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Yeah, she thought, he did. In his place, she’d have needed it. “There’ll be a full briefing tomorrow, nine hundred, my home office. Meanwhile, you’d better get back in shape because I don’t have time to carry you around.”
“Yes, sir. Thanks.”
“We’ve got to go stock the AutoChef with gruel and other tasty invalid food. See you around.”
“The gruel was a nice touch,” Roarke told her as they walked down the hall.
“I thought so.”
“Put a nice happy glow on his face.”
“Lieutenant! Dallas!”
She turned to see Peabody hustling down the hallway, then took a staggering step back when her aide caught her in a fierce embrace. “Thanks. Thank you.”
“Oh, jeez.” Mortified, Eve lifted a hand, patted Peabody awkwardly on the back. “Okay.”
“His heart stopped. During the transpo. They had to zap him. It was only a few seconds, but I thought: What’ll I do? What’ll I do? He’s such an asshole,” Peabody said and burst into tears.
“Man. God. Roarke.”
“An interesting and flattering lineup,” Roarke said to his wife’s strangled call for help. “Here now, darling.” Gently, he eased Peabody’s death grip on Eve and with his arm around her led her into a small waiting area. He sat her down and dabbed at her cheeks with a handkerchief.
Eve shuffled her feet, then sat. Then rubbed a hand over Peabody’s thigh. “You’re just going to puff up his ego if he finds out you’re crying over him. He’s already hard to live with.”
“I know. Sorry. It was, I guess it was hearing him say how it went down. It’s got my brain all scrambled up.”
“There’s a lot of that going around.”
Peabody managed a watery laugh and laid her head on Roarke’s shoulder. Such was her state of mind that the physical contact didn’t cause her to experience the usual sexual tingle. “You guys are the ult. Seriously. Taking him in for a few days while his system levels out.”
“Well.” Eve sighed. Friendship, she thought, could be so damn inconvenient. “He’s bound to be pretty demanding. I’m sure as hell not going to be his private nurse. You’re going to have to come along and take that duty.”
Peabody’s lips trembled. Her eyes filled again.
“Don’t! Don’t do that again. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir.” She let out an enormous sigh. “I’m going to go stick my head under a faucet before I go back in with him. I’ll keep him out of your hair, Dallas.”
“See that you do.”
Eve sat where she was a moment after Peabody walked out. “Don’t make any smart comments about me being a soft touch,” Eve warned. “Or you’ll be glad we happen to be in a medical facility when you regain full consciousness.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Roarke rubbed a hand over hers. “Lieutenant Softie.”
She slanted him a look, but got to her feet without resorting to violence. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
She let him drive home because she wanted to think. Electronics weren’t her strong suit. In fact, she and technology fought an ongoing war, and so far she’d lost most of the battles.
Feeney was captain of EDD because he was a good cop, and because he not only understood the strange world of electronics, he had a lifelong love affair with it. She could count on McNab, if he was physically up to it. He brought a young, fresh, innovative hand to the field.
And, after today, she could expect the full cooperation of every cop, drone, and droid in EDD.
But she had one more weapon, and it was sitting beside her, making her clunky departmental vehicle purr like a kitten as it darted through the misery of evening traffic.
She might have been Roarke’s wife, and the wheel of the deal was his favorite pastime. Okay, second favorite, she corrected with a smirk. But electronics was his well-loved mistress.
“We need to get into Cogburn’s unit,” she began. “We need to take it apart and put every chip, every circuit, every board under a scope. And we need to do that fast, without whoever’s working on
