Rules of the Game

by Nora Roberts

  his name again and again, fighting her way through the smoke to get to him.

  For an instant she could no longer breathe, no longer be certain where she was or where to run. An image flashed through her mind, one of herself as a young girl approaching a small two-story house where she would spend a year of her life. She couldn’t remember the names of the people who would be her parents for those twelve months, only that sense of disorientation and loneliness. She’d always felt as lonely going in as she had coming out. She’d always been separate, always an outsider, until she’d met Parks.

  She saw him racing back to her, misted through the curtain of smoke. Before she could separate one image from another, she was in his arms.

  “What happened?” he demanded. “I heard you shouting, I thought—” He buried his face against her neck a moment as the fear ebbed. “Damn it, Brooke, I told you to stay in the car.”

  “Not without you. Please, let’s go.” She was dragging on his arm, pulling him back down the road toward the car.

  “The house—”

  “Means nothing,” she said fiercely. “Nothing does without you.” Before he could react, Brooke was climbing into the driver’s seat herself. The moment Parks was beside her, she started down the twisting road.

  After nearly a mile, the smoke thinned. It was then Brooke felt the reaction set in with shudders and fresh tears. Pulling off the road, she laid her head on the steering wheel and wept.

  “Brooke.” Gently, he brushed a hand over her wet, tangled hair. “I’m sorry. I know the house was important to you. We don’t know yet that it’s gone or beyond repair. We can—”

  “Damn the house!” Lifting her head, she looked at him with eyes that were both angry and desolate. “I must’ve been crazy to act that way. To send you back there when . . .” Trailing off, she swore and slammed out of the car. Slowly, Parks got out and followed her.

  “Brooke.”

  “You’re the most important thing in my life.” She turned to him then, taking deep breaths to keep the tears back. “I don’t expect you to believe that after the way I behaved, but it’s true. I couldn’t let go of the house, the things, because I’d waited so long to have them. I needed the identity they gave me.” Because the words were painful, she swallowed. “For so long everything I had was only mine on loan. All I could think of was that if I didn’t keep that house, those things, I’d be lost again. I don’t expect you to understand—”

  “I will understand.” He took her face in his hands. “If you’ll let me.”

  She let out a long, shuddering breath. “I never belonged anywhere, to anyone. Ever. It makes you afraid to trust. I always told myself that there’d be a day when I’d have my own things, my own place—I wouldn’t have to share them, I wouldn’t have to ask. It was something I promised myself because I couldn’t have survived without that one hope. I forgot to let go of that when I didn’t need it anymore.”

  “Maybe.” He stroked a thumb over her cheek. “Or maybe you had without realizing it. Back there, you called it our home.”

  “Parks.” She reached up to place her hands on him. “I don’t care if the house is gone, if everything in it’s gone. I have everything I need, everything I love, right here in my hands.”

  They were wet, filthy, exhausted. Alive. Parks looked at her blackened face and matted hair, the red-rimmed eyes. She’d never looked more beautiful to him. Throats raw from smoke, eyes stinging, he reached for her. Together, they fell to the grass.

  Brooke was laughing and weeping as he kissed her. Her face was streaked with soot and tears, but his lips raced wildly over it. Passion met passion. Bruises were unfelt as they touched each other while a need, as volatile as the fire they had challenged, raged through them. When the tatters of her robe were gone, his sodden clothes joined it, they lay tangled, naked on the grass. Again and again, their mouths clung, drawing the strength and victory of the moment from each other, climbing beyond the smoke and stench of the fire left behind to a clean, bright world.

  She knew she had never been so aware, so stunningly alive. Her body seemed to hum from a thousand pulses that grew more erratic as he touched her. With her arms tight around him, his body pressed against hers, she felt the sensation of absolute trust. He would protect, she would defend, against any outside forces that threatened. During the fire, they had ceased to be a man and a woman. They had become a unit. Somewhere beneath the swirling passion, Brooke felt peace. She had found her own.

  They made love while the smoke broke into mists above their heads. And when they were spent, they clung still, unwilling to break the unity so newly discovered.

  “You’ve hurt yourself,” Parks murmured, touching a bruise on her shoulder.

  “I don’t feel hurt.” She buried her lips at his throat and knew she would never forget the smell of smoke and ash and loving. “I hit you.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  Hearing the grin in his voice, she closed her eyes. “You were only thinking of me. I’m sorry.”

  “Now you’re thinking of us.” He pressed his lips to her temple. “I’m glad.”

  “We won,” she whispered.

  Parks lifted his head to look down at her. Taking his thumb, he rubbed a streak of soot from her skin. It was the color of her eyes, he thought, seeing it on his own flesh. “We won, Brooke.”

  “Everything.”

  His lips curved before he brought them down to hers. “Everything.”

  She cradled his head on her shoulder, gently stroking his hair. Tiny pieces of ash continued to float above her like memories. “I said once I didn’t want anything to change. . . . I was afraid to let it change. I was wrong.” Closing her eyes, she let herself absorb his closeness. “It’s not quite the same now.”

  “Better,” he murmured. “It makes a difference. It’ll always make a difference.”

  She sighed, knowing the contentment she had always searched for was irrevocably bound up in one man, one love. “But we’ll still play the game, won’t we?”

  This time when he lifted his head, he grinned. Brooke’s lips curved in response. “By our own rules.”

  Keep reading for a special excerpt from the newest novel by J.D. Robb

  CALCULATED IN DEATH

  Available February 2013 in hardcover from G.P. Putnam’s Sons

  A killer wind hurled bitter November air, toothy little knives to gnaw at the bones. She’d forgotten her gloves, but that was just as well as she’d have ruined yet another overpriced pair once she’d sealed up.

  For now, Lieutenant Eve Dallas stuck her frozen hands in the warm pockets of her coat and looked down at death.

  The woman lay at the bottom of the short stairway leading down to what appeared to be a lower-level apartment. From the angle of the head, Eve didn’t need the medical examiner to tell her the neck was broken.

  Eve judged her as middle forties. Not wearing a coat, Eve mused, though the vicious wind wouldn’t trouble her now. Dressed for business—suit jacket, turtleneck, pants, good boots with low heels. Probably fashionable, but Eve would leave that call to her partner when Detective Peabody arrived on scene.

  No jewelry, at least not visible. Not even a wrist unit.

  No handbag, no briefcase or file bag.

  No litter, no graffiti in the stairwell. Nothing but the body, slumped against the wall.

  At length she turned to the uniformed officer who’d responded to the 911. “What’s the story?”

  “The call came in at two-twelve. My partner and I were only two blocks away, hitting a twenty-four/seven. We arrived at two-fourteen. The owner of the unit, Bradley Whitestone, and an Alva Moonie were on the sidewalk. Whitestone stated they hadn’t entered the unit, which is being rehabbed—and is unoccupied. They found the body when he brought Moonie to see the apartment.”

  “At two in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir. They stated they’d been out this evening, dinner, then a bar. They’d had a few, Lieutenant.”

  “Ok
ay.”

  “My partner has them in the car.”

  “I’ll talk to them later.”

  “We determined the victim was deceased. No ID on her. No bag, no jewelry, no coat. Pretty clear her neck’s broken. Visually, there’s some other marks on her—bruised cheek, split lip. Looks like a mugging gone south. But . . .” The uniform flushed slightly. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  Interested, Eve gave a go-ahead nod. “Because?”

  “It sure wasn’t a snatch and run, figuring the coat. That takes a little time. And if she fell or got pushed down the stairs, why is she over against the side there instead of at the bottom of the steps? Out of sight from the sidewalk. It feels more like a dump. Sir.”

  “Are you angling for a slot in Homicide, Officer Turney?”

  “No disrespect intended, Lieutenant.”

  “None taken. She could’ve taken a bad fall down the steps, landed wrong, broke her neck. Mugger goes down after her, hauls her over out of sight, takes the coat, and the rest.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It doesn’t feel like it. But we need more than how it feels. Stand by, Officer. Detective Peabody’s on route.” As she spoke, Eve opened her field kit, took out her Seal-It.

  She coated her hands, her boots as she surveyed the area.

  This sector of New York’s East Side held quiet—at least at this hour. Most apartment windows and storefronts were dark, businesses closed, even the bars. There would be some after-hours establishments still rolling, but not close enough for witnesses.

  They’d do a canvass, but odds were slim someone would pop out who’d seen what happened here. Add in the bitter cold, as 2060 seemed determined to go out clinging with its icy fingers, and most people would be tucked up inside, in the warm.

  Just as she’d been, curled up against Roarke, before the call.

  That’s what you get for being a cop, she thought, or in Roarke’s case, for marrying one.

  Sealed, she went down the stairs, studied the door to the unit first, then moved in to crouch beside the body.

  Yeah, middle forties, light brown hair clipped back from her face. A little bruising on the right cheekbone, some dried blood on the split lip. Both ears pierced, so if she’d been wearing earrings, the killer had taken the time to remove them rather than rip them off.

  Lifting the hand, Eve noted abraded flesh on the heel. Like a rug burn, she mused before she pressed the right thumb to her ID pad.

  Dickenson, Marta, she read. Mixed-race female, age forty-six. Married Dickenson, Denzel, two offspring, and an Upper East Side address. Employed: Brewer, Kyle and Martini, an accounting firm with an office eight blocks away.

  As she took out her gauges, her short brown hair fluttered in the wind. She hadn’t thought to yank on a hat. Her eyes, nearly the same gilded brown as her hair, remained cool and flat. She didn’t think about the husband, the kids, the friends, the family—not yet. She thought of the body, the position, the area, the time of death—twenty-two-fifty.

  What were you doing, Marta, blocks from work, from home on a frigid November night?

  She shined her light over the pants, noted traces of blue fiber on the black cloth. Carefully, she tweezed off two, bagged them, marked the pants for the sweepers.

  She heard Peabody’s voice over her head, and the uniform’s answer. Eve straightened. Her leather coat billowed at the hem around her long, lean frame as she turned to watch Peabody—or what she could see of her partner—clomp down the steps.

  Peabody had thought of a hat, had remembered her gloves. The pink—Jesus, pink—ski hat with its sassy little pom-pom covered her dark hair and the top of her face right down to the eyes. A multicolored scarf wound around and around just above the plum-colored puffy coat. The hat matched the pink cowboy boots Eve had begun to suspect Peabody wore even in bed.

  “How can you walk with all that on?”

  “I hiked to the subway, then from the subway, but I stayed warm. Jeez.” One quick gleam of sympathy flicked across Peabody’s face. “She doesn’t even have a coat.”

  “She’s not complaining. Marta Dickenson,” Eve began, and gave Peabody the salients.

  “It’s a ways from her office and her place. Maybe she was walking from one to the other, but why wouldn’t she take the subway, especially on a night like this?”

  “That’s a question. This unit’s being rehabbed. It’s empty. That’s handy, isn’t it? The way she’s in the corner there? She shouldn’t have been spotted until morning.”

  “Why would a mugger care when?”

  “That’s another question. Following that would be, if he did, how’d he know this unit’s unoccupied?”

  “Lives in the area? Is part of the rehab crew?”

  “Maybe. I want a look inside, but we’ll talk to the nine-one-one callers first. Go ahead and notify the ME.”

  “The sweepers?”

  “Not yet.”

  Eve climbed the stairs, walked to the black-and-white. Even as she signaled to the cop inside, a man pushed out of the back.

  “Are you in charge?” Words tumbled over each other in a rush of nerves.

  “Lieutenant Dallas. Mr. Whitestone?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “You notified the police.”

  “Yes. Yes, as soon as we found the—her. She was . . . we were—”

  “You own this unit?”

  “Yes.” A sharply attractive man in his early thirties, he took a long breath, expelling it in a chilly fog. When he spoke again, his voice leveled, his words slowed. “Actually, my partners and I own the building. There are eight units—third and fourth floors.” His gaze tracked up. No hat for him either, Eve mused, but a wool topcoat in city black and a black and red striped scarf.

  “I own the lower unit outright,” he continued. “We’re rehabbing so we can move our business here first and second floors.”

  “Which is what? Your business?”

  “We’re financial consultants. The WIN Group. Whitestone, Ingersol, and Newton. W-I-N.”

  “Got it.”

  “I’ll live in the downstairs unit, or that was the plan. I don’t—”

  “Why don’t you run me through your evening,” Eve suggested.

  “Brad?”

  “Stay in the car where it’s warm, Alva.”

  “I can’t sit anymore.” The woman who slid out was blonde and sleek and tucked into some kind of animal fur and thigh-high leather boots with high skinny heels. She hooked her arm through Whitestone’s arm.

  They looked like a set, Eve thought. Both pretty, well-dressed, and showing signs of shock.

  “Lieutenant Dallas.” Alva held out a hand. “You don’t remember me?”

  “No.”

  “We met for five seconds at the Big Apple Gala last spring. I’m one of the committee chairs. Doesn’t matter,” she said with a shake of her head as the wind streamed through her yard of hair. “This is horrible. That poor woman. They even took her coat. I don’t know why that bothers me so much, but it seems cruel.”

  “Did either of you touch the body?”

  “No.” Whitestone took over. “We had dinner, then we went for drinks. At the Key Club, just a couple blocks down. I was telling Alva what we’ve been doing here, and she was interested, so we walked over so I could give her a tour. My place is nearly done, so . . . I was getting out my key, about to plug in the code when Alva screamed. I didn’t even see her, Lieutenant, the woman. I didn’t even see her, not until Alva screamed.”

  “She was back in the corner,” Alva said. “At first, even when I screamed I thought she was a sidewalk sleeper. I didn’t realize . . . then I did. We did.”

  She leaned into Whitestone when he put an arm around her waist. “We didn’t touch her,” Whitestone said. “I stepped over, closer, but I could see . . . I could tell she was dead.”

  “Brad wanted me to go inside, where it’s warm, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t wait inside knowing she was out there, in the cold. The police came s
o fast.”