by J. D. Robb
Alone, Eve sat another minute with her coffee, feet up. She’d write up her notes, and she’d write a strong evaluation of Peabody’s work on the case for her file.
Then she’d go home, which did indeed make it a good day.
She glanced at her wrist unit, swore a little. She was already seriously late. According to the marriage rules, she needed to contact Roarke, give him her ETA.
Even as she turned to her desk ’link, it signaled.
“Homicide. Dallas.”
“Lieutenant.” Mrs. Ochi came on-screen. “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, but I wanted to know if you’ve ... if you have any news for me.”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Ochi. I was just about to contact you. We have all three of them. We have confessions. We have them behind bars now, and the prosecuting attorney is confident he’ll get a conviction that will keep them there for a very long time.”
“You caught them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Those fierce green eyes filled with tears before Mrs. Ochi put her hands over her face. “Thank you.” She began to sob, to rock. “Thank you.”
Eve let her weep, and when the woman’s son and daughter came on-screen, flanking her, holding her, Eve answered their questions.
By the time she was done, her mind was focused on completing the work—and not on the marriage rules. When she’d wrapped it up, she walked out, through the bullpen where Peabody hunched, intent over the work.
“See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, cha,” Peabody muttered.
McNab would have to play bad cop by himself for a while, Eve thought as she started out—then wished to God she hadn’t had the thought. On the heel of it, she remembered she hadn’t called home.
“Shit.” She reached for her pocket ’link.
“LT!” Detective Carmichael hustled after her. “Santiago and I are working a floater. I wanted to run a couple of the angles by you.”
“Walk and talk, I’m heading out.”
She listened, questioned, considered, taking the glides down rather than the elevator to give her detective more time. They paused on a level, with Carmichael tugging her ear.
“Are we cleared for the overtime, to move on this tonight?”
“I’ll clear it. Push it.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant.”
“How’s it working out with you and the new guy?”
“Santiago’s okay. Got a good nose. We’re getting a rhythm on.”
“Good to know. Good hunting, Carmichael.”
Eve took the elevator the rest of the way to the garage, thinking of Carmichael’s floater, the angles, authorizing the OT.
She crawled through traffic awhile, played a little game of outwit the other drivers by changing routes a couple times. By the time she remembered the marriage rules again, she was nearly home.
No point now, she decided. She’d just . . . make it up to Roarke. He’d have worked while waiting for her, she thought, so now they could have a nice dinner together. She’d even program it herself—one of those fussy, fancy deals he liked—open a bottle of wine.
Relax, hang. Maybe she’d suggest they watch one of those old vids he liked. A very married evening at home, she thought, followed by some very married sex.
No murder, no mayhem, no work, no pressure. Just the two of them. Hell, she might even dig out one of those sexy, seduce-your-partner get-ups, just to top it off.
She could program some music—go full-out romance.
Pleased with the plan, she zipped through the gates of home. Her mood throttled up another notch or two as she watched the lights shine in the multitude of windows in the gorgeous stone house. They could eat outside, she decided, on one of the terraces. She looked up as she drove, considering the towers and turrets. Maybe the rooftop terrace with its little pool and sweeping view of the city.
Pretty damn perfect.
She left her vehicle out front, and telling herself she was in too good a mood to be bothered by Summerset lurking in the foyer ready to sneer at her for being late, she jogged inside.
The foyer was empty, hitching her stride a moment.
No Summerset?
“Don’t question your luck,” she told herself, and continued her jog upstairs.
She swung into Roarke’s office first, surprised not to find him there, wheeling some deal, calculating some complicated equation.
Frowning, she turned to the house monitor. “Where is Roarke?” she demanded.
Darling Eve, Roarke is on the terrace, main level, rear, section two.
“We have sections? Which is—”
Location highlighted.
“Okay.” She pursed her lips, studied the house map and the blinking light. “Got it.”
She headed down. What was he doing out there? she wondered. Maybe having a drink with Summerset—which would answer the other question. Talking about old times, jobs pulled, booty stolen, burglaries accomplished.
The sort of thing it wasn’t ... polite to reminisce about with a cop present.
Time to break up the nostalgia and—
She pulled up short when she stepped out. Roarke was indeed with Summerset, but they weren’t having a drink—or not only—and they weren’t alone.
Two people she’d never seen before in her life sat with them at a white-draped table, with candles flickering prettily against the late-summer evening, apparently enjoying a very fussy, fancy dinner.
The strangers, a couple she judged in their middle sixties, included a woman with gold-coin hair forming a short, straight frame for a face dominated by big, round eyes, and a man sporting a trim goatee that set off his angular, somewhat scholarly face.
Everyone laughed uproariously.
She felt her shoulders tighten even as Roarke lifted his wineglass. He looked relaxed, happy, those strongly sculpted lips curved as he listened to something the complete stranger, female, said to the group at large in a tony Brit accent.
His sweep of midnight hair gleamed in the candlelight nearly to the shoulders of his suit jacket. She heard him respond—the richness and warmth of Ireland like wisps of smoke in his voice.
Then his eyes, wickedly blue, met hers.
“Ah, here’s Eve now.” He pushed back his chair, stood long and lanky, and held a hand out to her. “Darling, come meet Judith and Oliver.”
She didn’t want to meet Judith and Oliver. She didn’t want to talk to strangers with tony Brit accents, or have all attention focused on her coming home late, probably sweaty and with blacktop grime on the knees of her trousers from her altercation with three assholes.
But she could hardly just stand there.
“Hi. Sorry to interrupt.”
Before she could think to stick it in her pocket, Roarke had her hand and pulled her another foot toward the table. “Judith and Oliver Waterstone, my wife, Eve Dallas.”
“We were so hoping to meet you.” Judith sent her a smile, sunny and bright as her hair. “We’ve heard so much about you.”
“Judith and Oliver are old friends of Summerset’s. They’re in New York for a couple of days before they travel back to England.”
“You work murder cases here in New York,” Oliver began. “It must be fascinating and difficult work.”
“It can be both.”
“I’ll get another setting.” Summerset started to rise, but Eve shook her head.
“No, don’t worry about it. I’ve got a few things to deal with.” They were, as far as she could tell, nearly finished with the meal, so what was the point of squeezing her into the party? “I just wanted to let you know I was back. So ... it was nice to meet you. Enjoy your dinner.”
She’d managed to retreat inside before Roarke caught up with her. “Eve.” He snagged her hand again, and this time tugged her in for a welcome-home kiss. “If you’ve caught something hot, I can make my excuses and come up.”
“No.” The fact that he would made her feel smaller, and crankier. “It’s nothing hot. Just—”
<
br /> “Well then, come out and have some food, some wine. You’ll like these people.”
She didn’t want to like these people. She already had more people in her life than she could keep up with.
“Look, it’s been a long day, and I’m dirty and sweaty on top of it. I said I had things to deal with, so go back to your little dinner party and let me deal with them.”
She strode away, annoyance vibrating from every step. Roarke watched her. “Well then,” he murmured, and went back to his guests.
At Central, Peabody finished and filed her report, completed the murder book—and gave it a little pat.
Case closed, she thought. She’d already tagged McNab, told him she’d be late, so she took a few minutes to organize her work station as she liked to when she had the time.
As she tidied her space, she went over the stages of the investigation in her head, well satisfied, and a little bit smug. Until she remembered the punches Lowe had landed—and Eve’s critique of her hand-to-hand.
“She’s right, too,” Peabody admitted, gently rubbing her sore ear. “Definitely need to sharpen up in that area.” She considered switching bad cop with McNab to hand-to-hand practice.
But they’d just end up hot and sweaty, and having sex. Which would be good—really good—but not if she was serious about sharpening up.
She’d take an hour in the workout area, right there at Central. Set a program that would home in on her weak spots, help her improve them. Then she could grab a shower, change clothes, and be all fresh and shiny when she got home.
For some really good sex.
She headed down to her locker and, after pushing her change of clothes and workout gear into a hand duffle, made a note to remind herself to bring in a new change to replace what she took.
New deal, she told herself. An hour in the gym every day—okay that would never happen. Three times a week.
She could do three times a week. And keep it to herself, or herself and McNab. Then in maybe a month, dazzle Dallas with her light feet and lightning reflexes.
She walked to the gym that served her sector of Central, but with one foot in the door spotted half a dozen cops—buff cops—pumping, running, sparring.
She thought of her workout gear, the baggy shorts, the ugly sports bra she’d bought because it had been cheap. She thought of the size of her ass. And backed out again.
She just couldn’t go in there, especially not with cops she knew, and strip down that way, pant and sweat with all those toned, ripped, light-footed bodies.
And look fat and stupid.
Which is why, she reminded herself, she never used the sparkly, shiny gym at Central—or joined a fitness club. Which was why her ass was too big, she decided, and why, following the laws of gravity, she carried too much weight in her feet.
She ordered herself to suck it up, started to swipe her card and go in, then remembered the old, far from sparkly or shiny gym two levels down.
Nobody used it, she thought as she hurried off. Or hardly anybody. Because the equipment was old, the lockers stingy, and the shower barely offered a trickle.
But it would suit her and her new deal just fine.
She found the security pad deactivated and strolled into the empty room. The lights flickered on as she went in, dimmed, flickered again, then held. There were rumors about rehabbing the area, but she sort of hoped they’d leave it be. It might be ratty, but it could serve as her personal gym.
At least until she got ripped, light on her feet, and whittled her ass down.
She peeked into the locker area, listened. Smiled. Yep, her personal gym, she thought, and choosing a locker at random changed into her ugly—and soon to be replaced—gear. She managed to stuff everything else in the breadbox-sized locker, and feeling righteous, went out to set her program.
It was the first day in the life of the new lean and mean Peabody.
An hour later, she lay on the grubby floor wheezing like the dying. Her quads and hamstrings burned, her glutes wept, and her arms couldn’t stop screaming for mama.
“Never doing this again,” she announced. “Yes, you are,” she corrected. “Can’t. Dying. Can. Will. Help me, I think I broke my ass. Wimp, pussy. Shut up.”
She wheezed a little more, then rolled over, made it to her hands and knees.
“Should’ve started out slower, on a lower level. I knew that. Cocky bitch.” She gritted her teeth, determined not to crawl to the locker room and the showers.
But she did limp.
She peeled and tugged and fought the sticky sports bra off her sticky body, dropped it on the floor. Then rolling her eyes because her mother’s voice came clear in her ear—Respect what you own, Dee—she bent and picked it up again. She stuffed the sweaty bra, shorts, shoes in a second locker, grabbed one of the thin, placemat-size towels because she was afraid she’d be electrocuted if she risked the ancient drying tube—and stepped into one of the skinny shower stalls.
She stepped out again when she found the soap dispenser empty and worked her way down the line until she found one with about half a teaspoon of green goo still in the dispenser.
Maybe the water was cold, and more like a drip from a leaky faucet than an actual spray, but she wasn’t going to complain. Instead, she turned right, left, back, front until she’d managed to wash away most of the sweat.
By the time she’d lathered and rinsed, she felt closer to human again, and began to consider splurging and picking up some ice cream on the way home. Not the real deal—that sort of thing was out of her splurge zone. But there was that place not far from the apartment that had a nondairy frozen dessert that was pretty damn good.
And she’d earned it, she thought, turning off the taps. Man, she’d earned it. She grabbed the towel, scrubbed it over her hair.
She patted at her face, her shoulders, and started to step out where she had some room to dry off when she heard the raised voices. And the locker room door slammed.
“Don’t fucking tell me you didn’t screw up, Garnet, when you damn well did!” The female voice, hot and pissed, bounced off the old tiles.
Peabody opened her mouth to warn whoever was out there they had company when she heard the response, and the male voice—equally hot and pissed.
“Don’t blame me when you let this get out of control.”
Peabody looked down at her naked body, the excuse for a towel, and just squeezed into the back corner of the shower.
“I let it get out of control? Well, maybe I did by trusting you to handle it, to deal with Keener. Instead, he slipped your leash and cost us ten K.”
“You’re the one who said he wouldn’t be a problem, Renee, who pushed him to deliver the product when you knew he could rabbit.”
“And I told you to work him. I should’ve done it myself.”
“No argument.”
“Goddamn it.”
Somebody—probably the woman—punched a shower door. Peabody heard it slap against its side wall. And just stopped breathing.
“I’ve been running this operation for six years. You’d better remember that, Garnet, you’d better remember what can happen if you push me.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“I’m warning you. I’m in charge, and with me in charge you’ve raked in plenty the past few years. Think of your nice house in the islands, all the toys you like to play with, the women you like to buy, and remember you wouldn’t have any of them on a cop’s salary. You wouldn’t have any of them without me running this show.”
“I don’t forget, and don’t forget you get a bigger cut of every pie.”
“I earn it. I brought you in, and I made you a rich man. You want to stay in, think twice before you yank me into some moldy locker room to point fingers.”
“Nobody comes in here.” Another shower door, closer now, slammed open, and Peabody felt fresh sweat pearl on her forehead.
Naked, weapon in the locker. No defense except her fists. So she curled them by her side.
&nb
sp; If McNab tagged her, if her ’link signaled, she was screwed. If either of the people just inches outside the door slammed it open in temper, sensed her, heard her, smelled her, she’d be trapped, back to the wall. No escape.
Bad cops. Seriously bad cops. Renee, Garnet. Don’t forget, don’t forget. Keener. Remember all the details, just in case you live through it. She glanced up, saw with horror the drip of water sliding out of the fist-sized showerhead.
Throat slamming shut, she eased out a hand, palm up, and caught the tiny drop. Wondered if the sound of it meeting her palm was actually as loud as a hammer strike.
But they kept arguing until the woman—Renee, Renee—sighed. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. We’re a team, Garnet, but a team has a leader. That’s me. Maybe that’s a problem for you, maybe it’s because we used to sleep together.”
“You’re the one who called that off.”
“Because now it’s business. We keep it business, we keep getting rich. And when I make captain, well, we’re going to expand. Meanwhile, there’s no point in arguing about Keener. I’ve taken care of it.”
“Goddamn it, Oberman. Why the fuck didn’t you say so?”
Oberman, Peabody thought. Renee Oberman. Has rank, pushing toward captain.
“Because you annoyed me. I put our boy on it, and it’s done.”
“You’re sure?”
“You know how good he is, and I said it’s done. When they find him it’ll look like an OD. Just another chemi-head who pumped in too much junk. Nobody’s going to care enough to dig into it. You’re just lucky Keener hadn’t gotten far, and he still had the ten K.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
The laugh was bright, and sharp as steel. “I don’t kid about money. I’m taking ten percent of your share as a bonus for our boy.”
“The hell you—”
“Be grateful you’re getting any of it.” The words slapped hard and warned of worse. “Keener was a valuable tool when worked right. Now we have to replace him. In the meantime . . .”
Peabody heard the light pat on the stall door, watched it ease open a crack. The sweat dried to ice on her skin, and she balled her fists again.
Through the crack she saw part of an arm, a glimmer of red high heels, and a flash of blond hair.