Naked in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “I wasn’t worried about the department or the PA.”

  “You should have been.”

  “It seems you’ve worried enough for me. I’m very sorry.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I’ve seen shadows under your eyes too often since I’ve known you.” He traced a thumb along them. “I don’t like being responsible for the ones I see now.”

  “I’m responsible for myself.”

  “And I had nothing to do with putting your job in jeopardy?”

  Damn Feeney, she thought viciously. “I make my own decisions. I pay my own consequences.”

  Not this time, he thought. Not alone. “The night after we’d been together, I called. I could see you were worried, but you brushed it off. Feeney told me exactly why you were worried that night. Your angry friend wanted to pay me back for making you unhappy. He did.”

  “Feeney had no right—”

  “Perhaps not. He wouldn’t have had to if you’d confided in me.” He took both her arms to stop her quick movement. “Don’t turn away from me,” he warned, his voice low. “You’re good at shutting people out, Eve. But it won’t work with me.”

  “What did you expect, that I’d come crying to you? ‘Roarke, you seduced me, and now I’m in trouble. Help.’ The hell with that, you didn’t seduce me. I went to bed with you because I wanted to. Wanted to enough that I didn’t think about ethics. I got slammed for it, and I’m handling it. I don’t need help.”

  “Don’t want it, certainly.”

  “Don’t need it.” She wouldn’t humiliate herself by struggling away now, but stood passive. “The commander’s satisfied that you’re not involved in the murders. You’re clear, so other than what the department will officially term an error in judgment on my part, so am I. If I’d been wrong about you, it’d be different.”

  “If you’d been wrong about me, it would have cost you your badge.”

  “Yes. I’d have lost my badge. I’d have lost everything. I’d have deserved to. But it didn’t happen, so it’s over. Move on.”

  “Do you really think I’m going to walk away?”

  It weakened her, that soft, gentle lilt that came into his voice. “I can’t afford you, Roarke. I can’t afford to get involved.”

  He stepped forward, laid his hands on the back of the couch, caged her in. “I can’t afford you, either. It doesn’t seem to matter.”

  “Look—”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” he murmured. “Very sorry that I didn’t trust you, then accused you of not trusting me.”

  “I didn’t expect you to think any differently. To act any differently.”

  That stung more than the blow to the face. “No. I’m sorry for that, too. You risked a great deal for me. Why?”

  There were no easy answers. “I believed you.”

  He pressed his lips to her brow. “Thank you.”

  “It was a judgment call,” she began, letting out a shaky breath when he touched his mouth to her cheek.

  “I’m going to stay with you tonight.” Then to her temple. “I’m going to see that you sleep.”

  “Sex as a sedative?”

  He frowned, but brushed his lips lightly over hers. “If you like.” He lifted her off her feet, flustering her. “Let’s see if we can find the right dosage.”

  Later, with the lights still on low, he watched her. She slept facedown, a limp sprawl of exhaustion. To please himself, he stroked a hand down her back—smooth skin, slim bones, lean muscle. She didn’t stir.

  Experimentally, he let his fingers comb through her hair. Thick as mink pelt, shades of aged brandy and old gold, poorly cut. It made him smile as he traced those fingers over her lips. Full, firm, fiercely responsive.

  However surprised he was that he’d been able to take her beyond what she’d experienced before, he was overwhelmed by the knowledge that had, unknowingly, taken him.

  How much farther, he wondered, would they go?

  He knew it had ripped him when he’d believed she’d thought him guilty. The sense of betrayal, disillusionment was huge, weakening, and something he hadn’t felt in too many years to count.

  She’d taken him back to a point of vulnerability he’d escaped from. She could hurt him. They could hurt each other. That was something he would have to consider carefully.

  But at the moment, the pressing question was who wanted to hurt them both. And why.

  He was still gnawing at the problem when he took her hand, linked fingers, and let himself slide into sleep with her.

  chapter fifteen

  He was gone when she woke. It was better that way. Mornings after carried a casual intimacy that made her nervous. She was already more involved with him than she had ever been with anyone. That click between them had the potential, she knew, to reverberate through the rest of her life.

  She took a quick shower, bundled into a robe, then headed into the kitchen. There was Roarke, in trousers and a shirt he’d yet to button, scanning the morning paper on her monitor.

  Looking, she realized with a quick tug-of-war of delight and dismay, very much at home.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hmmm?” He glanced up, reached behind him to open the AutoChef. “Making you coffee.”

  “Making me coffee?”

  “I heard you moving around.” He took the cups out, carried them to where she was still hovering in the doorway. “You don’t do that often enough.”

  “Move around?”

  “No.” He chuckled and touched her lips to hers. “Smile at me. Just smile at me.”

  Was she smiling? She hadn’t realized. “I thought you’d left.” She walked around the small table, glanced at the monitor. The stock reports. Naturally. “You must have gotten up early.”

  “I had some calls to make.” He watched her, enjoying the way she raked her fingers through her damp hair. A nervous habit he was certain she was unaware of. He picked up the portalink he’d left on the table, slipped it back into his pocket. “I had a conference call scheduled with the station—five A.M. our time.”

  “Oh.” She sipped her coffee, wondering how she had ever lived without the zip of the real thing in the morning. “I know those meetings were important. I’m sorry.”

  “We’d managed to hammer down most of the details. I can handle the rest from here.”

  “You’re not going back?”

  “No.”

  She turned to the AutoChef, fiddled with her rather limited menu. “I’m out of most everything. Want a bagel or something?”

  “Eve.” Roarke set his coffee down, laid his hands on her shoulders. “Why don’t you want me to know you’re pleased I’m staying?”

  “Your alibi holds. It’s none of my business if you—” She broke off when he turned her to face him. He was angry. She could see it in his eyes and prepared for the argument to come. She hadn’t prepared for the kiss, the way his mouth closed firmly over hers, the way her heart rolled over slow and dreamy in her chest.

  So she let herself be held, let her head nestle in the curve of his shoulder. “I don’t know how to handle this,” she murmured. “I don’t have any precedent here. I need rules, Roarke. Solid rules.”

  “I’m not a case you need to solve.”

  “I don’t know what you are. But I know this is going too fast. It shouldn’t have even started. I shouldn’t have been able to get started with you.”

  He drew her back so that he could study her face. “Why?”

  “It’s complicated. I have to get dressed. I have to get to work.”

  “Give me something.” His fingers tightened on her shoulders. “I don’t know what you are, either.”

  “I’m a cop,” she blurted out. “That’s all I am. I’m thirty years old and I’ve only been close to two people in my entire life. And even with them, it’s easy to hold back.”

  “Hold back what?”

  “Letting it matter too much. If it matters too much, it can grind you down until you’re nothing. I’v
e been nothing. I can’t be nothing ever again.”

  “Who hurt you?”

  “I don’t know.” But she did. She did. “I don’t remember, and I don’t want to remember. I’ve been a victim, and once you have, you need to do whatever it takes not to be one again. That’s all I was before I got into the academy. A victim, with other people pushing the buttons, making the decisions, pushing me one way, pulling me another.”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “That’s what’s happening.”

  There were questions he needed to ask. Questions, he could see by her face, that needed to wait. Perhaps it was time he took a risk. He dipped a hand into his pocket, drew out what he carried there.

  Baffled, Eve stared down at the simple gray button in his palm. “That’s off my suit.”

  “Yes. Not a particularly flattering suit—you need stronger colors. I found it in my limo. I meant to give it back to you.”

  “Oh.” But when she reached out, he closed his fingers over the button.

  “A very smooth lie.” Amused, he laughed at himself. “I had no intention of giving it back to you.”

  “You got a button fetish, Roarke?”

  “I’ve been carrying this around like a schoolboy carries a lock of his sweetheart’s hair.”

  Her eyes came back to his, and something sweet moved through her. Sweeter yet as she could see he was embarrassed. “That’s weird.”

  “I thought so, myself.” But he slipped the button back in his pocket. “Do you know what else I think, Eve?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “I think I’m in love with you.”

  She felt the color drain out of her cheeks, felt her muscles go lax, even as her heart shot like a missile to her throat. “That’s . . .”

  “Yes, difficult to come up with the proper word, isn’t it?” He slid his hands down her back, up again, but brought her no closer. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and haven’t hit on one myself. But I should circle back to my point.”

  She moistened her lips. “There’s a point?”

  “A very interesting and important point. I’m every bit as much in your hands as you are in mine. Every bit as uncomfortable, though perhaps not as resistant, to finding myself in that position. I’m not going to let you walk away until we’ve figured out what to do about it.”

  “It, ah, complicates things.”

  “Outrageously,” he agreed.

  “Roarke, we don’t even know each other. Outside of the bedroom.”

  “Yes, we do. Two lost souls. We’ve both turned away from something and made ourselves something else. It’s hardly a wonder that fate decided to throw a curve into what had been, for both of us, a straight path. We have to decide how far we want to follow the curve.”

  “I have to concentrate on the investigation. It has to be my priority.”

  “I understand. But you’re entitled to a personal life.”

  “My personal life, this part of it, grew out of the investigation. And the killer’s making it more personal. Planting that gun so that suspicion would swing toward you was a direct response to my involvement with you. He’s focused on me.”

  Roarke’s hand jerked up to the lapels of her robe. “What do you mean?”

  Rules, she reminded herself. There were rules. And she was about to break them. “I’ll tell you what I can while I’m getting dressed.”

  Eve went to the bedroom with the cat sliding and weaving in front of her. “Do you remember that night you were here when I got home? The package that you’d found on the floor?”

  “Yes, it upset you.”

  With a half laugh she peeled out of her robe. “I’ve got a rep for having the best poker face in the station.”

  “I made my first million gambling.”

  “Really?” She tugged a sweater over her head, reminded herself not to be distracted. “It was a recording of Lola Starr’s murder. He sent me Sharon DeBlass’s as well.”

  A cold lance of fear stabbed. “He was in your apartment.”

  She was busy discovering she had no clean underwear and didn’t notice the iced edge of his voice. “Maybe, maybe not. I think not. No signs of forced entry. He could have shoved it under the door. That’s what he did the first time. He mailed Georgie’s disc. We had the building under surveillance.”

  Resigned, she pulled slacks over bare skin. “He either knew it or smelled it. But he saw I got the discs, all three of them. He knew I was primary almost before I did.”

  She searched for socks, got lucky, and found a pair that matched. “He called me, transmitted the video of Georgie Castle’s murder scene minutes after he’d whacked her.” She sat on the edge of the bed, pulled on the socks. “He planted a weapon, made sure it was traceable. To you. Not to knock how inconvenient a murder charge would have made your life, Roarke, if I hadn’t had the commander behind me on this, I’d have been off the case, and out of the department in a blink. He knows what goes on inside Cop Central. He knows what’s going on in my life.”

  “Fortunately, he didn’t know that I wasn’t even on the planet.”

  “That was a break for both of us.” She located her boots, tugged them on. “But it’s not going to stop him.” She rose, picked up her holster. “He’s still going to try to get to me, and you’re his best bet.”

  Roarke watched her automatically check her laser before strapping it on. “Why you?”

  “He doesn’t have a high opinion of women. I’d have to say it burns his ass to have a female heading the investigation. It lowers his status.” She shrugged, raked her fingers through her hair to whip it into place. “At least that’s the shrink’s opinion.”

  Philosophically, she pried the cat free when he started to climb up her leg, gave him a light toss to the bed where he turned his butt in her direction and began to wash.

  “And is it the shrink’s opinion that he could try to eliminate you by more direct means?”

  “I don’t fit the pattern.”

  Fighting back the slippery edge of fear, Roarke fisted his hands in his pockets. “And if he breaks the pattern?”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “It’s worth risking your life for three women who are already dead?”

  “Yes.” She heard the fury pulsing in his voice and faced it. “It’s worth risking my life to find justice for three women who are already dead, and to try to prevent three more from dying. He’s only half through. He’s left a note under each body. He’s wanted us to know, right from the start that he had a plan. And he’s daring us to stop him. One of six, two of six, three of six. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep him from having the fourth.”

  “Full-out guts. That’s what I first admired about you. Now it terrifies me.”

  For the first time she moved to him, laid a hand on his cheek. Almost as soon as she had, she dropped her hand and stepped back again, embarrassed. “I’ve been a cop for ten years, Roarke, never had more than some bumps and bruises. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I think you’re going to have to get used to having someone worry about you, Eve.”

  That hadn’t been the plan. She walked out of the bedroom to get her jacket and bag. “I’m telling you this so that you’ll understand what I’m up against. Why I can’t split my energies and start analyzing what’s between us.”

  “There’ll always be cases.”

  “I hope to God there won’t always be cases like this one. This isn’t murder for gain, or out of passion. It isn’t desperate or frenzied. It’s cold and calculated. It’s . . .”

  “Evil?”

  “Yes.” It relieved her that he’d said it first. It didn’t sound so foolish. “Whatever we’ve done in genetic engineering, in vitro, with social programs, we still can’t control basic human failings: violence, lust, envy.”

  “The seven deadly sins.”

  She thought of the old woman and her poisoned pie. “Yeah. I’ve got to go.”

  “Will you com
e to me when you’re off duty tonight?”

  “I don’t know when I’ll log out. It could be—”

  “Will you come?”

  “Yeah.”

  Then he smiled, and she knew he was waiting for her to make the move. She was sure he knew just how hard it was for her to cross to him, to bring her lips up, to press them, however casually, to his.

  “See you.”

  “Eve. You should have gloves.”

  She decoded the door, tossed a quick smile over her shoulder. “I know—but I just keep losing them.”

  Her up mood lasted until she walked into her office and found DeBlass and his aide waiting for her.

  Deliberately, DeBlass stared at his gold watch. “More banker’s hours than police hours, Lieutenant Dallas.”

  She knew damn well it was only minutes past eight, but shrugged out of her jacket. “Yeah, it’s a pretty lush life around here. Is there something I can do for you, senator?”

  “I’m aware there’s been yet another murder. I’m obviously dissatisfied with your progress. However, I’m here for damage control. I do not want my granddaughter’s name linked with the two other victims.”

  “You want Simpson for that, or his press secretary.”

  “Don’t smirk at me, young woman.” DeBlass leaned forward. “My granddaughter is dead. Nothing can change that. But I will not have the DeBlass name sullied, muddied by the death of two common whores.”

  “You seem to have a low opinion of women, senator.” She was careful not to smirk this time, but watched him, and considered.

  “On the contrary; I revere them. Which is why those who sell themselves, those who disregard morality and common decency, revolt me.”

  “Including your granddaughter?”

  He lurched out of his chair, his face purpling, eyes bulging. Eve was quite certain he would have struck her if Rockman hadn’t stepped between them.

  “Senator, the lieutenant is only baiting you. Don’t give her the satisfaction.”

  “You will not besmirch my family.” DeBlass was breathing fast, and Eve wondered if he had any history of heart trouble. “My granddaughter paid dearly for her sins, and I will not see the rest of my loved ones dragged down into public ridicule. And I will not tolerate your vile insinuations.”