Page 71 of Obsession in Death

And when she moaned his name, went limp, she simply emptied him.

They slid down, boneless, tangled together, ended up half propped against the shower wall. When he turned his head, brushed his lips at the curve of her throat, she smiled.

“Now that’s what I call a shower.”

“It’s what I call getting lucky.” He kissed her throat again. “This is what I call a shower. Temperature adjust to ninety degrees.”

He wasn’t sure how he managed to hold her down in his weakened condition, or if his ears would ever stop ringing from the screaming, but, again, it was worth it.

“No one sane considers ninety degrees cold,” he told her. “Now if I said eighty—”

“I’ll kill you dead.” She wanted to be furious, but it was hard getting there when she felt so good and was sliding around with him on the shower floor. “Prick.”

“Again? The woman’s insatiable. I’ll need about ten minutes first.”

“Don’t even think about it, ace.” She managed to half sit, then just sighed and dropped her head on his shoulder.

He stroked her back, gently now. “Computer lab?”

“Yeah. I gave myself an hour to clear my head, and I’ve taken nearly twice that.”

When she eased back, he took her hand. “We’ll get through this, Eve.”

“Yeah, we’ll get through it.”

•••

Clearer, steadier—she preferred the mild soreness from a good fight and exceptional sex to the dragging headache and irritation—she brought the disc files to Roarke’s computer lab.

EDD couldn’t boast better, she thought—then frowned when Roarke opened a bottle of wine.

“You wanted sweat and sex,” he pointed out. “I wanted a glass of wine when I got home. You got yours.”

She couldn’t argue with that, but she’d keep her own to one glass for the same reason she’d dressed in a shirt and trousers, and strapped her weapon harness back on. If and when Dispatch contacted her, she wanted to be ready to roll.

“I’ve got correspondence—mine and Nadine’s. It’s already had a first purge, eliminating what can be eliminated. What I’m looking to do is a search and analysis using these and the two crime scene messages.”

“Looking for key words and phrases, syntax, grammar.”

“Yeah. It’s a lot, but it’s less than it would’ve been without the first eliminations.”

“We can run this a few ways,” he told her. “I’ll set it up to cross yours and Nadine’s, and that will pop out matches, even if they haven’t come from the same name or location. Pure content match. And we’ll run another on yours, a third on Nadine’s, those against the messages—names, locations.”

“Good. That’s good. It’s thorough.”

“It won’t take long to set it up. It may take considerable time for the search and analysis. I’ll put them on auto, and the comp will alert when we have—say ten potentials on each?”

“Five. The sooner I start running them, the better.”

“Five, then.”

“I’ll do one. I can do one,” she insisted, a little miffed by his amused glance. “And yeah, it’ll take me as long to do one as it does for you to do the other two, but then they’ll all be done.”

She took the discs of her own correspondence, chose a comp, got started.

He finished his assignment, enjoyed his wine while she fought her way through the last of the programming.

“Done.” Nearly as relieved as she might have been to avoid a midair collision, she shoved her hands through her hair, then hell, took a gulp of wine. “And you should check to make sure I didn’t screw it up.”

---