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“Well, meanwhile, we did some poking around on the underground game sites on the way back. Razor’s already putting out feelers. We left it like we’d be willing to pay, and how we’d heard one of these swords was out there. Now he’s looking, and we’re watching him while he’s looking. McNab’s going to keep tabs. If Razor gets a hit, we’ll get it, too.”
“That’s good thinking. Go home and take that shower. I can smell you from here.”
“It’s not my fault. Plus, with the sweating I think I might’ve lost a pound or two just sitting there trying not to breathe.” She pushed herself up. “Oh, nearly forgot. We got you a present.”
“Why?”
“Because.” She unzipped one of her pockets and pulled out a very small gun.
“What is it?”
“It’s a toy gun. A derringer—like cardsharps and saloon girls carry in western vids. It’s like a clutch piece.”
“Hmmm.”
“And check it.” Peabody cocked it, and a sultry female voice purred out of the barrel. Put those hands where I can see them, cowboy.
“It has all sorts of audio streams—male, female. I figured you’d want the female. Plus—”
She aimed it at Eve, pulled the trigger even as Eve said: “Hey!”
The little gun let out a brave little bang. Next one goes lower, and you won’t be poking a woman with that stick of yours for the rest of your miserable life.
“Isn’t it cute? You could play saloon girl and Roarke could be high-stakes gambler, then . . . and that’s entirely none of my nevermind.” Peabody offered a big smile.
“Yes, it’s cute, no, it’s none of your nevermind.” Eve took the derringer, recocked it. You’d better hightail it before that tail’s sporting another hole.
“It could use better dialogue, but it’s apt enough. Hightail it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Peabody? Thanks.” Eve studied the gun, shook her head. Unable to resist, she shot her
computer, her AutoChef, amused by the lame insults that followed. That was another thing about partners, she decided. They knew what would make you laugh, often before you did.
12
There’d been a time, Roarke thought, not so long ago in the bigger scheme, when a few hours in a cop shop would’ve been something to be carefully and ruthlessly avoided. Now, he spent so much time in one he knew which Vending areas to avoid, which glides tended to drag or crowd up, and just how filthy cop coffee could be by the end of a tour.
His life had taken a sharp and strange turn the first instant he’d laid eyes on a cop, his cop, in an ill-fitting coat and a truly ugly gray suit.
He fingered the button from that suit, one he kept for luck and sentiment in his pocket.
She’d been a first for him at a time when he’d come to believe he’d done nearly everything worth doing at least once. Had he been bored? he wondered as he angled his way onto a down glide. No, not bored, but perhaps a bit unsettled, restless, certainly dissatisfied in ways he hadn’t been able to put his finger on at the time.
Then, there she’d been, and everything shifted, everything sharpened. He couldn’t say what fell into place. Nothing with Eve was quite that easy, but pieces had begun to fit together. Some of them, on both sides, had required a bit of reshaping, and likely still would as more and more of their picture emerged.
As he rode down, a pair of uniforms rode up. The rattail-thin man between them protested loudly and continually.
“Somebody musta planted that wallet on me. I got enemies. I was only running ’cause I had a bus to catch. Do I look like a pickpocket? Do I? Do I?”
You do indeed, Roarke thought, and if you can’t lift a wallet without fumbling the snatch, you deserve your ninety-day stretch.
Eve wouldn’t think quite that way, he mused. It wasn’t the getting caught, but the act itself that earned the stretch. Most of the time he agreed with her, and in fact had edged over to her side of that line more and more as time went by. But a bit of quick fingers? Well, everyone had to make a living, didn’t they? Even a street thief.
He ought to know.
He crossed into Homicide where the sounds, the sights, the smells had come to be as familiar to him as those in his own head-quarters.
