"Fate." Lucias began to laugh, and drew an answering grin from his friend. "It's really just fate, isn't it? And all on our side. Really, Kev, it just gets better and better. You'll take care of the account? Generate another?"

"Yes. Yes, that's no problem." Kevin shrugged that off. There was nothing he couldn't do with electronics. "They've made a great many details public, Lucias. The chat rooms, the setup. We may want to stop for a time."

"Just when it's getting interesting? I don't think so. The higher the risk, the greater the thrill. Now, at least, we know we've pitted ourselves against an adversary or adversaries that are worthy of our efforts. It adds such a flavor. Savory."

"I could keep the account open," Kevin mused. "Send out some decoys."

"Ah!" Lucias slapped a hand on the arm of his chair. "Now you're in the game. Just think of it. Think of when you have your rendezvous tomorrow night. Why, you and the lovely lady can discuss this recent horror over drinks. She shivers, delicately, over the fate of her doomed sisters. Never knowing she's fated to join them. God, it's delicious."

"Yes." The whiskey and the drug cruised inside him, turned the air he breathed into soft liquid. "It does add to the thrill."

"One thing for certain, we're not bored."

Amused now, Kevin reached over to take a hit from the laced cigarette. "And unlikely to be for some time. I know just what I'll wear tomorrow. Just how I'll look. She's so sexy. Moniqua. Even her name reeks of sex." He hesitated, hating to disappoint. "I don't know if I can go through to the end of it, Lucias. I don't know if I can kill her."

"You can. You will. One doesn't drop back a level of achievement." He smiled when he spoke. "Think of it, Kevin. You'll know, the whole time you're touching her naked body, while you bury yourself in her, that you'll be the last one to do so. That your dick pumping inside her is the last thing she'll ever know."

Kevin went hard thinking of it. "I suppose there's something to be said for the fact she'll die happy."

Lucias's laughter bounced cold around the room.

Since she was always trying to lose weight, Peabody got off the subway six blocks down from the stop nearest Eve's home. She was feeling pretty peppy about meeting at the home office site again, where the AutoChef was a treasure trove of wonders.

Another reason, she admitted, for the hike. Sort of penance before the sin. It was a solution that appealed to her Free-Ager's sensibilities. Of course in the tenants of Free-Agism there was no sin and penance, but imbalance and balance.

But that was really just semantics.

She'd grown up in a big, unwieldy family who'd believed in self-expression, had a reverence for the earth and the arts and a responsibility to be true to oneself.

She had known, it seemed she'd almost always known, that to be true to herself she needed to be an urban cop who tried to maintain… well, balance, she supposed.

She was sort of missing her family right now though. The bursts of love and surprise. And hell, the simplicity of it all. Maybe she needed to take a few days and go sit in her mother's kitchen, eat sugar cookies, and soak up some uncomplicated affection.

Because she didn't know what in God's name waswrong with her. Why she felt so sad and unsettled and dissatisfied. She had the one thing she'd wanted most in life. She was a cop, a damn good cop, under the direct command of a woman she considered the ultimate in examples.

She'd learned so much in the past year. Not just about technique, not just about procedure, but about what made the difference between that good cop and a brilliant one.

About what separated the ones who wanted to close a case from the ones who took it a level deeper, and cared about the victim. Who remembered them.

She knew she was getting better at the job every day, and she could take pride in that. She loved living in New York, seeing its face change and shift as you moved from block to block.

The city wasso full, she thought. Of people, of energy, of action. While she could go back and sit in that homey kitchen, she'd never be content living there again. She needed New York.

She was happy in her little apartment, where the space was all her own. She had steady comrades, good friends, a worthy and satisfying career.

She was dating, well, sort of dating, one of the most incredibly handsome, considerate, sophisticated men she'd ever known. He took her to galleries, to the opera, to amazing restaurants. Through Charles, she'd been exposed to not just another side of the city, but of life.

And she lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling and wondering why she felt so lonely.

She needed to pull out of it. Depression didnot run in her family, and she wasn't going to be the first to spiral down into it.

Maybe she needed a hobby. Like glass painting or container gardening. Holographic photography. Macrame.

Fuck it.

It was just that thought in her head when McNab popped out of the subway glide and all but collided with her.

"Hey." He took a jerky step back even as she did. Stuck his hands in his pockets.

"Hey." Could her timing have been worse? she wondered. She couldn't have walked a little faster, a little slower? Left home five minutes earlier, two minutes later?

They frowned at each other for a moment, then had to move or be mowed down by the commuters flooding off the glide and onto the sidewalk.

"So." He pulled his hands out of his pockets to adjust the fit of the tiny, round sunshades with aqua blue lenses. "Dallas called for the home office deal."

"I got the update."

"Sounds like she got some action last night," he continued, struggling to keep it all mild and easy. "Too bad that creep didn't drop into Cyber Perk the other night when we were there. We might've made him."

"Unlikely."

"Try a little optimism, She-Body."

"Try a little reality, jerk-face."

"Wake up on the wrong side of slick-boy's bed?"

She heard her own teeth grind. "There is no wrong side of Charles's bed," she said sweetly. "It's a big, soft, round playpen."

"Oh yeah?" Half the circuits in his brains fried at the image of Peabody romping naked in some plush, sexy bed. With someone else.

"That's just the sort of quick repartee I've come to expect from you. You must be sharpening your wits on all those bimbos you're bouncing on these days."

"The last bimbo had a doctorate from MIT, the body of a goddess, and the face of an angel. We didn't spend much time on wit-sharpening."

"Pig."

"Bitch." He grabbed her arm as she swung toward Roarke's gate. "I'm getting fed up with the way you slap at me every time I get within striking distance, Peabody. You're the one who put the brakes on."

"Not soon enough." She tugged, but his grip stayed firm. She always underestimated those skinny arms of his. It was mortifying to realize the strength in them had her stomach doing cartwheels. "And as usual you're wrong and you're stupid. You're the one who ended things because you couldn't have everything your way."

"Right. Excuse me for objecting to the fact you'd roll out of my bed and roll into the whore's."

She rammed a fist into his chest. "Don't call him that. You don't know anything about it, and if you had one tenth of Charles's class, his charm, his consideration, you'd crawl up to subhuman. But since you don't I should thank you for putting the skids on what was a ridiculous, embarrassing, and revolting mistake on my part by ever letting you lay a hand on me. So thanks!"

"You're welcome."

They were panting, wild-eyed and nose to nose. Then they were moaning and mouth to mouth. They jerked apart, still wild-eyed.