by J. D. Robb
“Do you have knowledge that Cleo Grady murdered Detective Coltraine.”
He smiled again. “She wanted to do it two years ago when the cop lived with Alex in Atlanta. I advised against, so this is nothing to me. She’s nothing to me. Lock her away. Stupid bitch. Stupid bitch.” He pounded his fist on the bunk. “Stupid bitch,” he repeated again and again.
“End holo,” Eve ordered, and heard the bitter refrain echo in her ears as she stared at Cleo. “Daddy’s in a very bad mood,” Eve commented.
There were tears, Eve noted, just the faintest glimmer of them behind the fury in Cleo’s eyes. “He’s a liar.”
“Oh yeah, but not about this. We’ve got him, Cleo. We’ve got you. And unless you’re a complete fool you know he won’t lift a finger to help you out.”
“I want a deal.”
“You won’t get one.” Eve sat again, made sure Cleo could read the solid truth of it on her face. “Murder in the First for Coltraine. We’ve got you wrapped on it. Your connection to Ricker will help put it over.”
“I want a fucking deal.”
“You’re not going to fucking get one! Not for Coltraine. Not as long as I’m breathing. You wanted to please your father and hurt your brother so you murdered an innocent woman. A fellow officer, a squadmate. You’re going to pay with the rest of your life for that. And for Sandy. He doesn’t mean the same to me, that’s a fact, but that’s the job. You’re going to pay for him, too.”
“Then we’ve got nothing to say.”
“Up to you. Let’s book her, Peabody, two counts of Murder in the First.”
“Give me something, goddamn it.”
“You want something, Detective? You want some sort of consideration from me? The fact that you’re conscious and not bleeding’s all the consideration you’re going to get.”
“I know Max’s contacts, the ones you missed. I know where he has accounts, accounts that hold enough to keep paying those contacts.”
“I don’t care. A good cop is dead, so believe me, I don’t care about your pitiful trade. You’ve got nothing I want half as much as I want you living out your life in a cage.”
Eve paused a moment as if considering. “But I’ll give you the chance for retribution on Max Ricker. I’ll give you the chance to drop the hammer on him.”
She watched the interest, and the rage kindle. And played on it. “He says it doesn’t matter, but you know better. Another life sentence, no more holes to slither through to push buttons down here. Strip him of whatever power he has left. I’ll give you a shot at that, right here and now. I walk out, and you lose even that. Pay him back, Cleo. Pay him back for tossing you out like garbage.”
“It was his idea. Coltraine. He wanted her dead, so he set it up. She’s not the only one.”
Eve came back to sit. “Let’s start with her.”
“He’s still got some pull, and some connections in Atlanta. He used them when she started talking transfer, to clear the way to New York, to my squad. If she didn’t bite, I’d have transferred to wherever she went. But she made it easy.”
“He targeted her because of Alex?”
“He and Alex had words, before Max went down and right after. Yeah, he thought about payback there for a long time—hell, he promised Alex he’d pay. Coltraine was the payment.”
“You contacted her that night.”
“Max set it up. Had Sandy persuade Alex they needed to come to New York for a while, deal with some business here. Sandy knew Alex had some regrets about Coltraine, and he played on them—nudged him into contacting her, asking her over. After that, it was easy. Sandy talked Alex into going out, taking a walk. I tagged her, told her I had a solid on the Chinatown case, needed her to come. Max told me how he wanted it to go down, and I did exactly what he wanted.”
“You waited for her in the stairway.”
“Just a stun there. Max wanted it done a certain way, so it was done a certain way. I carried her down to the basement, brought her back so I could give her Max’s message. ‘Alex is killing you, bitch. Alex is taking your own goddamn weapon and pressing it to your throat. Feel it? You don’t walk away from a Ricker and live.’ He wanted her to die thinking Alex ordered the hit. If Alex went down for it, so much the better. Either way, it was payback. And the kicker was it would happen on your turf. A little needle in your arm.
“He thinks about you a lot.”
“So will you,” Eve said.
EPILOGUE
WHEN it WAS DONE, WHEN EVE Felt As MUCH DISGUST As satisfaction, she ordered the uniforms to take Cleo to booking.
“Do you want to walk it through?” Peabody asked her.
“No, I really don’t.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Peabody offered. “It leaves you a little bit raw. She killed over a dozen people for him. Just because he said to.”
“No, not just because. That’s only part of it. The rest? It’s just in her. God knows why.”
“I’ll write it up. I’d like to,” she added before Eve could speak. “For Coltraine.”
“Okay.”
Alone, Eve simply sat down in the conference room. Too many things churning, she realized. Too many thoughts buzzing.
Morris came in quietly, sat across from her. “Thank you.”
For reasons Eve couldn’t name she braced her elbows on the table and pressed her fingers to eyes that stung.
“You feel some sympathy for her.”
“I don’t know what I feel,” she managed.
“Some small seed of sympathy for a woman whose father could have such contempt for her. I saw her face when he spoke to you about her. His words cut her to pieces. I was glad of it, and still I felt it, too. That small seed of sympathy.”
Eve dropped her hands. “She deserved it. All of it. More of it.”
“Yes. And still. That’s what makes us different than she is, Eve. We can feel that, even though. I’m leaving tonight for Atlanta. I’d like to tell her family her killer—her killers—have been brought to justice. I’d like to do that myself.”
“Yeah, okay. Sure. Are you . . .” She was nearly afraid to ask. “Are you coming back?”
“Yes. This is my place, this is my work. I’m coming back.” He put a box on the table. “This was hers. I want you to have it.”
“Morris, I can’t—”
“It’s a small thing.” He opened the lid himself. Inside was a glass butterfly, jeweled wings lifted. “She told me it was the first thing she bought herself when she came here. That it always made her smile. It would mean a lot to me if you’d take it.”
She nodded, then laid a hand over his. “It wasn’t just the job this time.”
“I know. But then, for you, it never is.” He rose, crossed over. He took her face in his hands and kissed her softly on the mouth. “I’ll be back. I promise,” he said and left her with the jeweled butterfly.
She lost track of the time she sat there, waiting for herself to settle, to smooth out. Lost track of the time alone before Roarke came into the room.
Like Morris, he sat across from her. He studied her face in silence.
“I’m tired,” she told him.
“I know you are.”
“I want to feel good about this, but I can’t quite get there. It was good work, I know that. Everybody did good work. But I can’t feel good about it. I just feel tired.”
She took a breath. “I wanted her cut to pieces, and I knew Ricker would do just that. I knew it. I wanted it. I had enough on her for the arrest without it. But—”
“Coltraine and Morris deserved more. And we both know an arrest isn’t a conviction.”
“Reo would’ve nailed her. But, yeah, Coltraine and Morris deserved more.”
“They betrayed each other so easily. Used and attacked and betrayed each other without hesitation, without remorse. While I enjoyed watching you work Ricker, enjoyed seeing him in that stone box, it’s just hard to feel good watching people who should feel some loyalty—bugger that—feel so
mething for each other tear in like vultures on a corpse.”
“She did feel something for him. Maybe that’s the problem.”
“You’re right, yes. But it didn’t stop her. You knew she felt something, however twisted, and used it. And that, Lieutenant, is good work.” He tapped the open box. “What’s this?”
“It was Coltraine’s. Morris . . . he wanted me to have it.”
Across those jeweled wings he smiled at her. “I think you’ll be able to look at that in days to come, and feel good. Can you go home?”
“Yeah. Peabody’s handling the grunt work.”
“Let’s go home, and have an evening being grateful for who we are.” She closed the lid on the box, slipped it into her pocket. She came around the table, put her arms around him. “I am. Grateful. God. I want to watch a vid where lots of stuff blows up, and eat popcorn, drink a lot of wine, then have drunken sex on the floor.”
“Strangely, just what I had in mind.” He shifted her, took her hand in his. “We’re perfect for each other.”
Maybe she wasn’t quite up to good, Eve thought as they left the conference room and started for the glides. But she was definitely feeling better.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robb, J. D., date.
Kindred in death / J. D. Robb.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-15104-4
1. Dallas, Eve (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Policewomen—Fiction. 3. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3568.O243K
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Welcome, kindred glooms!
Congenial horrors, hail!
—JAMES THOMSON
A lie which is half a truth is
ever the blackest of lies.
—TENNYSON
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
EPILOGUE
1
SHE’D DIED AND GONE TO HEAVEN. OR BETTER, BECAUSE who knew if there was really good sex and lazy holiday mornings in heaven. She was alive and kicking.
Well, alive anyway. A little sleepy, a whole lot satisfied, and happy the end of the Urban Wars nearly forty years before had resulted in the international Peace Day holiday.
Maybe the Sunday in June had been selected arbitrarily, and certainly symbolically—and maybe remnants of that ugly period still littered the global landscape even in 2060—but she supposed people were entitled to their parades, cookouts, windy speeches, and long, drunk weekends.
Personally, she was happy to have two days off in a row for any reason. Especially when a Sunday kicked off like this one.
Eve Dallas, murder cop and ass-kicker, sprawled naked across her husband, who’d just given her a nice glimpse of heaven. She figured she’d given him a good look at it, too, as he lay under her, one hand lazily stroking her butt and his heart pounding like a turbo hammer.
She felt the thump on the bed that was their pudgy cat, Galahad, joining them now that the show was over.
She thought: Our happy little family on a do-nothing Sunday morning. And wasn’t that an amazing thing? She had a happy little family—a home, an absurdly gorgeous and fascinating man who loved her, and—it couldn’t be overstated—really good sex.
Not to mention the day off.
She purred, nearly as enthusiastically as the cat, and nuzzled into the curve of Roarke’s neck.
“Good,” she said.
“At the very least.” His arms came around her, such good arms, in an easy embrace. “And what would you like to do next?”
She smiled, loving the moment, the lilt of Ireland in his voice, the brush of the cat’s fur against her arm as he butted it with his head in a bid for attention.
Or most likely breakfast.
“Pretty much nothing.”
“Nothing can be arranged.”
She felt Roarke shift, and heard the cat’s purring increase as the hands that had recently pleasured her gave him a scratch.
She propped herself up to look at his face. His eyes opened.
God, they just killed her, that bold, brilliant blue, those thick, dark lashes, the smile in them that was hers. Just hers.
Leaning down, she took his magic mouth with hers in a deep, dreamy kiss.
“Well now, that’s far from nothing.”
“I love you.” She kissed his cheeks, a little rough from the night’s growth of beard. “Maybe because you’re so pretty.”
He was, she thought as the cat interrupted by wiggling his bulk under her arm and bellying between them. The carved lips, the sorcerer’s eyes, and sharp, defined bones all framed in the black silk of his hair. When you added the firm, lanky body, it made a damn perfect package.
He managed to get around the cat to draw her down for another kiss, then hissed.
“Why the hell doesn’t he go down and pester Summerset for breakfast?” Roarke nudged away the cat, who kneaded paws and claws, painfully, over his chest.
“I’ll get it. I want coffee anyway.”
Eve rolled out of bed, walked—long, lean, naked—to the bedroom AutoChef.
“You cost me another shag,” Roarke muttered.
Galahad’s bicolored eyes glittered, perhaps in amusement, before he scrambl
ed off the bed.
Eve programmed the kibble, and since it was a holiday, a side of tuna. When the cat pounced on it like the starving, she programmed two mugs of coffee, strong and black.
“I thought about going down for a workout, but sort of took care of that already.” She took the first life-giving sip as she crossed back to the platform and the lake-sized bed. “I’m going to grab a shower.”
“I’ll do the same, then I can grab you.” He smiled as she handed him his coffee. “A second workout, we’ll say. Very healthy. Maybe a full Irish to follow.”
“You’re a full Irish.”
“I was thinking breakfast, but you can have both.”
Didn’t she look happy, he thought, and rested—and altogether delicious. That shaggy cap of deer-hide hair mussed about her face, those big dark eyes full of fun. The little dent in her chin he adored deepened just a bit when she smiled.
There was something about the moment, he thought, moments like this when they were so much in tune, that struck him as miraculous.
The cop and the criminal—former—he qualified, as bloody normal as Peace Day potato salad.
He studied her over the rim of his cup, through the whiff of fragrant steam. “I’m thinking you should wear that outfit more often. It’s a favorite of mine.”
She angled her head, drank more coffee. “I’m thinking I want a really long shower.”
“Isn’t that handy? I think I want the same.”
She took a last sip. “Then we’d better get started.”
Later, too lazy to dress, she tossed on a robe while Roarke programmed more coffee and full Irish breakfasts for two. It was all so . . . homey, she thought. The morning sun streamed in the windows of the bedroom bigger than the apartment she’d lived in two years before. Two years married next month, she thought. He’d walked into her life, and everything had changed. He’d found her; she’d found him—and all those dark places inside both of them had gotten a little smaller, a little brighter.
