by J. D. Robb
He thought of how she'd looked, face dead white, shiny with sweat. “I think we should call Louise, have her come take a look at you.”
“I don't think a doctor's going to help, or a priest either. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think it's like Janna. When we close the case, it'll be done.”
She shifted to him. “She cut me a little with her nails, see?” She held up her hand, palm out. “Said all this stuff about blood to blood and heart to heart. I had her blood all over me by then. And she said it wouldn't be finished until the promise was kept. And the thing is, I promised to find Beata while I was trying to keep the old woman alive.”
“You made a blood pact with a Romany.”
“A Romany speaker for the dead, apparently. Not on purpose,” she added with some heat.
“An accidental blood pact,” he qualified.
“You'd have done the same damn thing.” Peeved, she shifted away again. “And you're a civilian. I'm a cop. Protect and serve, goddamn it.”
“Which rarely includes blood pacts with dead travelers.”
“Are you trying to piss me off?”
“Got your color back,” he said easily.
“Well, whoopee. Eyes on the prize. I have to find out who killed Gizi Szabo, and I have to find Beata.”
“She's alive, Beata. You're certain.”
“In my current condition, tossing out the logic that says otherwise? I think Szabo would have known if the girl was dead. And I think I'd know it now. Instead, I have this certainty, against all that logic, that she's alive, trapped by the same devil who killed her great-grandmother. He wants to keep the girl, and the old woman made sure people knew she was getting close to finding her. Maybe she did that to lure him out, maybe she did it because it kept her going. But she was a threat.”
Her nerves throttled down a few more notches when Roarke drove through the gates, when she saw the house. Home. Hers.
“Beata's a liability now,” Eve added. “And that may weigh heavier on him than his need to keep her. Szabo stirred things up, and now I've done the same. He may decide to kill her rather than risk discovery.”
“This Alexi Barin?”
“He's heading the list. He knew her, wanted her, got shut down by her. He's got an ego the size of Utah. He knew where she lived, where she worked, very likely knew her basic routine. Added, they were rehearsing for this big dance — Diabolique, Angel and Devil, which is no fucking coincidence.”
“I'd agree. That would make it easier yet to lure her. Extra practice, after hours.”
“There you go. He's had violent run-ins, got a sheet, and the cops who busted him all say he's got a temper that lights him up — quick and fast. And that's why he's not in Interview right now.”
“Because while Szabo was killed violently and perhaps on impulse, if Beata's still alive, being held against her will, that took some planning. And continues to take planning.”
“Right now, it's a good thing you can think like a cop, because I don't know if my brain's firing on all circuits.” She got out of the car. “I need to be home. I need to be back in control. And if you're up for it, I could use some help running everybody on my list who knows Beata, studied with her, worked with her. Her neighbors, her friends, people who saw her routinely. You want what you see — or have to see it to want it.”
“You give me the names, I'll start your runs — on the condition that you rest. An hour,” he said as she started to protest. “Nonnegotiable.”
“I just need to clear my head. And I'm starving,” she admitted. “I feel like I haven't eaten in days, like everything's burned off.”
“Possibly a side effect of possession.”
“That's not funny either.” She stepped inside, gave Summerset a beady stare. “Baszd meg,” she suggested and watched his eyes widen.
Suspected she saw his lips twitch in what might have been a restrained smile.
“I see you're broadening your linguistics.”
“That wasn't Russian,” Roarke said as they headed up the stairs.
“I think it's Hungarian. It just came to me — and I figure he knows I just told him to fuck off.”
“Rude, yet fascinating.” He went with her to her office. “You, up.” He pointed at the cat currently sprawled in Eve's sleep chair. “You, down,” he ordered. “Give me your list, and I'll get those runs going.” He brushed a hand over her hair, struggling against worry. “How about pizza?”
“I could eat a whole pie.” She dropped into the chair. “Thank God my appetite's not running to that borscht, because I'd really rather have a brain tumor than beet soup.” She dragged her notebook out of her pocket. “Most of the names are in here. I have to get more. Peabody and McNab were hitting the theaters where she worked or would have, and I need neighbors. But that's a big start.”
“Food first.” He walked into the kitchen.
Galahad didn't leap into her lap but sat eyeing her.
“I'm still me,” she murmured. “I'm not her. I'm still me.” When he bumped his head against her leg, her eyes stung. “I'm still me,” she repeated.
Roarke came back with a plate on a tray. “I ordered up a whole one, but you start with that. And drink the soother. Don't argue,” he warned. “I doubt you've looked in the mirror in the last few hours, but when I came in to the morgue, you looked like you belonged there. You'll eat, drink a soother, then we'll see.”
With that, he turned to her desk, sat, and began inputting names into her computer. Eve ate like a horse.
“God, that's better. No shakes.” She held out a hand, a steady one. “No queasiness, no jumps.” Still she looked down at the cat. “He won't sit in my lap, even for pizza. He's not sure of me. I guess he senses something's off. That I'm off. How long do you think — ” She couldn't say it.
“It's going to be fine.” He rose to go to her. “We'll do whatever needs to be done, then we'll do whatever comes after that. You'll be fine.”
“I have to live with the dead, Roarke, I don't want to chat with them. I see the advantage for a murder cop. Hey, sorry about the bad luck, but who killed you? Oh yeah, we'll go pick him up. Move on. I don't want to work that way. I don't want to live that way. I don't think I can.”
“You won't have to.” He took the tray, set it aside. “I swear to you, we'll find whatever needs finding.”
She believed him. Maybe she had to, but she believed him.
“In the meantime . . . ” She took his hand. “Can you be with me? I need to be me. I need you to touch me — me — and feel what I do when you're with me. Know that you feel me.”
“There's no one but you.” He slid onto the chair beside her. “Never anyone but you.”
“Don't be gentle.” She dragged his mouth to hers. “Want me.”
She needed those seeking hands, that mouth hungry for hers. Needed to feel and taste and ache, needed to know that it was her mind, her body, her heart meshed with his.
Love, the dark and the light of it, was strength, and she took it from him.
He tugged her jacket down her shoulders, hit the release on her weapon harness as his mouth captured and conquered hers. And those hands, those wonderful hands lit fresh fires, a new fever that raged clean and bright in her blood. Her fingers fumbled for the chair controls so they tumbled back when it slid flat.
It wasn't comfort she wanted, he knew, but lust — the greed and speed. Perhaps he needed the same. So he pinned her arms over her head, used his free one to torment until she bucked beneath him, crying out as she came.
And there was more. Dewy flesh quivering under his hands, frantic pulses jumping at the nip of his teeth. The lust she wanted beat inside him as wildly as her heart.
His woman. Only his. Her flesh, her lips, her body. Strong again.
“Now. Yes. Now!” Her nails dug into his hips as she arched against him, opened to him.
Hot and wet, she closed around him, crying out again as he thrust hard and deep, as she bowed to take him. Holding there, holdi
ng for one heady moment as he looked in her eyes. As he saw only Eve.
Then the whirlwind, wicked and wild, spinning them both too high for air, too fast for fear.
And when the world settled back, all the colors and shapes and light, then came the comfort. She lay locked in his arms, breathing him in. Her body — her body — felt used and raw and wonderful.
Eyes closed, she ran a hand through his hair, down his back. “No problem, considering you might have just indirectly banged a ninety-six-year-old woman?”
“If I did, she gave as good as she got.”
She laughed, tangled her legs with his. “We'll still bang when we're ninety, right?”
“Count on it. I'll have developed a taste for old women by then, so this could be considered good practice.”
“It's got to be sick to even be thinking this way, but it's probably like making jokes in the morgue. It's how you get through.” She untangled, sat up. “What I'm going to do is grab a shower, then coffee, then go over your runs. I'm going to work this like it needs to be worked and keep this other thing off to the side. Because if I think about it too hard, I'm just going to wig out.”
He sat up with her, took her shoulders. And what she saw in his eyes blocked the air from her lungs. “What? What?”
“You are who you are. I know you. You believe that?”
“Yeah, but — ”
“You're Eve Dallas. You're the love of my life. My heart and soul. You're a cop, mind and bone. You're a woman of strength and resilience. Stubborn, hardheaded, occasionally mean as a badger, and more generous than you'll admit.”
Fear edged back, an icy blade down the spine. “Why are you saying this?”
“Because I don't think you can put what's happened aside, not altogether. Take a breath.”
“Why — ”
“Take a breath.” he said it sharply, adding a shake so she did so automatically. “Now another.” He kept one hand on her shoulder as he shifted and touched the other to her ankle.
And the tattoo of a peacock feather.
Eight
She got her shower, got her coffee. She told herself she was calm — would be calm. Panic wouldn't help; raging might feel good, but in the end wouldn't help either.
“There are options,” Roarke told her.
“Don't say the E word. No exorcisms. I'm not having some priest or witch doctor or voodoo guy dancing around me, banging on his magic coconuts.”
“Magic . . . Is that a euphemism?”
“Maybe.” It helped to see him smile — to think she might be able to. “But I'm not going there, Roarke.”
“All right then. What about Mira?”
“You think she can shrink Szabo out of me?”
“Hypnosis might find some answers.”
She shook her head. “I'm not being stubborn. Or maybe I am,” she admitted when he cocked his eyebrows. “Right now I'd rather not bring anybody else into this. I just don't want to tell anybody I invited a dead woman to take up residence in my head, or wherever she is. Because that's what I did.”
She shoved up, began to pace. “I said sure, come right in. Maybe if I'd been paying attention to what she was saying, what she meant, I'd have locked the door. Instead I'm all, yeah, yeah, whatever, because I'm trying to keep a woman science says was already dead from bleeding out. It doesn't make any sense, goddamn it. And because it doesn't, I have to set it to one side. I have to,” she insisted. “I have to work the cases — cases — with my head, my gut. Fucking A mine. Which I damn well would've done anyway if she'd left me the hell alone.”
“So you'll fight this with logic and instinct?” He decided they could both use a glass of wine.
“It's what I've got. It's what's mine. And if there's any logic to this other part, the part that makes no sense, when I find the killer, when I find Beata, it — she — goes away. If I don't believe that, I'm going to lock myself in a closet and start sucking my thumb.”
He took her the wine, touched her cheek. “Then we'll find the killer and Beata. And for now, we'll keep the rest of it between you and me. Twenty-four hours. We'll work it your way, and I'll find someone who can undo what was done. If this isn't resolved in twenty-four hours, we'll work it my way.”
“That sounds like an ultimatum.”
“It most certainly is. You can waste time arguing, or you can get to work. I'm not going to share my wife with anyone for more than a day.”
“I'm not your possession either, pal.”
He smiled again. “But you belong to me. We can fight about it.” He shrugged, sipped his wine. “And you'll have wasted part of your twenty-four. Still, it might fire you up, so I'm open to it.”
“Smug bastard.”
“Maybe you'd like to swear at me in Russian or Hungarian.”
“And you said I was mean. Twenty-four.” She took a slug of wine, considered how she's push for more if she needed it. “Let's look at the runs.”
Roarke ordered data on-screen, leaned a hip against the side of her desk. “Your prime suspect,” he began. “You had most of this, but the second-level run added a bit, and I extrapolated from your notes. Allie Madison's apartment, where it's verified Alexi Barin began the day, is an easy ten-minute walk to the alley — considerably less if a healthy, athletic man took it at a jog, even a run. It's about the same from the restaurant where he had brunch. As is his own apartment,” Roarke added, ordering the map he'd generated on-screen. “These locations are clustered, more or less, in the general area.”
“So he could've slipped out, slipped away, put on a mask, sliced Szabo up, and gotten back. Which would involve knowing she'd be in the alley at that convenient moment, and wearing something for the blood spatter. Because you don't hack somebody up the way she was hacked and walk away clean and fresh to take your alibi to brunch.”
She paced in front of the screen. “He could have set a meet with her, pinning the timing. Told her he had some information on Beata. It's a lot of planning for an impulsive guy with a temper.”
“Something set him off at the brunch if we go with your TOD, or prior if we stay with science,” Roarke suggested. “He went to confront her, saw her in the alley — he'd have come from this direction, so he'd have passed the alley. He snaps, pulls the knife, goes in.”
“Why is he disguised?”
“She could have seen his face, Eve. The condition she was in when you found her? It's not a stretch to believe she wasn't lucid.”
“She didn't see it. She saw the devil.” Eve paused a moment. “I know. It's what I saw. I had . . . a moment in the alley. I know what she saw.”
“All right.”
Because she'd expected an argument, even yearned for one, she rounded on him. “I don't know whether to be grateful or pissed off that you accept so easily.”
“Not as easy as it might seem, just easier than you. So if you say you saw what she saw, I know you did. The occult, on some level, is involved — even that's logical.”
“If you're a superstitious Irish guy.”
“If you're currently able to curse in Hungarian and make goulash,” he countered — and shut her up. “It could be your suspect has some power of his own.”
“I'm not going there. Logic, facts, data. So while it's possible Alexi slipped out, did the murder, it's low on the logic and probability scale with the data we have at this time. Give me the guy Beata worked with. The one who walked out of the restaurant with her the night she was last seen.”
“David Ingall, twenty-two, single. He's had two bumps. One for an airboard incident where he lost control and mowed down a group of pedestrians in Times Square, and another for manufacturing and using false ID — he was underage and got into a sex club before an undercover busted him. He dropped out of NYU and takes a couple of virtual courses a semester, lives in a one-bedroom apartment a few blocks from the restaurant with two roommates. He's worked at Goulash for three years.”
“Doesn't sound particularly murderous.”
“
In addition, the file from your Detective Lloyd has a statement from one of the roommates confirming his arrival home — and the drunken night of computer gaming that followed, on the night Beata Varga went missing.”
“Roommates make it harder for him to take Beata, hold her, unless they're complicit.”
“The information on the roommates is as benign as this one.”
“Switch to the theater,” Eve decided. “Where she was understudying. What did Peabody get?”
She studied the data as it scrolled, listened to Roarke's summaries. And paced.
None of them popped for her. Holding a woman against her will for an extended length of time required privacy, sound-proofing, supplies, and time.
Maybe she was wrong — maybe the old woman had been wrong — and the girl was dead. And the thought of that pierced her so deep, she shuddered.
“Eve — ”
“No, it's nothing. Keep going. I need to set up a murder board. I should've done it already.”
She pinned up her photos, let the information Roarke provided wind through while she arranged what she needed on the board.
“Work and the school,” Eve said. “Her most usual and regular spots other than her apartment. We focus there. She went out on auditions, and that'll be another level if we bomb here. Work, school, her neighbors. Then the theater, then audition sites, shops, and so on.
“Let me see the map again.”
She moved closer to the screen. “She takes this route basically every day. Home to morning class. Then from class to work if she was scheduled. Back to class, back to work or an audition. Evening class three nights a week, and work again four nights.”
“A regular customer at the restaurant,” Roarke suggested. “Someone she waited on routinely. Wanted her, took her.”
She nodded. “Possible. Someone she knew is most probable. Someone who could lure her where he wanted her to go. Doesn't make the ripples a forced abduction would. Had to have a place. Underground. A basement? A cellar?”
“The underground itself,” Roarke commented. “There are places under the streets no one would pay attention to a woman struggling, screaming, calling for help.”