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“Maybe.”
“Then I suppose I should add my own, in the interest of full disclosure and openness. I’ve implemented level-three runs on any of my people involved in the development of the holo-game project, and those on the fringes of it. Their associations, financials, communications.”
“That’s not your job.”
“I disagree. They’re my people, and I will be bloody well sure no one in my employ is involved in this, on any level, in any way.”
“The Privacy Act—”
“Be damned.” And a hot thread of anger, he admitted, felt more comfortable than this inexplicable sorrow. “Anyone employed by me or seeking to be is routinely screened, and signs a waiver.”
“Not for a level three, not without cause. That’s cop or government level.”
“Murder would be cause on my gauge.” His tone was as crisp and chilly as the wine.
“It’s a gray area.”
“Your gray is broader and darker than mine. There are incentives attached to a project like this, bonuses that could be very lucrative.” He stopped again, angled his head. “Which you know very well already as you’ve done or are doing your own level three, on my people.”
“It’s my job.”
“You might have told me. You might have trusted me enough to get the information for you.”
“You might have told me,” she countered. “Trusted me enough to do my job. Dammit. I didn’t tell you because you had a personal attachment to the victim, and I didn’t see the point in adding to the upset by telling you or asking you to get the data. What’s your excuse?”
“I don’t need an excuse. They’re my people. But the fact is once I have the data, and—whatever the results—pass it to you, you’d be able to contract or expand your suspect list.”
“All you had to do was tell me.”
“And the reverse holds just as true, so there’s no point in you getting pissed off.”
“I’m not pissed off. I’m . . . aggravated.”
“You’re aggravated? Consider, Eve, how aggravated I might be if it turns out that someone I trust, someone I pay had anything whatsoever to do with that.”
He gestured to the board.
“You can’t be or feel responsible for every person who pulls a check from Roarke Industries.” She threw up her hands. “It’s half the fucking world.”
More than one hot thread of anger wound through him now. “Oh yes, I bloody well can, and it’s nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with being in charge. You are and feel exactly the same about every cop in your division, in the whole shagging department come to that.”
She started to argue, then stopped because he was right about that much. “Any data from your run has to coincide with mine, and officially come from mine whether it clears your whole crew or somebody bobs to the surface.”
“I know how it works, Lieutenant. I’ll just get back to it then, so you can have what you need and shift it back to your side of the line.”
“That was low,” she mumbled as he walked out.
“Maybe it was.”
She sat, brooding into her wine. She didn’t know, exactly, why they were at odds. They were doing basically the same thing for basically the same reason.
Basically.
But he should’ve let her do it, or waited until she’d assigned him to do it. And that probably grated. The assign portion. Couldn’t be helped. She was the LT, she was the primary, she gave the damn orders.
Now she was passing aggravated and heading toward pissed, she realized.
She’d just been trying to shield him a little. Wasn’t that her job, too? she thought in disgust as she rose. Part of the marriage deal? So why were they fighting when she’d done her job?
