Big Jack Part 18

"I don't know." Warily, she lifted her shoulder, sniffed at it herself. Smelled like soap to her. "Whatever was in the shower." She gave her hand a little yank, but made the mistake of glancing around in case Feeney was still nearby. The instant of distraction gave him the opening to hook a foot around hers, tip her off balance and into his lap.

"Jesus, cut it out out!" Her voice was a fierce and frantic whisper. On the mortification scale, getting caught snuggled in Roarke's lap hit the top three, even above getting caught napping or barefoot by another cop. "I'm on the clock. Feeney's right here."

"I don't see Feeney." He was already nuzzling his way along her neck toward her ear. "And as an expert consultant, civilian, I'm ent.i.tled to a recreational break. I've decided I prefer adult activity to adult beverage."

Little demons of l.u.s.t began to dance along her skin. "You can't even think I'm going to mess around with you in the computer lab. Feeney could come back in here."

"Adds to the excitement. Yes, yes." He chuckled as he nipped at a spot-his personal favorite-just under her jaw. "Sick and perverted. And though I'd wager Feeney suspects we have occasional s.e.x, we'll take our recreational break elsewhere."

"I've got work to do, Roarke, and . . . Hey! Hands!"

"Why, yes, those are indeed my hands." Laughing now, he cupped them under her and levered out of the chair. "I want my thirty," he said, and carted her toward the elevator.

"The way you're going, you'll be done in five."

"Bet."

She struggled against a laugh of her own and put up a token struggle by clamping a hand on the opening of the elevator. "I can't just go off and get naked with Feeney in the house. It's too weird. And if he comes back and-"

"You know, I suspect Feeney gets naked with Mrs. Feeney, and this is probably how they had their little Feeneys."

"Oh my G.o.d!" Her hand trembled, went limp, and her face paled considerably. "That's just despicable, the dirtiest of dirty fighting to shove that one into my head."

Because he wanted to keep her unbalanced, he reached behind her and keyed in the bedroom rather than using audio command. "Whatever works. Now you're too weak to hold me off."

"Don't count on it."

"Do you remember the first time we made love?" He touched his lips to hers as he said it, changing tactics with a gentle brush.

"I have a vague recollection."

"We rode up in the elevator like this and couldn't keep our hands off each other, couldn't get to each other quick enough. I was mad for you. I wanted you more than I wanted to keep breathing. I still do." He deepened the kiss as the elevator doors opened. "It's never going to change."

"I don't want it to change." She combed her fingers through his hair, shoving the band away so all that thick, soft black slid through her fingers. "You're so d.a.m.n good at this." She pressed her lips to his throat. "But not quite good enough to have me doing this with the door open. Feeney could, you know, wander in. I can't focus."

"We'll fix that." With her legs hooked around his waist, her arms around his neck and her lips beginning to lay a hot line over his skin, he went to the door. He closed it. Locked it. "Better?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe you should remind me how we did this the first time again."

"I believe, if memory serves, it went something like this." He spun her around, trapping her between the wall and his body. And his mouth was fever hot on hers.

She felt the need, instant and primal, slice through her. It was like being cleaved in two-the woman she'd been before him, the woman she'd discovered with him.

She could be what she was, and he understood her. She could be what she'd become, and he cherished her. And the wanting each other, through all the changes, all the discoveries, never abated.

She let him ravish her, and felt the power in surrender. It pumped and swelled inside her as she slid down his body. Her hands were as busy as his, her mouth as impatient as they dragged each other toward the bed.

They stumbled up the platform, and remembering, she laughed. "We were in a hurry then, too."

They fell on the bed in a tangle of limbs, then rolled as they struggled to strip away clothes, to take and devour. Before, that first time, it had been in the dark. Groping and grasping and desperation in the dark. Now they were in the light that spilled through the windows, through the sky window over the bed, but the desperation was the same.

It ached in her like a wound that would never quite heal.

She'd been a ma.s.s and a maze of demands then, too, he remembered. All heat and motion, driving him toward frenzy so that he'd burned to ram himself into her and batter them both toward release.

But he'd wanted more. Even then, he'd wanted more of her. And for her. He gripped her hands, drawing her arms over her head, and she arched, pressing center to center until his pulse was a pounding of jungle drums.

"Inside me." Her eyes were blurred and dark. "I want you inside me. Hard. Fast."

"Wait." He knew what it would be now, where they would take each other, and control was a thin and slippery wire. He cuffed her wrists with one hand. If she touched him now, that wire would snap.

But he could touch her. G.o.d, he needed to touch her, to watch her, to feel her body gather and quake from the a.s.sault of pleasure. Her skin was damp when he ran his free hand down her. The moan trembled from her lips, then broke with a hoa.r.s.e cry as he used those clever fingers on her.

He watched those blurry eyes go blind, felt the scramble of her pulse in the wrists he held and heard her release a sob in the air before she went pliant. Wax melted in the heat.

Again, was all he could think as his mouth came down on hers, fierce and frantic. Again and again and again.

Then her arms were free and banded around him, and her hips pistoned up. He was inside her as she'd demanded. Hard and fast.

She knew, with the part of her brain that could still reason, that he'd gone over, gone where he could so often send her. Somewhere beyond the civilized and sensible, where there were only sensations fueled by needs. She wanted him there with her, where control was impossible and pleasure saturated both mind and body.

As her own system quivered toward that last leap, she heard his breath catch, as if on a pain. Wrapping around him, she gave herself over. "Now," she said, and pulled him with her.

She stretched under him, curled and uncurled her toes. She felt, Eve discovered, pretty d.a.m.n good. "Okay." She gave Roarke a noisy slap on the a.s.s. "Recreational break's over."

"Christ. Christ Jesus."

"Come on, you've had your thirty."

"I'm sure you're wrong. I'm sure I have five or six minutes left. And if I don't, I'm having them anyway."

"Off." She gave his b.u.t.t another slap, then a pinch. When neither budged him, she s.h.i.+fted her knee over, and up.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h." That moved him. "Mind the merchandise."

"You mind it. I've already used it." She was smart enough to roll over and away before he could retaliate. She landed on her feet, rolled up to the b.a.l.l.s, back to the heels. "Man, I'm revved."

He stayed where he was, flat on his back, and eyed her. Long, lean, naked, with her skin glowing from the energetic recreational break.

"You look it." Then he smiled, slyly. "I wonder if Feeney's finished his swim."

The color drained out of her cheeks. "Oh jeez, oh, s.h.i.+t s.h.i.+t!" She made a dive for her clothes. "He'll know. He'll just know, and then we'll have to avoid looking at each other while we pretend he doesn't know. d.a.m.n it."

Roarke was laughing as she dashed with her bundle of clothes into the bath.

Feeney beat her into her office, and that made her wince. But she strode in briskly and moved straight to her desk to set up files.

"Where were you?"

"Just, ah, you know . . . dealing with a couple things."

"I thought you were gonna . . . " He trailed off with a sound she recognized as embarra.s.sed horror not quite suppressed. She could feel her skin heat and kept her attention trained on her computer as if it might leap off the desk and grab her by the throat.

"I think I'll-um-" His voice cracked a bit. She didn't glance over but she could feel feel him looking frantically around the room. "Get some coffee." him looking frantically around the room. "Get some coffee."

"Coffee's good. That'd be good."

When she heard him escape to the kitchen, she rubbed her hands over her face. "Might as well be wearing a sign," she muttered. " 'Just Got Laid.' "

She set up her disks, her case board, then shot Roarke a vicious glare when he strolled in. "I don't want that look on your face," she hissed.

"Which look?"

"You know which look. Wipe it off."

Relaxed, amused, he sat on the corner of her desk. When Feeney walked in, he could see the fading flush. Feeney cleared his throat, very deliberately, then set the second mug of coffee he carried on the desk. "Didn't zap you one," he said to Roarke.

"It's all right. I'm fine for now. How was your swim?"

"Fine. Good." He rubbed a hand over the drying sproings of ginger and silver hair. "Good and fine."

He turned away to study the board.

Weren't they a pair? Roarke thought, two veteran cops who've waded through blood and madness. But put a bit of s.e.x on the table between them, and they're fidgety as virgins at an orgy.

"I'm going to bring you both up to date," Eve began. "Then I'll work on my angles while you work on yours. You see the artist's sketch on the board, and on screen."

She picked up a laser pointer, aimed it toward the wall screen. "Detective Yancy did the Ident, but isn't confident enough in this rendering for us to pa.s.s it to the media. But I think it gives us some basics. Coloring and basic facial structure, in any case."

"Looks, what," Feeney asked, "range of thirty?"

"Yeah. Even if Crew's son has spent the better part of a fortune on face work and sculpting, I don't think a guy in his sixties is going to look this young. And the witness never put him over forty. We may be looking for a family connection, or a young friend, protege. We have to pursue the connection. It's the most logical, given pattern and profile."

"Yeah, and it opens it up instead of narrowing it down," Feeney commented.

"We caught a break on narrowing it."

Eve told them about the trace evidence, and her field-work to date attempting to find the location of the Cobb crime scene.

"It's the first trace he's left. When we nail this down, we'll have another link toward identifying this creep. He chose the place, so he knows the place. He knew he could get in, do what he wanted to do in private and clean it up enough to have the crime undetected."

"Yeah." Feeney nodded agreement. "Had to splash some blood around. He cleaned up, or there'd be a report. A construction crew's not going to strap on tool belts with blood all over the d.a.m.n place."

"Which means he had to spend time doing so. Again in private. Had to have transpo, had to know there was a handy dump site and access to the flammable."

"Probably didn't seal up for that one," Feeney commented. "Why bother?"

"Not an efficient use of his time," Eve agreed. "He's going to burn the body and destroy any possible trace to him, or so he believed. Why bother to avoid any trace on the scene as long as it's reasonably cleaned? Particularly if he had some legitimate reasons for being there."

"Could own the place, work or live in it."

"Could be a building or construction inspector," Roarke put in. "Though if he is, it wouldn't have been bright of him to forget about the fire sealant."

"You got the data I asked for, the properties being built or rehabbed in that area. Is what you sent me the whole shot?"

"It is, yes. But that doesn't take into account ones that are under the table. Small jobs," he explained. "A private home or apartment where the owner might decide to do some work, or hires a contractor who's willing to forgo the permits and fees and work off the books."

Eve visualized the map of her investigation suddenly crisscrossed with hundreds of dead ends and detours. "I'm not going to worry about side deals until we exhaust the legitimate ones. Sticking with that, don't they sometimes use gas on construction sites?"

"For some of the vehicles and machines." Roarke nodded. "As it's inconvenient to transport it from one of the stations outside the city, you might use a storage compartment on-site or nearby. You've a fee to pay for that as well."

"Then we follow that down, too."

"Bureaucrats in Permits and Licensing are going to make you jump through hoops," Feeney reminded her.

"I'll deal with it."

"You're going to need to put the arm on these guys, get the warrants and a.s.sorted paperwork and other bulls.h.i.+t. We get lucky with the matches, you'll cut back on that." Feeney considered, pulled on his nose. "But you got a lot to wade through one way or the other. I can put my leave off a few days, until this is closed."

"Leave?" She frowned at him until she remembered his scheduled vacation. "c.r.a.p. I forgot all about it. When are you going?"

"Got two more days on the clock, but I can juggle some things around."

She was tempted to take him up on it. But she paced it off, heaved out a breath. "Yeah, fine, you do that and your wife will eat both our livers for breakfast. Raw."

"She's a cop's wife. She knows how it goes." But there wasn't much conviction behind his words.

"Bet she's already packed."

Feeney offered a hangdog smile. "Been packed d.a.m.n near a week now."

"Well, I'm not facing her wrath. Besides, you've already juggled enough to give me this much time. We can handle the rest of it."

He looked back at the board, as she did. "I don't like leaving a case hanging."

"I've got McNab and this guy." She jerked a thumb toward Roarke. "If we don't wrap it before you have to go, we'll keep you in the loop. Long distance. Can you give me a couple more hours tonight?"

"No problem. Look, why don't I get back to it, see if I can work some magic?"

"Do that. I'll see if I can wrangle some warrants. Okay with you if we brief here tomorrow, oh-eight hundred?"