The In Death Collection, Books 26-29

by J. D. Robb

  “Funny, I was thinking the same. Except about the possible sex slaves.”

  “Guys think about sex slaves more than women do. Probably.”

  “I can only suppose. He’d have wiped anything on his equipment.”

  “Unless he’s stupid, sure.” Feeney took out the bag of nuts in his pocket, rattled it. Offered it to Eve. “We’ll be able to tell if he wiped, maybe find the echoes.”

  Because they were there, she took a couple of sugared almonds, crunched. “But if he had unregistered, he’d have kept anything incriminating on that.”

  “Unless, again, stupid.”

  “I guess it was too much to hope we’d find Coltraine’s ring tucked into a box in his sock drawer.”

  “Worth a shot. Guy’s got the shady on him.” Feeney jutted a chin toward the building. “Slicked over more than his old man, but he’s got the shady on him.”

  “Yeah, he does. But shady’s a leap away from cop killer. I’m going to work from home. You get anything, I want to hear about it.”

  “Back at you. I didn’t know the lady, but she was a badge. And there’s Morris. You got EDD, and me, round the clock until we put this one away.”

  She walked over to Peabody, who was in a huddle with her cohab, McNab, and his EDD pal, Callendar.

  McNab stood jingling whatever would jingle in two of the pockets of his maxicargo fire-red pants. His blond hair was braided back from his thin, pretty face to hang down the back of his lightweight daffodil-yellow jacket. Beside him, Callendar was a busty explosion of color in a zigzag-patterned T-shirt, floppy overshirt, and glossy pants.

  “Pizza hits all the notes.” Callendar chomped on gum so her jaw movements sent the huge triangles dangling from her ears jumping. “You buy.”

  “I’m on for pizza, but the tab’s a grab.” McNab held out a fist, and Eve’s eyes narrowed as the two e-detectives went through the first round of Rock Paper Scissors.

  “Gee, I’m sorry to interrupt playtime, but there’s this pesky chore of hunting down a cop killer.”

  “We’re on it.” McNab turned earnest green eyes to hers. “We’re going to hunker down in the pen. We’re just settling on the fuel and the buy.”

  “I cleared the night for it, Lieutenant,” Callendar told her. “But you gotta prime the pump. We took eight desk units, twelve wall, and sixteen portables out of those digs. Anything on there bouncing to Detective Coltraine, we’re going to find it.”

  But pumps had to be primed. Eve dug into her own pockets. “Pizza’s on me. Peabody, I’m working from home. You can coordinate the search-and-seizure results, log it all in. Cross all the t’s. After that, choose where you’re most useful.”

  “Got that. One thing.” She quick-stepped with Eve toward Eve’s vehicle. “If Ricker and company hauled equipment or anything out of there, it should be on the building’s security discs. So we should—”

  “I’ve got them. I’m going to scan them at home.”

  “Oh.” Peabody’s face registered mild disappointment. “I guess I should’ve figured you’d think of it. I just didn’t want to say anything about it while we were inside, and on record.”

  “It’s good you thought of it.”

  “Well. Oh, and one more thing. If you think we should reschedule Louise’s bridal shower and all, I can take care of it.”

  “Crap.” Eve pushed a hand through her hair. “I forgot about it.” Again. “No, just leave it. We’ll see. If you talk to Nadine about that, and she uses it to try to pump you—”

  “The investigation is active and ongoing. We’re pursuing all leads. Blah, blah.”

  “Okay then.” Eve climbed into her car.

  She made the tail within three blocks. In fact, it was so sloppy a shadow, she felt insulted.

  Late-model, nondescript black sedan. Tinted windows. New York plates. She noted the plate numbers, turned to add a few blocks to her drive home. The sedan made the turn, huddled back two car lengths. She considered pulling over, seeing if her tail would follow suit to drive past, then scramble to double back.

  Instead, she allowed herself to be caught at the next light while the river of pedestrians flowed in front of her. Why would Ricker hire such a shitty tail? she wondered. A man with his connections, his reach ought to be able to put someone with more skill, and more technology on her.

  A homer on her car—or at the least a three-point tail that could mix it up. In this traffic, she might’ve missed it. Stupid, amateur move, she decided. Maybe she’d drive around awhile, waste their time, see if they’d swing up close enough so she could use her car to barricade then roust them.

  Meanwhile, she might as well find out who owned the sedan.

  She engaged her dash comp. “Run vehicle registration, New York. Eight, six, three, Zulu, Bravo, Echo.”

  Acknowledged. Working . . .

  When the light turned, she eased across the crosswalk, flicked a glance in the rearview.

  She caught the van out of the corner of her eye. Pinned by cross traffic, she had nowhere to turn. As it barrelled down on her, she punched the accelerator and hit vertical.

  “Come on, you piece of shit. Come on.” For an instant, she thought she might make it, but the speeding van caught her sluggishly-lifting rear wheels. The impact slapped her back in the seat. As the car spun, executed a clumsy nosedive toward Madison Avenue, it filled with safety gel.

  She thought: Fuck. And crashed.

  She heard it—sounds muffled by the gel—the smash, crunch, screech. She went into another sloping three-sixty as the car that had been directly behind her at the light slammed her front fender. Or more accurately, she slammed it. Despite the gel, she felt the jolt slap through her whole body.

  Dizzy, disoriented, she shoved out of the car, fumbled for her weapon. People thronged around her, with everyone talking at once through the bells gonging in her head.

  “Get back, stay back. I’m a cop.” She rushed toward the wrecked van. Her quick scan showed her the sedan, streaming sedately up Madison.

  Gone, baby. Gone.

  Blood in her eye, literally and figuratively, she approached the door of the van, leading with her weapon. And found the cab empty.

  “They ran!” One of the eager witnesses shouted it at her. “Two men. I saw them run that way.” The witness pointed east, toward Park.

  “I think one was a woman,” another witness weighed in. “God, they just rammed you, then took off.”

  “They were white guys.”

  “One was Hispanic.”

  “They had dark hair.”

  “One was blond.”

  Eve carved through the helpful crowd, yanked open the rear doors. In disgust, she studied the surveillance equipment.

  The tail hadn’t been stupid and sloppy. She had.

  She yanked out her communicator. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, officer-involved vehicular, Madison and . . . Seventy-fourth. Require assistance.” She elbowed her way back to the car that had hit her after she’d crashed. A woman sat inside, blinking.

  “Ma’am? Ma’am? Are you injured?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think.” With glassy eyes and pinprick pupils, the woman stared at her. “What happened?”

  “Require medical assistance for civilian,” she added, then turned to look at her crunched, mangled vehicle.

  “Goddamn it,” she muttered. “Requisitions is going to take out a contract on me.”

  The information he’d gotten claimed she wasn’t hurt. But Roarke took no one’s word when it came to his wife—not even hers. Of course, he thought, with a simmering anger he used to cover fear, she hadn’t been the one to contact him. Nor did she answer on her pocket ’link, as he’d been trying it since he’d started across town.

  When he reached the barricade, he simply left his car where it was. They could bloody well tow it, he thought. And bill him.

  He covered the rest of the ground on foot, moving fast.

  He saw the wreck first—the accordion pleats of metal, the sh
attered glass, bitten chunks of fiberglass.

  Fear rolled over the anger like lava.

  Then he saw her, on her feet. Standing. Whole. And arguing, by the look of it, with one of the medical technicians in front of an ambulance.

  “I’m not hurt. I don’t need to be examined, and I’m sure as hell not getting in that bus. The safety gel discharged. Can you see how much I’m wearing? How’s the civilian? How’s the woman?”

  “Shaken up is all,” the MT told her. “But we’re taking her in, getting her looked over. You ought to come in. Your eyes look shocky to me.”

  “My eyes are not shocky. My eyes are pissed. Now go away and . . .” She trailed off when she spotted Roarke, and he noted her eyes went from pissed to baffled.

  He walked straight to her, controlled the terrible urge to simply sweep her up and away. He skimmed his finger beside the shallow cut, and the blueing around it that marred her forehead.

  “Is this the worst of it then?” he asked her.

  “Yeah. How did you—”

  “I’ll see to her,” he told the MT. “If she needs to go in for treatment or exam, I’ll see to that.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “She’s my wife.”

  “Yeah?” the MT repeated. “Good luck, buddy.”

  “Did you have to—”

  “Yes. My car’s behind the barricade. Let’s go.”

  “I can’t leave the scene yet. I haven’t cleared everything, and I need to make sure the responding officers have—”

  He rounded on her, slowly, very slowly. “Could you leave the scene if you were unconscious and being transported to the nearest hospital or health center?”

  The narrowed glare she aimed at him didn’t penetrate. “Let’s go,” he repeated.

  “A minute. Officer Laney, I appreciate your prompt response.”

  “Wish it could’ve been sooner, Lieutenant, and we’d busted the assholes.” Laney, a hawk-eyed black female, glowered at the van currently being loaded on a flatbed. “The sweepers’ll go over every inch of it, and the sedan, too. You ought to go with the MTs, sir. You took a hell of a ride.”

  “I’m just going to go home. Thanks.” She turned back to Roarke, walked with him. “I’m not hurt.”

  “Most people who aren’t hurt aren’t bleeding.”

  “I banged my head, that’s all. Jeez, if I’d known you were driving home this way and would see that, I’d have tagged you first.” She glanced back, winced at the unholy mess in the intersection. “It looks worse than it is. Personal injurywise. Let me get them to clear us through here.”

  She walked to one of the uniforms at the barricade, had a short conversation. When she turned back, saw Roarke opening the door of his rich-guy’s car for her, she winced again.

  “Don’t, ah, pet or pat me or anything until we’re out of here. It makes me look weenie.”

  “Far be it from me.” He got behind the wheel, threaded through the opening the uniform made for him. He headed up Madison to circle the great park, and head home.

  “What happened?”

  “I was an idiot. Fell for it. Stupid. Goddamn it.”

  “Other than that, what happened?”

  “Did a search and seize on Ricker’s place, which he was expecting. Still, it had to be done. I split off after, to head home, work from there. Spotted a tail. I should’ve known. It was sloppy, obvious, and I got smug. Had my attention on the tail, and verifying the registration, start to cross at the light, and wham.”

  She slapped her hands together for emphasis, and the movement had the wound on her head throbbing in double time. She hunched, and resisted poking at it since Roarke would notice.

  “Then this van comes out of nowhere, laying for me. I punched it, over and up, but a vehicle like that, it doesn’t respond like the freaking wind. So he caught my rear wheels, sent me into a dive. I crash, wreck my ride. The woman behind me at the light catches my fender, sends me into another spin. I’m padded in there, but Jesus, round and round. Meanwhile, the guys—or guy and a woman—who may be white, or Hispanic, may be goddamn aliens from the planet Vulcan according to witnesses—are out and gone before I can get out of the car. The sedan’s shooting up Madison and was dumped on Eighty-sixth and Third. No wits forthcoming there, so far.”

  Since he seemed to be watching traffic, she did a cautious little poke at her throbbing forehead. And, of course, pushed the throb to triple time.

  “Leave it be,” Roarke said mildly.

  Annoyed, embarrassed, she dropped her hand. “The van was reported stolen by some delivery company in the Bronx this morning,” she continued. “The sedan is registered to a guy in Queens, and according to his wife and his boss, he’s in Cleveland on business, and has been for two days. The vehicle was boosted from long-term parking at the transpo center in Queens.”

  She slumped down in her seat. “Damn it.”

  “It’s a stupid way to try to kill you,” Roarke said after a few moments.

  “They weren’t trying to kill me. Just mess me up, shake me up, screw me up. Good job. But what’s the point?” She pushed up in her seat again. “Even if you mess me up, the investigation’s ongoing. We’ve got the electronics from Ricker’s. I’ve got the security discs. It’s not like we’re going to say, oooh, somebody wrecked Dallas’s ride, so we’ve got to shut down our investigation and hide.”

  “Why didn’t you answer your ’link?”

  “My ’link? It didn’t signal.” She dug it out of her pocket, scowled at it. “It’s dead. Must’ve gotten gunked up. Nature of the crash. The gel just exploded. Not just cushy bags, but the gunk. Everywhere.” She scratched her head and rained little specks of blue gel out of her hair. “See?”

  “I’m grateful for it.”

  She gave herself the indulgence of a sulk. “They’ll never put that vehicle back together. It’s the best one I’ve ever had. Now it’s trashed.”

  “A worry for another day.”

  He drove through the gates, stopped. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be a weenie now, as I intend to pat and pet.”

  “I’m really okay.”

  He drew her in, held her, breathed her. “I’m not, so you’ll have to give me the next bloody minute or two.”

  He turned his lips to her cheek, then touched them lightly to her injured forehead. Then found her mouth, and gave way to some of the fear.

  “I’m sorry.” She cupped his face, moved him back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about you coming that way, coming in on that. Getting scared that way. I’d’ve been scared if it’d been vice versa.”

  “Peabody contacted me.” He pressed his finger to her lips now before she could curse. “To assure me you were all right, not seriously hurt. She was afraid they’d flash it on the media reports, on traffic, on something, and I’d hear about it that way. She didn’t want me to worry.”

  “And I didn’t think of it. Sorry again.”

  “You were a little preoccupied. You’ll tell me the truth now. Is the bump on the head all of it?”

  “Pretty sure. I’m a little sore from being jostled around. Got a little queasy and dizzy from the dive and spin. That’s passed.”

  “Well, then, we’ll go in and fix you up.”

  “We being you, right? Not His Scariness.”

  “As long as there’s nothing serious, we shouldn’t need Summerset.”

  “That’s what I say all the time, we shouldn’t need Summerset. But do you listen?”

  He smiled, kissed her hand, and drove to the house.

  She was prepared for the once-over from the black crow of the foyer. Summerset didn’t disappoint. “I see you’ve destroyed another police vehicle. Perhaps you now hold the record.”

  Because she was afraid she just might, Eve only curled her lip and started up the stairs. Beside her, Roarke caught the inquiry in Summerset’s eyes, shook his head.

  Summerset crouched to stroke the cat. “She’s all right. Just a bump or two. He’ll see to her. You stay with me u
ntil she’s more herself. Not one nasty comment from her.” Summerset tsked as he and Galahad walked back toward the kitchen. “I’m sure she’ll be more herself tomorrow.”

  Upstairs, Eve took the blocker Roarke gave her without protest, and sat through his ministrations of her head wound. There had been a time, they both knew, she’d have fought him on both. So when he offered her a soother, and she refused, he simply nodded.

  “You’ll feel better for a soak in the tub.”

  “You want to see me naked.”

  “At every moment of every day.” He went into the bathroom, ordered the tub to fill at the boiling temperature she preferred. He added salts of some sort to the water, then turned where she waited and began to undress her himself.

  “Getting in with me?”

  “I’m not, no. Though, tempting. You’ll soak, use the VR for a relaxation program. Then you’ll eat something soothing.” Every inch he undressed he studied for bruises, swelling, and was relieved to find none. “As it’s the alternative to a trip to the hospital, you’ll obey orders like a good girl.”

  “I’d rather you soak with me, and maybe try out a dual VR. Something sexy. And I could be a bad girl.”

  He arched a brow. “You’re trying to take my mind off the fact you’ve been hurt. It’s a damn good attempt.” He gave her a light, almost paternal kiss. “In you go, Lieutenant. Alone.”

  “You’re turning down sex. Maybe you’re the one who got knocked on the head.” But she stepped into the frothy, swirling water of the wide tub, and couldn’t stop the moan of pleasure. “Okay, yeah, this is good.”

  He took VR goggles out of a drawer, set a program. “Relax.”

  “Am.”

  He slid the goggles on her, heard her sigh. He got himself a glass of wine, as good as a soother, he thought. And leaning against the door, he sipped it slowly, and watched her while she soaked away the aches.

  Home, he told himself. She was home and whole and safe.

  10

  RELAXED, RESTED, EVE BUNDLED INTO A ROBE. She stepped to the mirror, scooping her hair back to examine the cut on her forehead. Not bad, she decided, and pulled her bangs over it. You could hardly see it.