lot of help that is.”
She rubbed her eyes, thought it through. “But that says to me that the subject could, and likely would, behave out of pattern. Suicide would be out of pattern for these two men.”
“True enough,” Roarke agreed. Leaning back against the console, he crossed his legs at the ankles. “But so would dancing naked in church or kicking elderly matrons off a skywalk. Why did they both choose self-termination?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? But this gives me enough, once I figure out how to spin it to Whitney, to keep both cases open. Download data to disc, print hard copy,” she ordered, then turned to Roarke. “I’ve got a few minutes now.”
His brow quirked, a habitual gesture she secretly adored. “Do you?”
“Which laws did you have in mind to break?”
“Several, actually.” He glanced at his watch as she stepped forward to unbutton his elegant linen shirt. “We have a premiere in California tonight.”
Her fingers stopped, her face fell. “Tonight.”
“But I think we have time for a few misdemeanors first.” With a laugh, he scooped her off her feet and laid her back on the console.
Eve was tugging on a floor-length, siren-red sheath and complaining bitterly about the impossibility of wearing so much as a scrap of underwear under the clinging material when her communicator beeped. Naked to the waist, with the flimsy bodice hanging to her knees, she pounced.
“Peabody?”
“Sir.” Several expressions passed over Peabody’s face before it went carefully blank. “That’s a lovely dress, Lieutenant. Are you premiering a new style?”
Baffled, Eve looked down, then rolled her eyes. “Shit. You’ve seen my tits before.” But she set the communicator down and struggled the bodice into place.
“And may I say, sir, they’re quite lovely.”
“Sucking up, Peabody?”
“You bet.”
Eve stifled a chuckle and sat on the edge of the sofa in the dressing room. “Report?”
“Yes, sir. I . . . ah . . .”
Noting that Peabody’s eyes had shifted and glazed over, Eve glanced over her shoulder. Roarke had just walked into the room, damp from his shower, tiny beads of water glistening on his bare chest, a white towel barely hitched at his hips.
“Stay out of view, will you, Roarke, before my aide goes brain dead.”
He looked toward the communicator screen, grinned. “Peabody, hello.”
“Hi.” Even over the unit, her swallow was audible. “Nice to see you—I mean, how are you?”
“Very well, and you?”
“What?”
“Roarke.” Eve heaved a sigh. “Give Peabody a break, will you, or I’ll have to block video.”
