The In Death Collection, Books 11-15

by J. D. Robb

  “This can’t be gone after, not the way you mean.” How difficult for him, she thought, this man who looks like, thinks like, a warrior to stand without a lance to protect what he values most.

  “It can’t be changed,” she added, “it can’t be stopped because it’s already done. So it preys on you, just as it does on her.”

  “Sometimes she screams in the night.” He sighed. “Sometimes she only whimpers, like a small animal might when it’s afraid, or in pain. And sometimes she sleeps easy. I can’t go inside her dreams and kill him for her.”

  Professional objectivity couldn’t stand against the tidal wave of his emotion, or the flood of her own. Tears gathered in her throat as she spoke. “No, you can’t, but you’re there when she wakes. Do you understand what a difference you’ve made for her? How you’ve given her the courage to face her past? And the compassion to accept yours.”

  “I know, realistically, we are what we are because of what we were, and what we’ve made of that. I believe in fate, in destiny, and also in giving fate a good twist of the arm when it’s not going your way.” When she smiled at that, he felt his shoulders relax. “I know what’s done is done, but it doesn’t stop me from wishing I could go back and use these on him.” He balled his fists, then spread his fingers out again.

  “I’d say that was a very healthy attitude.”

  “Would you?”

  “I hope so as I often feel the same myself. I love her, too.”

  He looked at her, that serene face, those eyes so filled with quiet understanding. “Yes, I see you do.”

  “And you.”

  He blinked once, slowly, as if translating some foreign tongue. With a soft laugh, she got to her feet.

  “The pair of you always seem so baffled and suspicious when offered free affection. You’re a good man, Roarke,” she said and kissed his cheek.

  “Not really.”

  “Yes, really. I hope you’ll be comfortable coming to me, speaking with me if you ever feel the need. I’ll let you get back to your meetings. I’m already late for one of my own.”

  He walked her to the door. “Does anyone manage to resist you?”

  She winked. “Not for long.”

  Chapter 17

  Hacking through red tape with the finesse and subtlety of a chainsaw, Eve tracked down the private shuttle Julianna hired for her trip to and from Denver. Diamond Express advertised itself as the fastest and most luxurious private charter company servicing the continental U.S.

  A quick check showed her there was little truth in advertising as they were a solid third in the ratings, behind two of Roarke’s companies.

  Julianna wasn’t bold enough to hire one of his, Eve mused as she navigated around shuttles, cargo vehicles, and trams winding around the Diamond Express hangars.

  The headache was back, a hammer punch on the back of her skull where it had met pavement. She felt a desperate need for a nap, which told her she’d have to take a short break soon or end up flat on her face.

  “What’s the pilot’s name again?”

  “It’s Mason Riggs.” Peabody shifted, took another look at Eve’s profile. “You feeling okay—don’t get pissed off. It’s just you’re looking a little pale and shiny.”

  “What the hell does that mean? Shiny?” Eve parked, eased over to examine herself in the rearview mirror. Damn, she did look shiny. “It’s summer, it’s hot. People sweat. And no, I’m not feeling okay. Let’s just do this.”

  “I’m driving back.”

  With one leg out of the car, Eve swiveled around. “What did you say?”

  “I said,” Peabody repeated, courageously laying her life on the line, “I’m driving back. You shouldn’t be behind the wheel, and I promised Louise I’d make you take breaks when you got shaky.”

  Very slowly, Eve took off the sunshades she’d worn as a concession to the glare, the headache, and the appearance of her bruised face. The black eye only added an edge to the drilling stare. “Make me?”

  Peabody swallowed, but stuck firm. “You don’t scare me—hardly—because you’re pale and shiny. So I’ll take the wheel when we’re done here. You can put the seat back and catch a nap. Sir.”

  “Do you think adding ‘sir’ on the end of that is going to save you from my considerable wrath?”

  “Maybe, but I’m more confident I can outrun you in your current state of health.” She held up two fingers. “How many do you see?”

  “The two I’m going to rip off and stuff in your ears.”

  “Oddly, it reassures me to hear that, Lieutenant.”

  With a sigh, Eve pushed herself out of the car. The noise screaming out of the hangar lanced straight through her skull. Hoping to avoid going in and having her head fall off, she signalled to a woman wearing coveralls emblazoned with Diamond’s logo.

  “I’m looking for Pilot Riggs,” Eve shouted. “Mason Riggs.”

  “That’s his shuttle getting its weekly maintenance.” The woman jerked a thumb toward the mouth of the hangar. “He’s either in there guarding his baby or in the break room.”

  “Where’s the break room?”

  “Second door down on the left. Sorry, but the hangar and the break room are employees-only areas. You want I can page him for you.”

  Eve pulled out her badge. “I’ll just page him with this. Okay?”

  “Sure.” The woman held up her gloved hands, palms out. “Wouldn’t go in there without ear protectors. Against safety regs.” She flipped up the top on a crate, brought out two clunky sets. “It’s murder without them.”

  “Thanks.” Eve fit them on and immediately felt relief from the shrieking noise.

  She headed inside. The hangar held three shuttles at the moment, each covered with a swarm of mechanics who were either wielding complicated-looking tools or holding conversations in sign language.

  She spotted two uniformed pilots, one male, one female, and crossed into the heart of the hangar. The noise was like a whooshing wave through the ear protectors, and there was a smell of fuel, of grease, and someone’s spicy meatball sandwich.

  The latter made her stomach sit up and beg. She had a weakness for meatballs.

  She tapped the male pilot on the shoulder. He was vid-star handsome, with the caramel-colored skin of a mixed-race heritage smooth and tight over sharp bones.

  “Riggs?” She mouthed it slowly, then offered her badge when he nodded. At his polite yet baffled look, she gestured toward the break room.

  He didn’t look pleased, but he crossed the hangar quickly, coded in at the door, then yanked it open. The minute he was inside he pulled tiny protectors out of his ears, tossed them in a container.

  “That’s my shuttle. I’ve got to put it through its safety tests in twenty minutes. I’ve got a run.”

  Eve pulled off her own protectors. She hadn’t heard a word he’d said, but she got the point. He lifted his brow at the condition of her face.

  “Run into a door, Lieutenant?”

  “I was just waiting for that one.”

  “Looks painful. So. What’s the problem?”

  “You had a private shuttle run last night, to Denver, return this morning. Juliet Darcy.”

  “I can verify the trip, but I can’t discuss clients. That’s a privacy issue.”

  “You don’t want to go all regulation on me here, Riggs, or you’re not going to make your next run.”

  “Look, lady—”

  “I’m not a lady, I’m a cop. And this is a police investigation. Your client went to Denver last night, ordered herself a nice late supper from room service, probably got a good night’s sleep. This morning she killed a man named Spencer Campbell in her hotel room, took a cab back to the airport, hopped on your shuttle at which time you returned her to New York.”

  “She—she killed somebody? Ms. Darcy? You can’t be serious.”

  “You want to see how serious I am? We can take this down to Central.”

  “But she . . . I want to sit down.” He did so, droppin
g into a wide black chair. “I think you must have the wrong woman. Ms. Darcy was charming and refined. She was just in Denver overnight to attend a charity function.”

  Eve held out a hand. Peabody slapped a photo into it. “Is this the woman you know as Juliet Darcy?”

  It was a still taken from the disc found in Daily Enterprises and one that matched the image sent by hotel security.

  “Yes, that’s. . . Jesus Christ.” He took off his cap, raked his fingers through his hair. “This shakes you up.”

  “I’m sure Spencer Campbell feels the same way.” Eve took a seat. “Tell me about the trip.”

  Once he’d decided to cooperate, she couldn’t have stopped him with a laser blast. He paged the flight attendant to fill in any blanks and as a result Eve was given a full account of the round trip.

  “She was extremely polite.” Riggs downed his second cup of coffee. “But friendly. I’d noted by the log that she’d insisted on being a solo. No other passengers coming or going. When she boarded, I thought she looked like someone famous. We get a lot of celebs, and minor celebs, who insist on solos but who don’t want the trouble and expense of housing and maintaining a private transpo.”

  “I didn’t think she was friendly.” The attendant, Lydia, sipped bottled water. She was already dressed for her flight, perfectly groomed in a navy jumpsuit with a military touch of gold braid.

  “What did you think she was?” Eve countered.

  “A snob. Not that she wasn’t pleasant, but it was a veneer. There was a tone, mistress to servant, when she spoke to me. We offer caviar and champagne along with a fruit and cheese plate to our premier level passengers. She was a little put out by the brand of champagne. She said we could never hope to overtake Platinum or Five-Star in the ratings if we didn’t upgrade our service.”

  “Did she make or receive any transmissions during the flight?”

  “No. She did some work on her personal, turned it over so I couldn’t see the screen—like I cared—when I came back into the cabin to offer her coffee before landing. She called me by name every time she spoke to me. Lydia, this, Lydia that. The way people do when they want you to think they’re warm and friendly but that comes off as insulting somehow.”

  “She seemed perfectly pleasant to me,” Riggs cut in.

  “You’re a man.” Lydia managed to make the comment soothing and withering. And Eve decided she must be aces at her job.

  “How about the return this morning. What was her mood?”

  “Really up. Happy, sunny, relaxed. I figured she got laid the night before.”

  “Lydia!”

  “Oh, Mason, you know you thought the same. She took the full breakfast: eggs Benedict, croissant, marmalade, berries, coffee. Ate like an athlete, and washed it down with two mimosas. Selected the classical music, and kept her privacy light on. I had the screen on the morning media reports, but she ordered it off. A little snippy on that, too. I guess we know why now. That poor man.”

  “When she got off the shuttle, did she have ground transpo waiting?”

  “She went into the terminal. Struck me funny at the time.” Lydia shook her head. “Somebody snobby like that usually has a car waiting in the private transpo area. But she went inside.”

  And through the terminal, Eve thought, where she could go back out and catch any number of transportation options. Cab, bus, tram, private car, even the goddamn subway. And in effect, disappear.

  “Thanks. If you remember anything else, contact me at Cop Central.”

  “I hope you get her.” Lydia gave Eve a sympathetic look as she scanned her face. “Does that hurt?”

  Outside again, Eve rubbed her aching neck. “We’ll head back to Central, see what the Denver cops have sniffed out. Once it’s verified it was Dunne, and we’re multistate homicides, this is going to turn federal.”

  “We can’t let them take this over.”

  “I wish I could say I’d hand it to them on a platter if they could scoop her up, but I’d be lying. I want her.” She let out a long breath. “I’m counting on Denver being willing to stall on the identification for a few days.”

  Eve fished the sunshades out of her pocket, put them on. Immediately felt better. “Why don’t you drive, Peabody? I want to catch a nap.”

  Lips twitching, Peabody slid behind the wheel. “Yeah, why don’t I?”

  “Is that smug I see on your face?”

  “Damn.” Peabody dabbed at her cheek. “I thought I’d got all that off.”

  “Swing by a deli on the way. I want a meatball sandwich.” Eve kicked the seat back, shut her eyes, and dropped straight into sleep.

  Meat was not the operative word in meatball sandwich. It consisted of a couple of hunks of tough bread softened up by an ocean of rusty red sauce and between which swam a trio of ball-like substances, which where, perhaps, some distant cousin to the meat family. To disguise this very loose connection, they were coated with a stringy cheese substitute and spiced so generously they set the average mouth on fire, and successfully cleared the sinuses.

  They were both disgusting and delicious. The smell woke Eve out of a dead sleep.

  “I got the jumbo and had them cut it in half.” Peabody was already driving away from the deli in the steady, cautious manner that normally drove Eve insane. “Figured you for a tube of Pepsi this time of day.”

  “What? Yeah.” Her mind was dull as chamber music. “Jeez. How long was I out?”

  “About twenty, but you were at rock bottom. I kept waiting for you to snore, but you sleep like a corpse. Got some color back though.”

  “It’s the fumes from the meatballs.” Eve broke open the tube, took a huge glug of Pepsi before taking mental inventory. The headache had backed off, and so had the vague other-worldly feeling that had been creeping up on her. “Where are you heading, Peabody, and what century will we be in when we get there at this snail’s pace?”

  “I’m simply obeying the city traffic laws while showing courtesy and respect for my fellow drivers. But I’m glad you’re feeling better, and I figured since we’re in midtown and it’s a nice day, we could eat these outside at Rockefeller Plaza. Fuel up, sneer at the tourists, and grab some rays.”

  It didn’t sound half-bad. “No shopping of any kind.”

  “The thought never crossed my mind. For more than a minute.”

  Peabody eased down the pedestrian walkway off Fiftieth, slid the front wheel onto the curb, parked, and flipped up the ON DUTY sign.

  “What was that about obeying city traffic laws?”

  “That’s driving, this is parking. No point in being obsessive about it.”

  They got out, wound their way through the pack of tourists, lunchers, messengers, and the street thieves who loved them, and plopped down on a bench in the plaza with the ice rink at their backs.

  Peabody divided the tower of napkins and handed Eve her half of the sandwich. And they got down to the serious business of eating.

  Eve couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken an actual lunch break, one where she’d had what passed for real food somewhere other than at her desk or in the car.

  It was noisy and crowded, and the temperature was deciding whether it would settle for really warm or inch up all the way to hot. Sun lasered off the glass fronts of shops and a vender putting along on a mini glide-cart sang some soaring aria from an Italian opera.

  “La Traviata.” Peabody let out a gusty sigh. “I’ve been to the opera some with Charles. He really gets off on it. Mostly it’s okay, but it sounds better out here. This is the best part of New York. Being able to sit out here and eat this really superior meatball sandwich on a summer afternoon and see all these different kinds of people while some guy hawks soy dogs and sings in Italian.”

  “Um” was the best Eve could manage with a full mouth as she managed to save her shirt from a wayward gush of sauce.

  “Sometimes you forget to look around and notice and appreciate it. You know, the diversity and all. When I first moved here I
did a lot of walking and gawking, but that wears off. How long have you been here? In the city?”

  “I don’t know.” Frowning, Eve sucked in another bite. She’d bolted out of foster care, out of the system the second she’d been of legal age. And straight into the Academy, into another section of the system. “About twelve, thirteen years, I guess.”

  “Long time. You forget to notice stuff.”

  “Uh-huh.” Eve kept eating, but her attention was on a clutch of tourists and the slick-looking airskater who dogged them. He made the snatch clean, dipping skilled fingers into two back pockets without breaking rhythm. The wallets vanished as he did a fancy turn and veered away.

  Eve merely shot out her leg, catching his shins and sending him into a short but graceful swan dive. When he rolled, she pressed a booted foot to his throat. She munched on her sandwich until his vision cleared, then waved her badge in front of him and jerked a thumb at the uniformed Peabody.

  “You know, ace, I can’t figure if you’re stupid or cocky, lifting wallets with a couple of cops in the audience. Peabody, you want to confiscate the contents of this moron’s pockets?”

  “Yes, sir.” She hustled up, went through the half-dozen pockets and slits in the baggy trousers, the three in the loose shirt, and came up with ten wallets.

  “The two you got out of the right knee slit belong to them.” She gestured toward the happily unaware tourists who were taking holo-shots of each other. “Brown-haired guy with sunshades, blonde guy with the Strikers ballcap. Why don’t you save them some shock and dismay and return them before you call in a beat cop to deal with the rest.”

  “Yes, sir. Lieutenant, I never saw the move.”

  Eve licked sauce off her fingers. “We all notice different kinds of stuff, Peabody.”

  As her aide rushed off, the street thief decided to try his luck. But as he started to scramble up, Eve bore down, closing off his windpipe for ten warning seconds. “Ah, ah, ah.” She wagged a finger at him and polished off her tube of Pepsi.