Born in Death

by J. D. Robb

  He was still seething mad though, she noted. However cool and collected he might seem, she knew him, and saw the black temper bubbling under the surface. She couldn’t blame him. But there were other ways to work off a rage than a sweaty session in the gym, or a good, bloody row.

  “I still need that shower.” She headed for the door, glancing over her shoulder on the way out. “Wouldn’t mind some company.”

  She ordered the jets on full, at a temperature of 101, and let the heat punch its way into her bones. With her eyes closed and the water pulsing over her head, the worst of the headache she’d been carrying eased off.

  When arms came around her, the tension inside her body shifted to a different arena.

  “Sorry,” she said with her eyes still closed. “You’ll have to get in line. I’ve already got a guy scheduled for shower sex.”

  Hands slid up to cover her breasts; teeth nipped lightly into her shoulder.

  “Well, maybe I can squeeze you in.”

  She started to turn, but those hands held her in place while his mouth roamed over her neck and shoulders. Little bites while the steam began to rise.

  With an arm hooked around her waist, he flipped open the compartment in the glass block and let a river of fragrant soap pool into his hand. He slicked it over her breasts, torso, belly. Slow circles while the water pumped and pulsed.

  Everything inside her tightened into delicious knots that released only to snap taut again. The wet heat, the smooth hands teased all of her senses to the edge of nerves, drenching her in sensations.

  She lifted her arms, taking them back to wind around his neck, to open herself. Those lazy circles traveled down her again, slid slippery between her legs. Her body bowed, her breath escaping in a moan as he tipped her over the edge.

  She shuddered for him, shuddered and bucked against his busy hands, fueling his needs even as he sated hers. His own system began to churn, greed and want and lust and love so twisted together they created one mass of heat that spread from heat to heart to loins.

  A unit, he thought. Two lost souls, steeped in shadows, that had found each other. He shouldn’t have forgotten, even in temper, the miracle of that.

  When he pulled her around to face him, her eyes were heavy, her face flushed—and her lips slowly curved.

  “Oh, it’s you. I thought there was something familiar, but I wasn’t sure.” She reached down, took the hot, hard length of him in her hands. “Yeah, I recognize this.”

  She kept those sleepy eyes open and on his when he pushed her back against the wet wall. While the jetting water thundered he took her mouth, took her taste and quivered with the thrill when her lips met his with equal passion.

  Then, gripping her hips, he plunged into her, swallowing her cries, her gasps, her moans, as he drove them both.

  Her fingers slid down him, dug in for purchase as shock and excitement ripped through her. There was nothing but the heat, the wet, the glorious hard body against her, in her. The pleasure shot her up so high she had to fight for breath to even moan his name.

  Then it wrung her out, made her weak, made her woozy. She felt him let go, felt him give himself to her as she went limp.

  “Ta cion agam ort.” With his body warm and pressed to hers he murmured it.

  I love you, Eve thought, in Gaelic. Knowing he used it when it mattered most to him, she smiled.

  Feeling relaxed and accommodating, she let him pick the meal and ended up eating some sort of lightly grilled fish with a side of spicy rice mixed with crispy vegetables. She might have preferred a burger and fries drenched in salt, but she couldn’t complain.

  And the chilly glass of Italian white made it all go down smooth as silk.

  “Before we go any further,” he began, “I want to say more than feeling kicked, I felt I’d been sucker punched by this. And it bruised.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Hardly your fault. The fact is, I was equally furious with myself. I should have seen it coming.”

  “Why? How?”

  “A prominent accounting firm, with prominent clients.” He moved his shoulders. “There had to be some question that I’d have access to the financial data of some competitors. And the ensuing uproar over it.”

  “Hey.” She stabbed out with her fork. “You’re not going to take their side on this one. That’ll just piss me off all over again.”

  “I’m not, no. I think it was poorly handled. Still, I should have expected something along those lines, and been better prepared to deal with it.”

  “They bitch-slapped both of us. I’m not going to forget it.”

  “Nor will I. Why don’t you tell me about the progress of the investigation. If nothing else, it’ll make me feel we’ve given them a good poke in the eye.”

  “Sure.”

  He listened while she brought him up to date.

  “So somebody accessed her files and deleted whatever it was she was looking into. A clean job, according to McNab. They’re going to keep digging.”

  “Smarter if they’d taken the units, as they did on the crime scenes.”

  “Yeah, in hindsight. I’m guessing the killer couldn’t be sure we’d pin it to an account and start looking there. And until I talk to her supervisor, I don’t know that we will pin it to a specific account. When you take a scan of her office unit, even a hard look, you just see her tidy, organized files and data. The missing pieces only show up if you’re looking for them—those specific times and dates.”

  “Foreign accounts,” he mused. “It would be, most likely, a company—or individuals attached to it—that has interests here as well. Most likely directly here in New York. EDD hasn’t yet determined if the access was remote or on site?”

  “Not yet. My gut tells me on site. The killer hauled off their home units. If he had solid hacker skills, why not just delete the files from them? Or better, do that by remote before or after the killing? He hauled them away so he could get rid of them, ditch the data and dispose of the units. Not so easy to walk off with office equipment.”

  “Good security?”

  “Damn good. I don’t think anyone could have wandered in after hours without it showing up on discs. And nothing has. He deleted the files during working hours. Maybe got the passcodes and deleted from another station inside the building, maybe got into her office while her assistant was busy elsewhere. With the delay getting the warrant to confiscate, there was time. The killer or an accessory is inside the firm.”

  He sipped a little wine. “Did your first victim gain any new accounts in the last few weeks?”

  “Thought of that, and no. Nothing new in the last couple that I can see, so there’s no way to narrow it down from that route. If she flagged anything hinky, that’s gone. Maybe one of the accounts suddenly didn’t jibe, and she took a closer look. Could be the client recently started doing the shadowy stuff. Or she just happened to stumble across something because they’d gotten sloppy. Happens. But she didn’t discuss a problem with an account to any of the higher-ups or with her assistant. Not that any of them is copping to, at any rate.”

  “Just the fiancé.” Roarke nodded. “Because she trusted him completely.”

  “I get that. But I don’t believe she didn’t at least mention something to one of the partners or her supervisor, her department head. She was meticulous. You’ll see what I mean when you look at her files.”

  “I’ll take your word on that for now.”

  Eve set down her glass. “I thought we’d squared this, and you’d step onto the team—at least when you had time for it.”

  “For now,” he repeated, “I’d rather wait to look at the files. By meticulous, you mean she kept everything in excellent order.”

  Eve struggled back her annoyance. “That, yeah, but she was meticulous in the way she kept her office space, her apartment, her closet. She never had a single work eval that wasn’t glowing. She had a good relationship with her department head, and apparently with everyone she worked with. She was
tight pals with the grandson of one of the partners.”

  “Romantic link?”

  “No. It comes off as pals. Good, platonic pals. Grandson has a girlfriend, and the four of them hung. But she doesn’t mention there’s this problem to her pal.”

  “Blood’s thicker?”

  “Maybe, maybe.” She pushed away from the little table where they’d eaten. “It’s inconsistent with her type, her pathology. She was a team player, and she was a rule keeper. She took this to one of them, Roarke, and the one she took it to was the wrong choice.”

  “She must have dealt with some clients directly.”

  “In the office, or in theirs—New York–based. Some travel, too, sure. But nothing out of the ordinary I’ve found. No last-minute appointments worked in, according to her assistant. No last-minute travel to meet with a client or their representatives. If you look at her office, on the surface, it’s straight business as usual. Taking the home units without making it look like a bungled burglary was a mistake.”

  “I don’t know.” He considered it. “Simpler, as you said, to take the units than to stay there and fiddle with them. Especially since the killer had a second job to do. It could simply be confidence. Go ahead and look at her office files, I’ve taken care of that. Covered the tracks.”

  “Nobody ever covers them all the way. Okay, okay, present company excepted,” she added when he lifted an eyebrow. “If he was as good as you, and as—let’s say—meticulous—he’d have found a better way to do Copperfield and Byson.”

  “Such as?”

  “Arrange a meet, take them out together outside their apartments. You make it look like a mugging or a thrill kill. Rape the woman, or him, or both. Send the investigators mixed signals. I figure I’m looking for someone focused on the task—eliminate the threat, remove the evidence. That’s straight-line thinking, leaving out the flourishes.”

  “Perhaps the only way he could take lives was to block out all but the target. Reach the goal, don’t consider the enormity of the action to get there.”

  “I don’t think so, or not completely. Yeah, okay, reaching the goal. But if he’d needed to distance himself emotionally from the action, he wouldn’t use strangulation. It’s intimate. And it was face-to-face.”

  Narrowing her eyes, she brought the crime scenes, the bodies, back into her mind. “He experienced the killings. You don’t want an active part in it? You got the tape right there. You slap it over their mouths, over their nose, and you walk away. You don’t have to see them suffer and die. But he looked right into their eyes as they did.

  “And this isn’t what I need you for,” she snapped. “I can get into his head. Or I can get a profile from Mira, talk it through with her. I need a numbers man. I need a business man. Big business, big risks, big benefits. I need you to look at the data, analyze it in a way I can’t.”

  “And I will. But tonight I’d prefer the generalities. I can take a look at her client list, give you a take on what I know that might not show on records or bios.”

  “Why tonight?”

  He considered again. Easier to evade, but she’d been straight with him and deserved the same. “I’m going to have my lawyers draft a contract of sorts which will prohibit me from using any of the data I may be privy to during the course of this investigation.”

  “No.”

  “It covers our respective asses. It will also prohibit you, or any member of the team, from revealing the name of the organization, corporation or company whose data I analyze. I can, quite easily, work with the figures only.”

  Frustration nearly blew out of the top of her head. “This is a crock. Your word’s good enough.”

  “For you, and thank you for it. But it’s simple enough to do, and it’s logical. It’s very likely I’m in competition, or certainly will be at some point, with some or all of the clients on your victims’ list. And at some point, while I can promise you I wouldn’t use the data you’ve put in my hands—”

  “I don’t want your damn promise!” she exploded.

  Her fury over it was like a warm, comforting kiss. “Then none of that between us. But, let’s be practical. It could appear, or be argued that I have or will use it. It still could, come to that, but this shows good intent at least.”

  “It’s insulting to you.”

  “Not if I offer it—more, insist on it. Which is exactly what I’m doing.” He knew how to calculate the odds, he thought. How to manipulate them. And how to win. “I won’t look at any of the data unless you agree to this provision. We can argue about it if you like, but that’s my line. I’ll have it taken care of, then we’ll move forward.”

  “Fine. Fine. If that’s the way you want it.” She had to fight back the urge to kick something again.

  “It is. I’m happy to look at the client list.”

  She moved to her desk, pulled out a hard copy from her file bag. “Look it over, think it over. I’ve got some runs to do meanwhile.”

  And some sulking, he imagined. “I’ll be in my office, then.”

  She did sulk, but she worked while she was at it.

  She did probabilities and was satisfied that the computer agreed—at 93.4 percent—that someone inside the firm was connected to the double murder.

  She studied her notes, Peabody’s reports, the lab’s, the ME’s, the crime-scene records. And put up a second murder board.

  New lock on the door, she reminded herself. Kitchen knife in the bedroom. But Natalie hadn’t been afraid enough to bunk with her boyfriend, or hole up in a hotel. Not afraid enough to tell her sister not to come and stay with her.

  “Knew the killer,” Eve said aloud. “Or the go-between. Nervous, excited, cautious, but not seriously afraid for her life. Knife in the bedroom. Girl thing.”

  She paced in front of the board as she thought. Any serious attacker could probably have disarmed a woman of Copperfield’s build. But she’s alone, starts wigging just a little. Takes the knife like she could use it if she had to.

  “Not a stupid woman, but seriously naive,” Eve added. “Gonna handle this deal herself, with her guy. A little excitement in their lives. But who else did she tell?”

  When her ’link beeped, she turned, answered it absently. “Dallas.”

  “Hey, I know it’s late but I got this brainstorm.” Peabody’s brows drew together on the display screen. “Are you still working?”

  “Who did she tell?”

  “Who, what?”

  Obviously, Eve thought as she pulled her mind away from the murder board, Peabody wasn’t still working. “What brainstorm?”

  “About the shower?”

  “Oh, Christ on a plastic crutch.”

  “Look, it’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s on Saturday.”

  “And tomorrow being Friday, Saturday follows. At least in my pretty little world.”

  “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

  “So anyway, I’ve got the theme going, and picked up some stuff on my way home. I thought if I came by there tomorrow night, stayed over, we could put it all together in the morning.”

  “What does that mean, putting it all together?”

  “Well, the decorations, and these flower things I ordered, and, well…stuff. Plus I got this idea about the rocker system you bought her and how we can use it as a focal point, but disguise it like a throne until—”

  “Please, in the name of God, don’t tell me any more.”

  “So it chills with you if me and McNab bunk there tomorrow night?”

  “Sure, bring the family, all your friends, strangers you find on the street. All are welcome here.”

  “Uptown! Catch you in the morning.”

  She clicked off, then sat on the edge of her desk staring at nothing in particular. Baby showers and double murders. Was she the only one who could see they didn’t mix? She wasn’t equipped for the first. It wasn’t in her makeup.

  But she’d tried, hadn’t she? She’d called the caterer, an
d she’d let Mavis invite a horde of people—many of whom would be stranger than alien mutants. And still, it wasn’t enough.

  “Why do I have to decorate?” she demanded when Roarke stepped to the doorway.

  “You don’t. In fact, I sincerely wish you wouldn’t. I like our home as it is.”

  “See? Me, too.” She threw out her arms. “Why does it have to get tricked out for a baby shower?”

  “Oh. That. Well…I have no idea. I really choose to remain ignorant in this particular area of societal customs.”

  “Peabody said we have to have a theme.”

  He looked momentarily baffled. “A song?”

  “I don’t know.” Confused, Eve covered her eyes with her hands. “And there’s going to be a throne.”

  “For the baby?”

  “I don’t know.” Now she pulled at her hair. “I can’t think about it. It throws me off. I was thinking about murder, and I was fine. Now I’m thinking about themes and thrones, and I feel a little sick.”

  Eve took a huge breath. “Who did she tell?”

  “Peabody? I thought she just told you.”

  “No, God, not Peabody. Natalie Copperfield. Who did she trust or respect or feel obliged to report to if she found something off? Which of her clients did she believe, while they might do something illegal, unethical, might offer a bribe, wouldn’t cause her real physical harm? Because there’s no way she’d have let her sister come over, talked about pancake breakfasts, if she believed there might be actual danger.”

  “First, I’d say who she told would depend on the level of the illegality she uncovered. It’s not impossible she went directly to the client or their representative. But more likely that she showed the data to a superior.”

  “Back where I started, running rings. No way to pin down who she might have told other than the boyfriend.”

  “As for her client list, there are some high-end companies here. Any or all of them has very likely had some slippery moments. You can’t operate large companies without some slippage. Then you pay lawyers to slide you out of it, or you pay fines, settle suits out of court. But I don’t know of any major scandal involving those on her lists. And I haven’t heard anything murmuring on the wind about illegal practices. I can tune myself to that wind a little closer for you.”