by J. D. Robb
“Lieutenant Dallas.”
She knew exactly what it felt like to take a hit from a weapon like the one he held. Since it wasn’t an experience she cared to repeat, she kept her hands in view.
Not a man, she realized now that she got a better look. A droid. One that had been programmed to stop her specifically.
“That’s right. What’s the deal?”
“I’m authorized to give you a choice.”
The snow, she thought, was very likely blurring his vision as much as it was hers. She’d get an opening, by God, and bust his circuits. “What choice? And make it fast before some asshole drives along and kills us.”
“Your investigation into the matter of Petrinsky and/or Spindler is to be dropped within twenty-four hours.”
“Oh yeah?” She shifted her stance, cocking a hip in what would appear to be arrogance. But it brought her just a step closer. “Why would I do something like that?”
“If you do not cooperate with this request, you will be terminated, and your spouse, Roarke, will be terminated. These terminations will not be pleasant or humane. There are certain parties who have complete knowledge of the human body and will use such knowledge to make your deaths very painful. I am authorized to give you full details of the procedures.”
Going with the gut, she stumbled forward. “Don’t hurt my husband.” She let her voice shake, watched with narrowed eyes as the droid shifted the weapon enough to hold out his free hand and stop her forward motion.
It only took an instant.
She slammed her forearm into his weapon hand, disarming him, then, trusting her boots for traction, spun into a vicious back kick. It knocked him back a foot, but not quite long enough to give her time to free her weapon.
The snow cushioned the worst of the fall when he tackled her. They fought in near silence, hampered by the snow. But she tasted blood and cursed roundly when he slipped past her guard and slammed a fist into her mouth.
An elbow to his throat had his eyes rolling back where the knee to the groin did nothing.
“Not anatomically correct, huh?” she panted, rolling with him. “You’re cheaper without balls.” With her teeth gritted, she managed to draw her weapon and press it hard to his throat. “Tell me, you son of a bitch, who’s so economically minded? Who the fuck programmed you?”
“I’m not authorized to give you that information.”
She shoved the weapon harder against his throat. “This authorizes you.”
“Incorrect data,” he said and his eyes jittered. “I am programmed to self-destruct at this time. Ten seconds to detonation, nine . . .”
“Jesus Christ.” She fought her way off, skidding and sliding on the snow as she tried to leap clear of the blast. She barely heard him drone “two, one” as she flung herself down, covered the back of her head with her hands, and braced.
The blast stung her ears, the displaced air whipped over her, and something hot flew overhead, but the thick snow muffled the worst of the explosion.
Wincing, she got to her feet and limped back to where she’d taken him down. She found blackened snow, patches of it still hissing from the flames, and scattered, twisted bits of metal and plastic.
“Damn it, damn it. Not enough left to scrape into a recycle bin.” She rubbed her eyes and trudged back to her vehicle.
The back of her right hand burned, and glancing down, she noted the best part of her glove had been singed away to flesh, and the flesh was raw and red. Disgusted, and just a little dizzy, she tugged both off and flung them down in the snow.
Lucky, she decided, hissing as she pulled herself into the four-wheel. Her hair could have caught a spark and gone up. Wouldn’t that have been an adventure. She called in the incident, reported the debris on the drive home. By the time she got there, the aches and bruises were singing a full chorus. She was snarling as she slammed inside.
“Lieutenant,” Summerset began, then got a look at her. “What have you done? That coat is ruined. You haven’t had it a month.”
“He shouldn’t have made me wear it, should he? Goddamn it.” She yanked it off, furious to see the rips, burns, and stains. Disgusted, she dropped it on the floor and limped her way upstairs.
She wasn’t a bit surprised to see Roarke coming down the upper corridor toward her. “He just couldn’t wait to let you know I ruined that coat, could he?”
“He said you were hurt,” Roarke said grimly. “How bad is it?”
“The other guy’s in pieces that’ll have to be picked up with tweezers.”
He only sighed, took out a handkerchief. “Your mouth’s bleeding, darling.”
“It split open again when I sneered at Summerset.” Ignoring the cloth, she dabbed at the blood with the back of her hand. “Sorry about the coat.”
“Likely it kept certain parts of you from being ripped, so we’ll consider it lucky.” He pressed a kiss to her brow. “Come on. There’s a doctor in the house.”
“I don’t care much for doctors right now.”
“When have you ever?” But he led her steadily toward her office where Louise continued to work.
“More than ever, then. Nadine had just enough time to get her report on. But there wasn’t enough time for somebody to see it, track me down, program the droid, and send him after me. I made somebody nervous last night, Roarke.”
“Well, since that was your plan, I’d say you’ve had quite a successful day.”
“Yeah.” She sniffed. “But I lost my gloves again.”
chapter eleven
Late in the afternoon, while the snow continued to fall, Eve sat alone in her office and read over Louise’s simple translation of the medical data that had been gathered.
Basically, artificial organs—the process initially discovered by Friendly and his team and refined over the years—were cheap, efficient, and dependable. The transplant of human organs was not. It was necessary to find a match, to remove from a donor a healthy specimen, to preserve and transport the organ.
The building of organs from the patient’s own tissues was more advantageous, as there was no risk of rejection, but was costly in time and money.
With current medical knowledge, human donors were few and far between. For the most part, healthy organs were harvested—donated or brokered—from accident victims who could not be repaired.
Science, according to Louise, was a two-sided coin. The longer we were able to preserve life, the more rare human donors became. More than 90 percent of successful transplants were artificial.
Certain conditions and diseases could be and were cured, leaving the patient with his original organs in good repair. Others, too far progressed and most usually in cases of the poor or disenfranchised, left the organ too damaged and the body too weak for these treatments. Artificial replacements were the only course of treatment.
Why take what was useless? Eve asked herself. Why kill for it?
She looked up as Roarke came in. “Maybe it’s just another mission, after all,” she began. “Just one more lunatic, this one with a highly honed skill and a personal agenda. Maybe he just wants to rid the world of those he considers beneath him and the organs are nothing more than trophies.”
“There’s no connection between the victims?”
“Snooks and Spindler both had connections to Canal Street, and that’s it. There’s no other link between them, or to hook them to the victims in Chicago and Paris. Except when you look at what they were.”
She didn’t need to bring up the data on Leclerk to refresh her memory. “The guy who bought it in Paris was a chemi-head, late sixties, no known next of kin. He had a flop when he could pay for it, lived on the street when he couldn’t. He used a free clinic off and on, playing the system to get his social program meds when he couldn’t buy a fix. You have to submit to a physical if you want the drugs. Medical records indicate he had advanced cirrhosis of the liver.”
“And that’s what links them.”
“Liver, heart, kidneys. He’s buil
ding a collection. It comes out of a health center, I’m sure of it. But whether it’s Drake or Nordick or another one altogether, I don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s not only one,” Roarke suggested, and Eve nodded.
“I’ve thought of that. And I don’t like the implications. The guy I’m looking for is highly placed. He feels protected. He is protected.”
She pushed back. “He’s educated, successful, and organized. He’s got a reason for what he’s doing, Roarke. He was willing to kill a cop to protect it. I just can’t find it.”
“Kicks?”
“I don’t think so.” She closed her eyes and brought the image of each victim into her head. “There was no glee in it. It was professional, each time. I bet he got a thrill out of it, but that wasn’t the driving force. Just a happy by-product,” she murmured.
He leaned over, tipped up her face, scanned the bruises. “It’s beating you up. Literally.”
“Louise did a pretty decent job on me. She’s not as annoying as most doctors.”
“You need a change of scene,” he decided. “A distraction so you can come back to this with your mind clear on Monday. Let’s go.”
“Go? Where?” She gestured to the window. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re getting dumped on.”
“So why not take advantage of it?” He tugged her to her feet. “Let’s build a snowman.”
He surprised her, constantly, but this time, she simply gaped. “You want to build a snowman?”
“Why not? I’d thought we’d fly out, spend the weekend in Mexico, but . . .” Still holding her hand, he looked out the window and smiled. “How often do we have an opportunity like this?”
“I don’t know how to build a snowman.”
“Neither do I. Let’s see what we come up with.”
She did a lot of muttering, came up with alternate suggestions that included mindless sex in a warm bed, but in the end, she found herself bundled from head to foot in extreme climate gear and stepping out into the teeth of the blizzard.
“Christ, Roarke, this is crazy. You can’t see five feet.”
“Fabulous, isn’t it?” Grinning, he linked his gloved hand with hers and pulled her down the snow-heaped steps.
“We’ll be buried alive.”
He simply reached down, took a handful, fisted it. “Packs pretty well,” he observed. “I never saw much snow as a boy. Dublin’s for rain. We need a good base.”
Bending down, he began to mound snow.
Eve watched for a moment, amazed at how intent her sophisticated husband, sleek in his black gear, scooped and packed snow.
“Is this an ‘I was a deprived child’ thing?”
He glanced up, one brow lifting. “Weren’t we?”
She picked up a handful of snow, absently patted it onto the mound. “We’ve pretty well made up for it,” she murmured, then frowned. “You’re making it too tall. It should be wider.”
He straightened, smiled, then framed her face with snow-covered hands, kissing her when she squealed. “Pitch in or back off.”
She wiped the snow off her face, sniffed. “I’m going to build my own and he’ll kick your snowman’s butt.”
“I’ve always admired your competitive streak.”
“Yeah, well, be prepared to be amazed.”
She moved off a bit and began to dig in.
She didn’t consider herself artistic, so went with her strengths: muscle, determination, and endurance.
The form she worked on might have been slightly lopsided, but it was big. And when she glanced over at Roarke, she noted with glee that hers had his by a good foot.
The cold stung her cheeks, her muscles warmed with exercise, and without realizing it, she relaxed. Instead of unnerving her, the sheer silence soothed. It was like being in the center of a dream, one without sound, without color. One that lulled the mind and gave the body rest.
By the time she got to the head, she was packing and shaping with abandon. “I’m nearly done here, pal, and my guy is built like an arena ball tackle. Your pitiful attempt is doomed.”
“We’ll see about that.” He stepped back, studied his snow sculpture with narrowed eyes, then smiled. “Yes, this works for me.”
She tossed a look over her shoulder and snorted. “Better bulk him up before my guy chews him up and spits him out.”
“No, I think this is the right shape.” He waited while Eve patted her snowman’s bulging pecs, then trudged through the snow toward him.
Her eyes went to slits. “Yours has tits.”
“Yes, rather gorgeous ones.”
Stunned, Eve clamped her hands on her hips and stared. The figure was sleek and curvy, with enormous snow breasts that had been shaped into wicked points.
Roarke stroked one snowy breast lightly. “She’ll lead your pumped-up slab of beef there around by the nose.”
Eve could only shake her head. “Pervert. Those boobs are way out of proportion.”
“A boy needs his dreams, darling.” He took the snowball in the center of the shoulder blades and turned with a wolfish smile. “I was hoping you’d do that. Now that you’ve shed first blood . . .” He kept his eyes on her as he scooped up snow, balled it.
She dodged left, quickly made another ball, and let it fly with the grace and speed of a major-league infielder. He caught that one on the heart, nodded an acknowledgment of her aim and speed, and went for her.
Snow flew, hard bullets, heavy cannonballs, a barrage of fire. She watched a missile explode in his face and, grinning fiercely, followed up with a trio of body blows.
He gave as good as he got, even causing her to yelp once when she took a hard hit to the side of the head, but she thought she could have taken him, would have taken him, if she hadn’t started to laugh.
She couldn’t stop, and it made her slow and clumsy. As she fought for breath, her arms shook, throwing off her aim. Wheezing, she held up a hand. “Truce! Cease fire.”
Snow splatted high on her chest and into her face. “I can’t hear you,” Roarke said, moving steadily forward. “Did you say, ‘I surrender’?”
“No, damn it.” She fought to snort in air, grabbed weakly for ammo, then let out a laughing scream when he jumped her.
She went down, spilling into the thick cushion of snow with Roarke on top of her. “Maniac,” she managed and concentrated on getting her breath back.
“You lose.”
“Did not.”
“I seem to be on top of things, Lieutenant.” Aware just how tricky she could be, he clamped his hands over hers. “You’re now at my mercy.”
“Oh yeah? You don’t scare me, tough guy.” She grinned up at him. The black ski cap he’d pulled on was crusted white with snow, the glorious hair that spilled out of it wet and gleaming. “I mortally wounded you a half dozen times. You’re a dead man.”
“I think I have just enough life left to make you suffer.” He lowered his head, nipped lightly at her jaw. “And to make you beg.”
His tongue traced her lips and blurred the edges of her mind. “If you’re getting ideas about starting anything out here . . .”
“What?”
“Good,” she said and arched up to find his mouth with hers.
Hot and hungry from the first. With a little sound of greed, she took more. It burst through her, that wild, climbing need she’d only felt with him, for him. Trapped in the swirl of white, she gave herself to it.
“Inside.” He was lost in her. No one else had taken him as deep as she could. “We need to go inside.”
“Put your hands on me.” Her voice was rough, her breath already ragged. “I want your hands on me.”
He was tempted to rip away at the tough, thin suit, to find the flesh beneath. To sink his teeth into it. He yanked her up until they were sitting in the depression of snow, tangled and breathless.
They stared at each other a moment, both stunned at how quickly the mood had changed from playful to desperate. Then her lips curved. “Roarke?”
“I think we should go in and give these snow people some privacy.”
“Good idea.”
“Just one thing.” She moved into him, slid her arms around him, brought her mouth teasingly close. Then, snake-quick, tugged the collar of his suit out and dumped snow under it.
He was still hissing when she scrambled to her feet.
“Cheat.”
“You can make me pay for it when I’ve got you naked.”
As cold shivered down his back, he pushed himself up. “I’d be delighted.”
They started in the pool, in the fluid curve where with a mere touch of the controls, the water churned and went steamy. There in the pulsing heat, he put his hands on her however he liked, driving them both from edge to edge, yanking them back, time after time just short of full release.
She was dizzy, weak, her body teetering on the brink, when he dragged her to her feet. Water cascaded from them and steamed up in clouds.
“In bed,” was all he said, and he swept her up to carry her from the pool to the elevator.
“Hurry.” She pressed her face against his neck, nipped her teeth into it.
Her heart was raging. She wondered that it didn’t simply burst out of the cage of her ribs and fall into his hands. He already owned it. And her.
Delirious, battered with so much more than the easy lust they could spark off each other with a look, she curled into him. “I love you, Roarke.”
It shot into him. Those words from her were precious and rare. They could weaken his knees, make his heart ache. He strode off the elevator, climbed up to where their bed stood centered under a sky window curtained white with snow. And fell onto the bed with her.
“Tell me again.” His mouth fastened to hers, devoured, swallowed her moan. “Tell me again, while I’m touching you.”
His hands streaked over her, down her, causing her flesh to tremble. She arched under him, wanting him to cover her where the heat throbbed, to pierce her there. To fill her there.
