Fantasy in Death

14

She jerked up, shoving herself free of the dream. For an instant, just one beat of the heart, she swore she felt the keen edge slice at her throat.

Shaken, she reached up, half expecting to feel the warm wet of her own blood.

“Shh, now. It’s all right.”

His arms were there, drawing her in, closing around her like a shield. As her heart continued to bound, she leaned into them, into him.

“Just a dream. You’re home. I’m right here.”

“I’m okay.” No blood. No death. “It wasn’t a nightmare. Or not exactly. I knew it was a dream, but it was so real.” She drew one breath, then another. Slow, she ordered herself. Slow and steady. “Like the games. You lose track of what is and what’s not.”

He tipped her face up, and in the glow of moon and stars through the sky window met her eyes. “We’re real.” He touched his lips to hers as if to prove it. “What did you dream?”

“The battlefield, the last game.” Bart’s last game, she thought, but not hers. “I wasn’t playing. I was just watching. Observing the details.” She sighed once, rubbed her hands over her face. “If you don’t watch, if you don’t see, you don’t know. But it weirded on me, the way dreams do.”

“How?”

“The dead, the dying, their faces. All those people I don’t know until they’re dead.”

In those eyes, so blue in the starlight, came understanding. “Your victims.”

“Yeah.” The pang in her heart was pity, weighted down by resignation. “I can’t help them, can’t save them. And their killers are out there, free, killing more. It’s a slaughter.” And the simmer beneath it was an anger that bubbled up in her voice. “We put them away, but it doesn’t stop it. We know that. We all know that. There’s always more. He was there. You have to figure he’d be there.”

“Your father.”

“But he’s just one of the many now.”

Still she trembled, just a little, so he rubbed her arms to warm them.

“I’m not engaged. I’m not playing. I’m not one of them. Not one of the dead or dying, not one of the killers. Just an observer.”

“It’s how you stop them,” he said quietly. “It’s how you save those you can.”

And some of the weight eased. “I guess it is. I watched Bart fight. I know what’s going to happen, but I have to watch because I might have missed a detail. I might see something new. But it happens just the way I see it happen. Then the Black Knight, his killer, turns to me. Looks at me. It’s just a dream, but I go for my weapon because he’s coming for me. I can feel the ground shake and feel the wind. But all I have against that fucking sword is the little knife I used all those years ago, in that horrible room in Dallas.”

She looked down at her hand, empty now. “That’s all I have, and it won’t be enough, not this time. The sword comes down, and I feel that, too. Just for a second before I wake up.”

She let out a breath. “Sometimes they crowd me.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Killers and victims. They get in your head, and they never really leave.” She cupped his face now. “They’ll get in yours, because you can’t just step aside, just watch me do the job. You can’t just observe any more than I can. I’m in the game, always one of the players. Now, you are, too.”

“Do you think I regret that?”

“One day you might. I wouldn’t blame you.”

“I knew you for a cop the minute I laid eyes on you. And I knew without understanding how or why, that you would change things. I’ll never regret that moment, or any that followed.” He gave her shoulders a little shake-as comforting as a kiss. “You have to understand you’re not alone on the battlefield. And since that moment, that first moment? Neither am I.”

“I used to think I was better off alone, that I needed to be. And maybe I did. But not anymore.”

She touched her lips to his cheek, then the other. “And never again.”

Then laid her lips warm and soft on his.

What they brought to each other closed all the rest outside. A touch, a taste, a promise renewed.

He enclosed her, brought her in, brought her close. He knew, she thought, simply knew she needed to be held, to have his arms around her. His hands warming her skin were gentle, so gentle after the blood and brutality of the dream. His lips, those slow, tender kisses offered her peace and solace, and love.

Passion would come, she knew. It was a low fire always kindled between them. But for now he gave her what she reached for, could always reach for with him. He gave her comfort.

Did she know, could she know what it meant to him when she turned to him, when she opened herself to him like this? In absolute trust.

Her strength, her valor remained a constant wonder to him, as did her unrelenting determination to defend those who could no longer defend themselves. These moments, when she allowed her vulnerabilities, her doubts, her fears to tremble to the surface compelled him to take care. In these moments he could show her it wasn’t just the warrior he loved, he treasured, but the woman, the whole of her. The dark and the light.

Softly, softly, as if tending wounds, he stroked her skin, unknotted muscles tight from the day and the dream. And when she sighed, he laid his lips on her heart.

It beat for him.

In the blue wash of moonlight, she moved for him, rising up, another sigh, giving over. Giving.

Her fingers slid through his hair, glided down his back and up again. An easy rhythm even when her breath quickened and her sigh deepened to moan.

Lost in it, this quiet pleasure, she drew him closer, closer still. Body to body, mouth to mouth, thrilled with the weight of him, the shape of him. She drew in his scent like breath, and opened to take him in.

Smooth and slow and sweet, they moved together. As sensations shimmered through her like light, she cupped his face in the dark.

Not all magic was fantasy, she thought. There was magic here and she felt it glow in her body, in her mind and her heart.

“I love you. Roarke. I love you.”

Magic, she thought, watching his heart rise into his eyes.

“A ghrá.” My love. And with the word he lifted her home.

In the morning, Eve drank the first half of the first cup of coffee with the concentration of a woman focused on simple survival. Then she sighed with nearly the same easy pleasure as she had the night before under Roarke’s skilled hands.

No question, she admitted, and set the coffee aside long enough to jump in the shower: She’d gotten spoiled.

She didn’t know how she’d managed to get her ass in gear every day before Roarke-and real, honest-to-God coffee, black and strong and rich. Or how she’d lived with the stingy pisstrickle of the shower in her own apartment before she’d discovered the sheer wonder of hot multi-jets, on full, pummeling her awake.

Good things, little things, really, that she’d lived without all of her life-like the warm, clean-scented swirl of air in the drying tube. She’d gotten used to those good things, those little things, she realized, so that she rarely thought of them.

She stepped out of the tube and noted the robe hanging on the door. Short, soft, and boldly red-and probably new. She couldn’t be absolutely sure as her man had a habit of buying her pretty things-good things, little things-without mentioning it.

She put it on, picked up her coffee, and stepped back into the bedroom.

A typical morning scene in their household, she supposed. Roarke sipped his own coffee on the cushy sofa in the sitting area, stroking Galahad into a coma while he scanned the morning stock reports. Already dressed, she observed, and he’d probably dealt with at least one ’link conference or holo-meeting before she’d cracked her eyes open.

He’d nag her to eat breakfast, unless she came up with the idea on her own-and very likely let her know if whatever jacket she pulled out didn’t go with whatever pants she pulled on.

Good things, she thought yet again. Little things.

Their things.

While she’d come to rely on the routine, sometimes, she decided, you needed to shake it up.

“What’re you hungry for?” she asked him.

“Sorry?” He glanced over, obviously shifting his attention from screen to her.

“What do you want for breakfast?”

He cocked his head, lifted his eyebrows. “Have you seen my wife? She was here just a minute ago.”

“Just for that, you’ll eat what I give you.”

“That sounds a bit more like the woman we know and love,” he said to the cat. “And yet…” He rose, sauntered over to her. He gave her a spin and a dip, then a kiss more suited to steamy midnight than bright summer morning.

“Well, well, it is you after all. I know that mouth.”

“Keep it up, ace, and that’s all you’ll be tasting.”

“I could live with that.”

She gave him a poke to nudge him back. “I’ve got no time to wrestle with you. I’ve got search warrants to secure, suspects to grill, killers to catch.”

She programmed waffles and mixed berries, more coffee. She imagined Roarke had already fed the cat, but programmed a shallow bowl of milk. Galahad leaped on it like a puma.

“It’ll keep him out of our hair,” she said as she sat.

“And isn’t this nice, our little family having breakfast together.” He plucked a fat blackberry from his own plate, popped it in her mouth. “You look rested. No more dreams?”

“No. Something relaxed them right out of me.” She picked up a raspberry, popped it in his. “But I was thinking about it. Dreams are subconscious whacka-whacka.”

“A little known psychological term.”

“Whatever. I can figure out most of it; it’s just not that deep. But I have a lead suspect in my head, so why was it the fantasy figure that killed Bart in the dream? Maybe because my subconscious was just following the game, or maybe because it’s telling me I’m wrong.”

“You might run it by Mira.”

“Maybe. If there’s time. When the warrants come through, the searches are going to take a while. Hitting three places means extra time, extra men.”

“Mira might back you up on the need for those warrants.”

“Yeah, I’m holding her in reserve. The killer knew Bart’s routine, that’s part of the thing. His inside-his-own-place routine, and that takes a certain intimacy. It’s like this, us,” she explained wagging a finger between them. “The way I knew you’d be sitting here when I came out of the shower. Drinking coffee, petting the cat, checking the stocks and morning media. It’s what you do. You deviate now and then, as necessary, but odds are it’s like this.”

“Mmm.” Roarke cut a bite of waffle. “And the killer played the odds.”

“They were good odds. Just like I favor the odds on whoever killed him making a move to take the leadership role at U-Play. Bart’s death leaves a void, and part of the benefit of that death would be filling it.”

“You’re leaning away from more than one of them being involved now.”

“It’s still a good possibility, but killing a friend, a partner, it’s an absolute betrayal of trust.”

He nodded. “And anyone who’s capable of that sort of betrayal wouldn’t easily trust someone else.”

She tapped her fork in the air. “You got it in one. These people live by creating scenarios, and calculating all the steps. Take this choice, get this result, and that leads to the next. I think the killer would have calculated the pros and cons of pulling someone into it with him.”

“If the other weakens, makes a mistake, threatens, it’s a new problem. Difficult to kill another partner,” Roarke commented. “It would shine your light brightly on the remaining two. But…” He knew her, too. Her routine, her thought patterns. “You’re concerned that might happen.”

“It depends on what’s to be gained, or lost-and how much ego and satisfaction were stoked by the first kill. When someone believes they’re smarter, more talented, just plain more right than anyone else, and they harbor this kind of need, they’re very, very dangerous.”

Eve tried Cher Reo first. The APA was another friend, and Eve supposed in a broad sense, another partner. I knock them down, she thought as she pushed her way through morning traffic, you put them away.

When she contacted Reo’s office she learned the APA was already at Central overseeing Reineke’s case.

That didn’t take long, she mused, and cut west, away from Broadway and the crowds that inevitably partied there.

The pizza would roll on the pipe wrench, she concluded-or vice versa. One would take a deal, and the other would do the full weight.

And that had to be enough.

She left a voice mail on Reo’s ’link, requesting a meet as soon as she finished sealing the deal, but it surprised her to find Reo already waiting-with coffee, in her visitor’s chair.

“Thought you’d take longer,” Eve commented.

“They were at it since just after two this morning, which was when your boys decided the happy couple had had enough snuggle time.” Reo stretched, rolled her shoulders. “She’d slipped into his place about eight. Lights went off at midnight. Or thereabouts. They have it documented.”

She yawned, combed her fingers through her fluffy blond hair. “They got sloppy. Didn’t even bother to pull the privacy screen. Your guys got quite a little show before and after the lights went out.”

“I’m betting the wife rolled on the lover.”

“Like a wheel down a steep road. Tried all the usual first, apparently. She was just looking for comfort after the loss.” Reo widened her eyes, batted her lashes. “Oh my God, he killed my husband! Shock, dismay, tears. Anyway.” She shrugged. “They got very detailed confessions out of both, and I saved the taxpayers a bundle. She’ll do a solid dime, he’ll do double that.”

She held up a finger before Eve could speak. “Yeah, we probably could’ve gotten them both life in a trial, but this seals them up. It’s not a bad way to start the middle of the night.”

She might’ve argued, for form’s sake, but Eve wanted Reo’s good graces. “I need three search warrants.”

“For what?”

Eve got her own coffee, sat, and spelled it out.

Frowning, Reo tapped a finger to the side of her mug. “No physical evidence on any of them?”

“That’s why I need the warrants. To find some.”

“You don’t really know what you’re looking for.”

“But I’ll know it when I find it. The weight’s there, Reo. Motive, means, opportunity, e-skills-and an intimate knowledge of the vic’s domicile, habits, and security. Add in by their own statements only those three had full knowledge of the game.”

“They’re alibied.”

Eve shook her head, dismissing it. “The alibis are soft. They’re so soft they’re squishy. You haven’t seen the place. I have. It’s like a beehive, with the bees buzzing everywhere. It’s a five-minute walk to the scene. Any one of them could have slipped out for an hour without anybody knowing. And if someone had, the killer would’ve had another alibi ready. It’s the way they think-in cause and effect, action and reaction. Mira’s profile adds more. He knew his killer.”

Reo puffed out her cheeks. “I can work it. You say they’ve been cooperative so far?”

“Oh yeah.”

“You could always request a search, see how each of them reacts.”

“And that gives any of them time to ditch whatever it is I might find.”

“I can work it,” she said again. “And I sure hope you find something.” She rose. “Do you know how uncomfortable that chair is?”

“Yeah.”

Reo laughed, rubbed tired blue eyes. “Regardless, if you’d been another ten minutes, I’d’ve been asleep in it. I need a damn nap. See you tonight? Nadine’s party?”

“I’ll be there.”

“I’m going to have to trowel on the enhancers to look half human. I’ll get your warrants,” she added as she headed out.

“Thanks.”

One down, Eve thought, then walked out to pull Peabody away from her desk. “Let’s go have another talk with CeeCee.”

As they started for the glide, she spotted Reineke at one of the machines in Vending. “Good work, Detective.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant. Jenkinson’s walking them through processing.” He drew a very sad-looking Danish out of the slot. “You know, turns out in the end they were just a couple of idiots. He still had the clone phone he used to tag her before he went out and bashed the dead husband, and the pizza box hadn’t run through his recycler yet. And her? She bought fancy underwear online a couple hours after she’s notified she’s got a dead husband. Stupidity shoulda gotten them more than ten and twenty.”

“I bet they don’t come out any smarter. Good work,” she said again. “And I don’t want to find out you and Jenkinson shared the surveillance doc around the bullpen.”

“It’s too bad because they may be stupid, but they’re damn flexible.”

She waited until she was on the glide to grin.

“We’re not looking at the girlfriend? CeeCee?” Peabody asked.

“No. It’s one of the partners, but she may know more than she thinks. She’s had some time to settle. I want to poke at her memory, and impressions.”

They found CeeCee at home, in a tidy little apartment she shared with a trio of goldfish in a glass bowl.

Eve wondered about people who kept fish. Did they like to watch them circle, circle, staring out with those weird eyes? What was the appeal?

“I took some time off work.” CeeCee sat in a high-backed scoop chair. She’d pulled her hair back in a tail and hadn’t bothered with enhancements. She looked pale and tired. “I just can’t go back yet. It feels like if I do, it’s saying Bart didn’t matter enough for me to stay home. And he did.”

“Have you called a counselor?”

“No. I guess… I guess I’m not ready to feel better. That sounds stupid.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Peabody told her.

“I don’t know if we’d have stuck. I mean, things were good, and I think maybe… But I don’t know, and I keep thinking about that. Would we have moved in together, or even gotten married? I don’t know.”

“Did you ever talk about it?” Eve wondered. “Moving in together?”

CeeCee managed a little smile. “We sort of circled around it. I don’t think either of us was ready for that. I think if we’d stayed together a few more months, we’d have talked about it, seriously. We weren’t in a hurry, you know? We thought we had plenty of time.”

“And you each had your own interests,” Eve prompted. “Your own routines and your own friends.”

“That’s true. I had a boyfriend once, and he crowded me. It was like if we weren’t together twenty-four/seven, I didn’t care enough. It wasn’t like that with Bart. We did a lot together, and he liked my friends, I liked his. But we didn’t have to be together every minute.”

“You got along well with his partners. His closest friends.”

“Sure. They’re great. Good thing,” she added with a smile that warmed her tired eyes. “I don’t think I’d’ve been Bart’s girl if I hadn’t liked his friends, and they hadn’t liked me back.”

“Oh?”

“Well, they’re like family. Some people have trouble with family. I could tell you about my sister.” She rolled her eyes now, and Eve began to see some of the charm and energy that must have attracted Bart eke through the grief. “But I guess, I don’t know, when you choose your family it’s different. You can still disagree or argue, but you’re always going to stand up for each other, too. I guess that’s true with my sister, even when I’m mad at her.”

“It’d be natural for Bart to get mad at his partners sometimes.”

“Maybe, but he really didn’t. It was more like he’d shake his head and go, Jeez, what’s Cill thinking about this, or What’s Benny doing that for, or Var’s out of orbit on this one.”

“He’d talk to you about them.”

“Sure. I’d be a kind of decompression chamber for him, if they’d had a rough few days. I know they’d been working really hard on a new project. Long hours and lots of testing stuff. Maybe they argued a little, the way you do over stuff like that, especially when you’re overdoing it.”

“Anything specific? Every detail helps,” Eve added when CeeCee bit her lip. “One thing can lead to another, give us a better picture.”

“Oh. Well. I know he was miffed at Cill a couple weeks ago. Nothing big, but he was upset that she’d gone overbudget for a marketing campaign proposal. And she was miffed because she put a lot of time into it and thought it was worth the extra. And he didn’t. She gets madder than he does. Did.”

She sighed, then shook it off.

“He said they yelled at each other, but he doesn’t-didn’t-really yell, so I’d say she did that part. But they made up, like always. He bought her flowers. He liked giving flowers. And he and Var got into it about the direction of this new game. It was technical, so Bart didn’t really say what. Just about how they weren’t going off mission statement, and not everything should reach its full potential. That’s a weird thing to say, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. What did he mean?”

“I don’t know. He just said U-Play was about play, and that was that. He could be a little stubborn. Not often, but when he was… It was kind of cute.”

“How about Bart and Benny? Any tension?”

“They go back so far. They’d tease each other a lot-that kind of ragging guys do on each other. Like I was over there last week, because we were going to catch a vid after work. He and Benny were testing one of the games, going one-on-one, and Bart just slaughtered him. And Bart rubbed his face in it. They do that all the time, but I guess all the work they’d been putting in was starting to tell, because Benny got steamed. I could see it. Benny said maybe they’d try it IRL-in real life-next time and stalked off. Bart just laughed. I told him when we left he’d hurt Benny’s feelings.”

She shrugged. “It was just guy stuff. Stupid guy stuff.”

“She’s a nice woman,” Peabody commented when they got back in the car. “I know it’s pointless to speculate, but I think they would’ve stuck. His history indicates he’s the sticking kind.”

“Yeah. And he feels a little more normal now. Gets irritated with friends, has some arguments.”

“None of them seemed murderous.”

“Not to him. We can’t be sure about the friend. Cill-questioning her authority and creativity. Var-shutting down an idea for change. Benny-skewering his ego and e-skills. It tells us he’s normal, that two of the partners wanted something he didn’t and were overruled, and the third got his ass kicked in front of others. It’s unlikely any of those incidents were the first of their kind, and very possible any of those incidents was, for one of them, a last straw.”

“You and I argue, and you’ve been known to shut me down and kick my ass. I’m not plotting your murder. At this time.”

“I bet you’ve imagined kicking my ass.”

Peabody cast her gaze up to the roof of the vehicle. “Imagination is not against the law or any departmental regulations.”

“That’s the point. It takes a certain type, or a flashpoint incident to cause someone to turn imagination into reality.” She drummed her fingers on the wheel, thinking it through as she drove. “They all fit the profile, in my opinion. And turning imagination into something as close as possible to reality is what they try to do every day. So, one step more, and it’s absolutely real.”

She glanced down at her dash ’link, smiled at the text on-screen. “Reo came through. Put three teams together,” she ordered Peabody.

“Me?”

“Is someone else here?”

“No, but-”

“An e-man with each team. We’ll circulate. I want all weapons confiscated, even the toys. I want all discs evaluated, all comps, all coms evaled on-site.” She ran down the list briskly while Peabody scrambled to key tasks into her PPC. “Any question on any of them, they come in. I want all sinks, tubs, showers, and drains tested for blood. I want any and all droids on any of the premises also evaled.”

“Okay.” Peabody swallowed, then nodded. “I follow you.”

“Good. Make it happen. You and I are going by U-Play to notify the partners. Tell the ranking officer on each team to secure the warrant for his or her area.”

“Copy that. Dallas, do you really think, if one of the partners killed Bart, they’d leave evidence in their own space?”

She thought of a simple pizza box. “It happens.”