Divided in Death

Chapter 1

Lieutenant Eve Dallas, one of New York ’s top cops, sprawled naked with the blood beating in her ears and her heart pounding like an airjack. She managed to wheeze in a breath, then gave it up.

Who needed air when the system was revving from the aftermath of truly spectacular sex?

Beneath her, her husband lay warm and hard and still. The only movement was the knock of his heart against hers. Until he lifted one of those amazing hands and cruised it along her spine, from nape to butt.

“You want me to move,” she mumbled, “you’re out of luck.”

“I’d say my luck’s in.”

She smiled in the dark. She loved hearing his voice, the way Ireland shimmered through it. “Pretty good welcome home, especially since you were gone less than forty-eight hours.”

“It certainly put a nice cap on a short trip to Florence.”

“I didn’t ask, did you stop off in Ireland to see your-” She hesitated just a beat. It was still so odd to think of Roarke with family. “Your family?”

“I did, yes. Had a nice few hours.” He continued to stroke that hand, up and down, up and down her back so that her heartbeat slowed and her eyes began to droop. “It’s very strange, isn’t it?”

“I guess it will be, for a while yet.”

“And how’s the new detective?”

Eve snuggled in, thinking of her former aide and how she was handling her recent promotion. “ Peabody ’s good. Still finding her rhythm. We had a family dispute gone sour. Two brothers mixing it up over inherited property. Knocked the shit out of each other before one of them takes a header down the steps and breaks his stupid neck. So the other brother tries to mock it up like a bungled burglary. Tosses all this stuff they were fighting over in a blanket, hauls it out to his car, shoves it in the trunk. Like we’re not going to look there.”

The derision in her tone had him chuckling. Eve rolled off and stretched.

“Anyway, it was pretty much connect the big, pulsing red dots, so I put Peabody on as primary. After she started breathing again, she did fine. Sweepers were already sucking up evidence, but she takes this jerk in the kitchen, sits down with him all sympathetic-used all that family business she knows so well. Had him babbling out a confession in about ten minutes. Got him on Man Two.”

“Good for her.”

“It’ll help build her confidence.” She stretched again. “We could use a few more walks in the meadow like that one after the summer we put in.”

“You might take a few days off. We could walk in a real meadow.”

“Give me a couple of weeks with her. I want to make sure she finds her feet before I let her solo.”

“That’s a date, then. Oh, your… enthusiastic welcome, while much appreciated, drove this right out of my mind.” He got out of bed, calling for the lights at ten percent.

In their subtle glow, she could watch him step off the wide platform where the bed stood, move toward the small bag he’d taken with him. Watching him move, graceful as some lean, elegant cat, gave her such pleasure.

Was that kind of grace innate, she wondered, or had he learned it dodging cops and picking pockets as a child on the streets of Dublin? However it had come to him, it had served him well, as that clever boy, and as the clever man who’d built an empire out of guts and guile and a wily kind of genius.

When he turned, and she saw his face in that shadowed light, it blew straight through her. The staggering love, the breathless wonder that he should be hers-that anything so beautiful should be hers.

He looked like a work of art, one carved by some brilliant sorcerer. The keen bones of his face, the generous mouth that was sensual magic. Those eyes, that wild Celtic blue, that could still make her throat ache when they looked at her. And that miraculous canvas was framed by black silk that swept nearly to his shoulders, and continually made her fingers itch to touch it.

They’d been married more than a year, and there were times, unexpected times, when just looking at him could stop her heart.

He came back to sit beside her, cupped her chin in his hand, brushed his thumb over the little dent in its center. “Darling Eve, so still and quiet in the dark.” He touched his lips to her brow. “I’ve brought you a present.”

She blinked, and immediately edged back. It made him smile, this habitual reaction of hers to gifts. Just as the uneasy look she gave the long, narrow box in his hand made him grin.

“It won’t bite you,” he promised.

“You weren’t even gone two days. There has to be some sort of time requirement for bringing back presents.”

“I missed you after two minutes.”

“You’re saying that to soften me up.”

“Doesn’t make it less true. Open the box, Eve, then say: ‘Thank you, Roarke.’”

She rolled her eyes, but she opened the box.

It was a bracelet, a kind of cuff with a pattern of minute diamond shapes etched into the gold to give it sparkle. In the center was a stone-and as it was blood-red, she assumed it was a ruby-big as her thumb and smooth to the touch.

It looked old, and important, in that priceless antique way that made her stomach jitter.

“Roarke-”

“You forgot the thank-you part.”

“Roarke,” she said again. “You’re going to tell me this once belonged to some Italian countess or-”

“Princess,” he supplied, and took the bracelet from her to slip it onto her wrist. “Sixteenth century. Now it belongs to a queen.”

“Oh, please.”

“Okay, that was laying it on a bit thick. Looks good on you, though.”

“It’d look good on a tree stump.” She wasn’t much on glitters, despite the fact that the man heaped them on her at every opportunity. But this one had… something, she thought as she lifted her arm and turned her wrist so the stone and etching caught and scattered light. “What if I lose it, or break it?”

“That would be a shame. But until you do, I enjoy seeing it on you. If it makes you feel any better, my aunt Sinead seemed equally flustered by the necklace I bought her.”

“She struck me as a sensible woman.”

He tugged a lock of Eve’s hair. “The women in my life are sensible, enough to indulge me as giving them gifts brings me such pleasure.”

“That’s a slick way to box it in. It’s beautiful.” And she had to admit, at least privately, that she liked the way it slid fluidly over her skin. “I can’t wear this to work.”

“I don’t suppose so. Then again, I like the way it looks on you now. When you’re wearing nothing else.”

“Don’t get any ideas, ace. I’m on shift in-six hours,” she calculated after a glance at the time.

Because she recognized the gleam in his eye, she narrowed her own. But the token protest she intended to give was interrupted by the bedside ‘link.

“That’s your signal.” She nodded toward the ‘link, then rolled off the bed. “At least when somebody calls you at two in the morning, nobody’s dead.”

She wandered off into the bathroom as she heard him block video, and answer.

She took her time, then as an afterthought snagged the robe off the back of the door in case he’d reinstated the video on the ‘link.

She was belting it as she went back in, and saw he was up and at his closet. “Who was it?”

“Caro.”

“You’ve got to go now? At two in the morning?” His tone, just the way he’d said his admin’s name, had the skin on her neck prickling. “What is it?”

“Eve.” He pulled out a shirt to go with the trousers he’d hastily put on. “I need a favor. A very large favor.”

Not from his wife, she thought. But from his cop. “What is it?”

“One of my employees.” He dragged on the shirt, but his eyes stayed on Eve. “She’s in trouble. Considerable trouble. Someone is dead, after all.”

“One of your employees kill someone, Roarke?”

“No.” Since she continued to stand where she was, he moved to her closet, took out clothes. “She’s confused and panicked, and Caro says somewhat incoherent. These are not traits one associates with Reva. She works in Security. Design and installation, primarily. She’s solid as stone. She was with the Secret Service for a number of years, and isn’t a woman who shakes easily.”

“You’re not telling me what happened.”

“She found her husband and her friend in bed at the friend’s apartment. Dead. Already dead, Eve.”

“And finding two dead bodies, she contacted your administrative assistant instead of the police.”

“No.” He pushed the clothes he’d chosen into Eve’s hands. “She contacted her mother.”

Eve stared at him, cursed softly, then began to dress. “I have to call this in.”

“I’m asking you to wait, until you see for yourself, until you talk to Reva.” He laid his hands on hers, held them there until she looked back at him again. “Eve, I’m asking you, please, wait that long. You don’t have to call in what you haven’t seen with your own eyes. I know this woman. I’ve known her mother more than a dozen years, and trust her to the level I trust very few. They need your help. I need it.”

She picked up her weapon harness, strapped it on. “Then let’s get there. Fast.”

It was a clear night with the heaviness that had dogged the summer of 2059 lightening toward the crispness of the coming fall. Traffic was light, and the short drive required little skill or concentration on Roarke’s part. He judged by his wife’s silence that she’d closed in. She asked no questions as she wanted no more information, nothing that would influence her from her own impressions of what she would see and hear and feel.

Her narrow, angular face was set, the long golden-brown eyes cop-flat. Unreadable even to him. The wide mouth that had been hot and soft against his only a short time before was firm and tight-lipped.

He parked on the street, in an illegal spot, and flicked the ON DUTY light in her vehicle before she could do so herself.

She said nothing, but stepped onto the sidewalk and stood, tall and lanky, her shaggy brown hair still mussed from lovemaking.

He crossed to her, gently combed his own fingers through her hair to order it, as well as he could. “Thank you for this.”

“You don’t want to thank me yet. Prime digs,” she commented with a nod toward the brownstone. Before she could mount the steps, the door opened.

There was Caro, her shiny white hair like a silvery halo around her head. Without that, Eve might not have recognized Roarke’s dignified and efficient admin in the pale woman wearing a smart red jacket over blue cotton pajamas.

“Thank God. Thank God. Thank you for coming so quickly.” She reached out with a visibly trembling hand and gripped Roarke’s. “I didn’t know quite what to do.”

“You did just right,” Roarke told her, and drew her in.

Eve heard her stifle a sob, let go with a sigh. “Reva-she’s not well, not well at all. I have her in the living area. I didn’t go upstairs.”

Caro eased away from Roarke, straightened her shoulders. “I didn’t think I should. I haven’t touched anything, Lieutenant, except a glass out of the kitchen. I got Reva a glass of water, but I only touched the glass, and the bottle. Oh, and the handle of the friggie. I-”

“It’s all right. Why don’t you go sit with your daughter? Roarke, stay with them.”

“You’ll be all right with Reva for a few minutes, won’t you?” he asked Caro. “I’ll go with the lieutenant.” Ignoring the flash of irritation over Eve’s face, he gave Caro’s shoulder a comforting rub. “I won’t be long.”

“She said-Reva said it was horrible. And now she just sits there, and doesn’t say anything at all.”

“Keep her quiet,” Eve advised. “Keep her down here.” She started upstairs. She glanced at the leather jacket, ripped to shreds and tossed into a heap on the floor. “Did she tell you which room?”

“No. Just that Reva found them in the bed.”

Eve glanced at the room on the right, another on the left. Then she scented the blood. She continued down the hall, stopped at the doorway.

The two bodies were turned on their sides, facing each other. As if they were telling secrets. Blood stained the sheets, the pillows, the lacy cover that was tangled on the floor.

It stained the hilt and blade of the knife jabbed viciously into the mattress.

She saw a black bag near the door, a high-end stunner on the floor near the left side of the bed, a disordered pile of clothes heaped on a chair. Candles, still lit and wafting fragrance. Music still playing in soft, sexy notes.

“This is no walk in the meadow,” she murmured. “Double homicide. I have to call it in.”

“Will you stand as primary?”

“I’ll stand,” she agreed. “But if your friend did this, that’s not going to be a favor.”

“She didn’t.”

He stepped back while Eve drew out her communicator.

“I need you to take Caro in another room,” she told him when she was finished. “Not the kitchen,” she added with another glance at the knife. “There must be a den or a library or something like that down there. Try not to touch anything. I need to question-what was it? Reva?”

“Reva Ewing, yes.”

“I need to question her, and I don’t want you or her mother around when I do. You want to help her,” she said before he could speak, “let’s keep this as much by the book as we can from this point. You said she’s security.”

“Yes.”

“Since she’s one of yours I don’t have to ask if she’s good.”

“She is. Very good.”

“And he was her husband?”

Roarke looked back at the bed. “He was. Blair Bissel, an artist of some debatable talent. Works-worked in metal. That’s one of his, I believe.” He gestured toward a tall, seemingly jumbled series of metal tubes and blocks that stood in the corner of the room.

“And people pay for that?” She shook her head. “Takes all kinds. I’m going to ask you more about her later, but I want to get to her first, then take a closer look at the scene here. How long have they had marital problems?” Eve asked as she started down the hall again.

“I wasn’t aware they had any.”

“Well, they’re over now. Keep Caro tucked away,” she ordered, then walked to the living area to get her first look at Reva Ewing.

Caro sat with her arm around a woman in her early thirties. She had dark hair, cut short in a style nearly as careless as Eve’s. She looked to have a small, compact body, the athletic sort that showed off well in the black T-shirt and jeans she wore.

Her skin was icy-white, her eyes a kind of sooty gray that was nearly black with shock. Her lips were colorless, a bit on the thin side. As Eve stepped closer, those eyes flicked up, stared blindly. They were red-rimmed and puffy, and showed none of the sharp intelligence Eve assumed she owned.

“Ms. Ewing, I’m Lieutenant Dallas.”

She continued to stare, but there was a faint movement of her head, as much shudder as nod.

“I need to ask you some questions. Your mother’s going to go with Roarke while we talk.”

“Oh, couldn’t I stay with her?” Caro’s arm tightened on Reva’s shoulders. “I won’t interfere, I promise, but-”

“Caro.” Roarke moved to stand beside her, reached down and took her hand. “It’s better this way.” Gently, he drew Caro to her feet. “Better for Reva. You can trust Eve.”

“Yes, I know. It’s just…” She looked back as Roarke led her from the room. “I’ll be right here. Reva, I’m right here.”

“Ms. Ewing.” Eve sat across from her, set her recorder on the table between them. And saw Reva’s gaze fix on it. “I’m going to record this. I’m going to read you your rights, then ask you some questions. Do you understand?”

“Blair’s dead. I saw. They’re dead. Blair and Felicity.”

“Ms. Ewing, you have the right to remain silent.” Eve walked through the revised Miranda, and Reva closed her eyes.

“Oh God, oh God. It’s real. It’s not some horrible dream. It’s real.”

“Tell me what happened here tonight.”

“I don’t know.” A tear dribbled down her cheek. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Was your husband sexually involved with Felicity?”

“I don’t understand it. I don’t understand. I thought he loved me.” Her eyes locked on Eve’s. “I didn’t believe it at first. How could I? Blair and Felicity. My husband and my friend. But then I could see it, could see all the signs I missed, all the clues, all the mistakes-those little mistakes they both made.”

“How long have you known?”

“Just tonight. Just tonight.” Her breath shuddered in and out as she used a balled fist to wipe at the tears on her cheeks. “He was supposed to be out of town until tomorrow. A client, a new commission. But he was here, with her. I came, and I saw…”

“You came here tonight to confront them?”

“I was so angry. They’d made a fool out of me, and I was so angry. They broke my heart, and I was so sad. Then they were dead. All that blood. All the blood.”

“Did you kill them, Reva?”

“No!” Her whole body jerked at the question. “No, no, no! I wanted to hurt them. I wanted them to pay. But I didn’t… I couldn’t have. I don’t know what happened.”

“Tell me what you do know.”

“I drove over. We have a house in Queens. Blair wanted a house, and he didn’t want to live in Manhattan where we both worked. Someplace private and away, that’s what he said. Someplace just ours.”

Her voice broke on the words so that she covered her face with her hands. “I’m sorry. It all seems impossible. It seems I’ll wake up any minute and none of this will have happened.”

There was some blood on her shirt. None on her hands, on her arms, her face. Eve noted it down among her observations and waited for Reva to compose herself and go on.

“I was furious, and I knew just what I wanted to do. I’d designed the security here, so I knew how to get in. I broke in.”

She dashed a tear off her cheek. “I didn’t want to give them time to prepare, so I broke in, and I went upstairs, to her bedroom.”

“Did you have a weapon?”

“No… Well, I had a stunner. My SS issue, reconfigured. It won’t go over minimum power, so I can carry it with a civilian license. I was…” She heaved a breath. “I was going to give him a jolt with it. On the balls.”

“And did you?”

“No.” She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t remember clearly. It’s like this smear over my brain.”

“You tear up the leather jacket?”

“Yeah.” She sighed now. “I saw it hanging over the rail. I gave him that goddamn jacket, and seeing it just made me crazy. I took out my minidrill and went to work on it. Petty, I know it was petty, but I was so angry.”

“Doesn’t seem petty to me,” Eve said, keeping her tone mild and just a little sympathetic. “Husband’s cheating on you with your pal, you’d want to get some of your own back.”

“That’s the way I felt. Then I saw them in the bed, together. And I saw them-dead. The blood. I’ve never seen so much blood. She screamed-no, no, I screamed. I must’ve screamed.”

She rubbed a hand over her throat, as if she could still feel the sound ripping through it. “Then I passed out-I think. I smelled something. The blood, but something. Something else, and I passed out. I don’t know how long.”

She reached for the glass of water, drank deeply. “I woke up, and I felt fuzzy and sick and strange. Then I saw them, on the bed. I saw them again and I crawled out. I couldn’t seem to stand up, so I crawled out, to the bathroom and got sick. I called my mother. I don’t know why exactly. I should’ve called the police, but I called Mom. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“Did you come here tonight with the intention of killing your husband and your friend?”

“No. I came here with the intention of pitching a royal fit. Lieutenant, I’m going to be sick again. I need to-”

She clutched her stomach, then sprang up and ran. Eve was on her heels when Reva flung open a door and dived into a powder room. Dropping to her knees, she was hideously ill.

“Burns,” she managed, and gratefully took the damp cloth Eve offered. “Burns my throat.”

“You take any illegals tonight, Reva?”

“I don’t do illegals.” She mopped the cloth over her face. “Believe me, you’re raised by Caro, screened by the Secret Service, then Roarke, you don’t screw around.” Exhaustion in every line of her body, she leaned back against the wall. “Lieutenant, I’ve never killed anyone. I carried a weapon when I stood for the President, and once took a hit for her. I’ve got a temper, and when I’m riding on it, I can be rash. Whoever did that to Blair, to Felicity, wasn’t rash. They had to be crazy. Fucking out of their minds. I couldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have.”

Eve crouched down so they were eye-to-eye. “Why do you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself of that, Reva, as much as me?”

Her lips trembled, her eyes swam with fresh tears. “Because I can’t remember. I just can’t remember.” She covered her face with her hands, and wept.

Eve left her long enough to get Caro. “I want you to sit with her,” Eve instructed. “I’m going to put a guard with you momentarily. That’s procedure.”

“Are you arresting her?”

“I haven’t made that determination. She’s cooperating, and that’s going to help. It’d be best if you bring her in here, keep her in this room until I come back.”

“All right. Thank you.”

“I’ve got to get my field kit out of the car.”

“I’ll get it.” Roarke walked out with her. “What do you think?”

“I’m not thinking anything until I secure and examine the scene.”

“Lieutenant, you’re always thinking.”

“Let me do my job. You want to help? Direct my partner and the CSU upstairs when they arrive. Until then, you need to back off or you’ll just muck up the works.”

“Tell me one thing. Should I advise Reva to contact a lawyer?”

“You put me in a hell of a fix.” She snatched the field kit from him. “I’m a cop. Let me go be a cop. You figure out the rest. Goddamn it to hell and back again.”

She stomped upstairs. Breaking open the kit, she yanked out a can of Seal-It and coated her hands and boots. Then, fixing a recorder on her lapel, she re-entered the crime scene and got to work.

She’d progressed to the bodies themselves when she heard the creak of a floorboard. She whirled, ready to snap at the intruder, and bit back the oath when she spotted Peabody.

She was going to have to get used to her former aide’s lack of clomping. The new detective no longer wore the hard-soled cop shoes of uniform, but cushy airsneaks that were all but soundless. And just, in Eve’s opinion, a little spooky.

She had them, apparently, in every color of the rainbow, including the mustard-yellow she wore now to match her jacket. Despite them, and the straight-legged black pants and scoop-necked top, she managed to look pressed and polished and cop-like.

Her square face was sober and concerned, and framed by her standard ‘do, the straight bowl cut that seemed to suit her dark hair.

“It’s insult on injury to buy it naked,” Peabody said.

“And embarrassing on top of it to buy it naked with another woman’s husband, or a woman not your wife.”

“Is that what we’ve got? Dispatch wasn’t big on details.”

“I didn’t give them details. Dead guy is Roarke’s admin’s son-in-law, and right at the moment, her daughter’s prime suspect.”

Peabody looked at the bed. “Looks like a messy situation just got messier.”

“Take the scene first, then I’ll fill you in on the players. Stunner.” She lifted the sealed weapon. “Suspect claims-”

“Holy wow!”

“What? What?” Eve’s free hand slammed onto the butt of her weapon.

“That.” Reaching out, Peabody danced her fingers delicately over the bracelet on Eve’s wrist. “It’s mag. I mean mondo mag, Dallas.”

Mortified, Eve shoved the cuff under the sleeve of her jacket. She’d forgotten she was wearing the bracelet. “Maybe we could concentrate on the scene of the crime rather than my accessories.”

“Sure, but that is some ultimate accessory. Is that big fat red stone a ruby?”

“ Peabody.”

“Okay, okay.” But she was going to get a closer look, when Dallas wasn’t paying attention. “Where were you?”

“Just playing around with evidence, amusing myself at a crime scene.”

Peabody rolled her eyes. “Jeez, beat me with a stick.”

“First chance,” Eve agreed. “To continue. The suspect claims that she brought a stunner with her, a reconfigured one that meets civilian licensee requirements. This is not a reconfigured stunner, but a military issue with full capabilities.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Succinct, as always.”

“That’s inscrutable detective-speak.”

“Said weapon, which I’ve already tested for prints, has suspect’s, and only suspect’s prints, all over it. As does the murder weapon.” Eve gestured to another sealed bag, and the bloody knife within. “The carry bag over there holds electronic jammers and burglar tools, also loaded with Reva Ewing’s prints.”

“Is she security-savvy?”

“Works in that capacity for Roarke Enterprises, and is a former member of the Secret Service.”

“From the setup, it appears that the suspect broke in, found her husband noodling strange, and hacked away.”

But she moved closer to the bed, the bodies. “No defensive wounds on either vic, no signs of struggle. Somebody starts hacking away, most people tend to object, at least a little.”

“Hard to when you’re stunned first.”

With a fingertip, Eve indicated the small red dots between Blair’s shoulder-blades, the matching ones between Felicity’s breasts.

“Him on the back, her on the front,” Peabody noted.

“Yeah. I’d say they were in the middle of noodling strange. Killer walks in behind, zaps him first, shoves him aside and zaps her before she can more than peep. They were unconscious, or at least incapacitated when the hacking began.”

“Serious overkill,” Peabody commented. “There must be a dozen wounds on each of them.”

“Eighteen for him, fourteen for her.”

“Ouch.”

“I’ll say. No heart wounds, which is interesting. Makes more blood if you don’t hit the heart.”

She studied the way it spread over the sheets, the light spatter on the shade of the lamp beside the bed. Nasty work, she thought. Very nasty, very messy.

“Also interesting that none of the holes in them struck the points where the stunner left the burn marks. Suspect has some blood on her clothes-not much, considering, but some. Hands and arms are clean.”

“She’d have to wash up after something like this.”

“You’d think. You’d think if she did, she’d have gotten rid of the shirt, too. But people dumb down a lot of times after they hack a couple people to death.”

“Her mother’s here,” Peabody pointed out.

“Yeah. So maybe her mother washed her up some, but Caro strikes me as more careful than that. Time of death is one-twelve A.M. We’ll have EDD check the security, see if we can determine when she bypassed and entered. I need you to check the kitchen, see if the murder weapon came from the premises, or if it was brought on scene.”

She paused a moment. “You see what’s left of the leather bomber jacket on the floor down there?”

“Yeah. Looked like nice material.”

“I want it tagged, too. Ewing says she tore it up with her minidrill. Let’s see if that matches.”

“Huh. Why’d she use a drill if she had a knife. Ripping away with a knife’s got to be more satisfying and efficient.”

“Yeah, there’s a question. We’ll also run both vics, see if we can find anyone who’d want them dead besides the betrayed wife.”

Hissing a breath out between her teeth, Peabody looked back at the bodies. “If it’s what it looks like, she’ll make diminished capacity in a walk.”

“Let’s find out what it is, not what it looks like.”