“Because?” He knew the answer, or thought he did, but he loved watching her work.

“The sign on the door, the getaway. It was vicious-all that spatter. A pro wouldn’t have wasted time with that. Cut the throat, skewer the heart, hit the big artery in the thigh. Pick one and move on. But blood doesn’t lie, and the spatter clearly says this was slice, hack, rip.”

The light softened as they spoke, and he wondered how many couples might sit in the evening light over a meal and talk of blood spatter and exsanguination.

Precious few, he supposed.

“Are you sure none of the blood was the killer’s?”

She nodded. It was a good question, she thought, and only one of the reasons she liked bouncing a case around with him. “Reports just in, taking samples of every area of spatter, and several from the pool, confirm it all belonged to Buckley.”

“Then she was caught seriously off guard.”

“I’ll say. So, specific target, specific location and time, personal and professional connections. Add one more element, and I think it matters. Whoever killed Buckley didn’t kill Carolee Grogan when it would’ve been easier, more expedient and even to his or her advantage to do so.”

“Leaving her body behind. More confusion,” Roarke agreed. “A longer identification time on the blood pool. A killer with a heart?”

She tossed back the rest of her wine. “It’s more that a lot of people with a heart kill.”

“My cynical darling.”

She rolled her eyes. “Let’s see what we’ve got so far.” She jerked a thumb toward the console.

Roarke walked back behind the command center, sat. Then, smiling at Eve, patted his knee.

“Please.”

“And thank you,” he said, grabbing her and tugging her down. “There now, this is cozy.”

“It’s murder.”

“Yes, yes, on a daily basis. Now, see here, we’re through several levels on HSO, but then, I’ve been through that door before.” He brushed his lips over her cheek. “And making some progress on the others. They’ll have done some code shifting and housekeeping since my last visits, but see there, we’re rerouting with them.”

“I see a bunch of gibberish, numbers and symbols flashing by.”

“Exactly. Let’s see if we can nudge it along.” He reached around her, began tapping keys. “There are all sorts of tricks,” he continued as the codes zipped by on the screens. “Realignments, firewalls, fail-safes, trapdoors and back-doors. But we keep updating along with them.”

“Why? Seriously, why do you need access to this stuff?”

“Everyone needs a hobby. What we want here are eyes-only personnel files, their black ops consultants. And verification if the device rumored to exist does indeed exist. Eyes-only again, but the trick would be to find where it might be tucked and by whom. Ah well, bugger it. Let’s try this way.”

Assuming from the oath and his increased tapping that he’d hit a snag, Eve wiggled away. “I’m getting coffee, and I’m going to run some data of my own.”

When his answer was a grunt, she knew playtime was over. It was time for serious work.

Using an auxiliary computer, Eve initiated her own search for any mention of a device such as Roarke had described. She found several articles on medical sites detailing the memory suppressive drugs and tools used during routine surgeries, others edging toward hypnotherapy in both medical studies and gaming.

She also found a scattering of fringe blogs raging about government mind control, enslaving of the masses and the ever-popular doomsday warnings. A nation of human droids, forced experimentation, personality theft and human breeding farms were on their top-ten list of predicted abominations. This led her to others claiming to have been abducted by aliens in league with the shadow forces of government.

“I’m surprised the government has time to, you know, govern, when they’re so busy working with aliens and their anal probes or pursuing their mission to turn the global population into mindless sex droids.”

“Hmm,” Roarke said, “there’s government, then there’s government.”

She glanced over to where he sat, fingers flying, eyes intent. “You don’t actually believe this crap? Alien invasions, secret bunkers in Antarctica for experimentation on human guinea pigs.”

He flicked his glance up. “Icove.”

“That was… Okay.” Hard to argue when they’d both nearly been killed when dismantling a subversive and illegal human cloning organization. “But aliens?”

“It’s a big universe. You should get out in it more often.”

“I like one planet just fine.”

“In any case, I have your victim. No, don’t get up.” He waved her back. “I’ll put it onscreen. Data, wall screen one. This is from HSO, but the data matches what I’ve got from the other sources.”

“Dana Buckley,” Eve read. “With her three most common aliases. Same age as her current ID. But with the biographical data you had.”

“Now it lists her assets. The languages she spoke, her e-skill level, the weaponry she was cleared for. Included in her dossier is this list.” He scrolled down. “Names, nationalities, ranks if applicable, dates.”

“Her hit list,” Eve mumbled. “They know or believe she’s killed these people, but they let her walk around.”

“Undoubtedly she killed some of those people for these agencies. They let her walk around until now because she’s useful to them.”

Eve dealt with murder every day, yet this offended and disturbed her on some core level she wasn’t sure she could articulate.

“That’s not how it’s supposed to be. You can’t just kill or order someone’s death because it’s expedient. We’ve managed to virtually outlaw torture and executions; if a cop terminates in the line, he has to go through testing to ensure it was ultimate force that was necessary. But there are still people, supposedly on our side, who would use someone like her to do their dirty work.”

“People who use someone like her rarely, if ever, get their hands dirty.”

“She was a psychopath. Look at her psych profile, for God’s sake.” Eve swung an arm at the screen. “She should’ve been put away, just like the person who did her needs to be put away.”

He watched her as she read the data onscreen. “You have less gray area than most.”

“You think this is acceptable? Jesus, read the list. Some of them are kids.”

“Collateral damage, I expect. And no,” he added as she swung around, her eyes firing. “I don’t think it’s acceptable to kill for money, for the thrill or for expedience. There may be more gray in my world than yours when it comes to killing for a cause, but that’s not what she did. It was profit and, I believe, for fun. And I suspect, if it had been Buckley standing in that room when Carolee walked in, those boys would be grieving for their mother tonight instead of cuddled up with her watching in-room movies.”

“Not all assassins are created equal?” Calmer, she angled her head as she studied the screen. “We need to look at this list, see if we can connect any of these names to someone in the same business. Someone skilled enough to get the drop on her.”

“I’ll set it up. Meanwhile, there’s interesting data on the device. This memo was issued two days ago.” Again, he ordered the data onscreen.

“ ‘The Lost delayed. Owl to commence new series of tests in Sector Twelve. Owl request for seventy-two and blackout approved.’ ” Eve puzzled over it a moment. “She’s not Owl. Who’d code-name a female assassin-a young, attractive one-Owl?”

“We can go over the earlier memos, but I’d say Owl would be in charge of the development of the device.”

“The Lost. You lose time, yourself, your memory of what happened when you’re… gone. So, if this Owl or someone under him/her had it, maybe it was an exchange. No, no, it was a setup. It was planned. He had to have a way off the damn ferry, so none of it was spontaneous. Delayed? But if it was used, it was complete.”