Chapter Sixteen

She kept pacing when he brought in plates.

"It's mean."

"Murder?" He set the plates on the table by the balcony doors. As they both enjoyed the air, he opened them before turning to her. "It is, yes."

"Sure, but sometimes it's clean in a straightforward way, or crazy, impulsive, or purposeful. This is mean and stupid and personal."

"Murder offends you." Roarke brought the wine to the table. "It often makes you sad or angry—or both. This one also annoys you."

She frowned at her board. "Guess it does."

"You feel for the victim, always. You're their agent of justice."

"Eve Dallas, Agent of Justice." On a half laugh, she rolled her eyes.

"It has a ring. You feel for those left behind, always. And when you look at that board, you know one of those claiming that loss took her life."

"Yeah, but that happens." Frustrated, and yes, annoyed, she shoved her hands in her pockets. "It happens more often than not."

"And all that you handle, day after day. But for this you see that mean stupidity, a friend killing a friend and bringing grief to so many others they claim as friends, so many others who were on the verge of celebrating that victim starting a new phase of her life."

She did see it. She did feel it. And yeah, she admitted, it seriously annoyed.

"That was the point, or part of it. Ending it before it began. When Casto came for me, in that same room at the same sort of deal, he didn't care about any of that. He just needed to end me because I was too close to exposing him. That makes sense. It's not stupid. It was logical."

She gestured to the board with her wineglass. "This one cared about all of that."

"Come eat now. You're frustrating yourself."

"I probably am." She walked over, angled her head at the plates. Chicken glossy with sauce, a heap of fries, and the purple carrots she actually liked, mostly because purple. "That looks really good."

She set down her wine, stepped over, and kissed him.

"That's because I kicked Casto's ass that night so now we can sit here and eat what looks really good."

She took her seat, snagged a fry. "Looks aren't deceiving here. Frustrating myself some," she admitted. "I liked it better when the dead artist's paintings' value seemed like a viable angle."

"Because murder for monetary gain at least has some logic."

"Yeah, it would still be mean and stupid and a little sloppy, but you could see the logic. But that's not it. Maybe, on some level, it adds a benefit because just about everyone on the board has at least one of her paintings. It's just not the reason."

She sampled the chicken, found whatever coated it had an excellent tang. When Roarke topped off her wine, she decided that was fine. She was just circling anyway.

Set it aside, she told herself. Let it circle, but set it aside.

"Why were you downtown?"

"A meeting at your Off Duty club."

"You get a charge out of that, don't you? Saying it's my club."

"As it is yours, and yes, I do. You already have tenants applying for Stone's apartment above."

"That asshole. Do I?"

"You do. Once we do some vetting, you can choose."

"I can vet. I'm a cop."

"That you are." He smiled, a man who already knew the answer to the question. "Would you like to?"

"Absolutely completely not."

"We'll be interviewing for managers, bartenders, kitchen and waitstaff, and so on in another couple of months. Would you like to take lead on that?"

"Stop it." Laughing, she went for a carrot. "I'm giving all that to you, like a present, because you like it."

"Why, thank you, darling."

"You're welcome." As she ate, thunder rumbled in the distance.

She remembered it had stormed the night of Erin Albright's murder. While the group had partied and danced and drank, the storm had rolled in, and rolled out again.

"You're doing that security for the D her heart simply soared. "Sap."

"In this area," he said easily. "But smart enough to get through those initial and formidable defenses of yours with coffee."

"Yeah, that was pretty damn smart." She ate a fry made from an actual potato as she studied that incredible face again. "If I'd gone for somebody else, would you have killed me?"

Brows lifted, he picked up his wine. "Now, there's a sharp turn." He looked over at her board. "No. I might have bought up the world's supply of coffee, then convinced you of your mistake. Or, alternately, found a way to… disqualify my rival."

"Disqualify?"

"One way or the other, short of murder," he added. "You being a murder cop would have discouraged me on that tactic. And you?"

"Me? Oh, if you'd lured me in with your seductive coffee, then dumped me? Murder cops know a lot of ways to kill without leaving a trace. But short of that? I'd have just hounded you on your shady past until I got you tossed in a cage."

She angled around to look at the board. "Somebody on there didn't stop short."

"Killing the rival, or the one who rejected them?"

"Not completely sure. But I know Lopez took the time to go into that shoe store to fuck with Shauna. I've got no doubts she tried to put the moves on Erin within the last year. I'd've put some money on her for it."

"Now?"

"Holding that bet because Barney had something besides what came out of the friggie and AC in that box. He was nervous, stayed nervous, and pushed for information on the case. Trying to size me up on it."

She shifted back. "He took something, maybe just some little thing. And that's stupid, like the murder was stupid. He's got a thing for Shauna. It doesn't come off sexual, even romantic, but it's a thing."

"You're changing your bet."

"Not yet." She polished off the fries. "Not yet, because either one of them could've done it. And both of them wanted to."

"A partnership?"

"I've played with that. May play some more, but it doesn't hold for me. It… wobbles," she decided. "I can't see them hooking up, not for this, not for anything."

Shrugging, she picked up her wine again, did a half toast. "I'll know more tomorrow when I see them at the memorial."

As she drank, lightning cracked the sky. Rain poured out.

"Here it comes," she said. Then she rose. "I've got the dishes."

"Is there anything I can do to help you? Runs? Finances?"

"Not really, no." She walked to the window to watch the rain, to feel the whip of the wind. "I need to write it up—and I'm going to copy Mira. Maybe writing it up will click something into place."

When he joined her at the open doors, she leaned against him. Just two people, she thought, watching a storm blow its raging way over their city.

"I need to see them all together tomorrow. Together over death, how they react, how they interplay. I've got some of their impressions of each other, a lot of the dynamics. I need to see how it all plays out."

She looked up at him. "What have you got going?"

"Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that. I'll entertain myself well enough."

"How about you give it an hour, then we entertain ourselves with a vid?"

Watching the storm, he stroked a hand down her hair. "A vid, is it?"

"If something doesn't click, I'm just going to keep circling."

"A vid works for me. So does an hour."

She watched the storm another moment. "A good thing I lost that button."

"And I intuited you could be won over by coffee."

"Yeah. Anyway, I've got the dishes."

Though she didn't feel she made any progress or opened new avenues, Eve took the hour.

They settled into their usual vid spot, the sofa in the bedroom. The action and complexity of the vid took her out of the investigation for a while. As did the slow, lazy sex that followed.

She slept peacefully, curled between Roarke and the cat.

Until she didn't.

Back in the club, with Crack at the bar and the holo-band playing wild. Her friends, Erin Albright's friends, mixed and merged into one colorful, drunk, girl party.

Why was she back here? Eve wondered. Nothing new here.

She'd stayed sober, she thought. Getting married tomorrow.

"I guess I should've stayed sober, too." Beside her, Erin looked over the people, the color, the movement as Eve did. "But we weren't getting married until the weekend. And we were all having so much fun."

"You couldn't have known what was coming."

"You didn't know, either."

"Yeah, true enough. But even if you'd been cold sober, you're not trained. An ambush like that, from behind? You didn't have a chance."

"I love her so much." Tears gathered in Erin's eyes as she watched Shauna dance onstage. "She'll never go to Maui now. It's ruined for her. They killed me, sure. But they killed something in her, too."

"Might've been the point."

"If I had it to do over, I'd know who to trust and who not to."

"You don't, and you didn't. Why the hell am I back here?"

"Don't ask me. I'm dead."

Looking for something she missed? What the hell could she have missed in that small room?

But she followed the dream, walked out of the club area, down the hallway, and turned into the privacy room.

Casto jumped her, the syringe full of the drug Immortality in his hand. To protect himself, he'd take her down. He'd take her out.

He managed to get a trace in her, but as she told him, she hadn't been drinking. She was getting married in the morning!

He hurt her, blackened her eye, pounded her ribs, but that training, her determination to survive, met his head-on.

And she took him down.

A little woozy from that trace, she cuffed him. She started to stumble her way to the door.

The wire went around her neck, biting into her skin. Blood trickled warm down her throat as she gasped for air.

Unlike Erin, she didn't claw at the wire, but threw her body back against the attacker, added an elbow jab.

For a second, just an instant, the wire loosened. But as it tightened again, she felt herself weaken. Pain, cutting pain. No air, her mind starting to slip into the gray.

She thought of Roarke, waiting for her. Thought of the people in the club celebrating both of them. Thought of the life she'd never know.

Roarke pulled her up.

"You wake up now. You wake up, damn it, and breathe. Eve, breathe !"

She sucked in air like a drowning woman, let it out with a shudder. Still on the edge of the dream, she lifted a hand to her throat.

No wire cutting into her, no blood sliding down.

"Jesus, Jesus, that was too fucking real."

With his arms around her, with the cat butting his head against her hip, she dropped her head on Roarke's shoulder.

"I'm okay. It's okay. It was just so real."

Galahad stopped butting his head against her and leaned heavy against her back.

"You were choking. You didn't seem to breathe." He drew her back as he called for lights at ten percent. "Ah God, you're so pale."

"Shook me up a little."

More than a little, she thought as she struggled to even her breathing. She'd felt the pain, she'd felt the panic.

"Thanks for pulling me out." She reached around, stroked a hand over the cat. "You, too. I was back at the D she didn't. You relate to her because of the circumstances."

"I guess I do. We're nothing alike, except for the circumstances. But dwelling on those parallels is stupid and unproductive."

"I disagree." He smoothed her hair, then laid a hand on her cheek as color came back into it. "It helps you see her, and you need to see the victim."

"It's screwing with my objectivity. It puts a shadow over it."

"If you didn't use those shadows, Lieutenant, you wouldn't be the cop you are. But Christ knows there are times I wish it didn't get inside you as it does."

Then he sighed. "And yet that's what makes you who you are. So I'm well stuck as well, aren't I?"

"Looks that way to me. What the hell time is it?"

"It was half-five when I finished the meeting, so just shy of six."

"Okay, all right. Boy, am I awake, so I'm going to grab a workout, smooth myself out some."

"You should try this new program, an urban obstacle course. Program New York Challenge. It earned the title."

He cupped her cheek. "We'll see if you're up to it."

She decided it sounded perfect.

The program proved it earned the title, and she proved she was up to it. Inside of three minutes she broke a sweat as she ran, climbed, belayed, tunnel crawled, dodged, jumped, and swung her way through Midtown.

She capped that off with ten laps in the pool, and felt normal again as she rode back upstairs.

In the bedroom, Roarke and the cat sat on the sofa. The screen scrolled with stock reports. And all was right in her personal world.

"You were right about the program—it's a killer. I was up to it."

"You look yourself again," he noted.

"It pumped me up."

She programmed coffee, took it with her to shower.

When she came out, he had two domed plates on the table. Galahad sulked on the foot of the bed.

Roarke smiled at her as he removed the domes. "It seemed like a pancake kind of day."

Pampering her, she thought, when she'd scared them both.

"It should always be a pancake kind of day."

"You have the memorial later."

"Yeah, and you're fortifying me, but not with spinach. They're not cakes," she said as she sat beside him. "And don't they make them on a griddle sort of thing? But they call them pancakes anyway."

She drowned them in syrup. And after the first bite, didn't care what the hell they called them. She called them good.

"What did you give the cat for helping pull me back?"

"He enjoyed some smoked tuna for breakfast."

"And still he's pissed because he's not getting pancakes, too." She took another bite. "It is nice to be married. It's stupid for me to keep thinking Erin Albright didn't get the chance to find out if it would've been nice for her."

"It's not stupid." Touched, Roarke kissed her fingers. "It's compassionate, and how does that compassion interfere with your cop brain? Not a bit, darling Eve. Not at all."

"Maybe not."

"You have to know your victim. It's always how it works for you. Know the victim, find the killer. It's fascinating to me. Endlessly."

"Maybe. Maybe. They made stupid, rookie mistakes. They shouldn't have brought the case in—or if that was cover in the event they got spotted, they should've taken it with them when they left.

"Luck," Eve continued, "pure idiot luck they didn't get spotted, that they got in and out without being seen. And they stage a half-assed robbery. Stupid. But they had to take her 'link. There had to be communications on there. If I had enough, I could get a warrant for the suspects' e's. But I don't."

"The unregistered could deal with that easily enough," he reminded her.

Frowning, she drank more coffee. "If I felt there was any chance another life was in danger, I'd be tempted there. But I don't. The job's done. Erin was the target. Shauna's hurt is either a by-product or an added benefit. But there's nothing to indicate anyone else is in danger."

"If you change your mind, it's available."

She polished off the pancakes, rose.

"I'm going to a memorial. I'm wearing black."

"Understood."

"Just wanted to get that out of the way."

"We're due for a bit of a break with the heat, but you might want to go with linen."

She made some noncommittal sound as she went into her closet. She wasn't always a hundred percent sure which was linen.

Black tee, black jacket, black trousers and boots, belt. Easy as it got, she decided. And if the jacket and trousers weren't linen, they were lightweight.

She came out for her weapon harness.

"I like color," she began. "I do like color, but if they'd never invented it, getting dressed in the morning would be a hell of a lot easier. Creepy," she realized as she strapped her weapon on. "It would probably be creepy, and make it harder to identify a fleeing suspect."

"Boring, and creepy. That said, you look respectful and formidable in your full black."

"I want to intimidate the hell out of my top two suspects."

"My money's on you, always."

Rising, he walked to her, kissed her. "Take care of my formidable cop."

"Plan to." She kissed him again, added a quick, hard hug. "Yeah, it's nice being married. See you later."

She started out. And it flashed into her brain, just leaped inside and stuck. She turned around and went back.

"It wasn't a mistake. It wasn't a goddamn mistake. It was deliberate."

"The case?"

God, it was amazing to have someone who got her, who got it .

"The case, yeah, the frigging case, and what was in it. Not a mistake to leave it there, a deliberate shot. At Shauna. The big dream, forever ruined. Her dream, and one Erin wanted to give her, was going to give her."

Eve started to pace. "The killer doesn't have to take the case, the tickets, the costume, those pink shoes to the D&D, but they do. Okay, maybe cover—that's a benefit. ‘Oh, it's a surprise. Shh.' But they left them for a purpose.

"To destroy the dream."

"That's damn right—not stupid after all. Mean, vindictive, and purposeful."

Behind them, a dome crashed to the floor. Roarke turned to see the cat busily licking syrup from a plate.

"Bloody hell."

"Knock it off," Eve snapped. "Down. Now!"

When the cat leaped down, slunk away, Roarke snarled.

"Now I'm insulted. That fecking cat. That's insulting he cowers off when you tell him to."

"Never mind that. It's a twofer. Erin's dead, but Shauna not only loses her, she loses this dream she's had. Not only loses it, but knows she was just this close to having it. Now it's gone, it's all gone. It was fucking deliberate, Roarke. I didn't see it was on purpose."

"You do now, don't you? And I say you're right on it. It makes a miserable sort of sense, doesn't it then? Punish them both."

"Not a mistake," Eve said again, "so smarter than I gave them credit for initially. The half-assed robbery? No real choice. Have to ditch the 'link. Something on there that relates, so have to get it gone—and the rest is window dressing."

On her next pass, she scooped up the dome, tossed it back on the table.

"A first kill—I'm sure of that, the first kill. But not as stupid as I figured. Impulse maybe—opportunity knocked, but always planned out. Always with the purpose of taking a slap at Shauna along with it. She had to pay, too."

"Does it tell you who? As, not being a cop, I don't see."

"I am a cop, and I'm not sure. It works for both Lopez and Barney. In a twisted, selfish, bitchy way. But it changes things up a little. Looks like that dream wasn't a waste of time after all."

"I'd so much rather you come to these conclusions without scaring the life out of me."

She stepped to him, kissed him one more time. "I'll see what I can do going forward. The cat made a mess out of the table. See you later."

"Good hunting," Roarke said, and looked back at the table.

She wasn't wrong there, he noted.

"Bugger it," he decided.

He'd apologize to Summerset later.