by J. D. Robb
A quiet intimacy before death and duty pulled them both back in.
Instead she’d seduced him, in a finger snap, with humor and sex—so intimately theirs.
A part of him wished he could hold on, just endlessly hold on to this moment. But he contented himself, was more than content, to know there would be others, scores of other moments.
Intimately theirs.
He trailed his fingers over the lace, over those firm breasts, teasing them both, then flicked open the tiny front hook to free her to his hands.
And when her heartbeat quickened, to his mouth.
Her breath caught. It always did. That rush, that punch of feelings, the impossible knots of them tangled in that mad swirl of sensation as he took her over as no one else ever had, ever could.
Just him, only him, the one who knew her, knew her mind, her body, her often shaky soul. And loved her, simply loved her.
That, just that? The miracle in her life.
She let him take, surrendered herself to his needs and to her own, as here, always here, they became one and the same. Let herself tremble and ache as those hands, that mouth, possessed.
Then as they roamed over her body, roamed down.
His thumbs gliding along those sensitive lines where the white lace rode high, his tongue sliding under where it lay over her center turned the trembles into shudders. And shudders to writhing as he slowly, so slowly, eased the lace lower.
The pleasure all but drowned her, and still he took her down, further down, into the thick and the hot and the glorious. Soft, slow, dreamy touches that left her utterly helpless.
Blissfully so.
He loved the sound she made, between a moan and a purr, when she was steeped in what he gave her, when she yielded to herself. Then the explosion of her, the break and shock when, with fingers or tongue or both, he slid into the hot and wet.
Her body arched, it quaked as she rode that wild burst of release. Her hands flailed, then gripped the edges of the counter as he pushed her higher, gave her more until she cried out once, twice.
Her world reeled and spun, and there was nothing in it but him. She arched up, wrapped around him, her breath ragged, her skin slick. Clinging there, she gathered herself while his lips pressed to her throat.
Then her hands grappled with his belt, tugged. “I want.” She tossed her head back, met those wild blue eyes. “I want.”
He kissed her, and the ferocity was back. “I want.”
One and the same.
She dragged at his zipper, desperate now, greedy now. Her hands raced over his chest, his back, his hips, as he stripped.
As desperate, as greedy as she, he pushed her back, drove into her. Thrusting hard, deep, over and over, with her long legs hooked around him like chains so he was steeped, he was lost. With his blood racing under his skin, her hands clutched in his hair, her eyes fixed on his, he let himself go into the madness.
Then through it, with her, into the bliss.
When her body went lax, he simply had no choice but to drop his weight on her. He wasn’t sure he had a muscle or bone left in him.
Her voice, when she spoke, came both husky and smug.
“Command center sex. I’ve been saving it up.”
“Saving it up?” He wondered if his brains had been scrambled.
“Until the first Summerset-free night. It was worth it.”
He managed a laugh. “I’m in no position to argue.”
“Maybe we could just slide to the floor, then try to get up again in two or three days.” She locked her arms around him a moment in a tight hug. “Except.”
“Except.” He eased up enough to look down at her. “You know, now every time Summerset goes on holiday, I’ll be expecting command center sex.”
“I figure we mix it up, that way you’ll never know.” After a long sigh, she poked a finger into his chest. “I’ve got to get dressed. I’ve got that work.”
He reached over, picked up a discarded scrap of lace, offered it.
“Get real, pal. I can’t work in that. Or these purple boots.”
“I have a new and extreme fondness for those boots. What do you say we shower, get into comfortable clothes. We can have a meal while you catch me up on the investigation.”
“I want spaghetti, and big, fat meatballs.”
“I could use the same.”
He made her laugh by plucking her up again, tossing her over his shoulder before he started out of the room.
“Now you’re looking for shower sex.”
“And I know just where to find it.”
* * *
Over the meal, and a little wine, she filled him in and explained how she intended to approach the data.
“I need to pull out any five ratings from the books, cross-check them with the financial ledger. Some of them might not have made the initial payment, and they all have to be checked. Not all of them are from New York, or New Jersey, or within an easy distance. She hit some, I’ve already seen, from other areas, even out of the country. I need to separate those out, check travel.”
They cleared the table together. “I can help with that.”
“I was hoping you would. It’s going to be a long slog. I want to look for anybody we might be able to connect with Lari Jane Mercury. It’s a long shot she dipped into that pool, but I’m betting she started this business of hers a long time back. Why else change her face? She was of age, nobody could have forced her back to Kansas.”
“It’s just as likely, for someone like her, the appeal of remaking herself, sloughing off all the old—and improving on her looks was enough.”
“She looked okay before, but yeah. Yeah, vanity. She died a knockout. Still, it’s a thread to tug.”
With the dishes in the machine, she walked back into the office where the cat lay in front of the fire, his back to the room.
“I’m pretty good at reading Galahad’s body language. He’s a little pissed off at us.”
Roarke gave the cat a thoughtful study. “Well, we did pay more attention to each other than we did to him.”
“He was working with you when I got here.”
“He was, wasn’t he? And how did we thank him? We had command center and shower sex, pasta and meatballs, and he got low-cal kibble.”
Put that way, it sounded just wrong.
“Maybe a little tuna wouldn’t hurt. It makes us patsies,” Eve admitted, “but…”
“We are his patsies, aren’t we? I’ll get it,” Roarke told her. “You can start setting us up, and I expect we’ll need a pot of coffee.”
“Got it covered.” She walked over to the cat, stared down at him as he studiously ignored her. “Do you want tuna or not, fat boy?”
He rolled over, eyed her, eyed Roarke. Then followed Roarke into the kitchen as if doing them a favor.
“Patsies,” Eve grumbled, walking over to program the coffee and set up.
They fell into the rhythm of the work. It could still surprise her how easily he adapted to the elemental tedium of cop drudgery. The reading, analyzing, checking, rechecking, all that comprised so much of the job.
He worked on her auxiliary while the tuna-content cat dozed on her sleep chair. For nearly an hour they worked in silence, each studying and assessing the names, the lives, of those Mars had targeted.
“I’m sending you two batches,” Roarke told her. “Those I find more than an hour’s commute outside the city, and a second, smaller group who ranked a five and aren’t on her financial ledger.”
She leaned back, poured more coffee for both of them. “I’ll fold it into what I have. Business-brain question.”
“I happen to have one of those.”
“What I’m seeing here when you go through her payment schedules are some she started collecting from four or five years ago. A scattering of six years ago. And there are some names that drop off. A check shows me two of them are deceased, but the others aren’t. She marks the last payment shown with a red check mark. When I add them
up, the cumulative amounts vary, just as the monthly payments varied, so that eliminates a final amount she might have designated.”
“But it wouldn’t.” He picked up the coffee. “Not if it was a final amount she designated per individual, calculating just how much they might pay before balking or becoming angry or despairing enough to do as you wish they had at the start. Go to the authorities.”
“Okay, I was playing with that. She looked at the individual, calculated how much she could suck out of them, and/or how long she could so suck, before they started to waver. And/or again, she cut them loose when she sensed she was reaching that threshold.”
“Either/or,” he agreed. “It makes good business sense. Know when to settle and move on. From what I’m seeing, she had a head for it. Determine how much a target would pay per month, how long they would pay, and if and when they would reach their limit.”
“Maybe she miscalculated with one, and he hit his limit.”
“Which, logically, eliminates those with a red check mark from your suspect list.”
“Unless.” Calculating, she drank coffee. “One who she cut loose when he hit that threshold, or was, in her estimation, approaching it, is connected in some way to another target. Target A is now off the hook—but you’d simmer awhile, right? You’ve shelled out in the neighborhood of a half million or more to this conniving bitch. It’s a pisser. Then you find out Target B—maybe a friend, an associate, a relative—is being skinned, and the simmer goes to boil. It’s never going to stop, you think, never going to stop until she’s stopped.”
“Interesting, and logical.” He leaned toward her, tapped the side of her head. “Cop brain.”
“Yeah, and the cop brain says even the dead ones can’t be eliminated because someone connected to one of them might have found out, sought revenge. She knew the killer, I’m sure of that, but she knew a lot of people.
“I need a minute.”
She rose, paced, circled her board. Roarke took the minute with her, drank his coffee.
“It’s not going to be the data,” she decided. “It’s not going to be someone she used for information.”
“Why not?”
“When you reach the threshold there, you’re more likely to pack it in. Get yourself fired or transferred, find a way to be of less use to her. Not impossible you decide to kill her to end it, but she went for lower-level there, the easily intimidated, the rank and file most don’t notice. And I’m betting some of those she used enjoyed it. Like playing spy—and what’s the big deal? Wouldn’t surprise me to find out she fed the source now and then, too. Slip them a little cash, keep them going.”
She circled again. “She did that now and then—has it deducted as an expense. Like she deducted the expense of the two street LCs she paid to have sex with Bellami. Likely they knew he was drugged. Maybe they didn’t care, or maybe they thought that’s how he wanted it.”
“You’ll interview them.”
“Yeah, since she has their names listed. And the guy she blackmailed into dosing Bellami’s drink, I’ll do more than interview him.”
“Good news, blackmail days are over,” Roarke said, “bad news, you’re under arrest.”
“I’ll look forward to that.” Hands on her hips, she stared at her board, the faces. Shook her head. “Miscalculation on Mars’s part, maybe. Maybe, but she had a knack, like you said. She was damn good at this. The people she was bleeding? It’s upsetting, sure, it’s a pisser, yeah, but roughly eight thousand a month, a half million over a period of years? It’s no big. It doesn’t change their standard of living.”
“It’s insulting.”
“If it’s so insulting, you stop or you never start. She gave you a little nudge, and you slapped her back—and she stepped off. Because she read you right. If it’s so insulting, you tell her go ahead, try it. She’d have hit that a time or two and done just what she did with you. She stepped off.”
Eve walked back, dropped into her chair, blew out a breath. “Damn it.”
“You’re saying you don’t think her killer’s in this mass of books and ledgers.”
“Somewhere,” she muttered. “Somewhere. I just— It’s not clicking. Why kill her? Missy Lee had that right. You’d know the cops would come into it. You don’t know she’s got a secret place under another name. You’d have to figure the cops would find what we found, some sort of record, and we’d uncover your secret anyway. Killing her risks exposure, too.”
“Fight-or-flight’s not logical but instinctive. He snaps.”
“But he didn’t,” she insisted. “I went around this with Mira when she used that same term. He planned, he calculated, he timed, he prepared. This wasn’t a crime of passion, but of cold calculation. He’s not going to have been a target. I just don’t see it. But he’ll be connected to one. He’ll care about one. And he has to be close enough to know the target’s being exploited. A spouse, a relative, a friend, a trusted coworker. One who decided the target could weather the exposure of the secret if it came out, but shouldn’t bear the stress, the insult. He decided for them.”
Eve tapped a finger on one of the open books. “He’d handle it, take care of it, he’d clear it up.”
“Because that’s what he does?” Roarke prompted. “Handles things for this person? Takes care of this person?”
“Does or wants to. Killer’s male—determined. Target’s most likely female, or possibly a male perceived by the killer as vulnerable, too weak to take care of himself. I’m leaning female, and the killer’s the shiny knight.”
“That’s white knight, in shining armor.”
“If the knight’s wearing the armor, he’s shiny. If he’s not, he’s probably got a spear in his guts anyway.”
Roarke hesitated only a moment, then decided, “Inarguable.”
“Let’s try this. We’ll separate the female targets, then look for connected males. Spouses, fathers, brothers, partners, handlers. Like Missy Lee: her father—though he comes off a weak sister to me—her business manager, her agent. I’m leaning away from her only because she comes off as someone who knows how to keep a secret—you tell no one.”
“All right. Hold on.” His fingers raced over his keyboard. “Done,” he told her. “Both machines.”
“I could’ve done my own.”
“Now you don’t have to.”
She scowled over it for a moment, then turned to do the work.
“Connections,” she said again. “There are scores of them in the books—celebrities with their entourages, high-end execs with their staffs. You and me rate our own book, and plenty of connections. Nadine, Mavis, Summerset, Whitney, Caro. Even the red dress earned a few pages.”
Barely listening, he glanced up. “Red dress?”
“I … Just thinking out loud.”
He read it on her face. “Magdelana?”
“It’s not important. I didn’t mean to bring it up.”
He reached over, laid a hand on hers. “I’m sorry.” Always would be.
“It’s not important. Really, just thinking out loud.” But he, deliberately, turned her hand over, intertwined their fingers in a firm grip.
“Okay.” Better to get it out, she decided, as those blue eyes held hers just as his hand held hers. She didn’t think it would fester, but … “Mars did some research on her, speculated about the two of you. It looks like she considered taking a pass or two in that direction to see what she could stir up, but then Magdelana left town, and that’s that.
“That’s that,” Eve repeated.
“We’re both fully aware Magdelana would have enjoyed using Mars, as Mars used her, to stir things up. I regret even the possibility of that.”
“It didn’t happen. Mars didn’t make her move there soon enough, and Magdelana’s gone.”
“She is, and will stay gone.” When he hesitated, just a fraction of a second, Eve’s hand stiffened in his.
“You’ve got something you’re not telling me.”
“I detest bring
ing her into our lives even for an instant, but you should know. She arrived in Port-au-Prince a few days ago.”
“You’re keeping tabs on her?” Eve said carefully.
“I’m not, no. I don’t give a bleeding, buggering fuck where she is or what she’s up to.” Temper, brutally cold, edged his voice. “But I do keep track of my holdings, and if my directives are met. Perhaps testing the waters, or my reach, she attempted to stay in my hotel there in the company of another guest. As per my orders, she was turned out and away.”
He let out a breath. “I hope you can take at least some satisfaction from knowing security very firmly showed her the door.”
“More than some. Is there feed? Might be fun to watch.”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach those marvelous eyes. “I promise you, she won’t touch you or anything of ours again.”
“It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t matter.” In saying it, Eve realized she meant it. “Seeing her in the book gave me a bad half minute. Maybe a minute and a half,” she corrected as he simply looked at her. “We’re good.”
“She doesn’t matter,” Roarke echoed. “All that does matter to me is right here.”
Maybe it hurt him more, she thought, that faint shadow Magdelana cast. So she shrugged. “I gotta figure that’s true the way you stock my closet with boots.”
He murmured to her in Irish as he kissed the hand he held. She’d heard him tell her he loved her in his heart’s tongue often enough to recognize the words.
The way he said it, the way he looked at her when he did, made her throat ache. She leaned over, kissed him, then pulled back before she got sloppy.
“Okay, that’s enough sap. We’re working here. Connections,” she repeated.
The comm she’d brought in with her signaled.
“Crap. Crap.” She snatched it up, frowned. “Baxter,” she said, and responded. “Dallas.”
“Boss, we caught one. I think it links to yours.”
“Who’s the vic?”
“Female vic ID’d as Kellie Lowry, she’s employed by Knight Productions. We’re outside 30 Rock now, and the scene’s secure.”
“I’m—we’re,” she corrected when Roarke raised his eyebrows, “on our way. Do you have an on-scene determination on COD?”