by J. D. Robb
She hadn’t moved an inch.
He programmed the soother to split, brought the glasses over to sit on the bed with her again.
“Drink some, and tell me.”
She didn’t argue.
“I think I knew it was a dream at first. At first. It was a crime scene. The bodies—after the explosion—but all of them. Just all those pieces of people, and the white board with their names. All their names. I know their names.”
He took her hand, kissed it. “Yes.”
“Then I saw the two of them—black, white masks, talking—whispering. But I didn’t have my weapons. I didn’t have them, so I went at them to fight, to take them down, but . . . You couldn’t see the wall. I could see through it, and they were on the other side. I couldn’t get through the wall. They saw me, and I could hear them, and I knew . . .
“They took off the masks, but I already knew. Richard Troy and Patrick Roarke.”
Sorrow clouded his eyes as he stroked a hand on her cheek. “We’ll never altogether be done with them, will we?”
She shook her head, told him the rest.
“The room, the other room, so many people. Every time I looked, more people. But not you. I thought you were in the room with the two of them. A prisoner. And I would’ve gotten you out. I would’ve found a way.”
“Of course you would.” He kissed away the tears on her face. It broke his heart when she wept.
“But it wasn’t you.” She had to fight to breathe again, to hold back the horror. “When I could see through the shadows, it wasn’t you. It was me. And then I knew. I knew what they’d done. Then I saw you, in the room with everyone, everyone who matters. I saw you, and the vest.”
Because it threatened to swamp her again, she drank the last of the soother. “I screamed for you—you couldn’t hear me. I beat on the wall, and tried to break through. It started to crack, but you were reaching for the button. I had to get in, had to get in. If I couldn’t stop you . . . I couldn’t stand being without you. I can take anything, but I couldn’t take that. You have to swear to me.”
“A ghrá, it didn’t happen. And it won’t. Didn’t we already say we’d find another way?”
She gripped his hand until her knuckles went white. “You have to swear to me. You have to believe I’d find a way to get out, and swear to me you’d never push the button. Swear it.”
“And if it had been me, a prisoner?”
“You’d find a way.”
He leaned over, touched his lips to hers. “And there you have it, so I’ll say again what we said before. We’d find a way. I’ll swear to you, and you’ll swear to me. There’s trust between us, isn’t there? We’d find a way.”
“Yes.” She let out a breath. “Yes. I swear it.”
“And so do I. Those fucking bastards, and any like them? They won’t win. We won’t let them.”
She rested her head against his shoulder, and let it go.
“You were already up.”
“A holo conference. I’ll reschedule, and we’ll get a bit more sleep.”
Meaning, she knew, he’d put his work aside, stay with her in hopes she’d get more sleep.
“No, I’m getting up. I’ll feel better if I get going, get something done. You need to put on one of your emperor suits.” She ran a hand down his bare chest, felt his heartbeat. “I’m going to get a workout in, sweat the rest out of me.”
“All right then. I’ll be an hour or so,” he added as he moved to his closet.
She sat as she was, wrapped in the throw, holding the cat while he selected a suit. “You’re still a little pissed off, but now you’re worried on top of it. It’s hard to be both.”
Oh aye, his cop knew her nuances, he mused as he chose a shirt, gray as storm clouds. “I’ll manage.”
“Because you’re good at multitasking.”
“There is that,” he agreed, reaching for the tie he wanted that slashed bold blue over storm-cloud gray. He wandered closer to the bed as his clever fingers fashioned the tie into a perfect Trinity knot. “It’s also that over and under and through being a little bit pissed off and worried with it, I love you with all I am, and ever hope to be.”
Her eyes stung again, but she kept them trained on him. “There is that.”
He smiled, leaned down to brush his lips to hers. When her arms wrapped around him, he sat, drew her in. “Rescheduling’s not a problem.”
She shook her head, but burrowed for one more minute. “No, I’m good. Besides, you went from naked to god of all he surveys in about six and a half minutes.” Easing back, she tapped the complicated knot of the tie. “How’d you do that without even looking?”
“Talent.”
“Well, go do your business god thing with your classy tie. I’ll see you in an hour or so.”
“Or so.” He pressed his lips to her brow, left her.
She sat another moment, stroking the cat into thunderous purrs. She’d told him she wanted a workout mostly to stop him from worrying. Still, maybe a good sweat would drown the dregs of the dream.
Rising, she knocked back a quick shot of coffee, pulled on a tank, baggy shorts, and running shoes while Galahad watched her.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “Or I will be. You could use a workout yourself, pudge boy.”
He blinked his bicolored eyes, rolled over to stretch out on his back. Cat of leisure.
She took the elevator down. In the gym she programmed the beach, took a minute to just bask in the sights, sounds, and feel of blue ocean, white sand. And with the surf rolling, she ran three miles full out. Somewhere in mile two, she stopped thinking.
With her skin cased in a good, heathy sweat, she guzzled water, then turned to weights, lifted until her muscles trembled.
As she stretched, she eyed the sparring droid. She wouldn’t have minded a good, vicious bout, but she’d nearly hit the hour.
“Next time.” She pointed a finger at the droid. “I’m kicking your ass.”
Upstairs she found Galahad had deserted his post. Probably down with Summerset for breakfast, she decided and hit the shower—and there she washed away the last of the dream in blissfully hot water, steam, pulsing jets.
By the time Roarke came back, she’d pulled on black trousers, a crisp white shirt and her weapon harness. Breakfast sat under warming domes.
“Were you a benevolent god or a wrathful one?”
“A bit of both. Keeps them guessing.” She looked herself, he thought, strong and ready. Most of the worry he carried drained.
He poured himself coffee, topped off hers. It didn’t surprise him to find waffles under the domes.
He sat with her. “And what’s first on your agenda today?”
“Briefing. I’m going in early to set that up, and to work out the interview assignments.” She drowned her waffles in butter and syrup. “With two teams, we should be able to knock a good chunk off that list. Or pin somebody to the freaking wall.”
“I’ll hope for the latter. What would you like me to do for you today?”
“Just focus on world domination.”
“I always do, as I find it entertaining and profitable. But multitasking, I’d enjoy an assignment.”
“Follow the money. Yeah, yeah, you always do that, too.” She ate waffles. “Every day would dawn brighter with waffles.”
“We haven’t quite hit dawn yet.”
“When we do, it’ll be brighter. Anything you can scrape up on the stocks, the art. If we don’t make real progress today . . .” She stabbed another bite of waffle. “Eightteen dead. When I weigh that against the line crossed by using the unregistered, the dead win.”
“It’s likely I’d find more without being hampered by CompuGuard.”
“Yeah, and it wouldn’t be the first time. I need to push the interviews first. If I thought they were done, if I didn’t feel dead certain they’ve got another scheme in the works—”
“You could push through it your way. And you’d find them, I’ve no doubt of
it, sooner or later.”
“It’s the later that’s burning my gut. Contingencies. They had to have them, at least one contingency. One more they could work either to replace one that went south, or for the triple play.”
“You think they’d always planned for three, even four,” Roarke concluded.
“They had to rush the timing of the first two when the merger meeting scheduled on top of the art opening. They probably planned to hit both, but with a little more time between. And then a third. They’re gamblers. Three’s a lucky number, right?”
“All number’s are lucky when you hit them. But,” he added. “The gamblers I’ve known—the professional, the passionate, the addicted, they’re a superstitious lot. Added to it, they’d believe in the streak.”
“These two are on one. Another stock or art deal? Those are most logical. But I can’t find anything that fits, not in New York. How many major mergers, how many artists on the brink? Not that many right in New York City, not on top of each other.”
“You’d have to consider international,” he pointed out. “Even off-planet. The world’s full of mergers and emerging artists.”
“Yeah, and I can’t eliminate that altogether. But they have to stalk the target, his family. They have to watch and research. They have to be as certain as possible he’ll push that button. Now, maybe one of them goes off to wherever to do the legwork, then the other comes in to double team the family. But that splits them up, and I think they’re too dependent on each other.”
She polished off the waffles, opted for another hit of coffee.
“One of them’s softer. He doesn’t wrap the first kid up tight before they leave, and he reads stories to the second kid. How does the dominant one trust the softer one not to fold unless he’s there, propping him up, keeping the buzz going?”
“And how,” Roarke considered, “does the softer one make sure the more violent doesn’t cross the line if he’s not there to keep him steady?”
“Exactly.” Shaking her head, she rose. “So no, bad risk to separate. And why extend the target area, adding expense with travel, rooms? If they have jobs, how do you get that kind of time off? And this is New York. Anything you need to find, you can find it here.”
She picked up the jacket—black, leather flaps on the pockets, thin leather cuffs on the sleeves—pulled it on over the weapon harness. “The work’s figuring out what or who needs to be destroyed so they can make a profit, and how to connect a devoted family man to that what or who. Eliminate the stock market, the art world, and calculate where they’d try next.”
She studied him as she filled her pockets. “You’re not their kind of gambler,” she considered. “When you gamble in business, you know the odds, the ups, downs, ins and outs. You know the players and the house. You usually are the house. When you gamble for play it’s just that. Play. But still, you gamble. That place you bought in Nebraska, for instance, because we sort of made a bet.”
“No ‘sort of’ about it, and it’s coming along quite nicely.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Real estate’s a gamble.”
“Ah.” He sat back, intrigued. “Interesting. And yes, it certainly is.”
The idea had a little buzz going in the back of her brain. “Blowing up that wrecked farm out in Nowhereville—what would that get you?”
“If I’d insured it well, there’d be that, but you’d only go there if, for a variety of reasons, getting rid of it gets you out of debt or a deal.”
“Okay, shift to a building here in New York.”
“Do I own it?”
“You? Probably. Them, less certain. What would they gain by blowing up a building—or a person or persons involved in that building?”
“Well now, it’s a puzzle you’ve given me without many of the pieces.”
“Quick profit. Nothing long term.”
“Insurance again, but it takes more than a man in a suicide vest to destroy a building. Damage it, yes. Enough its value goes down. You could pick it up cheaply, but that’s a long-term investment, and that piece doesn’t fit. Kill the people who own the building? What does that get you? An interesting puzzle.”
“You own a lot of buildings, and you have a lot of people working for you.”
Now he rose, walked to her, ran his hands down her arms. “And I have security, the sort they’d never get through.”
“You don’t have security on every place you go—a lunch meeting at a restaurant, a meeting at another building.”
“Few have access to my schedule on any given day,” he reminded her. “Summerset, Caro.”
“The people on the other end of the meeting,” she countered. “I don’t see the finished puzzle, either, but say, maybe, we have a few of the pieces here, you could do me a big favor.”
“What would it be?”
“Mix things up today. Change the schedule around. And check on your people, especially any who have access to your HQ, your office. And since you’re you, you can run a check on people on the other side of the meetings you’ve got on your plate. Anybody who hasn’t come into work today, or for a couple days.”
“I can do that, especially if it stops you from worrying. And I’ll play with this puzzle. Real estate’s a world I know.”
“Good. I’m going to head in, get a jump start.” She leaned in to kiss him. “Take care of my business god. Please.”
“Done. Take care of my cop.”
When she left, he checked the time. Far too early to disturb Caro and begin the shuffling of the day’s schedule. In any case, he had another meeting. As he headed to his office, he decided after that and before the post-dawn day began, he’d work a bit on the puzzle.
18
For the second time since the investigation started, Eve drove to Central before sunrise. She wondered if she could train her body and brain to subsist on four or five hours of sleep most nights, like Roarke. Then she could make the commute before the streets clogged with traffic, the skies filled with noisy ad blimps.
Still, she’d rather not finish off the four or five hours with a nightmare.
He’d be careful, she assured herself. It wasn’t as if her dreams were prophetic. Her subconscious ruled there, and sometimes it pushed the worst of her thoughts and fears to the surface.
Love pushed the button, she thought. In her dreams, in reality. Who else who loved so deeply had these murderers-by-proxy targeted?
Most likely a male, a father of at least one young child. No, she considered, almost certainly only one young child. More than one complicated it, made it more difficult to restrain and control.
They’d stick with an only child unless they didn’t have a choice.
Most likely male, married, a father—one kid . . . twelve or under, she thought. Older, again more difficult to control, not as helpless. And most likely a father between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five. It could tip slightly over either end, but that was the sweet spot in her mind.
Single-family home. Multifamily brought in complications again. Proximity to neighbors, more chance of being seen or heard.
Successful man with at least some power and status in his business or employment. Someone who wouldn’t be questioned when walking into the key area.
And she’d bet, just bet, one or both of the killers had crossed paths with both targets. Not friends, she thought as she swung into the garage at Central. Not directly connected. But they’d crossed paths. Golf, tennis, the gym, a favorite restaurant, the theater, the vids, buying a damn tie or a pair of shoes.
Easy to cross paths with Denby, she thought as she walked to the elevator. You just had to stroll into the Salon. An art lover, or just a browser. A salesman, another artist.
Chewing on it, she got in the elevator, headed up.
She ignored the cops nearing the end of their shift who trudged on, and the LC with the black eye and split lip who stood stoically on legs scraped raw at the knees.
Because the LC smelled of stale sex and resignation, Eve go
t off and took the glides the rest of the way to Homicide.
In her office, she updated her board and book to reflect the night’s work. She reupped her hold on the conference room, sent memos to her team to report there.
She shot off a text to Feeney asking him to attend the briefing if it worked with his schedule.
After running a probability—ninety-six-point-eight—she sent an inquiry to Mira asking for confirmation or rebuttal on her belief both killers would remain in New York, in close proximity, and keep their targets in the city.
Couldn’t be a hundred percent, she mused, but if Mira agreed, it added weight.
As the sun came up, filtered light through her skinny window, she reviewed her squad’s caseload—what remained open, what had been closed. What looked to be going cold or heating up.
Made notes.
Finally she gathered what she needed—including a pot of real coffee—and walked to the conference room.
In the quiet, she set up the board lining up the data on interviewees by priority. She earmarked Hugo Markin for a second pass. Not just because he was a prize dick, she told herself. But because there was something there. She felt it in her gut.
Though she’d have preferred to toss the job to Peabody, she struggled her way through programming the data she wanted to put on-screen.
Just as she finished, Feeney walked in.
“You couldn’t have gotten here fifteen minutes ago?”
“Why?”
“Nothing.” On a huff of breath, she shoved her hands through her hair, relieved to have the programming off her task list. “You’re here early.”
“A second ago I was fifteen late. Is that real coffee?”
“Yeah.”
He helped himself. “I got a shit-ton of paperwork piling up. Figured I’d come in early and deal with it. Now I’ve got an excuse not to, and real coffee. It’s a good day.”
He drank half the mug. “Before they get their lovebird asses in here, are you still cutting Peabody loose tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I was going to cancel it—had to—but Roarke stepped in. He’ll cover for her. How did I get to the point I’m letting a civilian cover for my partner?”