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After two in the morning, with the initial search protocol complete, the alerts issued, the search active, Eve and Roarke returned to the hotel. The smudges of fatigue under her eyes blurred like bruising against her pallor. A sure sign, he knew, she’d passed the point of exhaustion.
She needed sleep but, as he expected, objected when he stopped the elevator on the bedroom level.
“I’m not done.”
“Oh, but you are.”
She stripped her jacket off, tossed it on a bench in the foyer. “Look, I need you to do something.”
“Fine. And I need you to do something. We’ll trade.”
She stood, weapon harness over shirtsleeves, her whiskey-colored eyes ripe with a combination of fury, sorrow, and stress he understood very well. He felt the same himself.
“Goddamn it, Roarke.”
“And that’s not the way to get something from me, particularly at half two in the morning. Tell me what you need, and I’ll try to get it for you.”
“The female, she cased that mall in her ‘I’m just a harmless woman’ gear. She even bought stuff for girls who fit the age spread, things the vic would go for. She knew the place, so I’m betting she used it for her own shopping.”
“Good bet.” He shrugged out of his own jacket, sat on the bench to pull off his shoes. If he’d be working a bit longer, he’d damn well work comfortably. “I see where you’re going.”
“She’d probably dress as who she is or who she wants to be for McQueen, wouldn’t she? Hitting shops that cater to adults, women’s stores, sexy gear stores. You want to bang, you buy the sexy underwear.”
He glanced up. She roamed the foyer, moving, moving, moving because she knew—as he did—once she stopped she’d go out.
“You don’t.”
“I don’t have to buy the sexy underwear when you buy enough for an entire gaggle of high-class LCs.”
“It’s a weakness. A gaggle is it? Darling Eve, you’re very tired.”
Frustration flickered over the tension in her face. “Look, if we can just set up and run a face-and-body-recognition program, something that will give us some probables, we—”
“No, you said you wanted me to do it, and I will.” He rose, barefoot now and in shirtsleeves as she was, and pulled a thin leather tie from his pocket. “In exchange you’ll go to bed, the bed neither one of us has so much as seen yet. That’s the master,” he added, gesturing.
“I want to get this started.”
“I’ll get it started, and we’ll both take a couple hours down while it runs. I’m pretty fucking fagged myself, but if you push it, I promise I’ll put you down.”
“You’re going to stand here and threaten me?”
“You know it’s not a threat.” In a smooth, unhurried move
, he tied back his hair. “It’s a simple fact, and one I’m not going to waste time arguing over. Go lie down, now, or it’ll get ugly.”
He watched anger flood temporary color into her face, lifted his brows when her hand balled into a fist. She wasn’t above throwing a punch under the circumstances, and he knew from experience she had a damn good right cross.
He almost hoped she would follow through on it, give him an excuse to manhandle her into bed, pour a tranq down her throat, and relieve some of his own temper in the process.
Apparently she thought better of it as she spun around and stomped off toward the bedroom.
“You’re fucking welcome,” he called after her.
She answered by stabbing her middle finger into the air before she slammed the bedroom door.
“Oh aye, back at you, darling.”
She’d wanted to give him a shot, one good shot. The problem was, she thought as she yanked off her weapon harness, she wasn’t at her absolute best—which meant he’d have more than likely followed through on his threat.
