"We didn't use some cheap by-the-hour flop. We..." Peabody cleared her throat as Eve simply kept up the long, steady stare. "Played games. As ordered."

"I don't want to know what kind of games."

"Really, really good games. Ones that call for excellent reflexes and superior physical stamina." She grinned, unrepentant. "We're going to save up and buy a new, juicy game system for each other for Christmas."

"Is this your report?"

"No, this is the shuttle-boiled-my-brain babble. Whew."

"What's on your tit? What the hell is that?"

"Oh." Peabody ducked her chin to glance down. "I t's my love dragon. I t's a temp."

"A love dragon? You're wearing a love dragon on your tit, most of which is spilling out of whatever that is you're not covered up with."

"I t's a look-and it works. Trueheart nearly choked on his tongue when I walked through the bullpen." Peabody sighed. "I t's pretty satisfying."

"I t may be you confused undercover with undercovered. Either way, I don't want to see your love dragon tomorrow. Now if you've rested and recovered from your arduous assignment, I 'd like that report.""Sure. The contact, Razor, the King of All Weaponry, hasn't heard of a sword like we're after-not a real. Props, toys of a similar and nonlethal nature, but nothing that could decapitate or leave those burns."

"Could've been made custom."

"We thought of that after... after a little gaming inspired us. We went back, discussed. After a little persuasion he gave us the names of a couple of sources who might be able to make something along the lines, for a price. A really, really whopping-ass price. Out of those, there was maybe one who might do it off the grid, unregistered. But that ups the price to about double whopping-ass. I know we looked at the financials, and nobody on our radar had an expenditure that comes close."

"I 'm doing deeper runs right now. Maybe it'll pop. Some people game for money," Eve considered. "Some game for money off the grid. So, we might have somebody who had a double whopping-ass pile of unreported cash."

"Well, meanwhile, we did some poking around on the underground game sites on the way back. Razor's already putting out feelers. We left it like we'd be willing to pay, and how we'd heard one of these swords was out there. Now he's looking, and we're watching him while he's looking.

McNab's going to keep tabs. I f Razor gets a hit, we'll get it, too."

"That's good thinking. Go home and take that shower. I can smell you from here."

"I t's not my fault. Plus, with the sweating I think I might've lost a pound or two just sitting there trying not to breathe." She pushed herself up. "Oh, nearly forgot. We got you a present."

"Why?"

"Because." She unzipped one of her pockets and pulled out a very small gun.

"What is it?"

"I t's a toy gun. A derringer-like cardsharps and saloon girls carry in western vids. I t's like a clutch piece."

"Hmmm."

"And check it." Peabody cocked it, and a sultry female voice purred out of the barrel. Put those hands w here I can see them, cow boy.

"I t has all sorts of audio streams-male, female. I figured you'd want the female. Plus-"

She aimed it at Eve, pulled the trigger even as Eve said: "Hey!"

The little gun let out a brave little bang. Next one goes low er , and you w on' t be poking a w oman w ith that stick of yours for the rest of your miserable life.

"Isn't it cute? You could play saloon girl and Roarke could be high-stakes gambler, then... and that's entirely none of my never mind." Peabody offered a big smile.

"Yes, it's cute, no, it's none of your never mind." Eve took the derringer, recocked it. You'd better hightail it before that tail's sporting another hole.

"I t could use better dialogue, but it's apt enough. Hightail it."

"Yes, sir."

"Peabody? Thanks." Eve studied the gun, shook her head. Unable to resist, she shot her computer, her AutoChef, amused by the lame insults that followed. That was another thing about partners, she decided. They knew what would make you laugh, often before you did.

CHAPTER 12

There'd been a time, Roarke thought, not so long ago in the bigger scheme, when a few hours in a cop shop would've been something to be carefully and ruthlessly avoided. Now, he spent so much time in one he knew which Vending areas to avoid, which glides tended to drag or crowd up, and just how filthy cop coffee could be by the end of a tour.

His life had taken a sharp and strange turn the first instant he'd laid eyes on a cop, his cop, in an ill-fitting coat and a truly ugly gray suit.

He fingered the button from that suit, one he kept for luck and sentiment in his pocket.

She'd been a first for him at a time when he'd come to believe he'd done nearly everything worth doing at least once. Had he been bored? he wondered as he angled his way onto a down glide. No, not bored, but perhaps a bit unsettled, restless, certainly dissatisfied in ways he hadn't been able to put his finger on at the time.

Then, there she'd been, and everything shifted, everything sharpened. He couldn't say what fell into place. Nothing with Eve was quite that easy, but pieces had begun to fit together. Some of them, on both sides, had required a bit of reshaping, and likely still would as more and more of their picture emerged.

As he rode down, a pair of uniforms rode up. The rattail-thin man between them protested loudly and continually.

"Somebody musta planted that wallet on me. I got enemies. I was only running 'cause I had a bus to catch. Do I look like a pickpocket? Do I? Do I?"

You do indeed, Roarke thought, and if you can't lift a wallet without fumbling the snatch, you deserve your ninety-day stretch.

Eve wouldn't think quite that way, he mused. I t wasn't the getting caught, but the act itself that earned the stretch. Most of the time he agreed with her, and in fact had edged over to her side of that line more and more as time went by. But a bit of quick fingers? Well, everyone had to make a living, didn't they? Even a street thief.

He ought to know.

He crossed into Homicide where the sounds, the sights, the smells had come to be as familiar to him as those in his own head-quarters.

Detective Baxter stood by his desk, straightening his tie. He paused, tapped a finger to his temple in salute.

"LT's in her office. Trying to get a head."

Roarke acknowledged the black humor with a quirked brow. "You've had all day, and that's the best you've got?"

"Already used up all the good ones. Anyway, I 've been off shift for, hey, look at that, an hour. So my brain's a little... detached."

"Better, marginally. Where's your boy?"

"Sent him home, and stayed back to finish the Fours and other crap. He's got a date."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah, our Trueheart's finally worked it up to ask out the little redheaded cutie in Records. He was seeing somebody else, but it fizzled. Civilians can have a harder time working it out with cops. Present company excepted."

"Understood."

"Anyway, he's trying out the dinner and a vid routine, after which, they'll likely exchange a friendly handshake. Kid moves like a glacier when it comes to the female persuasion. Otherwise, he's a quick study."

"You suit each other."

"Yeah, who'd've thought? Anyway, I 'm gone. I 've got a date myself, and I expect to be shaking more than her hand at the end of the night."

"Good luck with that."

"Friend, it ain't about luck." He gave Roarke another salute and sauntered off.

Amused, and considering the concept of dates, Roarke walked into Eve's office.

She stood in front of her murder board, hands on her hips. "Computer," she said, "save and copy all data to my home unit."

"This is good timing."

"I need some mulling time."

"I 've your copy. Sealed and logged."She took it from him. "Aren't you all official?"

"I certainly hope not. You can have your mulling time on the way."

"I 've got a couple more things-"

"That can wait," he interrupted. "I want dinner."

She pulled a derringer out of her pocket. Obligingly, he lifted his hands in surrender. "Don't shoot. I 'm unarmed."

"Bet you're not."

He only smiled. "You can search me later. Clever little thing there. Where'd you get it?"

"Souvenir from Peabody and McNab." She cocked it. It's small, but it's mean. Just like me.

He laughed and stepped forward to take a better look at it. "There was this screen show-television," he corrected, "as it was about a century ago.

What was it? In any case, it was in the American West, and the hero was a mercenary-a gun for hire. He carried one of these."

"I hope he didn't charge much."

"He had the full-size as well, but this was his-"

"Clutch piece."

"There you are. We'll have to watch some of them the next time we're free. Now, Lieutenant, as Baxter would say, we're gone."

"Okay, okay." She gathered up files. "You drive. I 'll mull."

"You're looking at his three friends, the partners," Roarke said as they worked their way down to garage level.

"Easiest access to his personal space, most to gain, and most intimately acquainted with the vic's habits, routines, the business itself, and the game at the center of it."

"You're leaning toward one." With a regret and grim acceptance he thought they shared, they wormed their way onto a jammed elevator. "One more than the others," he continued, jockeying for room in a space that smelled of boiled onions and stale sweat. "Which?"

"I 'm still structuring the theory. Besides that's not how the game's played." She shoved her way off again. "Which would you pick?"

"I t's difficult for me to think of any of them as capable of this. I don't know them especially well, but what I do know just rejects the idea."

"Why, particularly?"

"I suppose, in part, because of the way they came up together. Longtime mates."

"And you had yours," Eve commented. "In Dublin."

"I did, and while none of us would've been above a bit of a cheat, as that's a kind of game as well, we'd never have hurt each other, or caused hurt."

"Yeah, it's one of the things I 've been thinking about today. Friendships, long-term, short-term, what clicks and why. Friendships can enhance, right, complete in a way. But they can also erode and scrape, and simmer under the surface. Add money or sex or ego to the mix, and it can boil right over."

"I 'm hardly one to look at things through rose-colored glasses, or for that matter to doubt your instincts." Their footsteps echoed as they crossed the garage. "Still, I 've watched the four of them together, listened to them, and listened to Bart speak of them."

"You know, I bet when the pizza lady first hooked up with the husband she wanted dead, she had really nice things to say about him, too."

He had to shake his head, half in amusement, half in resignation. "Back to that, are we?"

"I 'm saying relationships change, people change, or sometimes an event, an action, or a series of them just pisses somebody off." She slid into the passenger's seat when they reached her vehicle, waited until he'd taken the wheel. "Play the game. Let's call it Deduction. I f you had to choose which murdered or arranged to have murdered the friend and partner, which? And why?"

"All right." I f nothing else, he thought, it might help him reach some level of objectivity. "First, if one of them did the murder, Cill doesn't have the muscle for it."

"Well, you might be wrong there. She, like the others, practices martial arts, combat fighting, street defense, weaponry, and so on regularly. In fact, she has a black belt in karate, and she's working on one in tae kwon do."

"Ah, well. I t doesn't pay to underestimate small packages."

"She'd be agile, quick, stronger than she looks. And the weapon itself may have given her more heft. Being a female with a small build doesn't rule her out.""The blow came from above, but I suppose it's possible she stood on something, or used a leap or jump to give her height and momentum."

"Now you're thinking."