Divided in Death

PROLOGUE

Killing was too good for him.

Death was an end, even a release. He’d go to hell, there was no question in her mind, and there he would suffer eternal torment. She wanted that for him-eventually. But for the time being, she wanted him to suffer where she could watch.

Lying, cheating son of a bitch! She wanted him to snivel and beg and plead and slither on his belly like the gutter rat he was. She wanted him to bleed from the ears, to scream like a girl. She wanted to twist his adulterous dick into knots while he shrieked for the mercy she’d never give.

She wanted to pound her fists into his beautiful liar’s face until it was a pulpy, pustulated mass of blood and bone.

Then and only then, the dickless, faceless bastard could die. A slow, withering, agonizing death.

Nobody, nobody cheated on Reva Ewing.

She had to pull over and stop the car in the breakdown lane of the Queensboro Bridge until she calmed down enough to trust herself to continue. Because someone had cheated on Reva Ewing. The man she’d loved, the man she’d married, the man she’d believed in utterly was, even now, making love to another woman.

Touching another woman, tasting her, using that skilled deceiver’s mouth, those clever cheating hands to drive another woman wild.

And not just any other woman. A friend. Someone else she’d loved and trusted, believed in, counted on.

It wasn’t just infuriating. It wasn’t just painful to know her husband and her friend were having an affair, and right under her oblivious nose. It was embarrassing to discover herself a cliché. The deceived wife, the clueless dolt who accepted and believed the adulterer every time he said he had to work late, or had a dinner meeting with a client, or was zipping out of town for a few days to nail down, or hand-deliver, a commission.

Worse, Reva thought now as traffic whizzed by her car, that she of all people had been so easily duped. She was a goddamn security expert. She’d spent five years in the Secret Service and had guarded a president before going into the private sector. Where were her instincts, her eyes, her ears?

How could Blair have been coming home to her, night after night, fresh from another woman and she not know?

Because she’d loved him, Reva admitted. Because she’d been happy, deliriously happy to believe a man like Blair-with his sophistication and amazing looks-had loved and wanted her.

He was so handsome, so talented, so smart. The elegant bohemian with his dark silky hair and emerald-green eyes. She’d been sunk, she thought now, the minute he’d turned those eyes on her, the instant he’d sent her that killer smile. And six months later, they’d been married and living in the big, secluded house in Queens.

Two years, she thought, two years she’d given him everything she had, shared every piece of herself with him, and had loved him with every cell of her body. And all the while he’d been playing her for a fool.

Well, now he’d pay. She dashed the tears from her cheeks, dug deep again for her anger. Now, Blair Bissel was going to find out just what she was made of.

She pulled back into traffic, and drove at a rapid clip to Manhattan ’s Upper East Side.

The husband-stealing bitch, as Reva now thought of her former friend, Felicity Kade, lived in a lovely converted brownstone near the north corner of Central Park. Instead of reminding herself of all the time she’d spent inside, at parties, casual evenings, at Felicity’s famed Sunday brunches, Reva concentrated on the security.

It was good. Felicity collected art and guarded that collection like a dog guarded his meaty bone. The fact was, Reva had met her three years before when she’d helped design and install Felicity’s security system.

It would take an expert to gain entrance, and even then, there were backups and fail-safes that would foil all but the crème de la crème of burglars.

But when a woman made her living, her very good living, looking for chinks in security, she could always find one. She’d come armed, with two jammers, a beefed-up personal palm computer, an illegal police master code, and a stunner she intended to slap right against Blair’s cheating balls.

After that, well, she wasn’t quite sure what she’d do. She’d just play the rest by ear.

She hefted her bag of tools, shoved the stunner in her back pocket, and marched through the balmy September evening toward the front entrance.

She keyed in the first jammer as she walked, knowing she’d have thirty seconds only once she’d locked it on the exterior panel. Numbers began to flash on her handheld, and her heart began to race as she counted off the time.

Three seconds before the alarm was set to trip, the first code scanned onto her jammer. She let out the breath she’d held, glanced up at the dark windows.

“Just keep doing what you’re doing up there, you pair of slime,” she muttered as she set the second jammer. “I only need a few more minutes here. Then we’ll really party.”

She heard the whiz of a car on the street behind her, and cursed softly as it braked. A quick look back and she spotted a cab at the curb, and the laughing couple in evening clothes who climbed out. Reva edged closer to the door, deeper in the shadows. With a minidrill she removed the side of the palm plate, noting that Felicity’s house droid kept even the screws spotless.

Interfacing her PPC with a hair-thin wire, she keyed in a bypass code, waited the sweaty seconds for it to clear. Meticulously, she replaced the panel, then used the second jammer on the voice box.

It took longer to clone, a full two minutes, but she felt a frisson of excitement work through her fury when the last voice entry played back.

August Rembrandt.

Reva’s lips twisted in a sneer as her false friend’s voice murmured the password. Reva had only to key in the cloned security numbers, then use her tools to lift the last, manual lock.

She slipped inside, closed the door, and out of habit reset the security.

Prepared for the house droid to appear, to request her business, she held her stunner at the ready. He’d recognize her, of course, and that would give her just enough time to fry his circuits and clear her way.

But the house stayed silent, and no droid stepped into the foyer. So, they’d shut him down for the night, she thought grimly. So they could have a little more privacy.

She could smell the roses Felicity always kept on the table in the foyer-pink roses, replaced weekly. There was a low light burning beside the vase, but Reva didn’t need it. She knew her way, and walked directly to the stairs to climb to the second floor. To the bedroom.

When she reached the landing she saw all she needed to bring her rage back in full force. Tossed carelessly over the rail was Blair’s light leather jacket. It was the one she’d given him for his birthday the previous spring. The one he’d hooked carelessly with his fingers over his shoulder just that morning when he’d kissed his loving wife good-bye, and told her how much he’d miss her, told her as he’d nuzzled her neck how much he hated having to take even this quick out-of-town trip.

Reva lifted the jacket, brought it to her face. She could smell him on it, and the scent of him nearly tore her grief through her anger.

To stave it off, she took one of her tools out of her bag and quietly shred the leather to ribbons. Then, tossing it on the floor, she ground her heel into it before stepping away.

Face hot with temper, she set her bag down, took the stunner back out of her pocket. As she approached the bedroom she saw the flicker of light. Candles, she could even smell them now, some spicy female perfume. And she could hear the low notes of music-something classic, like the roses, like the scent of the candles.

It was all so Felicity, she thought furiously. All so female and fragile and perfect. She’d have preferred something modern, something today and gutsy for this altercation.

Give her Mavis Freestone kicking some serious musical ass, she thought.

But then it was easy to tune out the music with the buzzing of temper and the ring of betrayal in her head. She toed the door wider with her foot, eased in.

She could see the two figures huddled together under the silk and lace of the coverlet. They’d fallen asleep, she thought bitterly. All cozy and warm and loose from sex.

Their clothes were tossed over a chair, messily, as if they’d been in a hurry to start. Seeing them, the tangle of clothes, broke her heart in hundreds of pieces.

Bracing against it, she strode to the bed, gripped the stunner in her hand. “Wake-up call, you piss-buckets.”

And whipped the silk and lace cover away.

The blood. Oh my God, the blood. The sight of it all over flesh, all over the sheets made her head spin. The sudden smell of it, of death, mixed with the scents of flowers and candles, made her gag and stumble back.

“Blair? Blair?”

She screamed once, shocking herself into action. Sucking in air to scream again, she lunged forward.

Something, someone, slipped out of the shadows. She caught the movement, and another smell-harsh, medicinal. It filled her throat, her lungs.

She turned, to flee or defend she wasn’t sure, and fought to swim through air that had gone to water around her. But the power had drained out of her limbs, numbing them seconds before her eyes rolled back in her head.

And she collapsed in a heap beside the dead who had betrayed her.