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“God, you romantic fool. No wonder I adore you.”
She offered a smirk. “So, while I was infected, she’s talking about how she’s going to stay in a hotel the night before the wedding because she doesn’t want Charles to see her on the day of, and she’s got to get rubbed and polished and painted. I said she should stay here.”
“She should, of course.”
“And then I said how she’d probably want her women friends with her. I don’t know where that came from. It just came out of the whacky-happy infection. It wasn’t until I had some distance, and it was too damn late, that I realized one of those women will be Trina. Has to be. So now I’ve opened it all up to a bunch of women with wedding mania, one of whom will come at me—oh yes, she will—with gunk and goo.”
Her heart, Roarke thought, would always win out over her sense of self-preservation when it came to those who mattered to her.
“But think of the friend credit you’ll accumulate.”
“I don’t know if it’s worth it. Plus . . .”
“Murder,” he said when she trailed off. “You’ve already given me a breather, and red meat. You don’t have to stop yourself from talking about it.”
“You looked tired and irritable, and you almost never do. That’s my job.”
He thought of Summerset’s “annoyed and tired” and felt the scowl take hold before he could stop it. “I was both.”
“I’m better at it.”
He laughed again. “Got me there. I enjoy e-work as a rule, particularly when there’s a challenge involved. But this is like trying to unravel a ball of string one thread at a time.”
“Maybe we won’t need it. I have other threads, and I’m tying them together. Yancy’s working on his face. I’ve got various contact points, and when I pin him on one, there’ll be others. I think he may be in the e-business, or he can afford a lot of toys. Including the same security system involved. It’s your system. You update it regularly.”
“As technology emerges, refinements, options, yes. A customer would be given the option to add any or all of the new features or refinements.”
“Which MacMasters did, in March. The timing’s too damn good. A couple of weeks later, Deena meets her killer. I can’t connect the killer or MacMasters to the tech who did the updates, but there’s going to be one, to him or to the company. Security Plus.”
“It’s not mine. We bid out service and maintenance to companies, and customers have the option of choosing from them, or at their risk, using an independent. Security Plus is a solid organization, and a service center for most top-of-the-line systems.”
“But you upgraded the system in March.”
“I can check.”
“While you’re at it, can you find out who bought the same system as MacMasters within the last six months? Year,” she corrected. “A year, and had the same upgrades done in March. He’s spent a lot of time on this project. He’d get the upgrades, too. He’d get every one of them.”
“I’ll warn you it sells very well to a certain level of clientele, and most will spring for the upgrades.”
“Something’s going to cross eventually. The system, his employment, his education, his face, his motive. It’s going to cross.” It damn well had to cross. “Then it’s going to cross again and again. Then we’re going to take that ball of string and shove it down his throat.”
“I look forward to helping with that. For the girl, her parents, for you. And for the very selfish reason the fucker compromised my system.”
“All good reasons.”
“I’ll get the data for you. It might take a bit.”
She indulged in another sip of wine. “Why don’t you set up a run and search, and we’ll finish the breather with a swim.”
He angled his head. “A swim? Would that be a euphemism?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll set it up.”
She wanted the water
, a good, strong swim—both literally and euphemistically. She needed the physical to offset the hours and hours of thinking. Maybe if she stopped thinking for just a little while, she’d go back to it with more clarity.
