by J. D. Robb
“No more locker room meets,” Renee said, tone cool now, crisp. Commanding. “You keep your head, Garnet, and you’ll keep enjoying those island breezes. Now, I’ve got a hot date, and you’ve made me late. Walk me out like a good boy.”
“You’re a piece of work, Renee.”
“I am. I am one fine piece of work.” Her laugh trailed back, echoed, faded.
And Peabody closed her eyes, stayed where she was, forced herself to count slowly to a hundred. In her mind she reconstructed the locker room, gauged the distance to the locker where she’d stowed her weapon.
She eased the door open, scanned, sucked in her breath, and made the dash to the locker. She didn’t release her breath until her weapon was in her hand.
Still naked, she crossed to the door connecting to the gym, eased it open an inch.
Dark, she noted. The lights would go off when the room was empty over a minute. Still she searched, made herself be sure before she backtracked.
She kept the weapon in her hand as she pulled out her ’link.
“Hey, She-Body!” McNab grinned at her, then gave her a green-eyed leer. “Hey, you’re naked, and so, so very built.”
“Shut up.” The shakes started; she couldn’t hold them off. “I need you to come, meet me at Central. Outside the south entrance. Come in a cab, McNab, and keep it. Make it fast.”
He didn’t grin, didn’t leer. His eyes went from lover to cop. “What’s wrong?”
“Tell you then. I gotta get out of here. Make it fast.”
“Baby, I’m practically there.”
Three
ROARKE GAVE EVE TIME TO STEW, SINCE THAT was obviously what she was in the mood for. He enjoyed the rest of his dinner, and the company, the conversation.
He liked, very much, hearing stories of Summerset’s past, hearing the angles and details of them from old friends of the man who’d become a father to him. And it pleased him to watch Summerset engage with them, laugh with them. Remember with them.
As long as they’d known each other, as much as they’d shared since Summerset had taken in a battered, beaten, half-starved boy, there was, Roarke discovered, a great deal yet to be learned.
He indulged in coffee and brandy, a bit of dessert before he said his good-nights.
The house monitor told him he’d find her in the bedroom.
She’d changed into the cotton pants and tank she favored during her downtime. He could smell her shower on her as he bent down to kiss her head. She sat brooding over a slice of pizza.
“You missed a lovely dinner,” he told her, and peeled off his suit jacket. “And truly delightful company.”
“I had things.”
“Mmm-hmm.” He loosened his tie, removed it. “So you said in your thirty-second appearance.”
“Look, it was a long day, and I didn’t expect to come home to a dinner party. Nobody told me about it.”
“It was spur of the moment. I’m sorry,” he continued, brutally pleasant, “am I supposed to check with you before I join Summerset and a couple of his old friends for dinner?”
“I didn’t say that.” She took a sulky bite of pizza. “I said I didn’t know about it.”
“Well then, perhaps if you’d contacted me, let me know you’d be very late coming home I’d have informed you.”
“I got busy. We caught a case.”
“Earth-shattering news.”
“What are you so pissy about?” she demanded. “I’m the one who came home and found a party going on.”
He sat to remove his shoes. “It must’ve been quite a shock—the brass band, the drunken revelers. But then, that kind of madness happens when adults leave the children on their own.”
“You want to be pissed at me, fine. Be pissed.” She shoved the pizza away. “I wasn’t in the mood to socialize with a couple of strangers.”
“You made that abundantly clear.”
“I don’t know them.” She pushed to her feet, tossed up her hands. “I’d just spent the bulk of the day dealing with three assholes who killed some old guy for a bunch of goddamn candy bars. Damned if I want to come home and sit around having dinner with Summerset and his old pals and listening to them talk about the old days when they scammed marks and picked fat pockets. I spend all day with criminals, and I don’t want to spend the evening asking them to pass the fucking salt.”
He said nothing for a moment. “I’m waiting for the corollary, where you remind me you married a criminal. But we can consider that unsaid.”
She started to speak, but the icy resentment in his voice, in those brilliant blue eyes, slammed between them.
“Judith is a neurosurgeon—chief of surgery, in fact, at a top London hospital. Oliver is a historian and author. If you’d bothered to spend five of your precious minutes with them, you’d have learned that they met and worked with Summerset as medics during the end of the Urbans, when they were only teenagers.”
She jammed her hands in her pockets. “You want me to feel like shit, well, I’m not going to.” But of course she did, which only throttled her resentment to fire against his ice.
“I didn’t know what was going on because nobody told me. You could’ve tagged me, then I’d have known I’d be walking in on you guys halfway through a fancy meal when I’m grubby from work.”
“When you don’t bother to let anyone know when you’ll come home I have to assume you’re tied up with something. And I’m damned, Eve, if I’m going to start tagging you asking what you’re doing, when you’re coming home like some nagging spouse.”
“I meant to contact you. I started to—twice—but both times I got interrupted. By the end of the interruption, I forgot. I just forgot, okay? Get a rope. You’re the one who married a cop, so you’re the one who has to deal with it.”
He rose, walked toward her as she continued to rant.
“Locking up the bad guys is just a little bit more important than being home on time to have dinner with a couple of people I don’t know anyway.”
Eyes on hers, he flicked her shoulder. Her mouth fell open.
She started stomping the floor.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” he demanded.
“Trying to kill the giant tarantula, because the only reason I can figure you just fucking flicked me is because there was a big, fat spider on my shoulder.”
“Actually, I was knocking the chip away that was balanced there. It looked awfully heavy.”
She strode away from him before she did something violent. She eyed the AutoChef. “How do you program this thing for a steaming cup of fuck you?”
“Children,” Summerset said from the doorway.
They both whirled on him, both snarled, “What?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your playtime—and might suggest the next time you want to behave like a pair of morons you shut the door as I could hear your clever banter halfway down the hall. However, Detectives Peabody and McNab are downstairs. She seems very upset, and informs me she needs to speak with you. Urgently.”
“Crap.” Eve hurried to her closet for shoes as she ran through the investigation they’d just completed. Had they missed something?
“They’re waiting in the parlor. By the way, Judith and Oliver said to tell you good-bye, and they hope to see you again when you have more time.”
She caught the chilly glance before he melted away, and decided she probably would feel like two jumbo scoops of shit. But later.
“You don’t have to go down,” she said stiffly to Roarke. “I can handle this.”
“I’ll do more than flick you in a minute.” He walked out ahead of her.
They maintained a fuming silence all the way down and into the parlor with its rich colors and gleaming antiques. Amid the stunning art, the glint of crystal, Peabody sat, sheet-pale, with McNab’s arm tight around her.
“Dallas.” Peabody got to her feet.
“What the hell, Peabody? Did those three idiots execute a jailbreak?”
Instead of s
miling, Peabody shuddered. “I wish it was that easy.”
When Peabody sank down again, Eve crossed over. She sat on the table so they were face-to-face, eye-to-eye. “Are you in trouble?”
“Not now. I was. I had to come, to tell you. I’m not sure what to do.”
“About what?”
“Tell it from the beginning,” McNab suggested. “You won’t jump around so much. Just start at the top.”
“Yeah, okay. I—ah—Okay. After I finished the paperwork, I decided I’d do an hour in the gym, work on my hand-to-hand. You said it was a weak spot. I went down to the second-level facilities.”
“Jesus, why? It’s a pit.”
“Yeah.” As she’d hoped, the comment had Peabody taking a breath. “It really is, so nobody much uses it, and my gear’s old and ugly, and I just didn’t want to sweat and stuff with the hard bodies in the new space. I put in an hour, overdid it.”
Peabody raked a hand through the hair she hadn’t bothered to brush. “I was toasted, you know. Went in for a shower. I had my things stuffed in a couple of the lockers. I’d just finished, started drying off in the stall when the locker room door bangs open, and two people come in, arguing.”
“Here.” Roarke pushed a glass of wine in her hand. “Sip a bit.”
“Oh boy, thanks,” she said as he offered McNab the e-man’s favored beer. Peabody sipped, breathed. “Female, seriously pissed. I started to call out so they’d know I was in there, so they’d take the fight elsewhere, then the other one goes off. Male. I’m in the damn stall with nothing but a towel that wouldn’t cover a teacup poodle, so I sort of squeeze back into the corner, and hope they go away. But they didn’t, and I hear them talking about the operation she runs, how he fucked up and cost them ten K. God.”
“Slow down a little, Dee.” McNab murmured it while he rubbed a hand on her thigh.
“Okay. Yeah. So they keep at each other, and I realize they’re not talking about a police op, but a side one. A long-running one, Dallas. I’ve got a couple of dirty cops right outside the shower door, talking about product and profit, about houses in the islands. And murder.
“I’m naked, and trapped, and my weapon’s in the locker. So’s my’link, and they’re slamming the shower doors open—one I’d’ve been in if there’d been any damn soap in there.”
Roarke stood behind her and, reaching down, laid his hands on her shoulders and began to rub. Taking another breath, she leaned back.
“I’ve been scared before. You’ve got to be scared going into some situations or you’re just stupid. But this . . . When the fight burns out, and they’re back in control, she, like, pats my shower door, and, Jesus, it opens a little. I can see her arm, her dress, her shoes. All she has to do is shift an inch, and I’m made—back in the corner of the stall with nothing.”
Beside her, McNab continued to rub her thigh, but his pretty, narrow face hardened like stone.
“I can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t risk it because I know if they see me, I’m dead. No way around it. But they leave, they never saw me. I got out, got McNab to get a cab and meet me so I could come here. So I could tell you.”
“Names?” Eve demanded, and Peabody shuddered out another breath.
“Garnet—she called the male Garnet. He called her Renee. Oberman. Renee Oberman. She was in charge.”
“Renee Oberman and Garnet. Description?”
“I didn’t get any sort of look at him, but she’s blond, between five-four and five-five, I think. She was wearing heels, but that’s about right. Caucasian. Strong voice—at least when she’s pissed.”
“Did they ever use their ranks?”
“No, but she said when she made captain, they were going to expand the business. She referred to it as a business several times. And they used to be lovers.”
“Did you run the names?” she asked McNab.
“Not yet. Peabody was pretty shaken.”
“She had somebody named Keener killed—said she had their boy take care of it, and that it would look like an OD. Keener’s a chemi-head, and one of their tools, contacts. He tried to rabbit on them, with this ten K. Garnet was supposed to have him on a leash, but he slipped. That’s what they were fighting about. They got the ten K, too—she let Garnet know that after she’d raked him down. And she was taking ten percent of his cut as a bonus for the boy, the killer. It was a business meeting.”
“Did you get the impression they used that space often for meetings?”
“No. No, the opposite. She was really peeved he’d yanked her in there, let him know there’d be no more meets there. Six years,” Peabody remembered. “She said she’d been running the business for six years. And the way she talked about ‘the boy,’ it was clear this Keener wasn’t the first kill she’d put him on.”
“Did anyone see you enter or leave that facility?”
“No.” Peabody paused, thought it through. “No, I really don’t think so. It’s like a tomb down there.”
“Okay.”
“Crappy report,” Peabody added. “Sorry. I’m jumbled.”
“You got names, a partial description, details of cops running a sideshow—sounds like illegals—and ordering hits. McNab, peel yourself off Peabody and run those names. Try the Illegals Division out of Central first. You’re going to find Oberman, Lieutenant Renee, there—I know who she is, but pin it. And pin this Garnet.”
“You know her?” Peabody demanded.
“I know who she is, and I know her father’s Oberman, Commander Marcus. Retired.”
“Jesus, Jesus, Saint Oberman? He ran Central before Whitney.” Every last remaining ounce of color drained out of Peabody’s cheeks. “Oh God, what did I step in?”
“Whatever it is, it’s a big, messy pile, so we take this slow and easy, and by the numbers.”
“Garnet, Detective William.” McNab glanced up from his PPC. “Second-grade, assigned the last four years to Illegals, out of Central, under Oberman, Lieutenant Renee.”
“Okay, let’s take this upstairs. McNab, you’re going to get me ID shots and any data on these two you can get without sending up a flag. Peabody, you’re going to give me a full, cohesive, and detailed report, on record. This Keener likely started out as a weasel for either Garnet or Oberman. We find him.”
“What do we do with this?” Peabody asked her.
Eve looked her dead in the eye, her own flat and cool. “We put it together in a very tidy package, and we take it to Whitney and to IAB. Other than that, nobody outside of this room hears a whisper of this until we’re otherwise directed.”
“Commander Oberman. He’s like a legend. Like a god.”
“I don’t care if he’s the second coming of Jesus. The daughter’s dirty. She’s a wrong cop, Peabody, and the blue line breaks for wrong cops. Let’s get started.”
“You haven’t eaten,” Roarke interrupted, smoothing a hand over Peabody’s hair.
“No, guess not.”
“She’ll do better with some food in her,” he said to Eve.
“You’re right.” She buried impatience as she’d buried the raging fury during Peabody’s report. “We’ll get some fuel, then we’ll lay it all out.”
“I got the shakes,” Peabody confessed. “After. They keep wanting to come back, but it’s better. I have to tag my mom, thank her.”
“For what?”
“I dropped my sweaty crap on the locker room floor, and I would’ve left it there if I hadn’t heard her voice in my head telling me to respect what belongs to me. If I’d left that ugly sports bra on the floor, they’d have seen it. They’d have found me. And I wouldn’t be here telling you Saint Oberman’s daughter’s a wrong cop.”
“Thank her in the morning,” Eve ordered. “Let’s get to work.”
Now Roarke draped his arm over Peabody’s shoulders when she rose. “How about a steak?”
“Really?”
He kissed the top of her head, made her flush. “Leave the menu to me. You’re a brave soul, Peabody.”<
br />
“My soul was scared shitless.”
He kissed her again. “You don’t want to argue with a man who’s about to fix you a steak.”
In her home office Eve set up a case board while Peabody and McNab ate. Roarke had been right about the food, the wine, the shoulder rub—all of it. He was usually on target about those things.
And it was better to give Peabody a little breathing room before opening the door to what would be an ugly and difficult process.
“She’s attractive,” Roarke commented, studying the ID shot of Oberman on the board.
“Yeah, and she has a rep for using it—and using her father’s rep. Just whispers—nothing said too loud. I ...”
Eve shook her head, then stepped out of the room.
“What?” Roarke asked when he followed her.
She kept her voice down. “If they’d found her, they’d have killed her. No way around it. She was right about that.”
“It must have been brutal, being trapped as she was.”
“We had this scuffle with these three assholes today, and one of them gives her a couple pretty good knocks. I told her she had heavy feet, needed to work on her technique, so what does she do? She goes down to that empty shithole of a gym. If it had tipped the other way, that’s where they’d have found her body. She takes a punch in the ear, and I can’t just say everybody takes a knock? I’ve got to tell her to work on it, to do better.”
“Because the next time she might take a knife in the ear. You’re not just her partner, Eve, you’re still training her. And you’ve done a damn brilliant job of it so far, in my opinion. She went down because she wants to improve, and yes, because she wants to meet your standards. It didn’t tip the other way,” he reminded her. “And if it had, though it makes me just as sick as you to think that, it would be on the heads of those bollocks excuse for cops. You know that.”
She sucked in a breath. “You’re still mad at me.”
“I am, and you’re still mad at me. But we both understand there are more important things just at the moment.”
They could count on each other for that, she thought. Count on each other to hold the line when it needed to be held. “So, truce.”