Page 134 of Bonded in Death

“Jenkinson, that doesn’t surprise me.”

“We don’t appreciate you taking it on for him getting by us.”

“Jenkinson—”

“If we’d bagged him, would you take all the credit? Hell no, you wouldn’t, so don’t treat us like we’re assholes who don’t know the job. Plus, the motherfucking fucker fucking shot you.”

“At. Shot at.” Recognizing if she didn’t cut this angle off, she’d have a mutiny on her hands, she held one up. “Okay, we all did the job, and he still got away from us. Feel better?”

“No, but at least that’s not bullshit.”

“Somebody get me some damn coffee, and we’ll go over it point by point. Then everyone write up their part of it and have those reports on my desk by end of shift.”

Roarke got her the coffee, and smoothly pressed a blocker into her palm. “Take it, you’re in pain. Take it,” he murmured, “or I’ll sic Jenkinson on you.”

She took it.

Chapter Eighteen

She couldn’t deny the blocker helped—so she wouldn’t mention it. But it helped get her through the rest of the debrief. It helped keep her mind clear to write up her report, in detail. Then to read and review others that came in.

Then Yancy rapped on her doorjamb.

“Tell me something good and you can have real coffee.”

“For real coffee I’d make something up, but I’ve got something good.”

She jerked a thumb at her AC.

He went straight for it. Peabody would’ve called him a frosty-looker with his pretty face, curling black mop, dreamy eyes. Eve considered him a genius as a police artist, and a damn solid cop.

He set a folder on her desk.

“I’ve got good descriptions from the server, from the Realtor—which correspond with the shop cams on his run. And another—we’re still working on the mask peel, but I’ve worked up another, and I think it’s close.

“And one more,” he said as she opened the folder. “A kind of combination, with a lot of comp input, using the other three.”

She looked at the first two, matching the server’s, the Realtor’s respectively.

“The gray temples don’t work. He’s too vain for gray, especially since he came full gray out of prison. I think the cheekbones are too sharp—that’s enhancement.”

“I’m going to agree.”

“He doesn’t have an overbite like this in the second. And that’s bound to be a wig. Little bit of jowls going here, too. The little scar in the left eyebrow. And no, too vain.”

“Same chapter, same page.”

“This one, the one you and the e-geek are working on.”

“It’s not a hundred percent.”

“But it’s closer. He had his eyes done. He got bags under them, lines around them in prison. Nose work. Rossi busted it good on the capture, and it stayed crooked. Had it straightened, thinned it some. Cheekbones, sharp but not like in sketch one. Not as prominent. Chin’s more square—he’d go for that. Took prison and about a decade off.”

She studied the next. “Yeah, yeah, I see where you’re going here. This is useful. Shows how he can morph with appliances, enhancements, skin and eye color changes. But it’s still the same man. As the driver, with the mask deal, bigger change. Two decades off. But he hasn’t used that again. Maybe he doesn’t have the necessary to create another. Or he has to save it until he really needs it.”

“Worth a cup of the real?”

“Oh yeah.”

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