“I’d invite you to stay at my place—it’s the least I can do, since you put me up at your castle and had your mom try to shrink my brain—but Stacy’s staying with me right now and it’ll be tight.”

Dmitri almost shuddered. “That’s quite all right. It’s probably best you and Stacy have privacy while you…discuss things.”

“I’d like to discuss things,” Caitlyn muttered, stomping through the lobby of the Minneapolis Marriott. “Right upside her head, I’d like to discuss things.”

“I prefer a well-run hotel to most homes anyway,” he said.

“How annoyingly bacheloresque. So, what?” she asked, stepping into the plush elevator behind him. “They’re processing poor deader-than-shit Dr. Miller, and now what?”

“Let me get my laptop set up, and I’ll show you. For starters, we’ll pull files on all O.S.F. employees, find out who, if anyone, is missing a gun, find out who has access to the Wagner team.”

“You can do that? Just from your laptop?”

He smiled at her and said nothing.

“Can I do that, maybe? Someday?”

“Probably.” He added, “I could teach you if you wish.”

“Oh. Okay.” She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Was it cool, or unbearably geeky? Well, she’d think about it later. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that. Listen, I’ll have the driver take me home and get my car. And change my clothes! Then I can come back and take you wherever you want. That way the O.S.F. doesn’t necessarily know every move we make.”

“I’m sure your car is bugged. But if it makes you feel better to drive your own car…” He shrugged.

“Oh, man. This day…it’s just getting better and better. Should have stayed in bed.”

“I’m wondering if it might not be Dr. Roe,” Dmitri said thoughtfully, following her as she lunged out of the elevator.

“The last member of the team? How come?”

“Everyone else is dead.”

“Yeah, but what’s her motive?”

“It could be any of a number of things. Professional jealousy, for one.”

“Yuck. Helluva dumb reason to plug someone. A whole bunch of someones.”

“Someone like you wouldn’t understand the darker regions of a person’s heart.”

“Okaaaaaaay.” Whatever the hell that meant. She was so freaked out by the day’s events that it was harder than usual to know what the hell Dmitri was babbling about. “I think it’s the swine.”

“Really? What’s his motive?”

“Ha! He’s so wicked and horrible, he doesn’t need one. He probably kills employees for relaxation, you know, like most guys play racquetball.”

“Dislike Gregory Hamlin as I do, I doubt he’s the killer. He runs the department, they all do things on his orders. His annual budget is in the eight figures, and he has the ear of the president. The last thing he would do is start killing off the team that made us.”

“Why? Because he wants to make more?”

Again, that maddening shrug.

“Well, fuck that! Jeez, the killer’s actually doing us a favor.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Dmitri said carefully, popping his key card into the suite’s slot. “It’s why you and I were suspects, remember.”

“Huh.” Then, “Whoa!” The suite was amazing…dark, rich carpeting, a piano (in a hotel room!), multiple rooms, and, when she darted into the bathroom, an enormous Jacuzzi tub in dark gray marble. “Holy cow! This isn’t a hotel room, it’s…er…” She couldn’t think of anything fancy enough.

“Their Presidential Suite is quite nice,” Dmitri remarked, already setting up his laptop.

“Nice? Kitties are nice. This place is like a fucking palace. And I would know!”

“Mmmm,” he said, already absorbed. Then he looked up at her. “Another suspect…now, don’t get angry….”

“Dude, have you been paying attention lately at all?”

“Fair enough. I’m wondering if the killer might not be your friend.”

“Stacy?” Caitlyn burst out laughing, finally collapsing on a chair opposite the desk. “Oh, man. Thanks. I really needed cheering up.”

“She has cause to resent the Wagner team,” he pointed out. “And now, thanks to her…ah…social connection, she can apparently enter this building anytime she wishes.”

“Dmitri, you’re so far out of left field, you’re not even in the ballpark anymore. Stacy wouldn’t hurt a fly. Literally. She shoos them out the window. Says it’s bad karma to squash anything, even a bug.”

He shrugged. “It’s just another working theory.”

“Well, think of a different one.”

She prowled around the spacious suite for a few minutes, wondering exactly what happened next. She wasn’t a homicide detective, she did heads. She had told the fink that she wasn’t qualified for this job. Watching Dmitri peck away at a laptop that was probably worth ten grand, that fact was brought home to her all over again.

What made matters worse was, the fink wasn’t even involving the police. He thought it was an inside job—and she had to agree—and he expected her and the Wolf to clean up the mess.

So now the Wolf was engrossed in work, the Boss was doing whatever it was he did (foreclose on orphanages? Tear down homeless shelters?), and she was…was…what?

Tired. Very, very tired. Her sleepless night was catching up with her, not to mention jet lag and the stressful events of the day. There was a perfectly nice bed somewhere in this suite, and she meant to find it and have a nap. Couldn’t do anything while Dmitri was working anyway.

She found the bed after searching for a minute and was asleep five seconds after her head hit the pillow.

“Caitlyn.”

Great. It was Dmitri, waking her up to tell her there’d been another murder. They’d have to fly back to the States, like, immediately. He was pissed at her, too, not that she could blame him, and when they were on the jet, he’d—

Wait. That had already happened.

She opened her eyes to find him bending over her. This was startling, yet yummy. “Guess I fell asleep. What’s up? Are you done?”

He shook his head, but his intense blue eyes never left her face. “I’m crunching data right now. Nothing to do but wait.”

“Okay.” She yawned. “So we wait.”

“Yes. Forgive me, but I’ve been wanting to do this for hours.”

“Wanting to…? Mmmph.” His mouth was on hers again, his fingers twined in her hair. She broke the kiss after a delightful long minute and gasped, “You—you want to? Again?”

“More than anything.”

“But…I thought you didn’t like me. You seemed really mad before. You seemed…”

“I was mad,” he said soberly, playing with a hank of her hair. “I was…a fool. Of course I like you. I adore you.”

“Dmitri…I’m not trying to rub anything in, but if you felt that way, why—”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “You’re quite right. I shouldn’t have taken you in the jet like a—but I was…I was angry. Upset about last night. As a matter of fact, if you send me away again, I don’t think I’ll survive it.”

“No pressure though,” she teased. “Lucky for you I’m on the Pill. And I didn’t get a chance to ask you this earlier, but I assume the nanobytes keep you from being crawling with disease.”

“Quite,” he said dryly, then laughed as she tugged him toward her. Not by his hand. “Wait, I still have my shoes on. Not to mention everything else.”

“Well, jeez, come on!” She was tempted to prolong the scene with pouting and listen to him beg for forgiveness, but frankly, she was too eager for sex to torture him. Maybe next time. “Come on, come on, come on!”

“All right, all right, don’t tear my shirt off…well, all right, do that if you wish. I have lots of shirts.”

“What a relief,” she said, and pulled so hard, buttons went flying and skittering across the room. She heard the double thud as his shoes hit the floor, and then, oh glory be, his hands were on her, the hands she’d ached for all last night, the hands that were on her for all too brief a time in the jet. They were in her hair, they were running over her limbs, they were caressing her breasts, and she was kissing him and running her own hands across his broad, hard shoulders.

“Don’t stop,” she groaned as he licked the tender undersides of her breasts. “Oh, God, I don’t want you to stop.”

“Again, we are of like minds.” His voice was muffled against her flesh. “Oh, Caitlyn. You are sublime.”

She was sublime? Had he looked in a mirror? Ever? His strong hands were everywhere, his mouth was everywhere, the clothes were everywhere, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass.

Now he was moving lower and was kissing the light fuzz over her pubic bone, and now his tongue was opening her like a flower, stroking and licking the damp folds.

Oh, God, he was better than her vibrator, Big Blue! In her vast sexual experience (more than the late Mother Teresa, fewer than Stacy), most men would go there to get her wet so they could stop as soon as possible and get what they needed, but Dmitri showed no signs of leaving, almost like the act itself was pleasurable to him.

His tongue and lips were amazing, and when she felt his mouth settle over her throbbing clit at the exact moment a finger slipped up inside her, she nearly screamed at the bold sweetness of it.

He worked her to orgasm again and again using fingers and tongue, chuckled when she shuddered and clutched at his shoulders, laughed outright when she begged him to fuck her, to stop what he was doing down there and come up here and fuck her now.

Finally, oh, finally, he was licking her stomach and then her cleavage and then his broad chest was settling over hers and she wrapped her legs around his waist and whimpered into his neck when he parted her with trembling fingers and slowly slid inside her.

He was whispering into her hair as he eased into her, whispering in a language that sounded sweet and dark, and when he started to thrust, she thought she would die, die with a silly grin on her face, die happy, die well.

She rose to meet him, and their stomachs slapped together in a beat that was as old as the family of man. He was still whispering in that secret language, but now his tone was more urgent, his thrusts more demanding, and she met him with everything she had, met him and wordlessly demanded more.

“God,” he said when she shuddered and clenched around him. “God, God…Caitlyn, my bold one, my own…”

“It’s so good,” she gasped, almost wept. “It feels so good.”

Her words seemed to do something to him, push him over some edge that he couldn’t come back from, and he stiffened in her arms and then shivered all over.

She could feel him pulsing within her and, for an odd moment, wished she weren’t on the Pill, wished he were making her pregnant at that very moment, pregnant with his baby, a boy or girl with his hair and her eyes. A strange thought and one she had never had at such a moment, not with any man.

She wept, and she didn’t know why, and he held her, and kissed her tears, and when she slipped back into sleep, he was whispering in that dark language again.