Brazen Virtue

by Nora Roberts

  Grace wrinkled her nose. “She’d have to like doing that?”

  “She’d love doing that.”

  “Sounds like you’d have to find some nice Nebraskan farm girl who’d been out of touch the last ten years.”

  “This is my fantasy, remember?”

  Her lips curved again. “Sorry. Go on.”

  “Every night when I got home, she’d be waiting. We’d sit down, put our feet up, and talk. Not about my work. I wouldn’t want that to touch her. She’d be too fragile. When it was time for me to retire, we’d just putter around the house together.” He stroked a hand down her hair, then cupped it under her chin. As the seconds passed he simply studied her, the strong bones, the big eyes and flyaway hair. “You’re not that woman, Grace.”

  She felt one very strong, very sharp moment of regret. “No, I’m not.”

  “But you’re the only one I want.” He touched his lips to hers in the soft, gentle way that made her pulse flutter. “You see, you screwed up my plans. I’ve got to thank you.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and settled in.

  GRACE AWOKE IN ED’S arms at dawn. The sheets were up to her nose and her head was nestled against his chest. The first thing she heard was the slow, steady beat of his heart. It made her smile. Soft and hazy, the light trickled in the windows, sweetened by the first birdcalls of morning. Her legs were tangled with his so that the warmth and security reached all the way to her toes.

  Turning her head, she pressed a kiss to his chest. She wondered if there were a woman in the world who wouldn’t want to wake this way, content and secure in her lover’s arms.

  He stirred and drew her a bit closer. His body was so hard, the power so controlled. Where her flesh rested against his it was hot and damp and sensitized. Before the last mists of sleep had cleared, she was aroused.

  On a sigh, she ran her hands over him, exploring, testing, enjoying. Still lazy, she let her lips skim over his flesh. When she felt his heartbeat accelerate, she murmured in satisfaction. With a half smile, she turned her head to look at him.

  His eyes were intense, dark, then everything blurred when he pulled her up to cover her mouth with his. No gentleness this time; only demand and desperation. The strength was as raw as the need. Grace was swept away on a wave of panicky excitement.

  The control he had always relied upon was gone. He was a man who moved carefully, all too aware of his own size and strength. But not now. They rolled over the bed as if chained together and he took exactly what he wanted.

  She was trembling, but not weak. With each second that passed, her passion grew, so that she met demand with demand. He’d shown her tenderness and a deep-seated respect she could only marvel at. Now he showed her the dark and dangerous side of his love.

  With his arms braced on either side of her head, he drove himself into her. Her fingers, slick with sweat, slipped down him, then found purchase and dug in. In the end they found more than release. They found deliverance.

  She was still gasping when he lowered himself to her. His head nestled between her breasts, her hands tangled in his hair. “I think I found the substitute for coffee,” she managed to say, then began to laugh.

  “Nothing funny about caffeine,” he muttered. “It’ll kill you.”

  “No, I was just thinking if this keeps up I could write my own training manual.” Stretching her arms over her head, she yawned. “I wonder if my agent could market it.”

  He lifted his head so that the tip of his beard tickled her skin. “Stick to mysteries.” He started to say something else, when the radio beside the bed went on with a blast of rock. “Christ, how can you wake up to that?”

  “No one gets the blood moving like Tina Turner.”

  Ed picked her up, turned her around, and laid her against the pillows. “Why don’t you get some more sleep? I’ve got to get ready for work.”

  She kept her arms around his neck. He was so cute when he tried to pamper. “I’d rather take a shower with you.”

  Ed switched Tina off in midhowl, then carried Grace into the bath.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  A HALF HOUR LATER, she was sitting at the kitchen table going through yesterday’s mail while Ed made oatmeal. “Sure I can’t talk you into a moldy Danish?”

  “Not a chance. I threw them out.”

  Grace glanced up. “They only had green stuff on one corner.” With a shrug, she went back to the mail. “Ah, looks like royalties. It’s that time of the year again.” She slit open the envelope, set the check aside, and studied the forms. “Thank God old G. B.’s still pulling through. How about some cookies?”

  “Grace, one of these days we’re going to have a serious talk about your diet.”

  “I have no diet.”

  “Exactly.”

  She watched as he spooned oatmeal into the bowl he’d set in front of her. “You’re too good to me.”

  “I know.” Grinning, he switched to his own bowl. As he began to scoop oatmeal from the pan, his gaze landed on the check Grace had set aside. Oatmeal landed with a plop on the table.

  “Missed,” she said lightly and tasted.

  “You, ah, get many of these?”

  “Of what? Oh, royalty checks? Twice a year, God bless them every one.” She was hungrier than she’d thought and took a real spoonful. If she didn’t watch herself, Grace mused, she might get to like this stuff. “Plus the advances, of course. You know, this wouldn’t be half bad with some sugar.” She started to reach for the bowl when she noticed his expression. “Something wrong?”

  “What? No.” After setting the pan aside, he got a rag to wipe up the spill. “I guess I didn’t realize how much money you could make writing.”

  “It’s a crap shoot. Sometimes you get lucky.” She was on her first cup of coffee, but still she noticed he was concentrating very hard on wiping up one blob of oatmeal. “Is it a problem?”

  He thought of the house next door, the one he’d saved for. She could have bought it with loose change. “I don’t know. I guess it shouldn’t be.”

  She hadn’t expected this. Not from him. The truth was Grace was careless with money, not negligent in the way of the truly rich, but careless, thoughtless. She’d been the same when she’d been poor.

  “No, it shouldn’t. Over the last few years writing’s made me rich. That’s not why I started writing. That’s not why I’m still writing. I’d hate to think that would be the reason you’d change your mind about me.”

  “Mostly I feel like an idiot thinking you’d be happy here, in a place like this, with me.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she frowned up at him. “That’s probably the first really stupid thing I’ve heard you say. I may not know what’s right yet, for either of us, but when I do, the place won’t mean a damn. Now why don’t you shut up? Your feet are too big to fit comfortably in your mouth.” After shoving the mail aside, she picked up the paper. The first thing she saw when she unfolded it was the composite drawing of Kathleen’s killer.

  “You guys work fast,” she said softly.

  “We wanted to get it out. They’ll flash it on TV today off and on. It gives us something solid to take to the press conference.”

  “He could be almost anyone.”

  “Mrs. Morrison wasn’t able to pull in many details.” He didn’t like the way Grace was studying the drawing, as if she was memorizing every line and curve. “She thinks she got the shape of the face and the eyes.”

  “He’s just a kid. If you combed the high schools in the area you could find a couple hundred kids who come close to this description.” Because her stomach was churning, she rose to pour some water. But Ed had been right. She’d memorized the face. With or without the sketch, she wouldn’t forget it. “A kid,” she repeated. “I can’t believe some teenager did that to Kathleen.”

  “Not all teenagers go to proms and pizza parlors, Grace.”

  “I’m not a fool.” Abruptly furious, she whirled on him. “I know what’s out there, dammit. Maybe I don�
��t like to live my life checking dark alleys and dirty corners, but I know. I put it on paper every day, and if I’m naive it’s by choice. First I have to accept the fact that my sister was murdered, now I have to accept that she was murdered—raped, beaten, and murdered—by some juvenile delinquent.”

  “Psychotic,” Ed corrected very quietly. “Insanity isn’t picky about age-groups.”

  Setting her jaw, she walked back to the paper. She’d said she wanted a picture; now she had one, however vague. She would study it. She would cut the goddamn thing out and stick it on her bedroom wall. When she was done, she’d know that face as well as her own.

  “I can tell you one thing, I didn’t talk to any teenagers last night. I listened to every voice over that phone, every nuance, every tone. I’d have recognized someone this young.”

  “Voices change by the time a kid hits twelve or thirteen.” When she reached for a cigarette, he nearly winced. She couldn’t keep living off tobacco and coffee.

  “It’s not just the depth of the voice, it’s the rap, it’s the phrasing. Dialogue’s one of my specialties.” Struggling to calm herself, she ran her hands over her face. “I’d have recognized a kid.”

  “Maybe. Maybe you would have. You pick up details and log them in. I’ve noticed.”

  “Tools of the trade,” she muttered. She forgot the cigarette as she studied the picture. There were details missing there. If she looked hard enough, long enough, she might be able to flesh them out, just as she did a character conceived in her own mind. “His hair’s short. Military, conservative. Doesn’t look like a street kid.”

  He’d thought the same thing, but a haircut wasn’t going to narrow the field. “Back off a little, Grace.”

  “I’m involved.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can be objective about all of this.” He turned the paper facedown. “Or that I can be. Dammit, this is my job and you’re playing hell with it.”

  “How?”

  “How?” He pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger and nearly laughed. “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’m crazy about you. While I’m still working my feet out of my mouth, I might as well say it all. I don’t like thinking about you talking to those men.”

  She ran her tongue over her teeth. “I see.”

  “The fact is, I hate it. I can understand why you’re doing it, and from a cop’s standpoint, I can see the advantage. But—”

  “You’re jealous.”

  “Like hell.”

  “Yes, you are.” She patted his hand. “Thanks. Tell you what, if any of them gets me excited, I’ll come looking for you.”

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “Christ, Ed, it has to be. Because I’ll drive myself crazy otherwise. I don’t know if I can make you understand, but it was weird listening to them, knowing someone else was listening too. I sat there concentrating on every voice that came over the phone and wondering what the others, the ones who were listening in, taping the evidence, were thinking.” She let out a breath, and her honesty. “I guess I wondered what you’d have thought if you’d been listening too. Because of that I concentrated harder.” Deliberately she turned the paper over again and looked down at the composite. “I have to look at the ridiculous side of it, and at the same time remember why. You see, I’ll know if I hear him. I can promise you that.”

  But Ed was just looking at her. Something she’d said had started a new train of thought. It made sense. Maybe the best sense. He was itching to go when he heard the knock on the front door. “That should be my relief. You going to be okay?”

  “Sure. I’m going to try to work. I figure I’ll do better if I get back to my routine.”

  “You can call me if you need to. If I’m not in, the desk knows how to reach me.”

  “I’ll be fine, really.”

  He tilted her chin up. “Call me anyway.”

  “Okay. Get out of here before the bad guys get away.”

  Chapter 14

  BEN WAS ALREADY HIP-DEEP in phone calls and paperwork when Ed came into the station. Spotting his partner, Ben swallowed the better part of a powdered doughnut. “I know,” he began as he put a hand over the receiver. “Your alarm didn’t go off. You had a flat tire. The dog ate your shield.”

  “I stopped by Tess’s office,” Ed said.

  The tone, even more than the statement, had Ben straightening at his desk. “I’ll get back to you,” he said into the receiver, then hung up. “Why?”

  “Something Grace said this morning.” After a quick scan of the messages and files on his desk, Ed decided they could wait. “I wanted to run the idea by Tess, see if she thought it fit into the psychiatric profile.”

  “And?”

  “Bingo. Remember Billings? Used to work Robbery?”

  “Sure, pain in the ass. He went private a couple years ago. Surveillance specialist.”

  “Let’s pay him a visit.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  LOOKS LIKE BUGS PAY,” Ben observed as he glanced around Billings’s office. The walls were covered in ivory silk and the pewter-colored carpet flowed right up to the ankles. There were a couple of paintings on the walls Ben thought Tess would like. French and muted. Outside the wide, tinted windows was a classy view of the Potomac.

  “The private sector, my man.” Billings pushed a button on his desk and sent a panel sliding back to reveal a range of television monitors. “The world’s my oyster. Anytime you want to ditch public service, give me a call. Always willing to give a couple of bright boys a break.”

  As Ben had said, Billings always had been a pain in the ass. Disregarding it, Ed settled on the corner of his desk. “Nice setup.”

  The only thing Billings liked better than playing hightech “I Spy” was to brag. “This ain’t the half of it. I’ve got five offices on this floor and I’m thinking about opening another branch. Politics, friends and neighbors.” Billings gestured with his long, narrow hands. “In this town someone’s always willing to shell out to get the edge on the next guy.”

  “Dirty business, Billings.”

  He only grinned at Ben. He’d had two thousand dollars’ worth of bridgework done recently and his teeth marched as straight as a Marine band. “Yeah, ain’t it just? So what are two of the department’s finest doing here? Want me to find out who’s playing with the commissioner when his wife’s out of town?”

  “Maybe some other time,” Ed told him.

  “Professional discount for you, Jackson.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind. Meanwhile, I’d like to tell you a little story.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Say we’ve got a snooper, he’s smart but wired wrong. He likes to listen. You know about that.”

  “Sure.” Billings leaned back in his custom-made chair.

  “He likes to listen to women,” Ben continued. “He likes to listen to them talk sex, but he doesn’t talk back. He hits a gold mine when he locks into fantasy calls. Now he can just sit there and listen, pick out the voice that turns him on, and he listens for hours while she talks to other men. Can he do that, Billings, without the other guy or the woman knowing about it?”

  “If he’s got the right equipment, he can tap into any conversation he wants. I’ve got some stuff in stock that could plug you in from here to the West Coast, but it costs.” He was interested. Anything that had to do with snooping interested him. Billings would have gone into espionage if he could have found a government to trust him. “What are you guys working on?”

  “Let’s just take the story a step further.” Ben picked up a crystal pyramid from Billings’s desk and examined the facets. “If this snooper wanted to find one of the women—he doesn’t know her name or where she lives or what she looks like, but he wants a face-to-face and all he’s got is the voice and the tap—can he get to her?”

  “Does he have brains?”

  “You tell me.”

  “If he’s got brains and a good PC the world’s his cupcake. Give me your phone number,
Paris.” Billings swung around to his workstation and tapped in the number Ben rattled off. The machine clicked and hummed as Billings programmed it. “Unlisted,” he muttered. “Only makes it more of a challenge.”

  Ben lit a cigarette. Before it was smoked halfway to the filter, his address came up on the screen.

  “Look familiar?” Billings asked him.

  “Can anybody do that?” Ben asked him.

  “Any decent hacker. Let me tell you something, with this baby and a little imagination, I can find out anything. Give me another minute.” Using Ben’s name and address, he began to work again. “Checking account balance is a little low, Paris. I wouldn’t write anything over fifty-five dollars.” He pushed away from the monitor again. “A really good snooper needs skill and patience as well as the right equipment. A couple of hours on this thing and I could tell you your mother’s shoe size.”

  Ben tapped out his cigarette. “If we wired you into the bait, could you get me a fix on the snooper?”

  Billings grinned. He knew he’d been smart to be expansive. “For an old buddy—and a reasonable fee—I’ll tell you what he ate for breakfast.”

  I’M TERRIBLY SORRY TO disturb you, Senator, but Mrs. Hayden’s on the phone. She says it’s important.”

  Hayden continued to read the revised speech he would give that afternoon at the League of Women Voters’ luncheon. “What line, Susan?”

  “Three.”

  Hayden pushed the button while keeping the phone cradled on his shoulder. “Yes, Claire. I’m a bit pressed for time.”

  “Charlton, it’s Jerald.”

  After twenty years of marriage, Hayden knew his wife well enough to recognize true alarm. “What?”

  “I’ve just gotten a call from school. He was in a brawl.”