by J. D. Robb
“Nadine.” Pleased, Eve tipped back in her chair. “You left out one of those basic human motives for violence before. Thrill.”
“I’ll make a note of it.” Nadine wrenched at the door, then let it slip out of her hands. When she turned back, her face was white and shocked under its sheen of camera makeup. “Are you out of your mind? You’re bait? You’re fucking bait?”
“Pissed you off, didn’t it?” Smiling, Eve allowed herself the luxury of propping her feet on the desk. Nadine’s reaction had brought the reporter up several notches on Eve’s opinion scale. “Thinking about me wanting all that airtime, and getting it, really steamed you. It’s going to steam him, too. Can’t you hear him, Nadine? ‘Look at that lousy cop getting all my press.’ ”
Nadine came back in and sat down carefully. “You had me. Dallas, I’m not about to tell you how to do your job—”
“Then don’t.”
“Let me see if I’m figuring this right. You deduce the motive was, at least partially, for the thrill, for the attention in the media. Kill a couple of ordinary citizens, you get press, sure, but not so intense, not so complete.”
“Kill two prominent citizens, familiar faces, and the sky’s the limit.”
“So you make yourself a target.”
“It’s just a hunch.” Thoughtfully, Eve scratched a vague itch on her knee. “It could be that all I’ll end up with is a lot of idiotic blips of me on screen.”
“Or a knife at your throat.”
“Gee, Nadine, I’m going to start to think you care.”
“I think I do.” She spent a moment studying Eve’s face. “I’ve worked with, around, and through cops for a long time now. You get instincts on who’s putting in time and who gives a damn. You know what worries me, Dallas? You give too much of a damn.”
“I carry a badge,” Eve said soberly and made Nadine laugh.
“Obviously you’ve been watching too many old videos, too. Well, it’s your neck—literally. I’ll see to it that you get it exposed.”
“Thanks. One more thing,” she added when Nadine stood again. “If this theory has weight, then future targets would fall into the well-known, media-hyped female variety. Keep an eye on your own neck, Nadine.”
“Jesus.” Shuddering, Nadine rubbed fingers over her throat. “Thanks for sharing that, Dallas.”
“My pleasure—literally.” Eve had time to chuckle between the time the door closed and the call came through from the commander’s office.
Obviously, he’d heard about the broadcast.
She was still stinging a bit when she bolted up the steps of the courthouse. The cameras were there, as Nadine had promised. They were there in the evening at the New Astoria when she stepped out of Roarke’s limo and tried to pretend she was enjoying herself.
After two days of tripping over a camera every time she took three steps, she was surprised she didn’t find one zooming over her in bed, and she said as much to Roarke.
“You asked for it, darling.”
She was straddling him, in what was left of the three-piece cocktail suit he’d chosen for her to wear to the governor’s mansion. The glittering black and gold vest skimmed her hips and was already unbuttoned to her navel.
“I don’t have to like it. How do you stand it? You live with this stuff all the time. Isn’t it creepy?”
“You just ignore it.” He flipped open another button. “And go on. I liked the way you looked tonight.” Idly he toyed with the diamond that hung between her breasts. “Of course, I’m enjoying the way you look right now more.”
“I’m never going to get used to it. All the fancy work. Small talk, big hair. And I don’t fit the clothes, either.”
“They might not suit the lieutenant, but they suit Eve. You can be both.” He watched her pupils dilate when he spread his hands over her breasts, cupped them. “You liked the food.”
“Well, sure, but . . .” She shivered into a moan as he scraped his thumbs over her nipples. “I think I was trying to make a point. I should never talk to you in bed.”
“Excellent deduction.” He reared up and replaced his thumbs with his teeth.
She was sleeping deeply, dreamlessly, when he woke her. The cop surfaced first, alert and braced.
“What?” Despite being naked, she reached for her weapon. “What is it?”
“I’m sorry.” When he leaned over the bed to kiss her, she could tell from the vibrations of his body that he was laughing.
“It’s not funny. If I’d been armed, you’d have been on your ass.”
“Lucky me.”
Absently, she shoved at Galahad who’d decided to sit on her head. “Why are you dressed? What’s going on?”
“I’ve had a call. I’m needed on FreeStar One.”
“The Olympus Resort. Lights, dim,” she ordered and blinked to focus as they highlighted his face. God, she thought, he looked like an angel. A fallen one. A dangerous one. “Is there a problem?”
“Apparently. Nothing that can’t be handled.” Roarke picked up the cat himself, stroked it, then set Galahad on the floor. “But I have to handle it personally. It may take a couple of days.”
“Oh.” It was because she was groggy, she told herself, that this awful sense of deflation snuck in. “Well, I’ll see you when you get back.”
He skimmed a finger over the dent in her chin. “You’ll miss me.”
“Maybe. Some.” It was his quick smile that defeated her. “Yes.”
“Here, put this on.” He shoved a robe in her hands. “There’s something I want to show you before I go.”
“You’re going now?”
“The transport’s waiting. It can wait.”
“I guess I’m supposed to come down and kiss you good-bye,” she muttered as she fumbled into the robe.
“That would be nice, but first things first.” He took her hand and pulled her from the platform to the elevator. “There isn’t any need for you to be uncomfortable here while I’m gone.”
“Right.”
He put his hands on her shoulders as the car began to glide. “Eve, it’s your home now.”
“I’m going to be busy, anyway.” She felt the slight shift as the car veered to horizontal mode. “Aren’t we going all the way down?”
“Not just yet.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders when the doors opened.
It was a room she hadn’t seen. Then again, she mused, there were probably dozens of rooms she’d yet to tour in the labyrinth of the building. But it took only one quick glimpse for her to realize it was hers.
The few things she considered of any value from her apartment were here, with new pieces added to fill it out into a pleasant, workable space. Stepping away from Roarke, she wandered in.
The floors were wood and smooth, and there was a carpet woven in slate blue and mossy green, probably from one of his factories in the East. Her desk, battered as it was, stood on the priceless wool and held her equipment.
A frosted-glass wall separated a small kitchen area, fully equipped, that led to a terrace.
There was more, of course. With Roarke there was always more. A communications board would allow her to call up any room in the house. The entertainment center offered music, video, a hologram screen with dozens of visualization options. A small indoor garden bloomed riotously below an arching window where dawn was breaking.
“You can replace what you don’t like,” he said as she ran her hand over the soft back of a sleep chair. “Everything’s been programmed for your voice and your palm print.”
“Very efficient,” she said and cleared her throat. “Very nice.”
Surprised to find himself riddled with nerves, he tucked his hands in his pockets. “Your work requires your own space. I understand that. You require your own space and privacy. My office is through there, the west panel. But it locks on either side.”
“I see.”
Now he felt temper snapping at the nerves. “If you can’t be comfortable in the house while I�
�m not here, you can barricade yourself in this apartment. You can damn well barricade yourself in it while I am here. It’s up to you.”
“Yes, it is.” She took a deep breath and turned to him. “You did this for me.”
Annoyed, he inclined his head. “There doesn’t seem to be much I wouldn’t do for you.”
“I think that’s starting to sink in.” No one had ever given her anything quite so perfect. No one, she realized, understood her quite so well. “That makes me a lucky woman, doesn’t it?”
He opened his mouth, bit back something particularly nasty. “The hell with it,” he decided. “I have to go.”
“Roarke, one thing.” She walked to him, well aware he was all but snarling with temper. “I haven’t kissed you good-bye,” she murmured and did so with a thoroughness that rocked him back on his heels. “Thank you.” Before he could speak, she kissed him again. “For always knowing what matters to me.”
“You’re welcome.” Possessively, he ran a hand over her tousled hair. “Miss me.”
“I already am.”
“Don’t take any unnecessary chances.” His hands gripped in her hair hard, briefly. “There’s no use asking you not to take the necessary ones.”
“Then don’t.” Her heart stuttered when he kissed her hand. “Safe trip,” she told him when he stepped into the elevator. She was new at it, so waited until the doors were almost shut. “I love you.”
The last thing she saw was the flash of his grin.
“What have you got, Feeney?”
“Maybe something, maybe nothing.”
It was early, just eight o’clock on the morning after Roarke left for FreeStar One, but Feeney already looked haggard. Eve punched two coffees, double strength, from her AutoChef.
“You’re in here at this hour, looking like you’ve been up all night, and in that suit, I have to deduce it’s something. And I’m a gold-star detective.”
“Yeah. I’ve been noodling the computer, going down another level on the families and personal relations of the victims like you wanted.”
“And?”
Stalling, he drank his coffee, dug out his bag of candied nuts, scratched his ear. “Saw you on the news last night. The wife did, actually. Said you looked flash. That’s one of the kid’s expressions. We try to keep up.”
“In that case, you’re rocking me, Feeney. That’s one of the kid’s expressions, too. Translation, you’re not coming clear.”
“I know what it means. Shit. This one cuts close to home, Dallas. Too close.”
“Which is why you’re here instead of trasmitting what you’ve got over a channel. So let’s have it.”
“Okay.” He puffed out a breath. “I was dicking around with David Angelini’s records. Financial stuff mostly. We knew he was into some spine twisters for gambling debts. He’s been holding them off, giving them a little trickle here and there. Could be he’s dipped into the company till, but I can’t get a lock on that. He’s covered his ass.”
“So, we’ll uncover it. I can get the name of the spine twisters,” she mused, thinking of Roarke. “Let’s see if he made them any promises—like he’d be coming into an inheritance.” Her brows knit. “If it wasn’t for Metcalf, I’d think hard about somebody he owed hurrying up on the IOUs by taking out Towers.”
“Might be that simple, even with Metcalf. She had a nice nest egg set aside. I haven’t found anybody among the beneficiaries who needed quick money, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.”
“Okay, you keep working that angle. But that isn’t why you’re here playing with your nuts.”
He nearly managed a laugh. “Cute. Okay, here it is. I turned up the commander’s wife.”
“Run that by slow, Feeney. Real slow.”
He couldn’t sit, so he sprang up to pace the small space. “David Angelini made some healthy deposits into his personal credit account. Four deposits of fifty K over the last four months. The final one was keyed in two weeks before his mother got terminated.”
“All right, he got his hands on two hundred K in four months, and banked it like a good boy. Where’d he get it? Fuck.” She already knew.
“Yeah. I accessed the E-transactions. Backtracked. She transferred it to his New York bank, and he flipped it over into his personal account in Milan. Then he withdraws it, in cash, hard bills, at an AutoTell on Vegas II.”
“Jesus Christ, why didn’t she tell me?” Eve pressed her balled fists to her temples. “Why the hell did she make us look for it?”
“It wasn’t like she tried to hide it,” Feeney said quickly. “When I clicked over to her records, it was all out front. She has an account of her own, just like the commander.” He cleared his throat at Eve’s level stare. “I had to look, Dallas. He hasn’t made any unusual transactions out of his, or out of their joint. But she’s cut her principal in half doling out to Angelini. Christ, he was bleeding her.”
“Blackmail,” Eve speculated, struggling to think coolly. “Maybe they had an affair. Maybe she was stuck on the bastard.”
“Oh man, oh Jesus.” Feeney’s stomach did a long sickening roll. “The commander.”
“I know. We have to go to him with this.”
“I knew you were going to say that.” Mournfully, Feeney took a disc out of his pocket. “I got it all. How do you want to play it?”
“What I want to do is go out to White Plains and knock Mrs. Whitney on her perfect ass. Barring that, we go to the commander’s office and lay it out for him.”
“They’ve still got some of that old body armor down in storage,” Feeney suggested as Eve rose.
“Good thinking.”
They could have used it. Whitney didn’t climb over his desk and body slam them, nor did he pull out his stunner. He did all the damage necessary with the lethal glare of his eyes.
“You accessed my wife’s personal accounts, Feeney.”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“And took this information to Lieutenant Dallas.”
“As per procedure.”
“As per procedure,” Whitney repeated. “Now you’re bringing it to me.”
“To the commanding officer,” Feeney began, then drooped. “Oh hell, Jack, was I supposed to bury it?”
“You could have come to me first. But then . . .” Whitney trailed off, shifted his hard eyes to Eve’s. “Your stand on this, Lieutenant?”
“Mrs. Whitney paid David Angelini a sum of two hundred thousand dollars over a four-month period. This fact was not volunteered during either primary or follow-up interviews. It’s necessary to the investigation that—” She broke off. “We have to know why, Commander.” The apology was in her eyes, lurking just behind the cop. “We have to know why the money was paid, why there have been no more payments since the death of Cicely Towers. And I have to ask, Commander, as primary, if you were aware of the transactions and the reason behind them.”
There was a clutching in his stomach, a burning that warned of untreated stress. “I’ll answer that after I’ve spoken with my wife.”
“Sir.” Eve’s voice was a quiet plea. “You know we can’t allow you to consult with Mrs. Whitney before we question her. This meeting has already risked contaminating the investigation. I’m sorry, Commander.”
“You’re not bringing my wife in to interview.”
“Jack—”
“Fuck this, Feeney, she’s not going to be dragged down here like a criminal.” He clutched his hands into fists under the desk and struggled to remain in control. “Question her at home, with our attorney present. That doesn’t violate procedure, does it, Lieutenant Dallas?”
“No, sir. With respect, Commander, will you come with us?”
“With respect, Lieutenant,” he said bitterly. “You couldn’t stop me.”
chapter eleven
Anna Whitney met them at the door. Her hands fluttered, then gripped together at her waist. “Jack, what’s happening? Linda’s here. She said you called her and told her I needed counsel.” Her gaze darted
from Eve to Feeney, then back to her husband. “Why would I need counsel?”
“It’s all right.” He put a tense but protective hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go inside, Anna.”
“But I haven’t done anything.” She managed one nervous laugh. “I haven’t even gotten a traffic ticket lately.”
“Just sit down, honey. Linda, thanks for coming so quickly.”
“No problem.”
The Whitneys’ attorney was young, sharp-eyed, and polished to a gleam. It took Eve several moments to remember she was also their daughter.
“Lieutenant Dallas, isn’t it?” Linda scanned and summed up quickly. “I recognize you.” She gestured to a chair before either of her parents thought of it. “Please sit.”
“Captain Feeney, EDD.”
“Yes, my father’s mentioned you many times, Captain Feeney. Now.” She laid a hand over her mother’s. “What’s this all about?”
“Information has just come to light that needs clarification.” Eve took out her recorder, offered it to Linda for examination. She tried not to think that Linda favored her father, the caramel-colored skin, the cool eyes. Genes and family traits both fascinated and frightened her.
“I take it this is going to be a formal interview.” With careful calm, Linda set the recorder on the table and took out her own.
“That’s right.” Eve recited the date and time. “Interviewing officer Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Also present, Whitney, Commander Jack, and Feeney, Captain Ryan. Interviewee Whitney, Anna, represented by counsel.”
“Whitney, Linda. My client is aware of all rights and agrees to this time and place of interview. Counsel reserves the right to terminate at her discretion. Proceed, Lieutenant.”
“Mrs. Whitney,” Eve began. “You were acquainted with Cicely Towers, deceased.”
“Yes, of course. Is this about Cicely? Jack—”
He only shook his head and kept his hand on her shoulder.
“You are also acquainted with the deceased’s family. Her former husband Marco Angelini, her son, David Angelini, and her daughter, Mirina.”
“I’m more than acquainted. Her children are like family. Why, Linda even dated—”