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“I . . .”

“Where’s Roarke?”

Even on the small communicator screen he could see flames leap into her eyes. “Roarke?” Though he had a bad feeling it was already too late, McNab tried to shift his expression into innocence, confusion, and righteousness all at once. “I don’t know. I guess he’s working somewhere. Um . . . did you want him for something?”

“Has he been playing with you?”

“No, sir! Absolutely not. I’m on duty.”

Her eyes stared out from the communicator screen for a very long twenty seconds. He felt sweat begin to slip greasily down the center of his back.

“I . . . as to how I accessed data, Lieutenant, it occurred to me that, well, previous backgrounds had been negative, and your instincts, which I respect and admire and trust absolutely, indicated there should be something. So I took what you could call a shot in the dark. That’s it, a shot in the dark, and communicated our position to Judge Nettles, who agreed to issue the proper authority. I have the warrant.”

He picked it up, waved it. “It’s signed and everything.”

“I just bet it is. Is this going to spring back and bite my ass, McNab? Think carefully before you answer, because I promise you, if it bites mine, it’s going to have a chew fest on yours.”

“No, sir.” He hoped. “Everything’s in proper order.”

“I’m ten minutes away. Hold everything . . . in proper order. And McNab, if I see Roarke’s fingerprints anywhere, I’m going to wring your skinny neck.”

The first thing Eve did when she walked back into the house was hit the house scanner. “Where is Roarke?” she demanded.

Roarke is not currently on the premises. He is logged, at this time, at his midtown offices. Shall I direct a transmission for you, Darling Eve?

“No. Sneaky bastard.”

“It called you darling, sir. That’s so sweet.”

“One of Roarke’s little jokes. And if I hear it repeated, I’ll have to kill you.”

She headed up the stairs out of habit. Peabody sighed again, knowing there were numerous elevators that would be delighted to save them the climb.

When they walked into the office, she smirked at McNab on principle, but she did offer up a quick little prayer for his skinny neck. She’d grown, however reluctantly, fond of it.

He sprang to his feet, leading with the warrant. “All proper and official, sir.”

Eve snatched it away, took a good, hard look. The tension in her shoulders unknotted muscle by muscle. She was dead sure Roarke was behind this sudden bounty of data, but the warrant would pass muster.

“Okay, McNab. You can live for the time being. Contact Feeney, put him on a conference-link and let’s see what we’ve got.”

What they had was twenty-four years old, but it was violent, petty, mean-spirited, and provocative.

“So the sophisticated Kenneth whopped big time on one Richard Draco.”

“Really big time,” Peabody put in. “He knocked out two teeth, busted his nose, bruised his ribs, and managed to break several articles of furniture before security got through the door and pulled him off.”

“It says in the civil action that Draco was unable to work for three weeks, suffered emotional damage, extreme embarrassment, physical trauma, and, this is my personal favorite, loss of consortium. Both the criminal charges and the civil action were taken against Stiles in his birth name, Stipple, which he legally changed to his current stage name immediately after the suit was settled.”

Eve turned the new data over in her mind. “He made a deal with Draco to take the payment and I’m banking it was more than the aforesaid five million smackeroon-ies to agree to having all of it sealed. The media didn’t get hold of it, and that had to cost, too.”

“Twenty-four years ago,” Peabody pointed out. “Neither of them were major names. But from what we know of Draco, he’d have whined to the press unless it was worth his while not to.”

“He could have spewed it out any time. Could have continued to hold it over Stiles’s head. Bad for the image developed.” Still she shook her head. “I can’t see Stiles being overly worried