Calculated in Death

French toast sat on the coffee table. Grateful he hadn’t decided, as he often did, she needed oatmeal, she dropped down beside him.
    “Nice.”
    “I thought we both deserved a bit of a treat.” Roarke lifted his eyebrows when she broke off a piece of bacon and offered it to the cat who sat staring holes through her.
    “For him, this is makeup sex. That’s all you get,” she said when Galahad inhaled the bacon then affectionately butted his head against her calf.
    “Just FYI, if you let another man rub up against you, and I sniff it out, you won’t be able to buy me off with bacon.” He handed her the syrup pitcher so she could drown her French toast.
    “So noted. What’s on your slate today?”
    Once again, Roarke lifted his eyebrows.
    “What? I can’t have an interest in how you bring home the bacon?” She bit into a piece, smiled. “And okay, I’m trying to get a feel for what these guys do on any given day. The money guys, the guys with the money. I’m going to have to look at the big shots in the companies the vic was auditing. You’re the biggest shot around, so . . .”
    Saying nothing, Roarke took out his appointment book, keyed in the day, handed it to her.
    “Seriously?” She shook her head as she ran through his day. “You’ve already had a holo-conference with these dudes in Hong Kong, and talked to this other guy in Sydney?”
    “And fed the cat, that’s not in there.”
    “Ha. Later this morning two more ’link conferences and an R&D meeting on something called Sentech.”
    “Would you like me to explain Sentech?”
    “No. I really don’t. Later, another holo about the Olympus Resort. How’s Darcia doing?” referring to Roarke’s police and security head on Olympus.
    “Very well.”
    “You know I hear Webster’s gone up there twice since she was here, and they . . .”
    “Developed a relationship?” Roarke suggested.
    “Yeah. Weird. Anyway, then you’ve got this lunch deal with these other dudes, a note to ’link up for this auction thing. What are you buying?”
    “You’ll find out, won’t you, once I do.”
    “Hmm. More meetings, more conferences, more ’link shit. I’m getting a headache just looking at this.”
    She forked up some French toast, cleared her head. “You could assign people to do half this stuff. Probably more than half.”
    “And often do.”
    “So you’re up before dawn doing business, and you come in here and check this out.” She gestured toward the reports scrolling on the screen. “You’re looking at what your stocks are doing—your companies, your investments, and your competitors.”
    “You’ll do smarter business if you know the field, which is always in flux.”
    “Okay, I sort of get that. Then you spend the rest of the day moving and shaking, wheeling and dealing, checking up on stuff in the works, putting more stuff into the works, and buying stuff.”
    “In a nutshell.” He took the appointment book back, put it away.
    “You do it to make money, and make stuff, but you also do it because you get off on it.”
    “In a manner of speaking.”
    She was a boss; she knew how it worked. Her department was small scale compared to the Universe of Roarke, but a lot of the same rules applied.
    “And if I asked you about any given employee, especially one who’d have the security level to access or gather information about funds or properties or investments—whatever—if you didn’t have the information on that employee in your head, you’d be able to have it in about ten seconds.”
    “Anyone in particular?”
    “No. See, you’ve had a couple people who work for you screw around, but when you consider the kazillion people who work for you in one way or another, but especially on the higher rungs, your system’s gold. And part of that gold is your immersion in it, because it’s your money, your people, your companies, your rep.”
    “All right.”
    “You’ve been audited, right?”
    “Internally and externally.”
    “And if there was anything hinky, you’d know it before the auditors. You’d fix it.”
    One way or another, but there was no point thinking about that.
    “That makes me wonder if the brass of the companies the vic was auditing know what’s what, and if they don’t, why? More, one of those companies—at least one—has something going on they’d kill for. How high does that go?”
    “It’s usually best to start at the top and work down.”
    “I’m thinking the same. Another