by J. D. Robb
“Plays well,” Roarke agreed. “When her killer arrived, however, wouldn’t she question or object if Bissel wasn’t along?”
“He gets inside. Tells her they have to be careful. They need her help. The more theatrical the story, the quicker she’d buy it and go along. All he has to do is talk her into starting a note. Hell, she might’ve written it herself beforehand, just a dramatic sort of touch. He slips the meds into her wine. After she drinks it, all he has to do is lay her out, then walk away.
“Or”—Eve ate a grilled pepper without thinking about it—“the HSO could’ve staged the whole thing. Gotten in, disabled her. But that doesn’t explain the BC, or the Sober-Up. Whoever killed her didn’t know she’d used either. He’s not as smart as he thinks he is.”
Roarke remembered the young woman clinging tearfully to Eve’s shins in the gallery. It fit. It was just sad enough to fit. “You’re heading back to Bissel’s brother.”
“Yeah, I’m liking the looks of him. He’s been MIA for almost a month. Plenty of time to have a little face work done, make himself look more like his brother.” She polished off her burger, took another drink of beer. “But there’s one more possibility, a little out there, but interesting.”
“Blair Bissel killed her,” Roarke put in.
“You’re pretty quick for a guy who grills burgers in his spare time.”
“Smoke’s gotten to you two,” Feeney said. “Bissel’s in a cold drawer at the morgue.”
“It looks that way. It probably is that way,” Eve agreed. “But let’s take this into spy vid territory for a minute—which Reva said was one of his hobbies—and which we know was his profession. What if Bissel was playing both sides? Or he was doing a double agent thing with, or without, HSO sanction. They find out Kade’s turned, or he’s just pissed she’s playing with his brother. He sets them up, knocks them down, and handily frames his wife, who he’s done with. He snips McCoy and gets back whatever she was holding for him in the locket.”
“You don’t think somebody as sharp as Morris would see the body didn’t match the ID photo? Even with the couple of bashes in the face, there’s dental. There’s fingerprints. There’s fricking DNA. All of it matches Blair Bissel’s.”
“Yeah, and he’s probably on ice. I said it was out there, and Carter Bissel heads my list. Morris is going to run a scan and see if he had any recent facial surgery. And because, if this is true, it would be another thread, I need you to hit IRCCA, find me a recently deceased face fixer. I’m betting Carter Bissel had work done—either to play Cain or to be tricked into playing Abel. One of the Bissel brothers is alive. We just need to figure out which.”
Eve told herself not to think about what was being done to her. Otherwise, she might scream like a girl. Her hair was plastered to her head with a thick pink goop. A new product according to Trina, guaranteed to add luster, body, and bring out the natural highlights.
None of which, to Eve’s mind, mattered.
Her face and throat were slathered with something green, and sealed with some sort of spray. Before that, her skin had been buffed and scrubbed, examined and critiqued. And not just the skin on her face and throat, Eve thought, still inwardly shuddering, but every inch that covered her body. From the throat down she’d been painted yellow, then sealed with the same spray before having her mortified body wrapped in a heat sheet.
At least she was covered. Small blessings.
She’d quietly turned off the VR goggles Trina had programmed when Trina had given the delighted Mavis her full attention. Eve didn’t want the mindless nature sounds or the soft, swimming colors of the relaxation program.
She might have been naked on a padded table and covered from head to feet in goo. But she was still a cop, and she wanted to think like one.
Back to the victims. It was always back to the victims.
Bissel, Kade, McCoy, with Bissel as the focal point. Who or what stood to gain from their deaths?
The HSO. During the early days of the Urban Wars, the government had formed the arm as a way to protect the country, to police the streets and gather intel covertly from radical factions.
It had done the job. It had been necessary. And over the years since, some said it had morphed into something closer to a legalized terrorist group than a protection and intel operation.
She happened to agree.
So, the murders could have been a cleanup operation. If Bissel and Kade had turned, and McCoy unwittingly knew too much, all three might have been terminated to protect some global security project. The Code Red was the obvious linchpin. The data units had been corrupted. What data needed to be eliminated? Or was the use of the worm simply a ploy to point toward the techno-terrorists?
The Doomsday Group. Assassinations, terminations, large- and small-scale destruction and loss of life through technological sabotage were their reasons for being. Kade and Bissel could have been playing both ends, or on assignment to infiltrate. They could have been targeted by the terrorists, taken out, and McCoy treated as collateral damage.
But then why weren’t they taking credit? Media play with a lot of bloody fist-pumping and skewed messages were a big part of the program for any terrorist group. There’d been enough time for an acknowledgment to have been leaked to the mainstream press.
In either case, why the frame on Ewing? Why—if either organization for reasons of its own wanted to keep the lid on the terminations—go to so much time and trouble to implicate Reva Ewing?
To slow, hamper, or eliminate her work on the extermination program, and utilize whatever data Bissel had gathered from his devices to create one first, in the HSO’s case, or to reformulate the worm to override the extermination, in Doomsday’s case.
Possible, and she wouldn’t close those doors. She’d run probabilities and give them a push.
But with either of those scenarios she still had Carter Bissel floating around like a goddamn dust mote. Had Kade recruited him with or without HSO sanction? With or without Blair Bissel’s knowledge?
And where the hell was he?
She tried to bring a picture of him into her mind, but it was blurry and kept dissolving in all the melting colors that swirled lazily in her brain.
She’d stopped hearing Mavis’s and Trina’s birdlike chatter at the edge of her focus, so there was only the gentle whoosh, like a heartbeat inside a womb.
Even as she realized the relaxation program had been reactivated, she sank under it.
In Roarke’s home computer lab, Feeney sat back at his station and pressed the heels of his hands hard against his aching eyes.
“You ought to take something for that eye strain headache,” Roarke commented. “Before it blows on you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Feeney puffed air into his cheeks, let it out. “Don’t do as much geek work as I used to.” He studied the unit currently laid out in sections and small bits over his counter. “Got spoiled handing this sort of detail over to one of my young guns.”
He glanced over at Roarke’s station and was somewhat mollified to see the civilian’s progress was as slow and exacting as his own. “You got an estimate on when we might have one of these up and running again—working like this, just the two of us?”
“I figure sometime in the next decade if we’re lucky, into the fourth millennium if we’re not. This bitch is toasted.” Roarke shoved back, scowled at the burned-out guts of his current project. “We can replace, repair, reconfigure, and beat it with a hammer. We’ll retrieve data. I’m annoyed enough at the moment to make it my bloody life’s work. But Christ knows we could do it all faster and easier with a few more hands and brain cells. McNab’s good. He’s got the hands and the geek quotient to keep him at something like this for hours on end, but he won’t be enough.”
They sat in brooding silence for a moment, then eyed each other.
“You talk to her,” Roarke said.
“Oh no, I’m not married to her.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“It’s
your setup here.”
“It’s an NYPSD investigation.”
“Like that means a damn to you. Okay, okay.” Feeney waved a hand before Roarke could speak again. “Let’s settle this like men.”
“Want to arm wrestle?”
Feeney let out a snort, then dug into his pocket. “We’ll flip a coin. You call it.”
Eve heard what sounded like flutes. For a moment she saw herself running naked through a flower-strewn meadow where small, winged creatures played long, reedlike instruments. Birds sang, the sun shone, and the sky was a perfect bowl of cerulean blue.
She woke with a start and said: “Gak.”
“Wow, Dallas, you were really out.”
Blinking, Eve focused on the figure spread out on the table beside her. She thought it was Mavis. It sounded like Mavis, but it was tough to make a positive ID when the form was covered with hot pink from shoulders to toes, the face coated with electric blue, and the hair plastered down with a mix of green, red, and purple.
She’d have said gak again, but it seemed redundant.
“You didn’t drool or anything,” Mavis assured her. “In case you were worried.”
“Let out a couple of sex moans.” Trina’s voice came from somewhere near her feet, and Eve froze.
“What are you doing?”
“My job. You’re all rinsed off. Blissed right through that part. Got your derma revitalizer rubbed in. Your man’s going to like this one. Going to finish up with your hair and face after I do your feet.”
“Do what to my feet?” Gingerly, Eve boosted herself on her elbows and looked down. “Oh my God! God almighty! You painted my toes.”
“Just a delux ped. It’s not a satanic ritual.”
“My toes are pink.”
“Yeah, I went conservative with you. Sun-kissed Coral. Nice with your skin tone. Your feet were a disgrace,” Trina added as she sprayed on sealer. “Good thing you were under VR while I was working on them.”
“How come she’s not under?” Eve demanded, pointing at Mavis.
“I get more out of it if I’m aware of the treatments. I like getting souped and rubbed and scrubbed down and painted. It’s the ult of ults for me. You hate it.”
“Mavis. If you know I hate it, why do you make me do this?”
Mavis smiled an electric blue smile. “ ’Cause it’s fun.”
Eve lifted a hand to rub her face, then gaped in shock as she saw her nails. “You painted my fingers. People will see them.”
“Neutral French job.” Trina walked back up, slid a finger over one of Eve’s eyebrows. “Need trimming. You oughta chill, Dallas.”
“Do you understand that I’m a cop? Do you understand that should I have to restrain a suspect and he gets a load of my shiny yet neutral French job, he’s going to break his neck laughing? Then I’ll be under IAB investigation for the death of a suspect at my hands.”
“I know you’re a cop.” Trina showed her teeth in a smile. The left eyetooth was decorated with a tiny green stud. “That’s why I threw in the little boob tat gratis.”
“Boob? Tattoo?” Eve sat up as if she’d been propelled out of a catapult. “Tattoo?”
“Just a temp. Came out really good.”
She was almost too horrified to look. To counter the fear, she took a handful of Trina’s glossy black hair, yanked her tormentor’s head down. If necessary, she would beat that head against the padded table until unconsciousness ensued. Ignoring Trina’s yelps and struggles, and Mavis’s giggling calls for peace, Eve tipped down her chin and looked at her breast.
There on the curve of the left was a painted replica of her badge, minutely detailed though it was no bigger than her own thumbnail. Her grip loosened a bit as she tilted her own head to read her name. And Trina escaped.
“Jesus, are you whacked? I said it was a temp.”
“Did you give me any hallucinogenic substance while I was under VR?”
“What?” Obviously steamed, Trina shook back her abused hair, folded her arms, and glowered at Mavis. “What is wrong with her? No, I didn’t give you anything. I’m a certified personal body and style consultant. I don’t have illegals on my menu. You ask me something like that, and—”
“I asked something like that because I’m looking at what you painted on a personal area of my body, and I kind of like it, so I want to make sure I’m not under some illusionary drug haze.”
Trina sniffed, but there was a light that was both pleasure and humor in her eyes. “You like it, I can make it permanent.”
“No.” In defense, Eve slapped a hand on her breast. “No, no, no. No.”
“Got it. Just the temp. Mavis has to cook awhile more, so we’ll finish you up.” Trina pressed a mechanism on the table and a section lifted up like the back of a chair.
“How come you’ve got all those colors in the gunk on your hair?”
“I’m getting multied,” Mavis explained. “I’m going to have some red curls, and purple spikes, and—”
“There wasn’t any of that in mine.” Fear clutched at her throat. “Was there?”
“Relax.” To get back some of her own, Trina yanked Eve’s head back by the hair. “The pink streaks’ll wash out.”
“She’s just kidding,” Mavis said as Eve went pale. “Honest.”
By the time it was over, Eve was limp as a noodle. The minute she was alone, she dashed into the nearest bathroom, shut the door, and braced herself for a look in the mirror.
Her knees went weak with relief when she saw there were no streaks of pink, or anything else, in her hair. Nor were her eyebrows the carnival of colors Mavis’s had been when Trina finished with them.
She wasn’t vain, Eve assured herself. She just wanted to look like she looked. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. And since she did, the ball of tension between her shoulder blades dissolved.
Okay, maybe she looked a little better than usual. Trina did something to her eyebrows whenever she got her hands on them that made the arch more defined and framed out her eyes. And her skin had a nice glow to it.
She shook her head, pleased when her hair fell into place without any fuss.
Then her eyes widened in shock. She was vain, or edging perilously close to it. And it had to stop. Deliberately, she turned away from the mirror. She needed to get out of this stupid robe and into clothes. As soon as she did, she’d check on the lab.
Work, she assured herself, was the only thing worth being vain about.
14 SHE’D BARELY NIPPED into the bedroom when Roarke stepped in from the elevator.
“I just need to change, then I was coming by the lab.”
“Well, I need a minute to speak with you, and saw that Mavis and Trina had gone.”
“What about?” She started rummaging through her dresser for old, comfortable sweats. It gave her something to do with her hands as she prayed it had nothing to do with a field operation in Dallas. “Did you guys have a breakthrough?”
“No. It’s painstaking and exacting work. Slow and tedious. Feeney’s taking an hour restorative. It’s hell on the eyes.”
“Okay.” She could hardly complain about the break when she’d spent a good chunk of the evening flat on her back and covered with goo. “I’m not much help in the comp-jock area, but I’ve got some probabilities to run, some theories I want to play with. Mind’s clear. I hate that.”
“You hate that your mind’s clear?”
“No.” Her shoulders relaxed again. She was tuned to every nuance in his voice, and everything was all right. For now. “I hate that the stuff Trina does actually works—on the brain. I’m pumped,” she said, hauling out a ragged and ancient short-sleeved sweatshirt she’d buried under a stack of silk and cashmere tees. “And I’m thinking . . . what’re you looking at?”
“You. Darling Eve, you look—”
“Don’t start.” She waved the shirt at him and backed up two steps. Even that was a fake, she thought. It was such a tremendous relief to know he could look at her that way. T
o know, when he did, her blood warmed, her body tightened. “Don’t even start.”
“You’ve had a pedicure.”
Instinctively, her toes curled in embarrassment. “She did it while I was under VR, and she won’t tell me how to get it off.”
“I like it. Sexy.”
“What’s sexy about pink toes? What could possibly be sexy about that? Wait, I forgot who I was talking to. If she’d painted my teeth pink, you’d think it was sexy.”
“A fool in love,” he murmured and stepped close enough to brush a thumb over her cheek. “Soft.”
“Stop it.” She slapped his hand away.
“And you smell . . . exotic,” he said after easing closer for a testing sniff. “A bit tropical. Like a lemon grove in spring, with just a hint of . . . jasmine, I think. Night-blooming jasmine.”
“Roarke. Down.”
“Too late.” He laughed and gripped her hips. “A man needs his restorative, you know. Why don’t you be mine?”
She was his, but still she gave him a shove as his lips came down on hers. “I’ve already had my break.”
“You’re about to extend it. You taste incredible.” His lips skimmed over her jaw, then under it, and his busy hands had already unbelted her robe, slipped beneath it. “Let’s just see . . .”—he tugged on her bottom lip—“ . . . what else Trina’s been up to.”
He eased the robe off her shoulders, skimmed his teeth over bare skin.
The little ball of lust that had curled in her belly expanded. She tipped her head to the side to give him better access. “I’m giving you twenty minutes, thirty tops, to get yourself under control.”
“Thirty should give me just enough time to . . .” He trailed off as his gaze lowered to her breast. “Well now.” His voice came out in a purr as he rubbed his thumb lightly over the replica of her badge. “What have we here?”
“One of Trina’s little brainstorms. It’s just a temp, and actually I got kind of a kick out of it after I got over the shock.”