“It’s a weakness,” he said rather sheepishly, and for an instant she feared she’d spoken aloud. “Baked stuff. Can’t help myself.”

She found that rather endearing. “Did your mother bake a lot?”

“No. She was all thumbs in the kitchen. But my stepmother, now she can whip these up with her eyes shut. Cakes, cookies, you name it. She always joked she had to run five miles a day to keep from weighing a ton just from sampling.”

Darien grinned. “Sounds like my kind of woman.”

“She’s great. I was ten when my mom died, so when my dad brought her home a couple of years later, she stepped into a pretty difficult situation. She did a great job, though. Even if I didn’t really appreciate it until much later.”

That he appreciated it now said a great deal about him, Darien thought. “You’re close, still?”

“Yeah. My dad was killed in an accident three years ago, but we’ve stayed close. She’s the mother I lost, and a friend, too.”

She gave him the warmest smile she could, and he shrugged as if embarrassed and turned his attention back to his own treat. In short order, she finished her own.

“I’d better get back to this. Use the sugar rush,” she said wryly, knowing the crash when the sugar burned off could be ugly.

She hadn’t spent a lot of time trying to break coded files, but she knew the basic approaches and she had the software to run them. She had tried them all, so far with no results. So now she was starting on combinations, knowing she was shotgunning, hoping a few pellets would hit.

“I wish I knew how you thought,” she murmured.

“ Gardner?”

She nodded without looking up. “Then maybe I could figure out what he would have done to protect these files.”

“Well, you know he both hid them and encoded them,” Waters said.

“Yes. That right there tells us something, I guess. But I would think the complexity of the code itself would depend on the importance of the information.”

“That makes sense,” her partner agreed. “If this is a list of his girlfriends, it would likely have less protection than, say, if he was dealing drugs or something like that, and those were his contacts.”

She glanced at him. “If there really is a connection between these files and his death, then we know this is dynamite. Of some sort.”

“That’s a big if,” Waters cautioned her.

“I know. So I’m just going to break this sucker so we can either act, or move on.”

“Anything I can do?”

She smiled at him. “You just did it,” she said, indicating the crumbs that were all that remained of the cinnamon roll. “That’ll keep me going for a couple of hours, at least.”

And it did, Colin thought later, watching her with amazement. She might be everything he stayed away from in a woman, she might have the kind of looks that had Neanderthals like Palmer guessing she’d slept her way here, but Colin had to admit now that she not only had good instincts, but she had the dogged determination the job required.

Looking up, he saw that the brass was filtering in. He knew it was only a matter of time before they came calling; on a high-profile case like this, no one had any peace until it was resolved. And every day that passed only increased the pressure.

“Brace yourself,” he told his partner. “The powers that be are starting to arrive.”

She glanced up, frowning. “Rats,” she muttered. “I need a little more time, quiet time. I’m almost there, I know it. I can feel it.”

“I’ll try to keep them off you,” he said.

“That would help,” she said, “if you don’t mind.”

He shrugged. “I can’t do what you’re doing, so I might as well do what I can.”

“Thanks,” she said, her voice carrying a little more gratefulness than he would have expected for the simple offer he’d made.

He looked up and saw the commander headed toward them. Colin stepped out of the cubicle and went to head him off.

“What progress?” Portman asked, dispensing with any amenities.

Quickly Colin outlined the interviews they’d conducted, both in person and on the phone, and his own business search.

“Suspects?”

“We’ve got a lot of possibles,” Colin admitted. “Just as you’d expect with somebody as rich as Gardner. A couple that stand out, but nothing I want to hang the name on yet.”

Portman scowled. “You know I’m fending off the media over this. They’re getting impatient. I need something to give them.”

“Surely the usual ‘We’re investigating all avenues’ will hold them for a while longer, won’t it?”

“Not much, not when it’s a Gardner who’s dead.” He turned as if to go, and Colin sighed inwardly in relief; he didn’t want to mention the computer files, not until they had something solid. But then Portman turned back. “How’s your new partner working out?”

Colin was glad now he hadn’t complained at the time. “Fine. She’s got good instincts, I think, and she’s working as hard and long as anyone.”

Portman nodded shortly, then turned and headed back to his office. Colin went back to the cubicle where Wilson was still working.

“That should hold him for a while, but-”

She didn’t look at him but threw up a hand to hush him. Startled, he shut up. He noticed then she was leaning forward, eyes glued to the screen, and he wasn’t quite sure she was breathing. He took his cue and kept quiet, and less than a minute later he heard her hiss under her breath a triumphant, “Yes!”

He stood up and took a step toward her. “Yes?”

“Got him!”

He stepped around to look at the screen, and saw the rows and rows of gibberish morph into lines of readable text. He let out a low whistle. “You go, girl,” he said.

She looked up at him and smiled. And he thought suddenly that was the kind of smile that started-or ended-wars. And that she was the kind of woman men fought them for. Or alongside. That scared him, and he backed away to a safer distance, retreating to the edge of his desk again. The moment he realized what he’d done, he swore silently at himself. You are not going to do this! he ordered himself.

She turned back to the screen and began to read. After a moment her smile faded, then a crease appeared in her forehead.

Uh-oh, he thought. “It didn’t work after all?”

“No, no, it did,” she said without looking up. “It’s just that…this makes no sense. Unless Franklin Gardner was going to some kind of dating service or something.”

Colin snorted inelegantly. “Not likely. Guys with his looks and money have to beat them off with sticks.”

“But he’s got lists of women here, broken down by month, with physical descriptions, and odd little notations like ‘jock’ or ‘schoolgirl.”’

He frowned. “Do they all have notes like that?”

She read further, and nodded. “Here’s one that says ‘girl next door.’ Oh, and here’s a nice one, ‘brunette and trashy.’ But the strange thing is, the physical descriptions are really vague.”

Colin went very still. “Vague how?”

“Like…well, maybe general is a better word. Like this one. ‘Blonde, five-two to five-six, voluptuous, hidden assets, innocent look.”

Colin stood up, slowly this time, in contrast to his racing thoughts.

“And this one,” she went on, her voice rising slightly, “this one’s sick! Listen to this! ‘Redhead, pigtails, freckles, no more than five feet, immature body, must look no more than twelve.’ What is this?”

“It sounds,” Colin said grimly, “like a shopping list.”

Even with the questionable help of Palmer it took them another hour to track down the reports-but only moments to match up the physical descriptions on four of the missing females to the list Darien had decoded on the computer. Palmer finally seemed to wake to the possibilities, and dug out three more reports that had been filed as open but not active. Those matched up with three more of the entries in Gardner ’s file.