The In Death Collection, Books 26-29

by J. D. Robb

  “Because you’re not nervous or worried about what comes after it. The two of you already changed your lives, made your life. It’s right here in this house.”

  To Eve’s concern Louise’s eyes went damp. “Oh God, I do need you.” She threw her arms around Eve. “That’s right, you’re exactly right. We did, we have. I’m not.”

  Flummoxed, Eve patted Louise’s back. “Okay.”

  “I can worry about the limo being late picking me up at the hotel, or the flowers being off a shade, or what size flutes for the champagne because marrying Charles doesn’t make me nervous at all. It makes me happy and settled and content. Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  “Let’s get out of here. We’ll go down and have some coffee.”

  “I really can’t. I’ve got to get back to work.”

  Louise stepped back, her gray eyes going somber. “It’s that young girl, isn’t it? The one who was raped and murdered in her own bedroom. I heard the report, and they said you were leading the in vestigation.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hope you find him quickly,” Louise said as they walked back downstairs. “Her parents must be devastated.”

  “We’re working some angles.”

  “Then I won’t keep you, even though I wish you could stay. I’m so glad you came by. Now I can be nervous without being nervous about why I’m nervous.”

  “So you say.” Eve paused at the door as something clicked. “What hotel?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Why do you need a car to pick you up at a hotel?”

  Louise shrugged, and her expression turned sheepish. “More obsession. I don’t want Charles to see me before the wedding because of the ridiculous bad-luck myth. But maybe it’s not a myth so, why take the chance? And since I’m going to need all day to get ready and deal with details, I decided I’d stay in a hotel the night before, get my spa services there, have Trina come in to do my nails, hair, makeup, that sort of thing.”

  Here, Eve realized, was something she could do, should do as matron of honor. “Cancel that. You can’t stay in a hotel room, alone, the night before the deal. You can stay at the house, where it’s all happening anyway.” And she thought, here was the major sacrifice for friendship. “Trina can do whatever you need there. Maybe you want a couple of women friends with you. It’s a ritual thing, right?”

  Face glowing, stunned, Louise shot out her hands to grip Eve’s. “That would be absolutely amazing. Absolutely perfect. It would mean a lot to me.”

  “Then it’s done.”

  “Thank you.” Louise hugged Eve again. “Thank you.”

  “Go log it on your board. I’ll see you Friday night.”

  “Five o’clock rehearsal,” Louise called out.

  “Sure.” Did she know that, Eve wondered. Rehearsal? Jesus, they had to do it all twice? She pushed a hand through her hair as she walked back to the car. They’d probably have more charts and time lines, and . . .

  “Shit!” Ignoring the insulted look from the pair of women she passed, Eve snatched out her communicator. “Feeney, check back on the security. See if there’s another glitch, a lag, any anomaly previous to the night of the murder. Not too close,” she added. “He wouldn’t rehearse it, time it, too close to the actual murder.”

  “You want me to pull off this to wade through weeks?”

  “What if he’d been in the house before? Cased it? Wait. Let me talk to MacMasters first, see if he noted any blip.”

  She cut Feeney off, tried MacMasters as she quickened her pace to the car. “Captain, can you tell me if you experienced any problems with your security system over the past six months. Even minor glitches?”

  “No.” His eyes seemed to have sunken into his skull. “I run a system check weekly as a precaution. The upgrades added a few months ago claim that’s unnecessary, but—”

  “What upgrades?” She got behind the wheel.

  “The maintenance company automatically informs us if and when upgrades are available.”

  “When did you last upgrade?”

  “I’m not sure, I think . . . Sometime in March. I coordinated it with our annual maintenance check.”

  “Does the company do the upgrades and the check in house or on site?”

  “Both.”

  “I need the name of your maintenance company.”

  “Security Plus. We’ve used them for years. They’re top-rated. Do you think someone there—”

  “I’m going to cover that angle, Captain. We’re going to cover them all. I’ll get back to you.”

  She pushed her way uptown while she hit Feeney again. “Start in March,” she told him. “MacMasters got an upgrade on the system in March, and his maintenance company came in to add it. Company’s Security Plus, and I’ll run that down.”

  “It would take balls to walk right into the house that way—and brains. He’d get a firsthand look at the system. Where it is, how it works, right on site. But we’ve already checked out the company. It’s what we do. I’ve got the upgrade, and the tech who plugged it in. He’s clean, and he’s twenty years too old to fit our guy. Worked for the company fifteen years.”

  “Damn it. Maybe this guy’s connected. Maybe he’s got the same system, and got the same upgrade. He’d get the same notice. Maybe he doesn’t rehearse on site, but he damn well practiced. Run it anyway. I’ll run down other clients with the same system, the same upgrades.”

  “Save yourself the time. I’ll get a man to run that down. It’ll be quicker.”

  “Get back to me. Wait, shit, wait. Does this company have more than one location?”

  “They’ve got a dozen in the metro area, counting New Jersey.”

  “He could still work for them. Work for them, be a client—or both.” It felt right. “Let’s push this. I’m in the field, then I’m working at home. Send me everything you get.”

  “You asked for it,” Feeney muttered and clicked off.

  13

  TO SAVE TIME, EVE ASSIGNED TWO OF HER DETECTIVES to retrieve the stuffed toy from the crime scene and hand-deliver it to the lab. She wanted to push on the possible connection to the security company.

  When she walked into the house, she gave Summerset one brief glance. “Why don’t you just outfit a droid in one of those funeral director suits and have it lurk in the foyer? It’d be livelier.”

  “Then I would miss your daily attempts at wit.”

  “I only need to attempt as the target comes in at half.” She bounded up the steps, pleased. Half-wit, she thought. Pretty good one.

  She went straight to her office, shedding her jacket on the way to her desk to check her incomings.

  The lengthy list of names from Peach Lapkoff proved the woman fast and efficient. Eve wished she had her on the payroll. Peabody had come through with a list of vendors within the city that carried all the items in question, and added a memo that she’d be in the field checking them.

  She read over the list of Security Plus locations in Manhattan, the data on the tech who’d worked at MacMasters’s, and fought impatience when there was nothing incoming from Yancy before she got coffee.

  With it, she circled her board. “One connection, just one solid link, that’s all I need. If you couldn’t access the house and the system prior to the night of the murder, you’d still want to walk it through, wouldn’t you? You’re so careful, so precise. Working for the company you could access the data without sending up any flag. Or maybe you’re good enough to hack into it from outside.”

  She turned and circled back.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Outside poses too many variables. But maybe you don’t have to do that because the vic’s given you enough data about the layout. That’s not as precise, not as detailed, but it would be enough.”

  She stopped, drinking coffee, rolling up to her toes, back to her heels. “Maybe there’s no glitch for us to find because you could test that on your own. Solid e-skills, but not genius. If you were stellar y
ou could have found a way to bypass the cameras without setting up a flag with a remote before you went in, but you had to do it from the inside, input the virus to corrupt the hard drive. The system’s too good for your skill set.”

  She angled her head as she continued to study the board. “I wonder, I wonder . . . Does it piss you off that you’re good, but not brilliant? Not exceptional enough to bypass the security cams? Not exceptional enough to get past MacMasters’s—the enemy’s—security block. Does that get under your skin? I bet, yeah, I bet that’s a pisser for you. Because he’s rich enough, smart enough, careful enough to have the very best, and you can’t quite slither through the very best.”

  She worked to try to fit some of the new pieces together, then sat, feet up, eyes closed to try to think them together.

  Client’s the smartest way, the safest way, she thought. But the systems are high-dollar—extreme high. And require a private home for install.

  But it doesn’t have to be your home. A friend’s, a relative’s, a client’s. She thought of fresh questions and sat up to nag Feeney again. Incoming signaled and presented her with the list of employees and clients, with a negative cross-reference already done—from Roarke.

  She cross-checked both lists with the fresh data from Columbia, and hit another negative.

  Annoyed she pushed up the pace. “You’re there, you’re in there, you bastard.”

  She circled, paced, sat, worked it a dozen different ways from a dozen different launch points.

  And while she worked, Karlene Robins died.

  In the loft, he checked and rechecked details. He’d logged her out of the building hours before, and had sent her fiancé a very sweet text so she wouldn’t be missed. He dressed, then placed his tools as well as her ’link, her PPC, and her memo book in his bag. Once again, he shut down the cameras, uploaded his virus.

  He walked out of the building and headed home.

  Cop work, Roarke thought, was bloody tedious. He had no doubt he’d be doing considerable more of it very shortly. But when he walked into the house, he was determined he’d be doing none of it until he’d had a decent meal and an hour to clear the buggering e-junk out of his head.

  “This is a change,” Summerset commented. “You coming home late for dinner without notice, and looking annoyed and tired.”

  “Then don’t tempt me to insult you as Eve does.”

  “She’s in her office, and has been since she got home. Is there any progress?”

  “Not nearly enough, considering.”

  He continued up and found her where he’d thought he would, at her desk hunched over data and coffee.

  She pushed to her feet when he came in, but he pointed a finger to stop her before she spoke. “We’re having a meal since all you’ve had is coffee and a candy bar.”

  She blinked, then noted she’d neglected to dispose of the wrapper. “I need to know if—”

  “I’ll tell you what there is to tell you, but I damn well want some food.”

  “Okay.” It occurred to her that he’d had less sleep than she had, and was juggling his work with hers. “I’ll get it.”

  His brows lifted. “Will you now?”

  “Yeah. How about a steak? We can probably both use the boost.”

  “I damn well could.” He reached out as she walked by, stroked her hair. “Thanks for that.”

  While she went into the kitchen, he opened a bottle of wine. Deliberately, he turned his back on her murder board to keep it out of his head for a few minutes. A little clearing-out time, he thought as he sipped.

  His brows rose again when she rolled out the dinner for two on a table when he’d assumed they’d eat at her desk.

  “Let’s eat by the windows,” she said and nodded to the wine as she pushed the table toward them. “I could use a glass of that.”

  He poured a second glass, then went to her, tapped the shallow dent in her chin, kissed her. “Hello, Lieutenant.”

  “Hi, Civilian. Let’s take a breather.”

  “I could use one nearly as much as I can use that red meat.”

  “Okay.” She sat, stabbed her fork into one of the salads she’d programmed with him in mind. “I went by to see Louise at her new place.”

  Now his brows winged up. “Aren’t you full of surprises?”

  “I was almost there anyway, and . . . Okay, I figured she wouldn’t be there so I could just leave a note and get, you know, friend credit.”

  Looking at her, listening to her, he laughed for the first time in hours. “Never change.”

  “Well, it should’ve worked, but she was there. Planting flowers, which who would expect?”

  “Astonishing.”

  “I don’t have to eat sarcasm to recognize the flavor. Anyway, I had to go in and go through the place. Have to say it looks like them. Smooth and sophisticated and now. She’s whacked with happy, which kind of infects anyone within a ten-foot radius.” She stuffed salad in her mouth to get it over with. “Like an airborne virus.”

  “God, you romantic fool. No wonder I adore you.”

  She offered a smirk. “So, while I was infected, she’s talking about how she’s going to stay in a hotel the night before the wedding because she doesn’t want Charles to see her on the day of, and she’s got to get rubbed and polished and painted. I said she should stay here.”

  “She should, of course.”

  “And then I said how she’d probably want her women friends with her. I don’t know where that came from. It just came out of the whacky-happy infection. It wasn’t until I had some distance, and it was too damn late, that I realized one of those women will be Trina. Has to be. So now I’ve opened it all up to a bunch of women with wedding mania, one of whom will come at me—oh yes, she will—with gunk and goo.”

  Her heart, Roarke thought, would always win out over her sense of self-preservation when it came to those who mattered to her.

  “But think of the friend credit you’ll accumulate.”

  “I don’t know if it’s worth it. Plus . . .”

  “Murder,” he said when she trailed off. “You’ve already given me a breather, and red meat. You don’t have to stop yourself from talking about it.”

  “You looked tired and irritable, and you almost never do. That’s my job.”

  He thought of Summerset’s “annoyed and tired” and felt the scowl take hold before he could stop it. “I was both.”

  “I’m better at it.”

  He laughed again. “Got me there. I enjoy e-work as a rule, particularly when there’s a challenge involved. But this is like trying to unravel a ball of string one thread at a time.”

  “Maybe we won’t need it. I have other threads, and I’m tying them together. Yancy’s working on his face. I’ve got various contact points, and when I pin him on one, there’ll be others. I think he may be in the e-business, or he can afford a lot of toys. Including the same security system involved. It’s your system. You update it regularly.”

  “As technology emerges, refinements, options, yes. A customer would be given the option to add any or all of the new features or refinements.”

  “Which MacMasters did, in March. The timing’s too damn good. A couple of weeks later, Deena meets her killer. I can’t connect the killer or MacMasters to the tech who did the updates, but there’s going to be one, to him or to the company. Security Plus.”

  “It’s not mine. We bid out service and maintenance to companies, and customers have the option of choosing from them, or at their risk, using an independent. Security Plus is a solid organization, and a service center for most top-of-the-line systems.”

  “But you upgraded the system in March.”

  “I can check.”

  “While you’re at it, can you find out who bought the same system as MacMasters within the last six months? Year,” she corrected. “A year, and had the same upgrades done in March. He’s spent a lot of time on this project. He’d get the upgrades, too. He’d get every one of them.”


  “I’ll warn you it sells very well to a certain level of clientele, and most will spring for the upgrades.”

  “Something’s going to cross eventually. The system, his employment, his education, his face, his motive. It’s going to cross.” It damn well had to cross. “Then it’s going to cross again and again. Then we’re going to take that ball of string and shove it down his throat.”

  “I look forward to helping with that. For the girl, her parents, for you. And for the very selfish reason the fucker compromised my system.”

  “All good reasons.”

  “I’ll get the data for you. It might take a bit.”

  She indulged in another sip of wine. “Why don’t you set up a run and search, and we’ll finish the breather with a swim.”

  He angled his head. “A swim? Would that be a euphemism?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll set it up.”

  She wanted the water, a good, strong swim—both literally and euphemistically. She needed the physical to offset the hours and hours of thinking. Maybe if she stopped thinking for just a little while, she’d go back to it with more clarity.

  Too many threads, she decided. She needed to find one, get a good grip on it. When she pulled, the rest would unravel.

  And, she admitted, she was still thinking.

  She didn’t bother with a suit, and instead stripped down in the moist, fragrant heat, and dived into the deep blue water. She felt him spear in beside her, and as she surfaced began to cut through the water. She knew him, and his competitive nature. He’d match her pace, push himself—as they were matched in speed and ability in the water.

  They hit the wall at the same time, flipped, and raced back. The rhythm, fast, hard—beat striking beat—did its job. Impossible to think when every muscle worked to its full potential, when the heart began to pound from the exertion.

  At five laps they were still stroke for stroke, kick for kick.

  She pushed, a little more, and a little more yet, slicing through the deep, dreamy blue, stretching for another inch while the water flew up from the power of scissoring legs. A little faster, a little harder, digging down for the speed and the power, she caught the blur of his face as she tipped hers up to grab air.