by J. D. Robb
“It would depend on the client, and the business.” Roarke’s voice was a silky purr, a tone Eve knew was dangerous. “Other things are bad for business as well.”
As if acknowledging some unspoken warning, Dorian angled his head in a slight nod, shifted his body away from Eve’s.
“Did you tell her you were a vampire?” Eve demanded. “That you could turn her?”
Dorian slid on a stool and laughed. “Yes, to the first. It’s part of the atmosphere, as you can clearly see. The core clientele come here for the thrill, the eroticism of the cult, the thrill of possibility. Certainly part of the draw is the fear and the allure of the undead, along with the dark promise of eternal youth and power.”
“So you sell it, but you don’t buy it.”
“We’ll just say I very much enjoy my work.”
“Tiara Kent was exsanguinated, through a two-pronged wound through the carotid artery.”
He lifted one arched black brow. “Really? Fascinating. Do you believe in vampires, Lieutenant Dallas? In those who prey on the human, and thirst for their blood?”
“I believe in the susceptible, in the foolish, and in those who exploit them. She was drugged first.” Eve took a careless glance around and hated, hated that her chest felt tight. “I wonder how many illegals I’d net if I ordered a sweep of this place?”
“I couldn’t say. We both know such things aren’t as…regulated underground.” He stared deeply into her eyes. “Just as we both know that’s not what you’re here for.”
“One leads to another. Her killer left his DNA behind.”
“Ah, well. We can, at least, settle that one particular element.” Watching her still, he rolled up his sleeve. “Allesseria, I’ll need a syringe with a vial. Unopened.”
“You keep needles behind the bar?” Eve snapped out.
“Part of the show. We serve several drinks that contain a dram or two of pig’s blood, and it’s added with a syringe for flourish.” He took the needle from the bartender. “Should you do the honors,” he asked Eve, “or I?”
“A swab of your spit would be easier.”
“But not nearly as interesting.” He pumped his fist until a vein rose, then slid the needle neatly—expertly, Eve thought—into it. Depressed the plunger. “Allesseria, you’ll witness I’m providing the lieutenant with my blood voluntarily.”
When the bartender didn’t speak, Dorian turned his head toward her slowly, stared.
“Yes. Yes, I will.”
“That should be enough.” He flashed a hard smile at Eve, then removed the needle, capped off the vial. “Thank you, Allesseria.” Flipping the syringe agilely, he held it out, plunger first. “Dispose of that properly,” he ordered, then handed the vial to Eve. “You’ll mark and seal that in our presence?”
As she did, Dorian swiped his fingertip over the drop of blood on the tiny puncture in his flesh, then laid it on his tongue. “Is there anything else?”
“Did you see Miss Kent with anyone in particular, see her leaving with anyone?”
“I can’t say I did. I believe she danced with any number of people. Feel free to ask any of the staff, and I’ll be happy to ask myself.”
“You do that. We’ll need an address, Mr. Vadim.”
“Dorian, please. I’m known as Dorian. I can be reached here. I’m living upstairs at the moment. Let me give you a card.” He waved his fingers, flicked them, and a glossy black card appeared between the index and middle finger. As he passed it to Eve, his fingers brushed down her palm, lingered for just an instant too long. Then he smiled. “I tend to sleep days.”
“I bet. One more thing. Can you verify your whereabouts from midnight to three this morning?”
“I would have been here. As I said, I’m most often here.”
“Anybody vouch for that?”
His lips quirked again, in a kind of smug amusement that put her back up. “I imagine so. You might ask any of the staff or the regulars. Allesseria?” He turned his black gaze from Eve’s face to the bartender. “You were on last night. Didn’t we speak some time after midnight?”
“I was on until two.” Allesseria kept her eyes locked on Dorian’s. “You were, ah, working the floor before I left, came by the bar for a spring water just before I clocked out. At two.”
“There you are. Lieutenant, it’s been a pleasure.” He took her hand, held it firmly. “But I really need to get back to work. Roarke. I hope you’ll both come back, for the entertainment.”
Through the fog that shimmered and curled, he glided off again, easing his way through the crowd. Eve shifted her body, stared hard at the bartender. “You want to tell me why you lied for him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Busily now, Allesseria wiped the bar.
“You don’t see a woman whose face is all over the screen and mags, and she comes in at least twice, hangs with your boss. You don’t make her.” Some of the anger she felt for herself snapped out in her voice. “But you remember Dorian got a spring water at two in the morning.”
“That’s right.”
“I need your full name.”
“You’re going to cost me my job if you don’t back off.”
“Full name,” Eve repeated.
“Allesseria Carter. If you have any more questions, I’m calling a lawyer.”
“That’ll do it for now. You remember anything, get in touch.” Eve laid one of her cards on the bar before she stepped away. “If that wasn’t Kent’s Prince of frigging Darkness pigs are currently dive-bombing Fifth Avenue.”
“Blood will tell,” Roarke said quietly.
“Bet your fine ass.”
Once they were out on the street, Peabody’s sigh was long and heartfelt. “Man. Creepshow—even if the Lord of the Undead is intensely sexy.”
“Looked like another freak to me,” McNab muttered.
“You’re a guy who likes women. If you were a woman who liked men, we’d still be rolling your tongue back into your mouth. He completely smoked, right, Dallas?”
Women had found her father attractive, Eve thought. No matter what he’d done to them.
“I’m sure Tiara Kent thought the same even as he was draining the life out of her. I’m going to call a black-and-white for you. I want you to take the blood sample directly to the lab, wait while it’s logged in.”
“Got it.” Peabody took the sample, stowed it in her bag.
“I’ll run our host, and the bartender. This isn’t his first time around the block—and she was lying about seeing him this morning. Lab comes through quickly enough, we’ll be giving Vadim a very unpleasant wake-up call.”
They separated, and as she walked Eve gave Roarke a quick hip bump. Now that she was on the street, away from Vadim, away from those pulsing lights, she felt herself again. “You’re quiet.”
“Contemplating. He was scoping you, you know. Subtle but quite deliberate.” When she started to jam her hands into her pockets, Roarke took one, brought it casually to his lips. “He wanted to see your reaction—and mine.”
“Must be disappointed we didn’t give him one. Or much of one on your part.”
“More puzzled, I’d think.”
“Okay, why didn’t you slap him back?”
“It was tempting, but more satisfying to let him wonder. In any case, he’s not your type.”
She snorted. “Nah. I don’t go for the tall, dark, gorgeous types who exude sexuality like breath.”
“You don’t go for sociopaths.”
She glanced up at him. He’d seen it, too, she realized. He’d seen at least that much, too. “You got that right.”
“Besides, I’m taller.”
Now she laughed, and because really, what did it hurt, she turned as she climbed the platform to the car, feigned judging his height as she laid her hands on his shoulders. She pressed her lips to his, warm, ripe, real, then eased back. “Yeah, I’d say you’re exactly tall enough to fit my requirements. You drive, ace. I want to start the runs on the
way home.”
She used her PPC, and though it was limited to a mini-screen, Dorian Vadim’s ID photo still had punch. His hair had been shorter when it was taken, but it still brushed past his shoulders. It listed his age at thirty-eight, his birthplace as Budapest, where according to his data, he still had a mother.
It also listed a very impressive sheet.
“Grifting’s a specialty of our suave Mister V,” Eve related. “Lotsa pops there, starting with a juvie record that was never sealed. Bounced around Europe and came to the States, it seems, in his early twenties. Arrests for smuggling—no convictions on that. Illegals, some pops, some questioned and released. Worked as an entertainer—mesmerist and magician. Hmmm. A lot of dropped charges, heavy on the female vics. Was questioned about the disappearance of two women he reputedly bilked. Not enough evidence to arrest, and no DNA in his records.
“Slithered through the system like a snake,” she muttered. “No violence on record, but wits recant or poof with regularity.” She frowned over at Roarke. “You buy into that mesmo stuff?”
“Hypnotism is a proven art, you know Mira uses it in therapy.”
“Yeah, but mostly I think it’s bull.” Still she remembered the odd sensation she’d felt when Dorian had stared into her eyes. Her problem, she told herself. Her personal demons.
“Anyway, the man’s bad news. And he’s got a pattern of victimizing women, wealthy ones particularly.”
She did a quick run on the bartender and found no criminal on Allesseria. “Bartender’s clean. Divorced, with a kid just turning three.” Eve pursed her lips as Roarke drove through the open gates toward home. “I get her in the box, even alone at her own place, I can break her. She’s lying about seeing Dorian. I could snap her statement in five minutes without him around. He scares her.”
“He’s a killer.”
“Yeah, no question.”
“I mean she knows it, or believes it. You’re capable of snapping her statement, and he’s equally capable of snapping her neck—and with a great deal less passion.”
“Wouldn’t disagree. I just wonder why you’d say that after one conversation with him.”
“I would have said it after one look at him. His eyes. He’s a vampire.”
Her mouth dropped open as he stopped the car. She hadn’t managed to get words working with her thoughts until she’d pushed out of the car, rounded the hood to meet him. “You said what?”
“I mean it literally. His type sucks the life out of people, and does it for momentary pleasure, just as effectively as any fictional vampire. And he’s just, darling Eve, as soulless.”
Like her father, Eve thought. Yes, Roarke had seen it, too. He’d seen all of it. There was nothing strange or frightening about recognizing a monster.
It only meant she understood her quarry.
Eve stepped in, pulled off her jacket. She gestured toward Summerset, Roarke’s majordomo, who—as he inevitably did—stood waiting in the foyer in his funereal black suit. “I always figured vampires looked like that. Pale, bony, dour, and dead.” She tossed the jacket on the newel and started up the stairs.
“Will you be having dinner in the dining room like normal human beings this evening?” Summerset asked.
“Got work, and nobody who looks like you should toss around words like ‘normal’.”
“We’ll get something upstairs,” Roarke said placidly.
He strolled with Eve into her office, then immediately whipped around and boxed her against the wall. “I think I’ll start with an appetizer,” he said, then crushed his lips to hers.
Her blood went to instant sizzle. She could all but feel her brains leaking out of her ears as his mouth ravaged hers with a kind of feral impatience that thrilled. Even as she gripped his hips, he was doing torturous things to her body with those quick and clever hands.
She gulped in air, and simply gave herself to the wild and wanton moment. And to him.
She would always give. He knew no matter how much he wanted, she would always be there to give, or take, to meet those endless, urgent needs with her own. Her mouth was a fever on his. A moan poured from her as he tugged her shirt apart, then found that warm, trembling flesh with his lips, his teeth.
The taste of her incited a fresh and mammoth wave of hunger.
Her hands yanked at the hook of his trousers as his yanked at hers. And she pressed erotically against him, core to core.
Her eyes were dark when he looked into them and, for one brilliant moment, went blind when he plunged inside her.
She matched him, beat for frantic beat, riding and racing the violent pleasure as he dragged her arms over her head, as he pinned them there. As he battered them both over the last turbulent crest.
Her breath whistled in and out; he rested his cheek on her hair as he caught his own. And in sweet opposition to the force of their mating, he brushed his lips at her temple, soft as gossamer wings.
“I believe I was a bit more than mildly annoyed by having some poster boy for Dracula hit on my wife in front of my face.”
“Worked for me.” Grateful for the wall behind her, Eve leaned back, managed to focus on Roarke’s eyes. “Feel better?”
“Considerably, thanks.”
“Anytime. You know what, I feel like a big, fat hunk of red meat. How about you?”
He smiled, touched his lips to hers. “I could eat.”
Six
She had an enormous hamburger while she backtracked through Dorian Vadim’s criminal record. She burned up the ’link as she ate, as Dorian hadn’t just slithered through the system, but had wound his way around the country and in and out of Europe while he did so. She spoke to detectives and investigators in Chicago, Boston, Miami, New L.A., East Washington, and several European cities.
She took copious notes, requested files, and made promises to keep other cops in other cities in the loop.
At some point during the process, Roarke wandered out. She’d set up another murder board, typed up her notes, and was talking to the head of security at Tiara Kent’s building when Roarke wandered back in again.
She held up a finger.
“Go back as far as you can. If you see this guy on any of your discs, at any point, I want to know. Yeah, day or night. Thanks.”
She disconnected. “Gist from the cops I’ve talked to across the frigging globe is Vadim is a smart grifter with the conscience and agility of a snake, an ego as big as…how big is Idaho?”
“There are bigger,” Roarke considered, “but I’d say that’s big enough.”
“Okay, we’ll go with Idaho, and an appetite for rich females and illegal substances. I’m damned if he’ll slip through my fingers. Going to wrap him up quick, going to wrap him up tight,” she told Roarke. “If we get him on any of the building’s security discs, it’s one more—ha, ha—nail in his coffin.”
“Then you might be interested in what I ferreted out, regarding his financials.”
Her expression went from intent to annoyed. “I don’t have authorization to ferret in his financials, as yet.”
“Which is why I used the unregistered. I don’t like him,” Roarke said very clearly before Eve could complain.
“Yeah, loud and clear on that. But I don’t need his financial data at this point, and I can’t use anything you found by illegal means, so—”
“So don’t use it. And if you’re not as curious as I was, I’ll keep the information to myself.”
He walked over, opened a wall panel, and got out the brandy. She lasted until he’d poured himself a snifter.
“Damn it. What did you find?”
“He’s not officially listed as the owner of the club, but he owns it—such as it is. He’s built several fronts, and is registered as its manager.”
“Shady,” she commented, “but not strictly illegal.”
“He’s also sunk quite a bit into the club—more, in my opinion, than makes good business sense on an underground establishment. I’d say Idaho might be lacking in s
quare miles, after all. His overhead’s considerably more than his take, particularly considering his payroll.”
“You hacked into his books for Bloodbath?”
“It wasn’t any trouble.” He swirled, then sipped brandy. “Not much of a challenge. He’s losing money on it, every week. Yet his personal finances don’t reflect that. Instead there’s a nice steady build. Nothing that would wave flags, which tells me he’s very likely tucked away other accounts. I only scraped off a few layers on this run.”
“What’s his other income?” Eve wondered, and Roarke smiled.
“That’s a question.”
“Illegals are likely one chute. Bilking, blackmail, extortion. Once a grifter…He could’ve been milking Kent, but if it was just about money, why kill the really rich cow before she runs dry? It’s not just about money,” she said before Roarke could. “That’s a shiny side benefit.”
“Agreed. And I’m going to wager very shiny. I can take a hard look at Kent’s finances, but I suspect she was the type who flung money about like confetti on New Year’s Eve.”
“Yeah, she had hundreds of shoes.”
“I don’t see the correlation, however,” he continued as she rolled her eyes. “With enough time, I could find his hidey-holes, and jibe any unusual income with the same outlay from Kent’s.”
“Given enough time,” Eve repeated. “Hours or days?”
“From the subjects in question, it could take a few days.”
“Crap. Poking there won’t hurt. But that’s not what’s going to get him.”
“Again, we agree.” He strolled over, sat on her desk. He liked it there, where he could look down into those whiskey-toned eyes. Those cop’s eyes. “It may be weight, but it won’t be your hammer. And as for the club, he’s certainly got a second set of books on that, one that includes any exorbitant, and likely illegal membership fees, illegals transactions, and the like. Which I’ll find for you, in time, as well.”
“You’re really handy to have around.” She tapped his knee with her finger. “And not just for the sex.”
“Darling, how sweet. I’ll say the same of you.” He bent down to kiss her lightly—another reason he liked sitting in just that spot. “On Vadim, if he were smarter, he’d be keeping his income and outlay closer on his official records. But he’s not as smart as he thinks he is.”