Calculated in Death

urgent, avid need gnawing to be quelled.
    He set the animal in him free, and its mate met it as ferociously.
    Crazed, careless, they stripped each other. He drove into her, hard and deep, shoved up her knees, wanting her to take more. To take all.
    To take him.
    She cried out, the pleasure tearing through her in keen, hot claws. Her hands gripped his hips as her own pistoned in response.
    Fast. Faster, until her cry of release came in desperate sobs. Until her hands slid limply to the floor.
    Until he choked out her name.
    Her breath whistled out. She wondered her raging heart didn’t jump out of her chest and dance around the room.
    “Jesus!” she managed in a voice harsh with a sudden, impossible thirst. “Holy cartwheeling Jesus.”
    “Well, that’s an image I didn’t expect.” He’d collapsed on her. He meant to roll off, give her air, and he would. In a day or two.
    “I may really have pulled something that time.”
    “I won’t be falling for that again. You’ve used me up.”
    “Good, because I don’t think I can move.”
    With considerable effort, he rolled off her, lay on his back staring at the ceiling as she did. “We can stay here.”
    “Forever?”
    “It’s an option.”
    “Crime would overtake the city, and the financial world would collapse. We can’t be responsible.”
    “I suppose not. I need water anyway. A gallon might do it.”
    “Just pour my share over me.”
    He gained his feet, realized he felt just slightly drunk. Pleasant enough, he decided as he retrieved two bottles of water. He gulped some down as he came back, then smiling down at her—her eyes closed, her face still flushed, tipped the bottle so cold water splashed on her belly.
    “Hey!”
    “As you requested.” He sat beside her, offered her a bottle.
    She drank half of it, sighed. “I figured on tuning up, clearing my head. Mission accomplished, with a big bonus.” She laid a hand on his. “It’s going to be tomorrow night.”
    “I suspect you’re right.”
    “We’ll be ready. Did you find anything at Milo’s I can use?”
    “Oh, we found quite a bit. More than enough already to put a number of people—including Alexander—in prison for considerable lengths of time. Milo keeps exceptional records, and has that insatiable curiosity of the hacker. Alexander opened his personal Pandora’s box when he hired him.”
    “Anything on Frye? You got the memo on Frye?”
    “I did, yes. Nothing by name. He called Frye the Ass-Kicker, or AK, but he did document the jobs by name. Marta Dickenson, time, location, fee. Parzarri, Ingersol, the same. Cocky little bastard, Milo. He made his own files on everything, secreted them away believing, obviously, no one would be smart enough or good enough to get to them and then past his shields.”
    “But you are, and you did.”
    “We were, and we did. And what about Frye, and hold that. It’s a bit much, even for us, to sit here naked and sweaty talking murderers. Let’s at least have a swim while you bring me up to date.”
    Because that wasn’t a bit much, Eve thought, but welcomed the cool water, the time to run it all through for him.
    “I need to make some contacts,” she said when they’d dried off and changed. “I want to talk to Frye’s commanding officer, get a sense of his military time, and talk to whoever his coach was when he played ball. I should connect with Reo, just find out where they are with Milo. And figure out how to keep the feds out of this for another twenty-four.”
    “You could have Alexander tucked in a cage by then, but you want him there, at the premiere.”
    “I do. He thinks he’s gotten away with it. He’ll be all smug, puffing around in his tux, glad-handing with Hollywood. Those hands are bloody. Besides the petty satisfaction of arresting him in public, it’ll give us time to coordinate, and have his operatives picked up. If the feds or the locals move on them too soon, somebody might alert Alexander. If we move on him too soon, it alerts them. I’d really like a clean sweep.”
    “Let’s have a drink and some food. Mad sex has me hungry. And I think with Milo’s data, and some I gathered myself, we may hand you a very big broom.”
    •   •   •
    I t was a damn big broom, Eve thought as she read over the files. It was the mother of all brooms. National, international, and global, between Milo the Mole and Roarke she had chapter and verse on Sterling Alexander’s illegal operations. Names, locations,