In Death 08 - Conspiracy in Death

were cool, much too cool, as he studied the face on-screen. "I could hardly be left out."
    "Officer Bowers, by your own admission, Lieutenant Dallas is a powerful, perhaps dangerous, woman." The on-air reporter couldn't keep the gleam of delight out of his eyes. "Tell me, why are you risking going public at this time with your suspicions?"
    "Someone has to speak the truth." Bowers lifted her chin, fixed her face in sober lines and shifted slightly so that she stared directly into the camera. "The department may choose to cover up for a dirty cop, but I honor my uniform too much to be a part of it."
    "They'll hang her for this." Eve drew in a breath, let it out slowly. "However much sticks to me, she's just terminated her own career. They won't transfer her this time. They'll kick her."
    "Screen off," Roarke ordered again, then wrapped Eve in his arms. "She can't hurt you. She can, for the short term, inconvenience and irritate, but that's all. You can, if you like, sue for defamation. She crossed several steps over from freedom of speech. But..." He ran his hands up and down Eve's back. "Take the advice of someone who's dodged those slings and arrows before. Let it go." He pressed a kiss to her forehead, to support and to soothe. "Say no more than necessary. Stay above it, and the longer you do, the quicker it'll pass."
    Closing her eyes, she let him draw her in, cradle her head on his shoulder. "I want to kill her. Just one quick snap of the neck."
    "I can have a droid made up in her likeness. You can kill it as often as you like."
    It made her laugh a little. "It couldn't hurt. Look, I'm going to try to get some work done. I can't think about her; it makes me crazy."
    "All right." He let her go, slipped his hands into his pockets. "Eve?"
    "Yeah?" She paused in the doorway, glanced back,
    "You could see it if you looked at her closely, looked at her eyes. She's not quite sane."
    "I did look. And no. No, she's not."
    Therefore, Roarke mused as his wife closed the door between them, Bowers was that much more dangerous. The lieutenant wouldn't approve, he thought, but it couldn't be helped. He would work in his private room that evening, on his unregistered equipment.
    And any and all data on Bowers would be in his hands by morning.
    It was, Eve thought as she sat in her idling vehicle and studied the crowd blocking the gate leading to the house, infuriating enough to have to dodge reporters when it was job-related, when it was on-scene or at Cop Central.
    But it was beyond infuriating to have a three-deep line of reporters screaming questions at her through the ironwork of her own gate. When it was personal. When it had nothing to do with the job.
    She continued to sit, watching the temperature of the crowd rise even as the ambient temperature struggled up to begin to melt the snow in steady drips. Behind her, the foolish snow people she and Roarke had built were losing weight rapidly.
    She considered various options, including Roarke's casual suggestion that they implement the electric current on the gate. In her mind she visualized dozens of drooling reporters jittering with the shock and dropping helplessly to the ground with their eyes rolling back white.
    But she preferred, as always, a more direct approach.
    She turned on the megaphone and started forward at a slow but steady speed.
    "This is private property, and I am off duty at this time. Move back from the gate. Anyone coming through the gate will be arrested, charged, and detained for trespassing."
    They didn't budge an inch. She could see mouths opening and closing, as questions were shot at her like arrows. Cameras were held up, pushed forward with the lenses like eager mouths waiting to swallow her.
    "Your choice," she muttered. She engaged the mechanism for the gate, letting it swing open slowly as she approached.
    Reporters hung onto the rungs or stampeded toward the opening. She just kept driving, kept mechanically repeating her warning.
    It gave her some satisfaction to watch some of them scramble for cover when they realized she wasn't going to stop. She glanced balefully at those ballsy enough to grab the handle on the sides of her vehicle and pace her while shouting through the closed window.
    The minute she cleared the gate, she slammed it shut, hoping to catch a few fingers in the process. Then, with a thin smile, she punched the accelerator and sent a pair of idiots tumbling clear.
    The echoes of their curses were like music that kept her mood