Shoot to Thrill by P.J. Tracy Page A

him.
    She opened the door when he knocked, and there was the thin smile reticence made, the swinging black hair, the face that always made his breath stop in his throat. And as if that weren’t enough, there was Charlie’s tongue licking his palm, and he was so goddamned stupid he thought all of this was the welcome home he’d been waiting for his whole life.
    “Hey, Magozzi.”
    “Hey, Grace.”
    She stepped aside, reset the alarm when the door closed behind him, and just assumed he would follow her down the hall into the kitchen. When he didn’t, she turned to look at him, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
    “You’re working with the Feds. You were center stage at the seminar last weekend.”
    Grace frowned at him. She didn’t do facial expressions often, which made them strangely precious. “It’s just work, Magozzi.”
    “Tommy told us a little about what was going on. It’s not your everyday average security-system setup. It’s big. You never mentioned it.”
    Her frown deepened, almost making a line between her brows, but not quite. “You want to know what I’m doing every minute, every day?”
    Oh, yeah. That was exactly what he wanted. “Of course not. It just pissed me off to hear the FBI’s sitting on some new kind of Internet-connected homicide without sharing info with the cops.
    We’re the guys on the ground. If this stuff is really happening all over the country, we ought to get some sort of heads-up.”
    “Only five confirmed so far.”
    “Oh, good. I feel better. So they’re bringing in outside geeks because their geeks couldn’t trace the posts, right? And they brought us in on absolutely nothing. Every decent-sized department in the country works the Internet, and yet Tommy gets a private invitation instead of through protocol channels. Is there a gag order on this thing?”
    Grace blew out breath. “Not that I know of. They’re just trying to get something in place the locals can use before they bring everybody on board, which is where Monkeewrench comes in. And if you want to know anything more, you can come back to the kitchen instead of standing out here being a puke. I’ve got things on the stove.”
    Magozzi blinked as she stomped away down the hall. Puke?
    He walked into the kitchen and was immediately assaulted by food aromas that mellowed his mind. He’d read somewhere that the most sexually stimulating aroma for a man was cinnamon, but all he could smell was garlic, which probably was a good indicator of the way the night was going to go. “You have something to drink?”
    “Wine? Beer?”
    “Something stronger.”
    She set a whiskey, straight up, at the wooden table and sat down next to him. “Bad day?”
    Magozzi sipped at the whiskey before he spoke again. “We had a floater.”
    Grace winced. “I hate that term.”
    “Makes it easier. Less personal.”
    “Homicide?”
    “No. Anant called just before I left the office. No bruising, hyoid bone intact, blood alcohol through the roof. It’s off our desk, just not out of our minds yet. Plus, Tommy gave us a look at the Cleveland homicide video, which didn’t do a whole lot to make the day brighter.”
    “Shall I try to cheer you up?”
    “Go for it.”
    “Harley’s got a Fed in his house.”
    Magozzi actually smiled. “Dead?”
    “Not yet. He’s going to work with us on the software the Bureau wants us to create.”
    “Which is?”
    “They want a program to separate staged death scenes on the Web from the real thing.”
    “Sounds impossible.”
    Grace shrugged. “We’ve got some ideas. The agent brought us the classified films and files, and a huge stack of fringe sites that pop in and out on the Net we have to look at. It’s creepy stuff, Magozzi, especially the fetish sites.”
    He nodded. “We saw a few of those at the Cyber Crimes happy golf weekend last spring. Sex stuff, sadomasochism, like that.”
    “It’s a lot worse than that. People are acting out murders on instant messaging, taking turns