"Oh, I figure you'll tell me, but right now I'm pressed. I've got McNab and Peabody in the field chasing leads. I'm locked in here because I planted a story through Nadine that I'm busted up and recuperating at home."
"You're getting good at that. Planting stories."
She jammed her hands in her pockets. "Okay, we'll run through it and clear the air. I made the statement, crossed the official line, to insult and challenge the killer to make a move on me. I'm supposed to serve and protect and I had to figure if he swung his aim in my direction, I'd buy time for whoever he'd targeted next. It worked, and as I'd calculated, he was pissed off enough to be sloppy, so we've got some leads we didn't have twenty-four hours ago."
Roarke let her finish. To give himself time he rose, walked to the window. Absently he adjusted the tint of the glass to let in more light. "When did you decide I was gullible, or simply stupid, or that I would be pleased to know that you had used yourself to shield me?''
So much for the cautious route, she decided. "Gullible and stupid are the last things I believe you are. And I wasn't considering whether or not you'd be pleased that I deflected his attention from you to me. Having you alive's enough—even pissed off and alive is fine by me."
"You had no right. No right to stand in front of me." He turned back now, his eyes vividly blue with temper that had gone from frigid to blaze. "No fucking right to risk yourself on my behalf."
"Oh really. Is that so?" She stalked forward until they were toe to toe. "Okay, you tell me. You keep looking me dead in the eye and you tell me you wouldn't have done the same if it was me in jeopardy."
"That's entirely different."
"Why?" Her chin came up and her finger jabbed hard into his chest. "Because you have a penis?"
He opened his mouth, a dozen vile and furious words searing his tongue. It was the cool, utterly confident gleam in her eyes that stopped him. He turned away and braced both fists on the desk. "I don't care for the fact that you have a point."
"In that case I'll just finish it out so you can swallow it all in one lump. I love you, and I need you every bit as much as you love and need me. Maybe I don't say it as often or show it as smoothly, but that doesn't make it any less true. If it pricks your ego to know that I'd protect you, that's just too bad."
He lifted his hands, dragged them up through his hair before he turned to her. "That's a hell of a way to defuse an argument."
"Did I?"
"Since any argument I could attempt would make me sound like a fool, it would seem you have."
"Good thinking." She risked a grin at him. "So, if you're finished being mad at me, can I run a few things by you?"
"I didn't say I was finished being mad, I said I was finished arguing with you." He sat on the corner of his desk. "But yes, feel free to run a few things by me."
Satisfied with that, she handed him a disc. "Put that in. I've got a still on it you can project on screen. Enhance it to full."
He did as she requested, then studied the image. He could see the fingers of a gloved hand wrapped around a wand-shaped device. The hilt was blocked from view but the pattern of notches and buttons on the stem were clear. A light at the tip glowed green.
"It's a jammer," he said. "More sophisticated and certainly more compact than anything I've seen on the market." He stepped closer to the screen. "The manufacturer's ID—if there is one—is likely on the hilt and hidden by his hand, so that's no help. One of my R a
nd D departments has been working on a smaller, more powerful jammer. I'll have to check the status."
That caught her off guard. "You're manufacturing this kind of thing?"
He caught the tone, smiled a little. "Roarke Industries handles a number of contracts for the government—for a number of governments, as it happens. The Defense and Security Department is always looking for new toys such as this. And they pay well."
"So a device like this might be in the works in one of your departments? Brennen was in communications. One of his research arms could have been working on one."
"It's easy enough to find out. I'll check which one of my particular arms has something along these lines on the boards, and have one of my moles check Brennen's organization."
"You have spies?"
"Data gatherers, darling. They object to being called spies. Have you got the rest of your man on here?"
"Click one back."
"Computer, display previous image on screen."
Roarke frowned at the picture and, using the vehicles for points of reference, speculated. "About five-ten, probably about one-sixty by the way that coat hangs on him. He's very pale from the looks of that swatch of skin you can see. I wouldn't say he spends a lot of time outdoors, so his profession, if he has one, is likely white collar."
Roarke tilted his head and continued. "No way to tell age, except he… holds himself youthfully. You can see part of his mouth. He's smiling. Smug bastard. His taste in outerwear is miserably inferior."