* * * *
“You really have a way with women,” Caleb muttered.
Simon slid an irritated glance at him. “You have a problem with my handling of taking the statement?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. She was happy, excited, chirping like a little bird, and I happened to be fucking enjoying watching her and listening to her.”
“You didn’t have any more of a fucking clue what she was talking about, or interest in it, than I did!” Simon growled.
“Nobody cares, either,” Joshua said. “I’m with Caleb. She’s been through hell. I don’t see spoiling a little bit of enjoyment.”
“It wouldn’t have hurt to let her talk,” Ian said tightly. “We could’ve gotten the statement later.”
“We aren’t here to chat. The idea is to put together a case that will stick.”
“Jesus! You aren’t the only one that wants to see the bastard pay for what he’s done!” Caleb snarled. “Everything else aside, she isn’t safe as long as he’s running loose!”
Simon studied the others angrily for a moment. “We agreed this would have to be kept strictly professional. One whiff that she might be romantically involved with any of us and it could jeopardize the entire case. His lawyers would be all over it, screaming that we’d influenced the witness and her testimony wouldn’t be worth a damn!”
“Well, I’m damned if I see how letting her chatter on about recipes and franken-veggies is liable to hurt a damned thing!” Caleb said tightly.
“The point is we can’t allow ourselves to get side-tracked or … too friendly.”
Ian frowned. “If you ask me, you’re going as far overboard on your ‘professionalism’ as Caleb is in keeping things ‘friendly’,” he drawled. “You’re as blind in your own way as he is.”
Simon and Caleb glared at him.
“How do you figure that?” Simon asked tightly.
“I figure it,” Ian said coldly, “because I was actually listening to her. I was enjoying her liveliness just like they were, but I was still listening. You tuned her out the moment she got sidetracked or you would’ve realized she’s just as much of a professional as you are. She said she’d discovered something ‘significant’ and she was afraid something would happen to it. She risked a lot, Simon, to leave the house at all and she knew it was a risk, or didn’t you think about that?”
“She asked me to get it for her while she was in the hospital,” Joshua said. “She told me she’d hidden her files in her reader and asked me to find out if the paddler had survived the explosion.”
“And?” Simon prompted.
He shook his head. “I didn’t want to tell the Water City PD what I was looking for,” he said pointedly. “I asked for a copy of the report.”
“And they refused to send it because it’s an ongoing investigation and they haven’t decided yet whether we were involved or not,” Simon concluded. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that asking was enough to make them that much more suspicious?”
Joshua sent him an angry glance. “It occurred to me, but she asked, and I could see it was important to her. I told her I’d try.”
“There’ll be men on Cavendish’s payroll in the department,” Caleb muttered.
“He’s too good at what he does to overlook the benefit of owning a few cops. If it did survive the explosion, it could still disappear from the evidence room.”
“We need to figure some way to retrieve it if it still exists,” Ian said, then added when Simon glanced at him sharply, “I don’t know or care whether it has a direct bearing on the case or not. It’s important to Anna.”
Simon studied him a long moment and finally settled back, thinking. “I hate to say it, but I think we run more of a risk of losing any chance of getting it if we try regular channels than getting it. The governor’s already chewed my ass out about our unauthorized stakeout. It put him in the position of claiming he’d authorized it just to keep from looking like he didn’t know what was going on, and he didn’t like that worth a fuck since we were completely out of our jurisdiction and hadn’t even had the courtesy to inform Water City PD, who
had
the jurisdiction. Beyond that, it’s thrown suspicion on him as well as us. I don’t think he could help us even if I managed to convince him, and he isn’t too keen on talking to me right now.”
The men looked at each other. “Do we have any connections in Water City that might be helpful?” Caleb asked.
Joshua seemed to struggle with himself. “I do,” he admitted finally. “I’ve still got family there.”
“I’d forgotten your folks colonized,” Simon murmured in surprise. “Do you think they could help?”
Joshua shrugged. “It’s possible. If nothing else, they might have connections that could help us.”
“But would they?”
Joshua grinned abruptly. “Maybe. They aren’t exactly what you’d call upstanding citizens,” he said wryly. “They aren’t fond of Water City PD.”
Simon rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I suppose you’re all aware that what we’re proposing goes beyond ‘gray’?”
Ian stared at the other three for a long time, wrestling with his own conscience. “I didn’t become a watchman just to enforce laws,” he said slowly. “I became a watchman to protect the innocent, to punish the guilty, and, above all, to do the right thing. If that chip still exists, the
right
thing to do is to get it and protect it. Anna was working on something to help people. Whatever’s on that chip will, and letting someone destroy it is absolutely the
wrong
thing to do.”
Simon nodded. “I agree. I hope everybody has enough credits put up for retirement. We might be needing it before we’re done with this case,” he added wryly.
Caleb grinned at him. “We aren’t too old to learn new tricks if this falls on us like a ton of bricks.”
“Speak for yourself,” Simon muttered. “I feel older by the day.”
Caleb narrowed his eyes at him speculatively. “You can always head over to the brothel. You haven’t been in a while. It’ll make a new man out of you.”
Simon flushed, glaring at him. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, you conniving bastard?” he growled. “Anna wouldn’t give me the time of day if I did.”
“There’s no reason Anna has to know,” he said pointedly. “It isn’t as if you’ve spoken to her, anyway. You’re still a free man.”
“Well, I don’t fucking
want
to stay one!”
Caleb shook his head at him in disgust. “You aren’t going to get in Anna’s bed if you keep snapping and growling at her! If you want my opinion, you need to let off a little steam before you explode.”
“If I wanted your damned opinion, I’d knock it out of you!” Simon snarled, surging to his feet and stalking from the living area.
Caleb sent Ian an ‘I rest my case’ look.
Ian shook his head at him and snorted. “Why don’t you just take him outside and let him beat the shit out of you? That would make him feel better and he wouldn’t be worried about Anna discovering he’d been dipping.”
Caleb shot him a bird but then thought it over and grinned. “Maybe I will. Anna would be fussing over me and giving him drop dead looks for days, at least. It might be worth it.”
* * * *
Simon had already snatched the door open to his ‘sanctum’ before he discovered there was someone sleeping in his bed. He jolted to a halt, staring at Anna blankly for several moments before he looked around the room and ascertained that it was his room.
It dawned on him after several moments that he’d actually intended to give her his room for her stay. They didn’t have a guest room.
Well, they had until Joshua had moved in.
He’d planned to move most of his personal belongings out before settling her in, though, and that had included his blanket and pillow.
After studying her for several moments, he backed out of the room again and headed toward the living area.
“Where are you going?” Joshua asked in surprise.
“To my office,” Simon growled, passing through and into the atrium.
“He knows it’s his day off, right?” Caleb murmured curiously.
“Joshua!” Simon bellowed from the atrium. “You left the damned sub parked at the door!”
“Well take the tube!” Joshua yelled back at him. “I left it there so I could take Anna out to get something when she felt up to it. She lost all of her stuff when her place blew up.”
Simon stalked passed them again, heading toward the tube in the utility room off of the kitchen. “Pick me up some bedding while you’re at it.”
Joshua sent Caleb a look of disgust when they heard the door of the tube slam and lock. “You just had to bring up that shit about the brothel!”
“You think he isn’t approaching melt down? I didn’t bring it up to try to fuck things up for him with Anna, whatever he thinks. I figured it might help him mellow out a little. He’s wound so tight he can hardly think straight.”
“Simon isn’t the only one wound up. You might be, too,” Ian drawled acidly, “except you already slept with her.”
Caleb flicked an accusing look at Joshua.
“Don’t look at me!” he snapped. “I didn’t rat you out.”
“He didn’t have to,” Ian said dryly. “If you think Simon and I didn’t both know when she showed up at the sub, you don’t know us nearly as well as we know you. I’m guessing here, but my guess is that
that’s
why he’s wound so tight. I know it’s been bothering the hell out of me. It was bad enough before.”
“Tell me about it,” Caleb muttered, realizing there wasn’t much point in trying to deny it. Not that he saw any point to it at this juncture. They all knew the game was on—except it was on hold until they tied up the damned case.
The sooner the better, as far as he was concerned. It wasn’t just sleeping alone that was bugging him. No romance meant
no romance!
They couldn’t speak to her, couldn’t even approach her about moving to the colony, let alone attempt to try to negotiate any kind of agreement.
And, as loathe as he was to admit it, that worried the hell out of him, having her in the colony and available. Of course, they had to keep her close since she was in protective custody, which meant keeping everybody else away from her, but he still didn’t like it worth a fuck!
That hadn’t stopped the rest of the bastards down at the center from plying her with every enticement they could think of! And it wasn’t likely to stop any of the others in the market for a woman either! The bastards were probably plotting some way to cut them out right now!
He didn’t know why Ian was complaining any damned way! They’d agreed he could be lead man! So he’d jumped the gun a little! It wasn’t as if there was anything typical about this courtship—starting and ending with the fact that they couldn’t even openly court her!
He supposed, upon consideration, that it might have been worse if she was on the market, but it wasn’t much of an edge when they still didn’t know that she would consider moving to Atlantis, let alone consider their suit!
What they needed, he decided, was an enticement that nobody else would think of. It had to be something beyond the ordinary, something that might get Anna to thinking along the lines of taking up permanent residence when they couldn’t actually ask her to consider it.
The germ of an idea came to him while he listened absently to Joshua and Ian discussing possibilities for getting Anna’s data chip back.
She’d lost everything in the explosion. He supposed just about anything they could think up in the way of a gift would be good, but they didn’t really know what Anna liked. That was the catch.
He sure as hell hadn’t been able to tell from the junk the bastards at the center had piled on her. She’d seemed pretty damned pleased with all of it, and he knew she couldn’t be. She’d just been happy to get presents.
She liked music, he thought abruptly—the classical stuff. She’d had something playing just about all the time he’d been on watch.
The problem with that was that he hadn’t actually recognized anything by name.
He’d realized it was classical, but he wasn’t a big music buff.
“Back so soon?” Joshua asked cheerfully when Simon returned about an hour later.
Simon’s face darkened. “I didn’t actually have that much to take care of at the office.”
“Oh. I thought maybe you’d remembered it was your day off.”
Simon’s face grew darker. “I’m High Guardian. I don’t actually have days off,”
he muttered, searching the kitchen cabinets a little absently and finally pulling out something to cook. He was starving. He hadn’t realized he hadn’t gotten around to eating anything before he left. He’d missed breakfast and noon had come and gone.
“What was that music Anna was playing at her place all the time?” Caleb asked, joining Simon and Joshua in the kitchen and settling at the table.
Simon flicked a blank look at him. “Classics.”
Caleb rolled his eyes. “I know that. I just wondered if you recognized any of it.”
Simon frowned thoughtfully. “I know I heard at least one piece that was Beethoven—Chopin. It seemed like there was more Tchaikovsky, though. Why?”
“I was just thinking about our situation and it occurred to me that we might convince Anna to move here without actually asking her outright just by making her feel at home, you know? It’s going to take us weeks to get to trial no matter how fucking hard we work to put the case together. And, until then, our hands are tied.
“She’s going to be bored out of her mind in a little while, though, if she doesn’t have anything to do that she’s used to. So, we produce them. It makes her a lot happier about being caged, and maybe she gets to thinking this wouldn’t be a bad place to settle once it’s all over.
“If you think about it, it might not be such a bad thing for us either. Assuming we can convince her, we’re going to have to make some adjustments anyway. And it would give us something to do to keep from going off the deep end.”
Simon frowned at him. “I see one problem with that.”
“What?”
“We’re all going to look, and feel, pretty fucking stupid if we get everything all cozy and comfortable and she lights out for land again,” he said dryly.
Caleb felt his belly tighten uncomfortably. He glared at Simon in annoyance. “I still think we have a better chance of preventing that if we get her used to the idea first.”
Ian joined them in the kitchen. “He’s right. We have to think about the practical side of forming a pod anyway. This is a bachelor household. We’re either going to have to look for another place, or remodel this one. Having only four bedrooms is going to get damned uncomfortable damned fast.”
Simon sent him a sour look, but frowned thoughtfully. “We need a lab and greenhouse. She spent ninety percent of her time in one or the other.”
Caleb stared at him blankly for a moment. “God damn it! You just had to suggest that before I could get it out! I was thinking the same thing!”
“What difference does it make?” Ian asked sardonically. “He’s right. It’s the one thing most likely to work.”
“Exactly!” Caleb snarled. “And it was my fucking idea to start with and now he gets the credit!”
“It’s going to take all of us chipping in to pay for it,” Joshua pointed out, “unless you guys have more credits than I do … or it’s cheaper than it sounds like to me.”