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wasn’t as if she’d had to lie, cheat, and steal to get a meal.
    She’d had a fucking privileged life and had the snooty attitude and polished good looks to show for it. But then again, maybe losing her folks accounted for why she was so fucking cold and unemotional. Hell, she seemed to be more comfortable with a keyboard under her fingers than a man. Maybe she liked chicks?
    “I’m inside the bank’s transactions logs,” she told him. “No sign of any misconduct that I’ve seen so far.” She sounded disappointed as her gaze flicked back and forth across the screen, scanning the material. “A failover to a mirror backup server occurred a couple hours before the bombing. Standard practice for financial institutions, an automated process, so all client data is there. So far, nothing indicates tampering.
    “I’m only through the first couple of layers. I’ll dig deeper.” She used one finger to scroll slowly, typed in a string of numbers, then glanced up. She had the eyes of a Siberian husky. Clear, blue, intelligent, and brain-piercing. “Anything new on your end?”
    “Slavin took some interesting bits and pieces in for analysis. I should have something from Bäcker in about an hour.” He leaned over his arms, crossed on the table, and ignored her cocked brow at the I . This I-we thing worked with everyone but Winston. He never had a problem with personal pronouns when he worked with a team.
    Soft mouth a thin line, she tuned him out and went back to her keyboard. Clickety-click . The light filtering through the window limned her cheek. She had beautiful skin, translucent, assuming the texture and color weren’t totally due to makeup. Smoky eyeshadow; long, black lashes; glossy peach lipstick that made him want to lean over and taste it. There was no need to gild the lily; she was already beautiful.
    “So we should have some idea—”
    “Looks like a straight statement bombing.” Rafael’s voice carried just the eighteen inches separating them and no further. He had no fucking business thinking of Winston this way. None. Too bad his dick couldn’t read the memo.
    “Nothing was taken from the vault, which was an integral part of the building. Armored walls and tightly fashioned doors closed with complex, time-release locks. Our people found it. Intact and unopened.
    “We know from surveillance footage that no one went anywhere near the vault between when it was locked last night and this morning, when it was found sitting outside the bank.”
    “Hmm…” Her head lifted, but it took several beats before her gaze followed. “So it wasn’t a robbery. Not of the money in the vault, anyway. I saw the latest broadcast about the announcement from Städtische Hoffnung on the FR app.”
    “Yeah. They didn’t say much more than that they were responsible. If they are, I’ll know when I’ve gone through what we found at the site.”
    “You don’t believe them?” She picked up her paper cup and drank. Despite her polite, non-confrontational tone and inscrutable expression, Rafael felt the pulse of her excitement like the flutter of hummingbird wings between them.
    He shrugged, watching the movement of her smooth throat as she swallowed. “Anything’s possible. I’m not going to speculate until I see what we’re dealing with here. I believe we have enough bomb components from the scene to re-create the device, and I’ll be able to determine what type of explosives they used by analyzing the trace residue. I’ll go from there.”
    She set down the cup, fixing him with a pointed look from those Siberian Husky eyes. “ We go from there.”
    Rafe sat back in his chair, if for no other reason than to put some distance between him and Frosty. “I don’t see any point in your further involvement. I know you were pulled away from the Venice thing. Go ahead and join the team there as planned. I’m good.”
    “Wouldn’t it be great if it was your decision to tell me where to report?” Honey said