Leverage in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “Make it fast,” she snapped and, still fuming, went to her command center to do the run.

  She had to use Feeney’s baby, the IRCCA, as she needed the international run. She found Donnelly easily enough, and his spotty juvenile record. Petty theft, some car boosts. Then it appeared he’d gotten better at his work. Only suspicions of burglary or theft, and always in empty houses or businesses. No muggings, no person-to-person crimes. One arrest tossed for lack of evidence. And one conviction in his late twenties.

  He did three years for that one, and then poofed.

  But she found not a single citing of violence, of weapon possession.

  She pushed on his family, saw his mother lived in Queens near the sister and the retired Army. Another sister lived in New Jersey—also married with family—and the third currently lived and worked in Italy.

  Nothing criminal on any of them. She couldn’t decide if that equaled relief or annoyance.

  Then Roarke came back, and she found the annoyance easily.

  “He was nervy,” Roarke said as he moved to the cabinet for wine, “and evasive, as he knew your reputation. He was frightened. He knew about the bombing, of course. He works at Econo, as you know.”

  Roarke poured wine while she sat and said nothing.

  “He never thought the cops would give him more than a cursory glance as he had no connection to the meeting or anyone in it. When you interviewed him this evening, he was shaken. He has a wife and three children, as you also know. He met his wife as William O’Donnell, twelve years ago. After he’d come to New York—before he was . . . retired. He retired after their first child was born—that’s nearly eleven years now. And before they married, he told his wife about Liam and the time he’d spent in prison and the rest. She married him anyway. But they haven’t told the children, you see.”

  He looked at her now as he sipped the wine. “And he was afraid you’d push deep enough to see through the identification he’s used all these years, the life he’s built. He was afraid he’d have to leave his family, or decide to uproot them all and run.

  “You can contact his sister in Italy. He says if Richie was becoming important, his Colleen would know, and would help you in any way she could. He hopes you wouldn’t need to speak with his brother-in-law, who knows nothing of his life before, as it could cause friction in the family, but he won’t run. He trusts me enough not to, as I told him I trusted you weren’t interested in uprooting three children or punishing him for false papers.

  “He’s terrified,” Roarke finished. “But he’s putting the life he’s built in your hands because I asked him to.”

  He crossed to her. “So where does that leave us, Lieutenant?”

  “You say you understand the job comes first, then you slap at me when it does.”

  “And you ask me to work with you when it suits, but yank back when my way of doing the job veers from yours. Even,” he said before she could speak, “if both ways put those who’ve died first and foremost. Pushing at Liam would have eaten up your time and energies—as it already has more than it needed to.”

  “Chasing him down if he was part of this would’ve eaten more.”

  “True enough, but he’s not. And you’re too good a cop to have looked into his past and thought otherwise. We both know there are ways of doing the job other than pulling a man out of his house and grilling him in the box. And both of us, Eve, skirt our particular lines when we have to, or when the other needs it.”

  “It’s easier for you.”

  He angled his head. “Do you think so?”

  She let out a breath. “I like to think so. I don’t like thinking how many times you’ve compromised or moved your line. It makes the scales too uneven.”

  “They’re level enough from where I stand. What I can’t tolerate is thinking your trust in me has limits.”

  “It doesn’t. Fuck.” She had to put her head—throbbing again—in her hands. “It wasn’t not trusting you. It was not trusting some guy you acknowledged was a thief—a guy who checked off several boxes—just because you have some fond memories.”

  He drank more wine. “If I jiggle my line a bit, we can call that fair enough. But I’d never jeopardize your investigation over fond memories.”

  “He was the best shot I had so far. Markin’s another, but I haven’t been able to pin it down. Now this guy is off the list. I’m still checking out his alibi.”

  “I’d expect no less. Nor would he. I’ll go make another couple of contacts. And you should drink some water. It’ll help revive the blocker a bit to push back the fresh headache.”

  “It’s annoying when you look in my head.”

  “I just have to look in your eyes. I know how they look when they’re fighting pain. Drink some water,” he said, and left her.

  17

  When he judged he’d done all he could for the night, Roarke found Eve asleep at her command center.

  Second night running, he thought. She would push herself to exhaustion, carrying the weight of eighteen dead. And no point, he decided, in beating against that wall. That was the woman he loved, no matter how much she could—and did—infuriate him.

  He glanced at the work on her screen, noted she’d juggled, yet again, names on her list. From most to least probable.

  She’d do better, he knew, when she conducted her face-to-face interviews. She had a master’s skill in reading people, the nuances of tone, gestures, a look in the eyes, a turn of phrase.

  Oh, she had her blind spots, he thought, but then he did as well. Still, he didn’t care for it, not one bit, when one of those blind spots centered on him.

  However irritated he remained, he gathered her up.

  She jerked, might have struck out. Fortunately for both of them her reflexes remained keen.

  “I was just—”

  “Past the point where coffee can keep you going,” he said as he carried her to the elevator.

  “I drank the water.”

  “Good.”

  He carried her into the bedroom where Galahad was already sprawled on the bed, belly-up like roadkill. After sitting her on the side of the bed, Roarke sat himself to take his boots off.

  His boots, she thought, not hers. Maybe a small, stupid thing, she considered, but she knew a flick in the eye when it stung her.

  She was, as he’d thought himself only minutes before, very good at reading nuances.

  “If you want to stay pissed off—”

  “It isn’t a matter of want.”

  “Fine. If you’re going to stay pissed off, I can stay right there with you.” She yanked off her own boots, tossed them aside before she shoved up to strip off her weapon harness.

  “I took him off the list, didn’t I? I’m not going to report him over the fraudulent ID. But you should tell him he’s on my scope now.” In angry clicks and bangs, the contents of her pockets hit the dresser. “So if he’s not retired, or he gets a yen to come out of retirement, I’ll bust him. And that’ll be on him.”

  Roarke rose to take off the sweater he’d changed into after his workday. “I did.”

  “Fine. Good.” She dragged off her belt with a snap like a whip. “And goddamn it, if I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t get within fifty klicks of an investigation.”

  “Unless it suited you.”

  Hot, molten, flaming fury erupted against his cold and bitter ice. “Bullshit.” She stalked over to him. “Bullshit, bullshit.” Shoved him. “Bollocks.”

  “Careful.” His voice, dangerously quiet, only pumped up the heat for her.

  “Oh, bite me.” Shoved him again. “I opened the door, and I can close it because I’m the one with the badge. I’m in fucking charge. I opened it, and I leave it the hell open because I trust you. So knock it off.”

  Viciously pleased to see flashes of heat melting the Arctic ice in his eyes—damned if she’d be the only one on boil—she pushed again. Then added an insulting gesture he’d once pulled on her. She flicked his shoulder.

&nb
sp; “There, I knocked it off for you.” And there it was, the hot blue center of the flame. She started to flick his other shoulder. He grabbed her hand; she lifted her chin.

  And they lunged at each other.

  They landed on the bed in a grappling heap. The cat didn’t just leap up, he hissed, nearly spat before he stalked away. Ignoring him, they rolled over the bed, fighting for dominance.

  Until she grabbed Roarke’s hair by the fistfuls and dragged his mouth down to hers.

  A brutal meeting of lips, teeth, tongues became a greedy ravishing. Temper-fueled lust scorched through blood, burning away any thought of care, of caution, as he tore her sweater away, yanked down her tank.

  And when that greedy mouth fixed on her breast, the shock of sensation held her on the tenuous edge between pleasure and pain. She clung there, breath tattered, a red haze of need clouding her mind, and her body alive, wildly alive.

  Her fingers dug into his back, his hips, nails biting. She wanted flesh—the feel, the taste of flesh, wanted him—hard, hard, hard—inside her. She scissored her legs, shifted the balance to roll again, fought to strip him, strip herself, to take what she wanted.

  Take him. Be taken. And now.

  He reared up, and now his hand took her hair, yanking her head back to expose her throat. Fed there while his hands moved roughly down her body, that long warrior’s body he craved like his next breath.

  When his fingers speared into her, she came on a cry that held triumph and shock. And wanting both, more of both, he drove her up again.

  In that instant, that glorious instant when she went limp, before she could gather and rise again, he shoved her onto her back. Plunged into her.

  One instant, one more instant while they both gripped that toothy edge, while they hung together in air too thick to draw in, where their eyes met—flaming blue, molten brown.

  They took each other, driving, driven in a fever of need, a mad thirst for more, still more. Lost in the storm, he muttered in Irish, words both incoherent and savage.

  When pleasure, building, building, impossibly building, peaked, it slashed like a blade.

  She lay under him, weak, dizzy, empty of anger. And somehow tendrils of sorrow trailed in to fill the void.

  “It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s never you.”

  “It’s never me you want to distrust,” he countered. “But there are still times, just now and then, when those cop’s eyes are on me and say different.”

  He rolled off of her. “The heart and the brain don’t always mesh, do they? I know your heart, darling Eve, but your brain still has some mysterious corners.”

  They’d scattered clothes over the bed. He considered just kicking them to the floor, but as he needed a minute to settle himself, he rose to dump them in a handy chair.

  When he turned back to the bed, she’d rolled onto her stomach, and slept.

  Heart, brain, body, he thought, all meshing in this case with pure exhaustion.

  He drew the covers over her, slipped in beside her. And waited for sleep to come.

  * * *

  The air smelled of smoke, blood, burnt flesh. She saw the charred remains, the blackened severed limbs where skin had bubbled off the bone. The blood—black as tar—splashed over the walls like a vicious painting.

  One wall, blinding white, held all the names of the dead beneath the spatter.

  Eighteen, and room for more.

  Two men stood in the room, men dressed in black with white masks. They spoke in whispers, words she couldn’t quite hear. She reached for her weapon, but it wasn’t there. Not her sidearm, not her clutch piece. Prepared to take them on unarmed, she charged.

  But what she’d seen as shadows stood as a wall. Impenetrable.

  Desperate, she searched for a door, an opening, found none. She moved back through the dead to give herself room, ran full out, throwing her body up at the last minute to strike the wall with a violent kick.

  It repelled her like a hand swatting at a fly. She tried again, again, slamming the wall with kicks and punches until her fists left smears of blood.

  The men simply watched her from behind their masks.

  One laughed, then slapped the second on the shoulder in a gesture of shared humor.

  “Well now, how long you figure she’ll keep up with all that?”

  She heard Ireland—thicker, deeper than Roarke’s. It made her stomach flutter in a kind of sick dread.

  “That one? Always was a stubborn little bitch.”

  Now her stomach twisted as dread dropped to fear and resignation. The men pulled off the masks—no need for them, after all.

  She stood facing Richard Troy and Patrick Roarke with a shadowy wall between.

  “The boy always was a fuckup,” Patrick Roarke claimed. “But still he’s got my looks, so you’d think he could do better than that one. And a cop for all of that as well.”

  “She’s a killer.” Troy smiled wide and bright. “I’m dead proof of it.”

  “That right. You’re dead,” Eve said. “Both of you. A long time dead.”

  “But there are so many more like us,” Troy reminded her. “We just keep coming, little girl. Beat yourself against the wall of that, and we still keep coming.”

  “There are always more like me.”

  “Look around you. Can’t keep the dead from piling up, can you now?” Patrick Roarke laughed, then as the shadows shifted, poured whiskey from a bottle into two glasses.

  As they clinked glasses, drank, she saw they stood in a room with a bed, and on the bed a figure struggled. She couldn’t see through the shadows, but saw the movements, heard the screams muffled by a gag.

  “And more to come.” Troy lifted his glass in toast to another wall.

  It cleared to show the people behind it. And her heart began to pound in her chest.

  Peabody, Mavis, oh God, the baby, Feeney.

  She rushed, beat against the wall.

  Nadine, Baxter, Leonardo, McNab. More. Everyone, everyone who mattered. Summerset, Whitney, Trueheart, Charles, Louise, Crack. Her whole squad, Reo, everyone milling around the room as if at some goddamn party.

  Mira, Dennis Mira, Morris.

  Every time she blinked, more appeared in the room.

  Though she beat on that wall, shouted, no one heard, no one saw.

  Everyone, everyone who mattered to her. But the one who mattered most.

  “Where’s Roarke? Goddamn you, where’s Roarke?”

  She rushed back—the figure on the bed. God, oh God.

  The two men sat at a table, counting money with a mountain of it at their backs.

  “You can never have too much of it, can you, Paddy?”

  “No indeed, Richie, no indeed. And the getting more’s the fun of it.”

  Shifting shadows. She started to call to Roarke, to swear to him she’d find a way to get to him. But when the shadows cleared, she didn’t see him. She saw herself, bound to the bed, struggling, terrified.

  The red light blinked on and off, on and off as it had a lifetime before in a horrible room in Dallas.

  “More fun this way.” Troy wagged a thumb to the next wall. “Look who’s joining the party.”

  The moan rolled out of her soul. Roarke stepped in—everyone, everyone, everyone who mattered—with the suicide vest locked around him.

  On a scream, she launched herself against the wall. She felt her arm break—the snap of a twig—and threw herself against the wall again.

  “Roarke! Don’t, don’t, don’t. It’s a lie. Look at me. Roarke!”

  Spiderweb cracks sizzled over the wall. As he reached for the button, she screamed again, reared back to charge through the cracks.

  “Stop it now. You stop it. You need to wake up. Christ Jesus, Eve, you bloody well will wake up!”

  She snapped back, saw his eyes. Just his eyes. On a choked sob she grabbed at him, pressed to him. “You can’t. You won’t. Swear you won’t. You have to swear to me.”

  “Stop now, stop. It’s
a dream, just a dream.”

  “You can’t—You’re wet. Is that blood?” She shoved back, ran her hands over him.

  “Of course it’s not blood. It’s only water. I was having a shower,” he said, calm and gentle as he stroked her back. “I heard you screaming. And now I’m dripping all over you. Let me get that throw over you.”

  “Just hold on.” Shaking, she wrapped her arms around him again. “Just hold on.” The cat bumped his head against her so she reached down to try to soothe. But her hand shook violently.

  “You need to slow down your breathing. Slow breaths, baby. A bad dream, nothing more. I’m right here. I’m just getting the throw. You’re freezing.”

  “No, no. Don’t let go.”

  “Look here, look at me now.” He tipped her head up. “A dream, all right? You understand me?”

  “It felt real. I could feel . . .”

  His heart squeezed when she gripped a hand on her own arm.

  “Were you back in Dallas?”

  “No. Yes. Not exactly.”

  “You need to get warm, then you’ll tell me. Here now.” He pulled the throw over, wrapped it around her.

  “You’re cold, too. And wet. I’m sorry.” She gathered the cat up, stroked him. “I’m sorry.”

  “You hold on to him—you could both use it. I’ll get you a soother.”

  “I don’t want a soother.”

  “We’ll split one.”

  She pressed her face to Galahad’s fur. “You need to get warm.”

  “I’ll just get a towel, then we’ll split that soother and you’ll tell me.”

  With her face still buried, she nodded.

  He ordered the fire on as he walked to the bathroom, ordered the jets he’d left running to shut down. Then he dropped his forehead to the glass tiles and took his first true breath since he’d heard her scream.

  Screaming, he thought, as if someone hacked at her with an axe. And so deep in that nightmare she’d been mired, he hadn’t been able to pull her out at first. She’d just screamed. Even when her eyes had flashed open, wide and blank, she’d screamed.

  He dragged a hand through his dripping hair, grabbed a towel to drape over his hips and went back to her.