In Death 30 - Fantasy in Death

to take a spin on the pottery wheel. Either way, bring them in tomorrow and work them.”
    “Will do.”
    She started out again, stopped again. “If he’s got no priors, and he killed for her, he’ll be harder to crack. She’s at home, fully alibied while he does the dirty work. He’s going to start off trying to protect her. She’s the cheat. She’ll roll first.”
    Marriage, she thought as she made her way up the glide, was a minefield.
    Following hunch and hope she bypassed the chaos of the EDD bullpen and tried the lab. She wondered what compelled e-types to work in glass boxes. Were they innately claustrophobic? Closet exhibitionists? Was it a need to see out, or a need to be seen?
    Whatever the reason, Feeney and his team manned the comps and stations inside the glass, movements and voices silenced by the clear barrier. It was a little like watching a strange species in their natural habitat.
    Feeney, his hair sticking up in mad tufts, popped one of his favored candied almonds in his mouth. Callendar, hips jiggling, fingers snap
    ping, paced in front of a screen that scrolled incomprehensible codes. Someone she didn’t recognize—who could tell them apart?—rode a wheeled stool up and down a counter, his baggies and skin tank red and orange blurs, his ring-studded fingers flying over keys and controls.
    And Roarke.
    He’d shed his suit jacket and rolled the sleeves of his black shirt up to his elbows. The twist of leather restraining his hair at the nape indicated full work mode. He, too, sat on a stool, but unlike his companions remained almost preternaturally still but for the rapid movements of his fingers on controls.
    She knew he was focused, utterly, on whatever task he worked on. If it gave him trouble he’d be thinking in Irish, and muttering curses in the same.
    He’d filed away whatever business he’d done that day, whatever he would deal with that evening, or the next. Which would be considerable, she thought. He did that not just for the man—the boy as he thought of him—he’d enjoyed, nor for the pleasure he gained from the work, the puzzle of it. He did it for her.
    Whether or not they always agreed on the ways and the means of the work, that single fact shone through the gray between them. In her life no one had ever put her so completely, so absolutely first.
    And as she knew him, she knew the moment he sensed her. His fingers paused; he turned his head. Those brilliant eyes locked on hers as they had the very first time at a funeral for another of the dead they’d shared.
    Her heart opened, and it lifted, weightless and free.
    Marriage was a minefield, she thought again, but she’d risk every sweaty, breathless step for moments like this.
    He rose, evading the orange and red blur, skirting around the pacing Callendar, and came out to her.
    She didn’t protest when he tilted up her chin and brushed his lips against hers.
    “You had such a look in your eyes, a ghrá .”
    “I was thinking about people. Friends, lovers, partners. You get a check in the all-of-the-above column.”
    He took her hand, a light link of fingers. “Conclusions?”
    “Sometimes you get lucky with who you let in your life. Sometimes you don’t. I’m feeling lucky today.”
    His lips curved slowly as he brushed hers again.
    Feeney shoved open the door. “If that’s all the two of you can think about doing, go up to the crib and get it over with. Some of us are working.”
    If she’d been the blushing type, she’d have turned scarlet. Instead mortification hunched her shoulders even as Roarke laughed.
    “I’d be up for a break.”
    “You’d be up for eternity if you could manage it,” she muttered. “No sappy stuff on duty.”
    “You started it.”
    She couldn’t argue so she said nothing and went inside the glass box. “Progress?” she said in a crisp cop’s voice.
    “We’re peeling the layers off the vic’s holo-system,” Feeney said in the same tone. “Looking for any shadows, echoes, and signs of tampering. So far, it’s coming up a hundred percent on all levels. Same with his droid. No sign of tampering, no breaks in time or programming.”
    “Holo-room security’s clean as well,” Roarke told her. “We’re picking it apart, bit by byte, but there’s no indication anyone left or entered that room after Bart and before the droid bypassed the lock the next morning.”
    “If I didn’t know better, I’d say the kid’s head just magically chopped itself off.”