Loyalty In Death Part 30

"And you'll reluctantly ask me to a.s.sist you with it." He hooked his fingers in her waistband and tugged until she tumbled on top of him. "But first..." He rubbed his mouth persuasively against hers. "I need you."

Her protest would have been lukewarm in any case. But those words melted it away. She skimmed her fingers through his hair. "I guess I can spare a couple of minutes."

He laughed, and tucking her close, reversed position. "In a hurry, are you?

Well then."

Now his mouth crushed down on hers, hot, greedy, and with enough bite to shoot her pulse from steady to screaming. She hadn't expected it, but then she never quite did expect what he could do to her with a touch, with a taste, with as little as a look.

All the horror, the pain, the misery she'd waded through that day fell away in the sheer drive to mate. "I am. In a big hurry." She tugged at the hook of his trousers. "Roarke. Inside me. Come inside me."

He yanked down the soft slacks she'd slipped into after her shower. Mouth still devouring mouth, he lifted her hips. And he plunged into her.

Into the heat and the welcome and the wet. His body shuddered once as he swallowed her groan. Then she was moving under him, driving him, setting a frantic pace that ripped her to peak and over before he could catch his breath.

She closed around him, vise tight, erupted around him, nearly dragged him off that fine edge with her. Gasping for air, he lifted his head, watched her face.

G.o.d, how he loved to watch her face when she lost herself. Those dark blind eyes against flushed skin, that mouth full and soft and parted. Her head tipped back, and there was that long smooth throat, its pulse wildly beating.

He tasted her there. Flesh. Soap. Eve.

And felt her building again, fast and sure, her hips pistoning as she climbed, her breath ragged as the wave swept in. And this time, when it crested, he buried himself deep and let it swamp them both.

He collapsed on her, let out a long, contented sigh as his system shimmered.

"Let's get to work."

CHAPTER TWELVE

"We're not doing this in here because I want to get around CompuGuard."

Eve took her stand in the center of Roarke's private office while he settled down at the control console of his unregistered -- and illegal -- equipment.

"Mmmm," was his response.

She narrowed her eyes to slits. "It's not the issue here." "That's your story, and I'll stick with it."

She gave him a scalpel-thin smile. "Stick your smart-a.s.s comments, pal. The reason I'm going this route is because I've got good reason to believe Ca.s.sandra's got just as many illegal toys as you do, and likely just as much disregard for privacy. It's possible they can slide into my equipment here or at Central. I don't want to chance them getting a line on any part of the investigation."

Roarke leaned back, nodded soberly. "And it's a very good story, too, well told. Now, if you've finished soothing your admirable conscience, why don't you get us some coffee?"

"I really hate when you snicker at me." "Even when I have cause?"

"Especially." She strode to the AutoChef. "What I'm dealing with here is a group that has no kind of conscience, that has what appears to be heavy financial resources, expert technical skills, and a knack for getting by tight security."

She brought both mugs to the console, smiled again. "Reminds me of someone." "Does it really?" He said it mildly as he took the coffee she offered.

"Which is why I'm willing to use everything you've got on this one. Money, resources, skills, and that criminal brain of yours."

"Darling, they are now and always at your service. And following that line, I've made some progress on Mount Olympus and its subsidiaries." "You got something?" She went on full alert. "Why the h.e.l.l didn't you tell me?"

"There were other matters. You needed an hour," he reminded her. "I needed you."

"This is priority," she began, then stopped herself with a shake of her head.

Complaining was a waste of time. "What have you got?" "You could say, nothing."

"But you just told me you'd found them."

"No, I said I'd made progress, and that progress is nothing. They're nothing.

They don't exist."

"Of course they exist." Frustration shimmered around her. She hated riddles. "They appeared all over the computer -- electronics companies, storage companies, office complexes, manufacturers."

"They exist only on the computer records," he told her. "You might call Mount Olympus a virtual company. But IRL -- in real life -- it's nothing. There are no buildings, no complexes, no employees, no clients. It's a front, Eve."

"A virtual front? What the h.e.l.l is the point of that?" Then she knew, and swore.

"A distraction, a time waster. Energy defuser, whatever. They knew I'd do a search and scan on Ca.s.sandra, that it would lead me to this Mount Olympus, and then to the other fake companies. So I waste time chasing down what was never there in the first place."

"Not very much time," he pointed out. "And whoever set up the maze -- and a very complex and well-executed maze it was -- doesn't know you've gotten from one end to the other."

"They think I'm still looking." She nodded slowly. "So I continue to search through EDD, tell Feeney to take it slow so Ca.s.sandra thinks we're still running into walls."

"Building their confidence while you concentrate in other areas."

She grunted and, sipping her coffee, paced. "Okay, I'll handle that. Now, I need to know all I can about the Apollo group. I gave Peabody the a.s.signment, but she'll have to go through channels and won't find enough data, not fast, anyway. I don't just want their party line," she added, turning back to him. "I want what's under it. I've got to get a handle on them and hope that gives me one on Ca.s.sandra."

"Then that's where we'll start."

"I need names, Roarke, of known members, living or dead. I need to know where they are, what happened to them. Then I need names and locations of family members, lovers, spouses, siblings, children, grandchildren." She paused, her eyes going cop flat. "In Fixer's little journal, he mentioned revenge. I want survivors and loved ones. And I want those closest to James Rowan."

"The FBI will have files, sealed, but they'll have them." He lifted a brow, amused by the obvious struggle on her face. "It'll take some time."

"We're a little pressed in that area. Can you zing whatever you pull up into one of the auxiliary units? I can start a comparison run on ID, see if I can tag anyone connected who worked or works in the three target buildings."

He nodded toward a machine on the left of his console. "Help yourself. I'd focus on lower-level positions," he suggested. "Security checks are likely to be spottier there."

She settled down, spending the next twenty minutes reviewing everything she could find on the Pentagon bombing. At the control center, Roarke went coolly about the business of bypa.s.sing FBI security and delving into sealed files.

He knew the route -- had taken it before -- and slid through the locked levels like a shadow through the dark. Occasionally, for his own amus.e.m.e.nt, he checked in to see just what the Bureau had in their file marked Roarke.

It was surprisingly lean for data on a man who had been and done and acquired all he had been and done and acquired. Then again, he'd erased and destroyed a great deal of that data, or at least altered it, when he'd still been a teenager. Files at the FBI, Interpol, IRCCA, and Scotland Yard contained nothing he didn't care for them to contain.

It was, he liked to think, a matter of privacy.

He regretted only mildly the fact that since he'd met Eve, none of those agencies had cause to add any interesting facts about his activities. Love had him walking the straight and narrow, with only the occasional step into the dark.

"Incoming," he murmured, and had Eve's head coming up. "Already?"

"It's only the FBI," he pointed out, and tipping back in his chair, ordered data onto the wall screen. "There's your head man. James Thomas Rowan, born in Boston, June 10, 1988."

"They so rarely look like madmen," Eve murmured, studying the image. A handsome face with sharp bones, easily smiling mouth, clear blue eyes. His dark hair was shot with distinguished gray, lending him the look of a successful executive or politician.

"Jamie, as he was called by friends, came from good, solid, New England stock." Roarke angled his head as he read data. "And healthy Yankee money. Prep schools, Harvard. Poli-sci major. Likely being groomed for politics. Did his military stint -- angled into Special Forces. He did some work for the CIA. Parents deceased, one sibling. Sister. Julia Rowan Peterman."

"Professional mother, retired," Eve read. "She lives in Tampa. We'll check her out."

She rose as much to stretch her legs as to get a closer look at the screen.

"Married Monica Stone, 2015. Two children: Charlotte, DOB September 14, 2016, and James Junior, DOB February 8, 2019. Where's Monica?"

"Display current data on Monica Stone Rowan," Roarke ordered. "Split screen."

Going by the age of the subject, Eve decided the picture was fairly recent.