St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

a bitch broke her heart. Not since her first son died. Not since she went to make up with Liza and had a stroke. Not since you took over. She’s Castillo now. Mine , not yours.”
    Josh shook his head and gave up. Winifred lived in the past. She always had. She always would. Nothing he said could change that. He turned and headed for the door. “If you don’t keep a tight rein on your little historian, I will.”
    The door closed hard behind him.

TAOS
NOON MONDAY
9
    CARLY MURMURED INTO HER COLLAR AS SHE BENT OVER THE MICROFILM READER . Until Dan brought her up to speed on the computer program he’d used for archiving, she was stuck researching the old-fashioned way. Somehow she didn’t think Dan was in any hurry to make her job easier.
    Despite the rather primitive room with its cracked, uneven concrete floor, the microfilm was in good shape and the filing cabinets were kept warm enough that she didn’t have to worry about condensation on the film when she took it from its canister and put it into the reader. For the moment, her biggest problem wasn’t the equipment, it was translating the oldest documents. Her colloquial Spanish was good enough, but her historical Spanish was barely passable.
    “Wonder if Winifred could translate these?” she muttered.
    “Probably,” Dan said from the bottom of the stairs. “She spends a lot of time with old books.”
    Carly jerked and barely managed to bite back a shriek. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
    His left eyebrow lifted. He hadn’t made any special effort to be quiet when he secured the cellar door and walked down the steps. “You asked a question. I assumed you knew I was here.”
    “I’m taking notes,” she said, pointing to the tiny microphone along her jaw. “I thought I was alone.”
    He glanced at the microphone, then came in for a closer look. “Nice. Voice recognition or straight recording?”
    “Both. Voice right now, record when I’m interviewing. They haven’t come up with reliable multivoice recognition software yet.”
    Dan knew they had, and it was classified, so he just nodded. “How much longer will you be?”
    She blinked. “Is there a time limit?”
    “Usual business hours.” He glanced at his watch. “You have until five.”
    She looked at her own watch. “Does someone have to be here with me all the time?”
    “Yes.”
    Carly wasn’t surprised, but she wasn’t pleased that Dan had been assigned to babysit her. Something about him was distracting and she had a lot of work to do.
    From beneath lowered lashes she watched while he shrugged out of his jacket and denim shirt. Stripped down to a black turtleneck and faded jeans, he went to a storage cupboard at the back of the room. He pulled out some yellowed, fragile papers, and went to work with a piece of equipment she assumed was some kind of scanner. Despite the size of his fingers and a physical strength made clear by the fit of the turtleneck, he handled the papers with a delicate patience that intrigued her.
    “You’ve done that a lot, haven’t you?” she asked.
    Dan nodded without looking up.
    “But you’re not an archivist?”
    He nodded again.
    She didn’t take the hint. “Then why did you take on the job of translating microfilm into computer files?”
    He looked up at her. In the stark light and shadows of the room, his green eyes had a catlike glow. “I wanted to.”
    “Why?”
    “Why do you care?”
    “I’m curious. And don’t bother telling me about curiosity and the cat. Been there, heard that, wasn’t impressed.”
    The line of his mouth shifted slightly. Almost a smile. But then, his face was in shadow so she couldn’t be sure.
    “Somehow I’m not surprised,” Dan said.
    “Somehow I don’t think much could surprise you.”
    He looked at the smoky gold of her eyes and knew she was wrong. She surprised him. Everyone else walked on tiptoe around him, trying not to disturb whatever was brooding inside him. But did she tiptoe? Hell, no. She nudged and nipped and kicked.
    “When I was thirteen, I chose to microfilm the computer files as a school project,” he said, surprising himself again. “Back then, the newspaper wouldn’t let me near the really old stuff, so there’s a lot still to be done.” He lifted and turned the sheet and hit the button again. “I modified a computer scanning program and kept working on it until I left for college when I was eighteen. No one else could figure out how to make my program work, so they