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“You didn’t tell me about it.”

“It just went up today. I figured you’d see it on your way home and thought it would be a nice surprise.”

“It was.” And remembering brought her smile back. “I nearly clipped a glide-cart, and I was sitting there, grinning at it, about to call her, but I had a transmission come through.”

“So work intruded.”

“More or less. It was Webster.” Because the smile was gone again, and she was scowling at the trees, she didn’t notice the slight tension in Roarke’s body. “Don Webster from Internal Affairs.”

“Yes, I remember who he is. What did he want?”

“I’m trying to figure that out. He called on my personal and asked for a private meet.”

“Did he?” Roarke murmured, his voice deceptively mild.

“He went out of his way for it, tailed me from Central. I met up with him just down the block from here, and after he got finished trying to make nice, he started a song and dance on the Kohli case.”

Just thinking about it again got her blood boiling. “Tells me how IAB wants it put away quiet, doesn’t like the idea that I’m going to look into Kohli’s financials. But he won’t confirm or deny anything. Claims it’s just a friendly, unofficial heads-up.”

“And do you believe him?”

“No, but I don’t know what he’s feeding me. And I don’t like IAB’s sticky fingers poking into my case files.”

“The man has a personal interest in you.”

“Webster?” She looked over now, surprised. “No, he doesn’t. We blew off some steam one night years back. That’s the beginning and end of it.”

For you, perhaps, Roarke thought, but let it go.

“Anyway, I can’t figure if the meet was really about Kohli or if it’s more about the Ricker connection.”

“Max Ricker?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes sharpened. “You know him. I should’ve figured that.”

“We’ve met. What’s the connection?”

“Kohli worked on the task force that busted Ricker about six months back. He wasn’t a key player, and Ricker slithered through, but it had to cost him a lot of time and money. Could be Ricker put out contracts and is getting some of his own back by whacking cops.”

“What I saw in Purgatory today didn’t seem like Ricker’s style.”

“I don’t figure he’d want his fingerprints on it.”

“There’s that.” Roarke was silent for a moment. “You want to know if I ever did business with him.”

“I’m not asking you that.”

“Yes, you are.” He took her hand, kissed it lightly, then got to his feet. “Let’s have a walk.”

“I brought work home with me.” She let him pull her up, smiled. “So much for the experiment. I should get to it.”

“You’ll work better if we clear this up.” He kept her hand in his, started across the lawn.

The breeze had shaken some of the petals from the trees so they lay like pink and white snowdrops on the green. Flowers, banks of them she couldn’t name, flowed out of beds in soft, blurry blues and shimmering whites. The light was beginning to go, softening the air. She caught drifts of fragile perfumes, country sweet.

He bent, snapped off a tulip, its cup as perfect as something sculpted from white wax, handed it to her.

“I haven’t seen or dealt with Max Ricker in a number of years. But there was a time we had business of sorts.”

She held the tulip and heard the city sniffing at the gates. “What kind of business?”

He stopped, tipped her head back so their eyes met. Then saw, with regret, that hers were troubled. “First, let me say that even one with my . . . let’s call it eclectic palate . . . hasn’t the taste for certain activities. Murder for hire being one of those. I never killed for him, Eve, nor for that matter, for anyone but myself.”

She nodded again. “Let’s not go there, not now.”

“All right.”

But they’d come too far to shy away now. She walked with him. “Illegals?”

“There was a time in the beginning of my career, I couldn’t . . . No,” he corrected, knowing that honesty was vital. “When I wasn’t particularly selective in the products I handled. Yes, I dealt in illegals from time to time, and some of those dealings involved Ricker and his organization. The last time we associated was . . . Christ, more than ten years back. I didn’t care for