And the Black Knight wheeled his horse and grinned at her, fiercely. When he charged, she reached for her weapon, but all she had was a small knife, one already stained with her father's blood.

Only in dreams, she told herself, but knew a terrible fear as he came for her.

CHAPTER 14

She jerked up, shoving herself free of the dream. For an instant, just one beat of the heart, she swore she felt the keen edge slice at her throat.Shaken, she reached up, half expecting to feel the warm wet of her own blood.

"Shh, now. I t's all right."

His arms were there, drawing her in, closing around her like a shield. As her heart continued to bound, she leaned into them, into him.

"Just a dream. You're home. I 'm right here."

"I 'm okay." No blood. No death. "I t wasn't a nightmare. Or not exactly. I knew it was a dream, but it was so real." She drew one breath, then another.

Slow, she ordered herself. Slow and steady. "Like the games. You lose track of what is and what's not."

He tipped her face up, and in the glow of moon and stars through the sky window met her eyes. "We're real." He touched his lips to hers as if to prove it. "What did you dream?"

"The battlefield, the last game." Bart's last game, she thought, but not hers. "I wasn't playing. I was just watching. Observing the details." She sighed once, rubbed her hands over her face. "I f you don't watch, if you don't see, you don't know. But it weirded on me, the way dreams do."

"How?"

"The dead, the dying, their faces. All those people I don't know until they're dead."

In those eyes, so blue in the starlight, came understanding. "Your victims."

"Yeah." The pang in her heart was pity, weighted down by resignation. "I can't help them, can't save them. And their killers are out there, free, killing more. I t's a slaughter." And the simmer beneath it was an anger that bubbled up in her voice. "We put them away, but it doesn't stop it. We know that. We all know that. There's always more. He was there. You have to figure he'd be there."

"Your father."

"But he's just one of the many now."

Still she trembled, just a little, so he rubbed her arms to warm them.

"I 'm not engaged. I 'm not playing. I 'm not one of them. Not one of the dead or dying, not one of the killers. Just an observer."

"I t's how you stop them," he said quietly. "I t's how you save those you can."

And some of the weight eased. "I guess it is. I watched Bart fight. I know what's going to happen, but I have to watch because I might have missed a detail. I might see something new. But it happens just the way I see it happen. Then the Black Knight, his killer, turns to me. Looks at me. I t's just a dream, but I go for my weapon because he's coming for me. I can feel the ground shake and feel the wind. But all I have against that fucking sword is the little knife I used all those years ago, in that horrible room in Dallas."

She looked down at her hand, empty now. "That's all I have, and it won't be enough, not this time. The sword comes down, and I feel that, too. Just for a second before I wake up."

She let out a breath. "Sometimes they crowd me."

"Yes. I know."

"Killers and victims. They get in your head, and they never really leave." She cupped his face now. "They'll get in yours, because you can't just step aside, just watch me do the job. You can't just observe any more than I can. I 'm in the game, always one of the players. Now, you are, too."

"Do you think I regret that?"

"One day you might. I wouldn't blame you."

"I knew you for a cop the minute I laid eyes on you. And I knew without understanding how or why, that you would change things. I 'll never regret that moment, or any that followed." He gave her shoulders a little shake-as comforting as a kiss. "You have to understand you're not alone on the battlefield. And since that moment, that first moment? Neither am I ."

"I used to think I was better off alone, that I needed to be. And maybe I did. But not anymore."

She touched her lips to his cheek, then the other. "And never again."

Then laid her lips warm and soft on his.

What they brought to each other closed all the rest outside. A touch, a taste, a promise renewed.

He enclosed her, brought her in, brought her close. He knew, she thought, simply knew she needed to be held, to have his arms around her. His hands warming her skin were gentle, so gentle after the blood and brutality of the dream. His lips, those slow, tender kisses offered her peace and solace, and love.

Passion would come, she knew. I t was a low fire always kindled between them. But for now he gave her what she reached for, could always reach for with him. He gave her comfort.Did she know, could she know what it meant to him when she turned to him, when she opened herself to him like this? In absolute trust.

Her strength, her valor remained a constant wonder to him, as did her unrelenting determination to defend those who could no longer defend themselves. These moments, when she allowed her vulnerabilities, her doubts, her fears to tremble to the surface compelled him to take care. In these moments he could show her it wasn't just the warrior he loved, he treasured, but the woman, the whole of her. The dark and the light.

Softly, softly, as if tending wounds, he stroked her skin, unknotted muscles tight from the day and the dream. And when she sighed, he laid his lips on her heart.

I t beat for him.

In the blue wash of moonlight, she moved for him, rising up, another sigh, giving over. Giving.

Her fingers slid through his hair, glided down his back and up again. An easy rhythm even when her breath quickened and her sigh deepened to moan.

Lost in it, this quiet pleasure, she drew him closer, closer still. Body to body, mouth to mouth, thrilled with the weight of him, the shape of him. She drew in his scent like breath, and opened to take him in.

Smooth and slow and sweet, they moved together. As sensations shimmered through her like light, she cupped his face in the dark.

Not all magic was fantasy, she thought. There was magic here and she felt it glow in her body, in her mind and her heart.

"I love you. Roarke. I love you."

Magic, she thought, watching his heart rise into his eyes.

"A ghra." My love. And with the word he lifted her home.

In the morning, Eve drank the first half of the first cup of coffee with the concentration of a woman focused on simple survival. Then she sighed with nearly the same easy pleasure as she had the night before under Roarke's skilled hands.

No question, she admitted, and set the coffee aside long enough to jump in the shower: She'd gotten spoiled.

She didn't know how she'd managed to get her ass in gear every day before Roarke-and real, honest-to-God coffee, black and strong and rich.

Or how she'd lived with the stingy piss trickle of the shower in her own apartment before she'd discovered the sheer wonder of hot multi-jets, on full, pummeling her awake.

Good things, little things, really, that she'd lived without all of her life-like the warm, clean-scented swirl of air in the drying tube. She'd gotten used to those good things, those little things, she realized, so that she rarely thought of them.

She stepped out of the tube and noted the robe hanging on the door. Short, soft, and boldly red-and probably new. She couldn't be absolutely sure as her man had a habit of buying her pretty things-good things, little things-without mentioning it.

She put it on, picked up her coffee, and stepped back into the bedroom.

A typical morning scene in their household, she supposed. Roarke sipped his own coffee on the cushy sofa in the sitting area, stroking Galahad into a coma while he scanned the morning stock reports. Already dressed, she observed, and he'd probably dealt with at least one 'link conference or holo-meeting before she'd cracked her eyes open.

He'd nag her to eat breakfast, unless she came up with the idea on her own-and very likely let her know if whatever jacket she pulled out didn't go with whatever pants she pulled on.

Good things, she thought yet again. Little things.

Their things.

While she'd come to rely on the routine, sometimes, she decided, you needed to shake it up.

"What're you hungry for?" she asked him.

"Sorry?" He glanced over, obviously shifting his attention from screen to her.

"What do you want for breakfast?"

He cocked his head, lifted his eyebrows. "Have you seen my wife? She was here just a minute ago."

"Just for that, you'll eat what I give you."

"That sounds a bit more like the woman we know and love," he said to the cat. "And yet..." He rose, sauntered over to her. He gave her a spin and a dip, then a kiss more suited to steamy midnight than bright summer morning.

"Well, well, it is you after all. I know that mouth.""Keep it up, ace, and that's all you'll be tasting."

"I could live with that."

She gave him a poke to nudge him back. "I 've got no time to wrestle with you. I 've got search warrants to secure, suspects to grill, killers to catch."

She programmed waffles and mixed berries, more coffee. She imagined Roarke had already fed the cat, but programmed a shallow bowl of milk.

Galahad leaped on it like a puma.

"I t'll keep him out of our hair," she said as she sat.

"And isn't this nice, our little family having breakfast together." He plucked a fat blackberry from his own plate, popped it in her mouth. "You look rested. No more dreams?"

"No. Something relaxed them right out of me." She picked up a raspberry, popped it in his. "But I was thinking about it. Dreams are subconscious whacka-whacka."

"A little known psychological term."

"Whatever. I can figure out most of it; it's just not that deep. But I have a lead suspect in my head, so why was it the fantasy figure that killed Bart in the dream? Maybe because my subconscious was just following the game, or maybe because it's telling me I 'm wrong."

"You might run it by Mira."

"Maybe. I f there's time. When the warrants come through, the searches are going to take a while. Hitting three places means extra time, extra men."

"Mira might back you up on the need for those warrants."

"Yeah, I 'm holding her in reserve. The killer knew Bart's routine, that's part of the thing. His inside-his-own-place routine, and that takes a certain intimacy. I t's like this, us," she explained wagging a finger between them. "The way I knew you'd be sitting here when I came out of the shower.

Drinking coffee, petting the cat, checking the stocks and morning media. I t's what you do. You deviate now and then, as necessary, but odds are it's like this."

"Mmm." Roarke cut a bite of waffle. "And the killer played the odds."

"They were good odds. Just like I favor the odds on whoever killed him making a move to take the leadership role at U-Play. Bart's death leaves a void, and part of the benefit of that death would be filling it."

"You're leaning away from more than one of them being involved now."

"I t's still a good possibility, but killing a friend, a partner, it's an absolute betrayal of trust."

He nodded. "And anyone who's capable of that sort of betrayal wouldn't easily trust someone else."

She tapped her fork in the air. "You got it in one. These people live by creating scenarios, and calculating all the steps. T ake this choice, get this result, and that leads to the next. I think the killer would have calculated the pros and cons of pulling someone into it with him."

"I f the other weakens, makes a mistake, threatens, it's a new problem. Difficult to kill another partner," Roarke commented. "I t would shine your light brightly on the remaining two. But..." He knew her, too. Her routine, her thought patterns. "You're concerned that might happen."

"I t depends on what's to be gained, or lost-and how much ego and satisfaction were stoked by the first kill. When someone believes they're smarter, more talented, just plain more right than anyone else, and they harbor this kind of need, they're very, very dangerous."

Eve tried Cher Reo first. The APA was another friend, and Eve supposed in a broad sense, another partner. I knock them dow n, she thought as she pushed her way through morning traffic, you put them aw ay.

When she contacted Reo's office she learned the APA was already at Central overseeing Reineke's case.

That didn't take long, she mused, and cut west, away from Broadway and the crowds that inevitably partied there.

The pizza would roll on the pipe wrench, she concluded-or vice versa. One would take a deal, and the other would do the full weight.

And that had to be enough.

She left a voice mail on Reo's 'link, requesting a meet as soon as she finished sealing the deal, but it surprised her to find Reo already waiting- with coffee, in her visitor's chair.

"Thought you'd take longer," Eve commented.

"They were at it since just after two this morning, which was when your boys decided the happy couple had had enough snuggle time." Reo stretched, rolled her shoulders. "She'd slipped into his place about eight. Lights went off at midnight. Or thereabouts. They have it documented."

She yawned, combed her fingers through her fluffy blond hair. "They got sloppy. Didn't even bother to pull the privacy screen. Your guys got quite alittle show before and after the lights went out."