by J. D. Robb
Peabody was shaky now, and the defense played on that. But that might be a mistake, Eve thought. Screwing with the victim, the only survivor in a series of hideous murders.
“According to your own testimony, Detective, and the statements and testimony of other witnesses to the attack, John Joseph Blue was alone when he assaulted you.”
“That’s correct.”
“Ms. Sanchez was not there at the time you were injured.”
“No, sir. Not physically.”
“According to prior testimony, Ms. Sanchez had never met or spoken with or had contact with the man who attacked you, with John Joseph Blue.”
“That’s not accurate. She had contact with John Blue. Psychically.”
“I would qualify the word contact . Ms. Sanchez had observed, through her gift, violent murders committed by one John Joseph Blue, to which he has confessed. Isn’t it true that Ms. Sanchez came to you voluntarily to offer her assistance in your investigation?”
“No, sir, it’s not.”
“Detective, I have reports in evidence that clearly state Ms. Sanchez volunteered her help, without any fee, to the investigating officers, and that her assistance was accepted. That, in fact, she was instrumental in identifying Blue, and thereby stopping him.”
While he’d spoken, Peabody lifted a water glass, drank deep. Her voice was steady again, a cop’s again when she continued. “No, sir, she did not give the investigative team or the department, or the victims or the city assistance. She, in fact, hindered the investigation by holding back key information in order to kill Annalisa Sommers, which was her primary objective.”
“Your Honor, I ask that this witness’s speculative and inflammatory statement be stricken from the record.”
“Objection.” The PA was on his feet. “This witness is a trained police officer, one of the key members of the investigative team.”
The dance continued, but Eve could see Peabody relax into it now. She’d found her rhythm.
“You’ve got two seconds to let go of my hand before I use the other to punch you,” Eve said mildly.
“Oh. Sorry.” McNab released her, gave a nervy little laugh. “She’s okay, don’t you think?”
“She’s fine.”
There was more, then re-cross. When she stepped down, Peabody was a little pale, but Eve was pleased to see her turn her head, look directly at Celina.
She’d remember that, too, Eve decided. She’d remember she’d stood up, and she’d looked.
“That’s my girl,” McNab said the minute they were outside the courtroom. His arms went around her. “She-Body, you rocked! ”
“More like I was rocky, but I think I came around. And Jesus, I’m glad it’s over.” She rubbed a hand over her belly, mustered up a genuine smile. “Thanks for sticking,” she said to Eve.
“No problem.” Eve checked the time. “Tour’s over in two. Take off, take the personal.”
“I’m okay, I—”
“Nothing’s shaking anyway.” She spotted Nadine Furst, Channel 75’s on-air ace, clicking her way over the tiles in her skinny-heeled boots, her camera in her wake. “At least, nothing official.”
“There she is. How’d it go, Peabody?”
“Okay. I think it went good.”
“You up for a quick one-on-one?”
Eve started to object on principle, then stopped herself. It would probably be good for Peabody to have her say outside the courtroom. And she could trust Nadine.
“I guess. Sure. I can do that.”
“It’s lousy out, but it’d make better screen if we did it on the steps. Give up your girl a minute, McNab.”
“Nope, but you can borrow her.”
“Dallas, looking forward to tomorrow.” They headed for the doors. “I could use a quick one from you, too. The sober, flat-eyed, ‘justice is being served’ kind of thing.”
“No. It’s Peabody’s show. Take the personal,” Eve said to Peabody, and took a look up at the sky before she started down the steps.
At the bottom, she turned, looked back. Nadine was right, it would make good screen—Peabody, damp in the drizzle, on the steps of the courthouse. It’d be something Peabody would want her family to see, how she’d stood there and talked of the job and justice.
Since she liked seeing it herself, she watched a few moments. She turned away again, just in time to see the shove, grab, and go.
“My purse! My purse!”
“Oh, shit,” Eve muttered. She blew out a breath, and gave chase.
* * *
Halfway down the steps, Nadine risked a broken neck by rushing. “Get on her!” she shouted to her camera. “Stay on her. Look at her go!” When Peabody and McNab whizzed by, Nadine all but danced on the courthouse steps. “Don’t lose them, for God’s sake.”
* * *
The snatcher was about six foot, Eve judged, and looked a solid one-ninety. Most of his height was legs, and he was using them. He bowled people over like pins, leaving her to leap over the piles.
Her coat streamed back, leather snapping in the wind.
She didn’t waste her breath shouting for him to stop, identifying herself as the police. His eyes had met hers—as Celina’s had—and they’d recognized the hunt.
He grabbed a glide-cart on the corner—operator and all—and shoved it. Soy dogs skidded onto the ground, drink tubes splatted and burst.
She jigged away from a pedestrian he all but threw at her, then jagged from another. Judging the distance, she pumped her legs, shoved off. Her tackle took him down, sheered them both across the wet sidewalk an inch from the curb, where the brakes of a maxibus screamed like a woman.
Her healing hip cried like a baby at the jolt.
He managed to get one in while she was avoiding being crunched under skidding wheels. She tasted blood when the elbow jammed her jaw.
“Now that was stupid.” She yanked his arms back, slapped on restraints. “That was bone stupid. Now you’ve got assaulting an officer on your tab.”
“Never said cop. How’m I supposed to know? ‘Sides, you were chasing me, you nearly threw me in front of a bus. Police brutality!” He shouted it, humping his body as he struggled to look for some sympathetic bystander. “I’m minding my own and you try to kill me.”
“Minding your own.” Eve turned her head, spat out blood. At least her throbbing jaw took her mind off her hip.
She tugged, pulled out the purse—and another three, along with assorted wallets. “Pretty good haul,” she commented.
He sat up, shrugged, philosophical now. “Holidays. People come out, whatever the hell. Don’t slap the assault on, okay? Come on, cut me one, will ya? It was reflex.”
Eve wiggled her jaw. “You’ve got good ones.”
“You’re fucking fast, gotta admire it.”
She shoved at her wet hair as Peabody and McNab ran up. “Disperse this crowd, will you? And get a black-and-white down here to haul this guy in. Multiple counts, robbery. Seeing as it’s this close to Christmas, I’ll give you a pass on the assault.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Let’s get—get that camera out of my face,” Eve snapped.
McNab busied himself gathering the bags and wallets. “Your lip’s bleeding, Lieutenant.”
“Nah.” She swiped a hand over it. “Bit my own damn tongue.”
“Car’s on its way, sir,” Peabody reported. “Nice pedestrian-hurdling, by the way.”
Eve crouched down to have another word with the snatcher. “If you’d run the other way, we’d be at Central, out of this damn cold drizzle.”
“Yeah, like I’d be that stupid.”
“Stupid enough to do the grab right in front of the courthouse.”
He gave her a sorrowful look. “I couldn’t stop myself. The woman’s swinging the damn purse around, gabbing to the woman walking with her. She practically gave it to me.”
“Right. Tell it to your PD.”
“Lieutenant Dallas?” Nadine, huffing a little, stepped up
. She had a hand clamped over the arm of a woman with huge brown eyes. “This is Leeanne Petrie, whose property you’ve just recovered.”
“Ma’am. I just don’t know how to thank you.”
“Start by not calling me ma’am. We’ll need you to come down to Central, Ms. Petrie, to make a statement and sign for your property.”
“I’ve never had so much excitement. Why, that man just shoved me right down on the ground! I’m from a little place called White Springs—just south of Wichita, Kansas. I’ve never had so much excitement.”
It had to be said. “You’re not in Kansas anymore.”
* * *
Because she pulled rank and ordered Peabody home, straightening out the mugging mess kept her at Central until after shift. Dark had the temperatures dropping, and the incessant drizzle turned into sleet. The now tricky streets turned the drive home into a marathon of annoyance.
Stuck in it, she sipped on ice water to soothe her sore tongue, and let her mind drift. She was a handful of blocks from home when it drifted to Trudy Lombard, and the light went off.
“Not me. Jesus, it’s not about me. Why would it be? Damn it, damn it, damn it.”
She flicked on sirens, shot into vertical. Cursing herself and the snarls that made the maneuver all but suicidal, she engaged her dash link.
“Roarke,” she snapped when Summerset came on. “Is he there yet? Put him on.”
“He’s just come through the gates, hasn’t yet reached the house. If there’s an emergency—”
“Tell him I’ll be there in ten. I need to talk to him. If anyone named Lombard contacts the house, don’t put her through to him. You got that? Don’t put her through.”
She flicked off, whipped her wheel, and nipped back down to the street to narrowly miss a trio offenders.
Son of a bitch! What else would she be after but money? Big, shiny piles of it. And who in the known universe had the biggest piles?
She wasn’t getting away with it. And if he even thought of paying her off to make her go away, Eve vowed she’d personally skin him.
She fishtailed, and roared through the gates of home. Roarke opened the door himself as she braked in front of the house.
“Am I under arrest?” he called out, and circled a ringer in the air. “Sirens, Lieutenant.”
She called them off, slammed the door. “I’m so stupid! I’m a goddamn idiot.”
“If you’re going to talk that way about the woman I love, I’m not going to offer you a drink.”
“It’s you. It was never me. If I hadn’t let her turn me inside out, I’d‘ve known it from the get. Lombard.”
“All right. And what’s this?” He skimmed a finger gently over the faint bruise on her jaw.
“Nothing.” Anger had smothered any lingering pain. “Are you listening to me? I know her. I know the type. She doesn’t do anything without a purpose. Maybe the purpose is jollies, but she didn’t go to all the trouble and expense to come here just to bust my balls. It’s about you.”
“You need to calm down. In the parlor.” He took her arm. “There’s a nice fire. You’ll have some wine.”
“Will you stop .” She slapped his hand off, but he simply shifted and tugged off her wet coat.
“Take a minute, catch your breath,” he advised. “You may not be wanting a drink, but I am. Filthy weather.”
She did take a breath, pressed her hands to her face to steady herself. “I couldn’t think, that was the trouble. Didn’t think. Just reacted. And I know better. She must’ve figured she’d come see me, try to play the reunion card. I was just a kid, and messed up with it. So maybe she banked that I didn’t remember what it had been like with her. Then she can be the long-lost mother, angel of mercy, whatever, grease those wheels so when she tapped me for money, I’d ask you to give it to her.”
“Underestimated you. Here.” He handed her a glass of wine.
“Backup plan.” She took the wine, paced to the hearth with its snapping fire, back again. “Someone like her has one. I’m not receptive, she’ll have a way to go straight to the source. Right to you. Try for sympathy, some hard-luck story. Move to threats if that doesn’t shake the money tree. She’d want a nice fat lump sum, come back for more later, but get a juicy bite right off…”
She took a moment to study his face. “And none of this is news to you.”
“As you said, you’d have come to it yourself right away if you hadn’t been so twisted up.” He lowered his head enough to brush his lips over her jaw. “Come, sit by the fire.”
“Wait, wait.” She grabbed his sleeve. “You didn’t go warn her off. You didn’t go see her.”
“I had and have no intention of going to her. Unless she continues to harass and upset you. Do you know she had eleven other children put in her care over the years? I wonder how many of them she tormented as she did you.”
“You ran her? Of course you ran her.” She turned away. “I’m really slow on this one.”
“It’s taken care of, Eve. Put it out of your mind.”
She kept her back to him, took a slow sip of the wine. “How is it taken care of?”
“She came to my office today. I made it clear that it would be best for all concerned if she went back to Texas and didn’t attempt to contact you again.”
“You spoke to her?” She squeezed her eyes shut against the helpless anger. “You knew who she was, what she was, but you let her in your office.”
“I’ve had worse in there. What did you expect me to do?”
“I expected you’d leave this to me. That you’d understand this is my problem. This is for me to handle.”
“It’s not your problem, but ours—or was. And it was for us to handle. Now it’s done.”
“I don’t want you dealing with my problems, my business.” She whirled around and before either of them knew she intended it, she let the glass fly. Wine and glass splatted and shattered. “This was my personal business.”
“You don’t have personal business from me any longer, any more than I do from you.”
“I don’t need to be shielded, I won’t be shielded. I won’t be tended to.”
“Oh, I see.” His voice softened, a dangerous sign. “So it’s perfectly fine, we’ll say, for me to see to those pesky little details. Can this get wrapped, for instance. But the things that matter, I’m to keep my nose out?”
“It’s not the same. I’m a lousy wife, I get that.” Her throat was clogging up, and her voice thickening as the words fought their way through. “I don’t remember to do things—don’t know how and don’t give a rat’s ass about finding out. But—”
“You’re not a lousy wife, and I’d be the one to judge that. But you are, Eve, an extremely difficult woman. She came to me, she tried to shake me down, and she won’t try it again. I have every right to protect you, and my own interests. So if you want to have one of your snits about it, you’ll have to have it alone.”
“Don’t you walk away from me.” Her fingers actually itched to pick up something precious to throw at him as he started for the doorway. But that was too female, and too foolish. “Don’t you walk away and flick off my feelings.”
He stopped, looked back at her with eyes searing with temper. “Darling Eve, if your feelings weren’t so important to me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If and when I walk away from you, it’s to prevent myself from taking the alternative, which at the moment would be to beat your head against some hard object until a little sense rattles into it again.”
“Were you even going to tell me?”
“I don’t know. There were good reasons on both sides of that, and I was still weighing them. She hurt you, and I won’t have it. That’s simple. For God’s sake, Eve, when I found out about my mother, and went into a spin, didn’t you knock it out of me? Didn’t you tend to me, even stand in front of me?”
“It’s not the same.” Her stomach burned, and the acid of it spewed into words. “What did you get, Roarke? What did you fall into
but people who love and accept you? Good, decent people. And what do they want from you? Not a damn thing. Yeah, you had it rough. Your father killed your mother. But what else did you find out? She loved you. She was a young, innocent girl who loved you. It’s not the same for me. Nobody loved me. Nobody and nothing I came from was decent or innocent or good.”
Her voice hitched, but she bore down, let the rest spew out. “So yeah, you took a hard and nasty slap, and it sent you reeling. But what did you fall into? Right into gold. What else is new?”
He didn’t stop her when she strode from the room. Didn’t go after her when she charged up the steps.
At that moment, he couldn’t think of a single reason why he should.
Chapter 5
THE GYM SEEMED THE OBVIOUS PLACE FOR HIM to work off steam, and he had plenty of it. His shoulder was still weak from wounds he’d incurred a few weeks before, helping his infuriating wife on the job.
It was all right, apparently, for him to risk his bloody life, but not— according to the Book of Eve—to get rid of a fucking blackmailer.
Bollocks to that, he thought. He wasn’t going to stew about it.
It was time, he decided, to punish his body back into shape.
He went for weights rather than one of the holomachines, and programmed a brutal session of reps and sets.
Her solution, he knew, had she headed downstairs rather than up, would have been to activate one of the sparring droids. Then beat the bleeding hell out of it.
To each his own.
Knowing her, she’d be pacing her office, kicking whatever was handy, and cursing his name. She’d have to get over it. Never in his life, he thought as he pumped his way through bench presses, had he known such a rational woman who could flip so quickly and so stupidly into irrational behavior.
What the bloody, buggering hell had she expected him to do? Give her a shout and ask her to pinch that ridiculous Texas fly off his neck for him?
Well, she’d married the wrong man for that, hadn’t she? Too bad for her.
She didn’t want to be protected when she damn well needed protection, didn’t want to be looked after when she was blind with grief and stress? That was too fucking bad for her as well, wasn’t it?