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“Wait. Listen, grab me some work clothes, will you? And my weapon harness, and—”
“I know what you need.”
Her screen went black. Pissed off, she thought, and couldn’t blame him. She imagined a few heads would roll at Roarke’s Palace, and in short order. But meanwhile, she had useless discs on her hands, a suspect with drug-induced memory blanks, and a mutilated body at the morgue.
And it was still shy of dawn.
She opened her murder book, set up her board. According to the hotel records, the Asant Group had booked the triplex two months prior, and secured it with a credit card under the name of Josef Bellor, who carried an address in Budapest.
She fed the data into her computer, ordered a standard run. Only to learn Josef Bellor of Budapest had died there five years before at the ripe age of one hundred and twenty-one.
“Gonna be hard-pressed to get him to pay the bill,” she muttered.
One night’s booking, she thought, going over the notes. All room service delivered through the suite’s AutoChefs or pre-ordered and delivered prior to check-in. Five cases of wine, several pounds of various European cheeses, fancy breads, caviar, pâtés, cream cakes.
No point in ritual murder on an empty stomach.
So they ate, drank, orgied, she thought, pushing up to pace the small space of her office. Popped whatever illegals suited their fancy. Three floors of revelry, soundproofed high-collar digs with the privacy shades activated.
Would’ve saved the best for last, she decided. The sacrifice would’ve been the evening’s crescendo.
Just how did a nice girl from Indiana end up the star of the show? How did a transplanted young doctor from Pennsylvania get invited and left behind?
“Lieutenant.”
She turned to the sleepy-eyed McNab in her doorway. He wore pants of screaming yellow that matched the fist-sized dots shrieking over a shirt of eye-tearing green. His long blond hair was pulled back from his thin, pretty face into a tail. She wondered if the hank of it somehow balanced the weight of the tangle of silver loops in his ear.
“Doesn’t it ever give you a headache?” she wondered. “Just looking in the mirror.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Discs.” She gathered them from her desk, pushed them at them. “Find something on them. Roarke’s on his way.”
“Okay. Why?”
“They’re his discs. Palace Hotel security. I’ve already shot a report to your unit in EDD. Read it, work it. Get me something.”
He stifled a yawn, then focused on her board. “Is that the vic?”
Eve only nodded, said nothing when he came in to study the board. He’d work better and harder, she knew, if he was invested. “That’s fucked up,” he said. “That’s seriously fucked up. And that’s gotta be more than one killer.” He slipped the discs into one of the pockets of his pants. “If there’s an image on these, we’ll get it.”
If there were no images, she thought when McNab left, it meant the security had been compromised on site. Knowing how tightly any ship in Roarke’s expansive fleet ran, that would’ve taken some serious magic.
She turned toward her ’link with the idea of tagging Roarke on his way in. And he walked into her office.
“That was quick.”
“I’m in a hurry.” He set a bag on her visitor’s chair. “Where are the discs?”
“I just passed them off to McNab. Wait.” She shot out a hand as he turned. “If the security was breached on site, how could it be done?”
“I don’t know until I see the discs, do I?”
“Be pissed off later. How could it be done?”
He made an obvious effort to settle himself, then walked to her AutoChef to program coffee for himself. “It would have to be through security or electronics, and one of the top levels. Most likely both, working in tandem. No one at that level would consider a bribe of any kind worth their position.”
“Threat, blackmail?”
