The Right Path

by Nora Roberts

  He moved to her, limping a little. Reaching down, he drew her to her feet. “What were you doing with the gun, Aphrodite?” he said softly, when he felt her tremble under his hands. “You couldn’t have pulled the trigger.”

  “Yes.” Her eyes met his. “I could.”

  He stared at her for a moment and saw she was speaking nothing less than the truth. With an oath, he pulled her against him. “Damn it, Morgan, why didn’t you stay in the villa? I didn’t want this for you.”

  “I couldn’t stay in the house, not after I heard the shooting.”

  “Yes, you hear shooting, so naturally you run outside.”

  “What else could I do?”

  Nick opened his mouth to swear, then shut it again. “You’ve stolen my clothes,” he said mildly. He wouldn’t be angry with her now, he promised himself as he stroked her hair. Not while she was shaking like a leaf. But later, by God, later . . .

  “You took mine first.” He couldn’t tell if the sound she made was a laugh or a sob. “I thought . . .” Suddenly, she felt the warm stickiness against her palm. Looking down, she saw his blood on her hand. “Oh, God, Nicholas, you’re hurt!”

  “No, it’s nothing, I—”

  “Oh, damn you for being macho and stupid. You’re bleeding!”

  He laughed and crushed her to him again. “I’m not being macho and stupid, Aphrodite, but if it makes you happy, you can nurse all of my scratches later. Now, I need a different sort of medicine.” He kissed her before she could argue.

  Her fingers gripped at his shirt as she poured everything she had into that one meeting of lips. Fear drained from her, and with it, whatever force had driven her. She went limp against him as his energy poured over her.

  “I’m going to need a lot of care for a very long time,” he murmured against her mouth. “I might be hurt a great deal more seriously than I thought. No, don’t.” Nick drew her away as he felt her tears on his cheeks. “Morgan, don’t cry. It’s the one thing I don’t think I can face tonight.”

  “No, I won’t cry,” she insisted as the tears continued to fall. “I won’t cry. Just don’t stop kissing me. Don’t stop.” She pressed her mouth to his. As she felt him, warm and real against her, the tears and trembling stopped.

  “Well, Mr. Gregoras, it seems you intercepted Mr. Zoulas after all.”

  Nick swore quickly, but without heat. Keeping Morgan close, he looked over her head at Tripolos. “Your men have the crew?”

  “Yes.” Lumbering over, he examined the body briefly. He noted, without comment that there was a broken arm as well as the knife wound. With a gesture, he signaled one of his men to take over. “Your man is seeing to their transportation,” he went on.

  Nick kept Morgan’s back to the body and met Tripolos’s speculative look calmly. “It seems you had a bit of trouble here,” the captain commented. His gaze drifted to the guns lying on the sand. He drew his own conclusions. “A pity he won’t stand trial.”

  “A pity,” Nick agreed.

  “You dropped your gun in the struggle to apprehend him, I see.”

  “It would seem so.”

  Tripolos stooped with a wheeze and handed it back to him. “Your job is finished?”

  “Yes, my job is finished.”

  Tripolos made a small bow. “My gratitude, Mr Gregoras.” He smiled at the back of Morgan’s head. “And my congratulations.”

  Nick lifted a brow in acknowledgment. “I’ll take Miss James home now. You can reach me tomorrow if necessary. Good night, Captain.”

  “Good night,” Tripolos murmured and watched them move away.

  Morgan leaned her head against his shoulder as they walked toward the beach steps. Only a few moments before she had fought to keep from reaching them. Now they seemed like the path to the rest of her life.

  “Oh, look, the stars are going out.” She sighed. There was nothing left, no fear, no anxiety. No more doubts. “I feel as if I’ve waited for this sunrise all my life.”

  “I’m told you want to go to Venice and ride on a gondola.”

  Morgan glanced up in surprise, then laughed. “Andrew told you.”

  “He mentioned Cornwall and the Champs d’Élysées as well.”

  “I have to learn how to bait a hook, too,” she murmured. Content, she watched as day struggled with night.

  “I’m not an easy man, Morgan.”

  “Hmm? No,” she agreed fervently. “No, you’re not.”

  He paused at the foot of the steps and turned her to face him. The words weren’t easy for him now. He wondered why he had thought they would be. “You know the worst of me already. I’m not often gentle, and I’m demanding. I’m prone to black, unreasonable moods.”

  Morgan smothered a yawn and smiled at him. “I’d be the last one to disagree.”

  He felt foolish. And, he discovered, afraid. Would a woman accept words of love when she had seen a man kill? Did he have any right to offer them? Looking down, he saw her, slim and straight in his clothes—jeans that hung over her hips—a shirt that billowed and hid small, firm breasts and a waist he could nearly span with his hands. Right or wrong, he couldn’t go on without her.

  “Morgan . . .”

  “Nicholas?” Her smile became puzzled as she fought off a wave of weariness. “What is it?”

  His gaze swept back to hers, dark, intense, perhaps a little desperate.

  “Your arm,” she began and reached for him.

  “No! Diabolos.” Gripping her by the shoulders, he shook her. “It’s not my arm, listen to me.”

  “I am listening,” she tossed back with a trace of heat. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “This.” He covered her mouth with his. He needed the taste of her, the strength. When he drew her away, his hands had gentled, but his eyes gleamed.

  With a sleepy laugh, she shook her head. “Nicholas, if you’ll let me get you home and see to your arm—”

  “My arm’s a small matter, Aphrodite.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Morgan.” Nick stopped her before she could turn toward the steps again. “I’ll make a difficult and exasperating husband, but you won’t be bored.” Taking her hands, he kissed them as he had on his balcony. “I love you enough to let you climb your mountains, Morgan. Enough to climb them with you if that’s what you want.”

  She wasn’t tired now, but stunned into full alertness. Morgan opened her mouth, but found herself stupidly unable to form a word.

  “Damn it, Morgan, don’t just stare at me.” Frustration and temper edged his voice. “Say yes, for God’s sake!” Fury flared in his eyes. “I won’t let you say no!”

  His hands were no longer in hers, but gripping her arms again. She knew, any moment, he would start shaking her. But there was more in his eyes than anger. She saw the doubts, the fears, the fatigue. Love swept into her, overwhelmingly.

  “Won’t you?” she murmured.

  “No.” His fingers tightened. “No, I won’t. You’ve taken my heart. You won’t leave with it.”

  Lifting a hand, she touched his cheek, letting her finger trace over the tense jaw. “Do you think I could climb mountains without you, Nicholas?” She drew him against her and felt his shudder of relief. “Let’s go home.”

  Keep reading for a special excerpt from the newest novel by J.D. Robb

  CALCULATED IN DEATH

  Available February 2013 in hardcover from G.P. Putnam’s Sons

  A killer wind hurled bitter November air, toothy little knives to gnaw at the bones. She’d forgotten her gloves, but that was just as well as she’d have ruined yet another overpriced pair once she’d sealed up.

  For now, Lieutenant Eve Dallas stuck her frozen hands in the warm pockets of her coat and looked down at death.

  The woman lay at the bottom of the short stairway leading down to what appeared to be a lower-level apartment. From the angle of the head, Eve didn’t need the medical examiner to tell her the neck was broken.

  Eve judged her as middle forties. Not
wearing a coat, Eve mused, though the vicious wind wouldn’t trouble her now. Dressed for business—suit jacket, turtleneck, pants, good boots with low heels. Probably fashionable, but Eve would leave that call to her partner when Detective Peabody arrived on scene.

  No jewelry, at least not visible. Not even a wrist unit.

  No handbag, no briefcase or file bag.

  No litter, no graffiti in the stairwell. Nothing but the body, slumped against the wall.

  At length she turned to the uniformed officer who’d responded to the 911. “What’s the story?”

  “The call came in at two-twelve. My partner and I were only two blocks away, hitting a twenty-four/seven. We arrived at two-fourteen. The owner of the unit, Bradley Whitestone, and an Alva Moonie were on the sidewalk. Whitestone stated they hadn’t entered the unit, which is being rehabbed—and is unoccupied. They found the body when he brought Moonie to see the apartment.”

  “At two in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir. They stated they’d been out this evening, dinner, then a bar. They’d had a few, Lieutenant.”

  “Okay.”

  “My partner has them in the car.”

  “I’ll talk to them later.”

  “We determined the victim was deceased. No ID on her. No bag, no jewelry, no coat. Pretty clear her neck’s broken. Visually, there’s some other marks on her—bruised cheek, split lip. Looks like a mugging gone south. But . . .” The uniform flushed slightly. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  Interested, Eve gave a go-ahead nod. “Because?”

  “It sure wasn’t a snatch and run, figuring the coat. That takes a little time. And if she fell or got pushed down the stairs, why is she over against the side there instead of at the bottom of the steps? Out of sight from the sidewalk. It feels more like a dump. Sir.”

  “Are you angling for a slot in Homicide, Officer Turney?”

  “No disrespect intended, Lieutenant.”

  “None taken. She could’ve taken a bad fall down the steps, landed wrong, broke her neck. Mugger goes down after her, hauls her over out of sight, takes the coat, and the rest.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It doesn’t feel like it. But we need more than how it feels. Stand by, Officer. Detective Peabody’s on route.” As she spoke, Eve opened her field kit, took out her Seal-It.

  She coated her hands, her boots as she surveyed the area.

  This sector of New York’s East Side held quiet—at least at this hour. Most apartment windows and storefronts were dark, businesses closed, even the bars. There would be some after-hours establishments still rolling, but not close enough for witnesses.

  They’d do a canvass, but odds were slim someone would pop out who’d seen what happened here. Add in the bitter cold, as 2060 seemed determined to go out clinging with its icy fingers, and most people would be tucked up inside, in the warm.

  Just as she’d been, curled up against Roarke, before the call.

  That’s what you get for being a cop, she thought, or in Roarke’s case, for marrying one.

  Sealed, she went down the stairs, studied the door to the unit first, then moved in to crouch beside the body.

  Yeah, middle forties, light brown hair clipped back from her face. A little bruising on the right cheekbone, some dried blood on the split lip. Both ears pierced, so if she’d been wearing earrings, the killer had taken the time to remove them rather than rip them off.

  Lifting the hand, Eve noted abraded flesh on the heel. Like a rug burn, she mused before she pressed the right thumb to her ID pad.

  Dickenson, Marta, she read. Mixed-race female, age forty-six. Married Dickenson, Denzel, two offspring, and an Upper East Side address. Employed: Brewer, Kyle and Martini, an accounting firm with an office eight blocks away.

  As she took out her gauges, her short brown hair fluttered in the wind. She hadn’t thought to yank on a hat. Her eyes, nearly the same gilded brown as her hair, remained cool and flat. She didn’t think about the husband, the kids, the friends, the family—not yet. She thought of the body, the position, the area, the time of death—twenty-two-fifty.

  What were you doing, Marta, blocks from work, from home on a frigid November night?

  She shined her light over the pants, noted traces of blue fiber on the black cloth. Carefully, she tweezed off two, bagged them, marked the pants for the sweepers.

  She heard Peabody’s voice over her head, and the uniform’s answer. Eve straightened. Her leather coat billowed at the hem around her long, lean frame as she turned to watch Peabody—or what she could see of her partner—clomp down the steps.

  Peabody had thought of a hat, had remembered her gloves. The pink—Jesus, pink—ski hat with its sassy little pom-pom covered her dark hair and the top of her face right down to the eyes. A multicolored scarf wound around and around just above the plum-colored puffy coat. The hat matched the pink cowboy boots Eve had begun to suspect Peabody wore even in bed.

  “How can you walk with all that on?”

  “I hiked to the subway, then from the subway, but I stayed warm. Jeez.” One quick gleam of sympathy flicked across Peabody’s face. “She doesn’t even have a coat.”

  “She’s not complaining. Marta Dickenson,” Eve began, and gave Peabody the salients.

  “It’s a ways from her office and her place. Maybe she was walking from one to the other, but why wouldn’t she take the subway, especially on a night like this?”

  “That’s a question. This unit’s being rehabbed. It’s empty. That’s handy, isn’t it? The way she’s in the corner there? She shouldn’t have been spotted until morning.”

  “Why would a mugger care when?”

  “That’s another question. Following that would be, if he did, how’d he know this unit’s unoccupied?”

  “Lives in the area? Is part of the rehab crew?”

  “Maybe. I want a look inside, but we’ll talk to the nine-one-one callers first. Go ahead and notify the ME.”

  “The sweepers?”

  “Not yet.”

  Eve climbed the stairs, walked to the black-and-white. Even as she signaled to the cop inside, a man pushed out of the back.

  “Are you in charge?” Words tumbled over each other in a rush of nerves.

  “Lieutenant Dallas. Mr. Whitestone?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “You notified the police.”

  “Yes. Yes, as soon as we found the—her. She was . . . we were—”

  “You own this unit?”

  “Yes.” A sharply attractive man in his early thirties, he took a long breath, expelling it in a chilly fog. When he spoke again, his voice leveled, his words slowed. “Actually, my partners and I own the building. There are eight units—third and fourth floors.” His gaze tracked up. No hat for him either, Eve mused, but a wool topcoat in city black and a black and red striped scarf.

  “I own the lower unit outright,” he continued. “We’re rehabbing so we can move our business here first and second floors.”

  “Which is what? Your business?”

  “We’re financial consultants. The WIN Group. Whitestone, Ingersol, and Newton. W-I-N.”

  “Got it.”

  “I’ll live in the downstairs unit, or that was the plan. I don’t—”

  “Why don’t you run me through your evening,” Eve suggested.

  “Brad?”

  “Stay in the car where it’s warm, Alva.”

  “I can’t sit anymore.” The woman who slid out was blonde and sleek and tucked into some kind of animal fur and thigh-high