The In Death Collection, Books 1-5

by J. D. Robb

  She’d worked up a satisfactory sweat by the time she switched machines for aerobics. The combo-unit took her on a punishing run, up inclines, down them, a race up endless flights of stairs. She’d set it for variety, and found the change of texture on her running surface from simulated asphalt to sand to grass to dirt interesting, but it wasn’t doing anything to ease the ache in her belly.

  You could run, she thought with dull fury, but you couldn’t hide.

  Her heart was pumping hard, her skin suit soaked with sweat, but her emotions were still fragile as glass. What she needed, Eve decided as she tugged on soft, protective gloves, was to pound on something.

  She’d never tried out the sparring droid. It was one of Roarke’s newest toys. The unit was a middleweight: six feet, one ninety, and firmly muscled. Good reach, Eve decided with her hands on her hips as she sized him up.

  She punched in the code on his storage tube. There was a faint hum as circuits were engaged. The unit opened dark, polite brown eyes. “You wish a match?”

  “Yeah, pal, I wish a match.”

  “Boxing, karate—Korean or Japanese—tae kwon do, kung fu, street style. Self-defense programs are also available. Contact is optional.”

  “Straight hand-to-hand,” she said, backing up and gesturing. “Full contact.”

  “Timed rounds?”

  “Hell, no. We go till one of us is down, pal. And out.” She curled her fingers in a come-ahead gesture.

  “Acknowledged.” There was a faint humming from the unit as he self-programmed. “I outweigh you by approximately seventy pounds. If you prefer, my program includes a handicap—”

  She brought her fist up hard and fast, an uppercut to the jaw that snapped his head back. “There’s my handicap. Come on.”

  “As you wish.” He crouched as she did and began to circle. “You did not indicate if you desired vocal additions to the program. Taunting, insults—” He staggered back as her foot whipped up and plowed into his guts. “Compliments or suitable exclamations of pain are available.”

  “Come at me, will you, for Christ’s sake?”

  He did, with a swiftness and force that had her stumbling back, nearly losing her footing. This, she decided as she pivoted and caught him backhanded, was more like it.

  He blocked her next blow, shifted weight, and wrapped his arm around her throat. Eve planted her feet, elbowed, and flipped him over her shoulder. He was up like lightning before she could attempt a pin.

  His gloved fist made a solid connection with her solar plexus, pushing a whoosh of air out of her lungs and ringing bright pain straight into her head. Doubled over, she followed through with a head butt, stomped hard on his instep.

  When Roarke walked in ten minutes later, he watched his wife fly through the air and go skidding across the mat. Lifting a brow, he leaned back against the door and settled down to watch.

  She didn’t have time to gain her feet before the droid was on her, so she grabbed one of his ankles, twisted, hauled, and thrusted. Her mind was a blank now, a black blank. Her breath was heaving, and she could taste the metallic flavor of blood inside her mouth.

  She went at her opponent like a hail storm, cold and relentless. Each jab, each blow, each kick given or received sang through her body with icy, primitive rage. Her eyes were flat with violence now, her fists merciless as she concentrated on the head, working the droid back, back.

  Frowning, Roarke straightened. Her breath was wheezing out now, all but sobbing, yet she didn’t stop. When the droid staggered, went down on its knees, she crouched for the kill.

  “End program,” Roarke ordered, and caught his wife’s rigid arm before she could kick the droid’s lolling head. “You’re going to damage the unit,” he said mildly. “It isn’t designed for to the death.”

  She bent over, resting her hands on her knees, to catch her breath. Her mind was full of red now, red rage, and she needed to clear it. “Sorry, I guess I got carried away.” She eyed the droid, who remained slumped on his knees, mouth slack, eyes blank as a doll’s. “I’ll run a diagnostic on it.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He started to turn her to face him, but she broke away, moved across the room for a towel. “In the mood for a fight?”

  “I guess I wanted to pound something.”

  “Should I suit up?” He was smiling a little. Until she lowered the towel. The rage had drained from her face. All that was left in her eyes was misery. “What is it, Eve? What happened?”

  “Nothing. Just a rough day.” She tossed the towel aside, moved to the cold box unit for a bottle of mineral water. “So far, Wineburg’s house is a bust. Nothing there to help us. Sweepers didn’t find anything in the garage, either. Didn’t expect them to. I jabbed some at Cross again, and at Alban the Magnificent. Had a consult with Mira. Her daughter’s a Wiccan. Can you beat that?”

  It wasn’t work, he thought, that put that painful unhappiness in her eyes. “What is it?”

  “Isn’t that enough? It’s going to be tough to get an objective consult from Mira when her daughter’s into spell-casting. Then there’s Peabody. She’s caught a damn cold, and her head’s so full of snot I have to say everything twice before it gets through.”

  She was talking too fast, Eve realized. Words were tumbling out of her mouth and she couldn’t seem to stop them. “A hell of a lot of good she’s going to be to me hacking and sneezing all goddamn day. The media picked up on Wineburg, and the fact that you and I were on scene when it went down. My ’link’s jammed with fucking reporters. Leaks everywhere. Fucking leaks everywhere. Feeney found out I’ve been holding back on him.”

  Ah, Roarke thought, there we are. “He was hard on you?”

  “Why shouldn’t he be?” Her voice rose as she whirled and searched for temper to cover the hurt. “He should’ve been able to trust me. I lied to him, right to his face.”

  “What choice did you have?”

  “There’s always a choice.” She bit the words off, heaved the half-empty bottle at the wall, where it bounced and spewed out bubbling water. “There’s always a choice,” she repeated. “I made mine. I knew how he felt about Frank, about Alice, but I blocked him out. I followed orders. I walked the line.”

  She could feel the pain rising, straining to spew as the water had spewed out of the bottle. She fought to block it back. “He was right, everything he said to me. Everything. I could have gone to him on the side.”

  “Is that what you were trained to do? Is that what he trained you to do?”

  “He made me,” she said fiercely. “I owe him. I should have told him how it was going down.”

  “No.” He stepped to her, took her by the shoulders. “No, you couldn’t.”

  “I could have.” She shouted it. “I should have. I wish to God I had.” And broke. Covered her face with her hands and broke. “Oh God, what am I going to do?”

  Roarke gathered her close. She cried rarely, a last resort, and always when the tears finally came they were vicious. “He needs time. He’s a cop, Eve. Part of him already understands. The rest just needs to catch up.”

  “No.” Her hands fisted in his shirt, held on. “The way he looked at me…I’ve lost him, Roarke. I’ve lost him. I swear I’d rather lose my badge.”

  He waited while the tears stormed out, while her body shook with them. There was such strong emotions in her, he thought, rocking as her hands clenched and unclenched against his back. Emotions she’d spent a lifetime bottling up, so they were only the more potent when they broke free.

  “Damn it.” She let out a breath, long and shaky. Her head felt achy, muffled, her throat raw. “I hate doing that. It doesn’t help.”

  “More than you think.” He stroked a hand over her hair, then tipped it under her chin to lift her face. “You need food and a decent night’s sleep, so you can do what you need to do.”

  “What I need to do?”

  “Close the case. Once you have, you can put all this behind you.”

  “Yeah.” She pus
hed her hands over her hot, wet cheeks. “Close the case. That’s the bottom line.” She hissed out a breath. “That’s the goddamn job.”

  “That’s justice.” He brushed a thumb over the dent in her chin. “Isn’t it?”

  She looked up at him, her eyes reddened, swollen, exhausted. “I don’t know anymore.”

  She didn’t eat, and he didn’t press her. There had been grief in his life, and he knew food wasn’t the answer. He’d considered browbeating her into taking a sedative. That, he knew, would have been an ugly business. So he was grateful when she went to bed early. He made some excuse about a conference call.

  From his office, he watched on the monitor until her restless twists and turns stopped, and she slept. What he had to do would take no more than an hour or two. He doubted she’d surface before then and miss him.

  He’d never been to Feeney’s. The apartment building was comfortably shabby, well-secured, and unpretentious. Roarke thought it suited the man. Because he didn’t want to risk being refused entrance, he bypassed the security buzzer and entrance locks.

  That suited him.

  He strolled through the tiny lobby, caught the faint scent of a recent insect extermination. Though he approved the intent, he disliked the lingering reminder of it, and made a note to have it dealt with.

  After all, he owned the building.

  He stepped into an elevator, requested the third floor. He noticed when he stepped out again that the corridor carpet could use replacing. But it was well lit, the tiny beam on the security cameras blinking efficiently. The walls were clean and thick enough to muffle all but a faint hum of life behind closed doors.

  A low drift of music, a quick rumble of laughter, a fretful baby’s nighttime wail. Life, Roarke thought, and a pleasant one. He rang the bell at Feeney’s door and waited.

  His eyes stared soberly at the peep screen, continued to stare when Feeney’s irritated voice came through the intercom.

  “What the hell do you want? You slumming?”

  “I don’t think this building qualifies as a slum.”

  “Anything does, compared to that palace you live in.”

  “Do you want to discuss the difference in our living arrangements through the door, or are you going to ask me in?”

  “I asked what you want.”

  “You know why I’m here.” He quirked a brow, making sure it was just insulting enough. “You’ve got guts enough to face me, don’t you, Feeney?”

  It had, as Roarke had expected, the right effect. The door swung open. Feeney stood, blocking entrance with his compact body braced for war, his rumpled face bright with fury. “It’s none of your fucking business.”

  “On the contrary.” Roarke stood where he was, kept his voice even. “It’s very much my fucking business. But I don’t believe it’s any of your neighbors’.”

  Teeth clenched, Feeney stepped back. “Come in and say what you have to say, then get the hell out.”

  “Is your wife at home?” Roarke asked when Feeney slammed the door at his back.

  “She’s got a girl’s thing tonight.” Feeney inclined his head, much like a bull, Roarke thought, preparing to charge. “You want to take a shot at me, you go ahead. I wouldn’t mind pounding that pretty face of yours.”

  “Christ Jesus, she’s just like you.” Shaking his head, Roarke wandered the living room. Homey, he decided. Not quite tidy. The viewing screen was set on the ball game, the sound muted. The batter swung, the ball flew in total silence. “What’s the score?”

  “Yanks are up by one, bottom of the seventh.” He caught himself on the verge of offering Roarke a beer, then stiffened again. “She told you, didn’t she? Filled you in right from the get-go.”

  “She wasn’t under orders not to. And she thought I could help.”

  He could help, Feeney thought and tasted bitterness. Her rich, fancy husband could help, but not her former trainer, not her former partner. Not the man who had worked side by side with her with pride, and goddamn it, affection, for ten years. “Doesn’t make you less of a civilian.” His tired eyes went broody. “You didn’t even know Frank.”

  “No, I didn’t. But Eve did. She cared.”

  “We’d been partners, me and Frank. We were friends. Family. She had no business bumping me out of it. That’s how I feel, that’s what I told her.”

  “I’m sure you did.” Roarke turned away from the view screen, looked Feeney dead in the eye. “And however you told her, it broke her heart.”

  “Dented her feelings some.” Feeney walked away, picked up a half-empty bottle of beer. Even through the murky haze of his fury, he’d seen the devastation in her eyes when he’d come down on her. And had willed himself not to give a damn. “She’ll get over it.” He drank deeply, knowing the taste wouldn’t overpower the bitterness lodged in his throat. “She’ll do her job. She just won’t do it with me anymore.”

  “I said you broke her heart. I meant it. How long have you known her, Feeney?” Roarke’s voice hardened, demanding attention. “Ten years, eleven? How many times have you seen her fall apart? I imagine you could count them on the fingers of one hand. Well, I watched her fall apart tonight.” He took a careful breath. Temper wasn’t the answer here, not for any of them. “If you wanted to crush her, you succeeded.”

  “I told her how things were, that’s all.” Guilt was already seeping in. He slammed down the bottle, determined to chase it away. “Cops back each other, they trust each other or they’ve got nothing. She was digging on Frank. She should have come to me.”

  “Is that what you’d have told her to do?” Roarke countered. “Is that the kind of cop you helped her become? It wasn’t you in Whitney’s office, taking the orders, doing the job,” he went on without giving Feeney time to answer. “And suffering for it.”

  “No.” A fresh wave of bitterness passed through him. “It wasn’t me.” He sat, deliberately turned up the sound, and stared at the ancient battle on the screen.

  Stubborn, thick-headed Irish bastard, Roarke thought with twin tugs of sympathy and impatience. “You did me a favor once,” Roarke began. “When I was first involved with Eve and I hurt her because I misunderstood a situation. You straightened me out on that, so I’m going to do you a similar favor.”

  “I don’t want your favors.”

  “You’ll have it, anyway.” Roarke sat in a chair comfortably sprung. He helped himself to Feeney’s nearly empty bottle. “What do you know about her father?”

  “What?” Baffled now, Feeney turned his head and stared. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “It has everything to do with her. Did you know he beat her, tortured her, raped her repeatedly until she was eight years old?”

  A muscle worked in Feeney’s jaw as he turned away again, muted the screen. He’d known that she’d been found in an alley at eight, beaten, broken, sexually abused. That was on record, and he never worked with anyone without knowing their official data. But he hadn’t known it was her father who’d done it. He’d suspected as much, but he hadn’t known. His stomach twisted, his hands clenched.

  “I’m sorry for that. She never brought it up.”

  “She didn’t always remember. Or, more likely, she did and refused to remember. She still has nightmares, flashbacks.”

  “You got no business telling me this.”

  “She’d likely say the same, but I’m telling you, anyway. She made herself what she is, and you helped. She’d go to the wall for you; you know that.”

  “Cops back up cops. That’s the job.”

  “I’m not talking about the job. She loves you, and she doesn’t love easily. It’s difficult for her to feel it, and to show it. Part of her may always be braced for betrayal, for a blow. You’ve been her father for ten years, Feeney. She didn’t deserve to be broken again.”

  Roarke stood, and saying nothing more, walked out.

  Alone, Feeney raked his hands up over his face, into his wiry red hair, then let them drop on his lap.<
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  It was six fifteen when Eve rolled over, blinked at the light streaming through the windows. Roarke preferred waking to sun. Unless she snuck out of bed or climbed in well after him, she didn’t get her shot at pulling the privacy screens.

  She felt logy, decided it was too much sleep, and started to slip out of bed.

  Roarke’s arm swept out and pinned her. “Not yet.” His voice was husky, his eyes still closed as he tugged her back over.

  “I’m awake. I can get an early start.” She wiggled. “I’ve been in bed nearly nine hours. I can’t sleep anymore.”

  He opened one eye—sufficient to note that she did indeed look rested. “You’re a detective,” he pointed out. “I’ll bet if you investigated, you’d uncover the startling fact that there are activities that can be done in bed other than sleep.”

  His lips curved as he rolled on top of her. “Allow me to give you the first clue.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised her that he was already hard, or that she would be so instantly ready for him. He slid inside her, smooth, slow, deep, and watched the lingering sleep clear from her eyes into awareness.

  “I think I’ve figured it out already.” She lifted her hips, matched his lazy pace.

  “You’re such a quick study.” He lowered his lips to nuzzle just under her jawline. “I like this spot,” he murmured. “And this one.” His hand trailed up her rib cage, cupped her breast.

  The arousal was sweet, simple, and made her sigh. “Let me know when you get to something you don’t like.”

  She wrapped her arms around him, her legs. He was so solid, so warm, the steady beat of his heart against hers so comforting. Pleasure built in gauzy layers, floating over her mind, stroking through her body.

  “Go over for me.” He nibbled her lips, then swept his tongue inside to tangle with hers. To nip, to suck. “Go over,” he repeated. “Slow.”

  “Well…” Her breath was already hitching, catching in her throat. “Since you ask so nice.”