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“Shit! Shit a brick!” Eve sprang around, instinctively reaching for her weapon and slapping her own naked side. On the monitor she saw Nixie standing in the guest room by the house scanner. “Jesus, does she ever sleep?”
“Summerset will go settle her down.” But he sat in the warm bed with his naked wife and watched the child.
“We can’t have juicy sex with a kid right there. It’s . . . perverted.”
“I don’t mind perverted. What it is, is intimidating. It’s not like she can see or hear or . . . it’s just that there she is. And now there’s Summerset.” He sighed, pushed back his hair as he watched his majordomo go into Nixie’s room. “Bugger it. Let’s try the shower. It could work in the shower, you know, with the door closed, the water running.”
“It’s weirded me out now, him as much as her. I’ve got to slap it together and get to work. Go back to sleep.”
He dropped back on the pillows when she jumped out of bed and dashed toward the bath. “Right. That’ll happen.”
She was smart enough to get in and out of the shower in a blink, knowing he might try to talk them both into a quick water game. She was shutting the door on the drying tube when he came in.
“She wants pictures,” he said. “Pictures of her family. Can you get some for her?”
“I’ll take care of it. Gotta check some things in my office,” she added. “See if anything came in while we slept. Then I’ve got to get back downtown.”
“I’ll check the search results for you before you go—on the condition you have some breakfast.”
She watched him—the man had the best ass on the planet—step into the shower. “Get something in the office.” She stepped out of the tube, combed her fingers through her hair as she reached for a robe. “Update you in there if you want.”
“I’ll come up as soon as I’m dressed. We’ll have some breakfast while you do.”
“Deal.” She went into the bedroom, pulled out some underwear, grabbed some trousers, reached for a shirt. She was pulling it on when the in-house ’link beeped.
“Video off. What?”
“As you’re up, Nixie would like a word with you,” Summerset said.
“I’m heading to my office in a minute.”
“As none of you has had breakfast, perhaps she could join you.”
Put me right in that corner, Eve thought with a snarl for the ’link. “I’m still—”
“I can program coffee.” Nixie’s voice piped through. “I know how.”
“Okay, fine, sure. Do that. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She buttoned the shirt, pulled on her boots, and muttered to herself about having to have conversations with witnesses before she’d had her coffee. Sex might’ve given her a charge, cleared the cobwebs, but no. Kid’s got to start nagging at her before she’s out of the damn bed.
She strapped on her weapon harness, strode to the closet for a jacket. She had work to do, damn it. Serious, concentrated work, and what was going to happen? The kid was going to start out the day with one of those long, soulful looks. And she’d have to tell her for the umpteenth time that no, she hadn’t caught the murdering bastards who’d slaughtered her family.
“Oh fucking shit!”
The murder board, Eve thought, standing in plain sight in her office. She streaked out of the room, swung into the one Nixie was using. When she found it empty, she charged toward her office.
Still in her pink pajamas, the child stood, staring at the stark
images of murder and death. Cursing herself, cursing Summerset, Eve strode across the room, put herself directly between Nixie and the board.
“This isn’t for you.”
“I saw them before. I saw them for real. My mom and dad. I saw them before. You said I could see them again.”
“Not like this.” Her eyes were huge, Eve thought. So big in her face it seemed they’d swallow it whole.
“It’s my mom and dad. They’re not yours.” She tried to push pass Eve.
