“He’s a killer.”
“Yeah, no question.”
“I mean she knows it, or believes it. You’re capable of snapping her statement, and he’s equally capable of snapping her neck—and with a great deal less passion.”
“Wouldn’t disagree. I just wonder why you’d say that after one conversation with him.”
“I would have said it after one look at him. His eyes. He’s a vampire.”
Her mouth dropped open as he stopped the car. She hadn’t managed to get words working with her thoughts until she’d pushed out of the car, rounded the hood to meet him. “You said what?”
“I mean it literally. His type sucks the life out of people, and does it for momentary pleasure, just as effectively as any fictional vampire. And he’s just, darling Eve, as soulless.”
Like her father, Eve thought. Yes, Roarke had seen it, too. He’d seen all of it. There was nothing strange or frightening about recognizing a monster.
It only meant she understood her quarry.
Eve stepped in, pulled off her jacket. She gestured toward Summerset, Roarke’s majordomo, who—as he inevitably did—stood waiting in the foyer in his funereal black suit. “I always figured vampires looked like that. Pale, bony, dour, and dead.” She tossed the jacket on the newel and started up the stairs.
“Will you be having dinner in the dining room like normal human beings this evening?” Summerset asked.
“Got work, and nobody who looks like you should toss around words like ‘normal.’”
“We’ll get something upstairs,” Roarke said placidly.
He strolled with Eve into her office, then immediately whipped around and boxed her against the wall. “I think I’ll start with an appetizer,” he said, then crushed his lips to hers.
Her blood went to instant sizzle. She could all but feel her brains leaking out of her ears as his mouth ravaged hers with a kind of feral impatience that thrilled. Even as she gripped his hips, he was doing torturous things to her body with those quick and clever hands.
She gulped in air, and simply gave herself to the wild and wanton moment. And to him.
She would always give. He knew no matter how much he wanted, she would always be there to give, or take, to meet those endless, urgent needs with her own. Her mouth was a fever on his. A moan poured from her as he tugged her shirt apart, then found that warm, trembling flesh with his lips, his teeth.
The taste of her incited a fresh and mammoth wave of hunger.
Her hands yanked at the hook of his trousers as his yanked at hers. And she pressed erotically against him, core to core.
Her eyes were dark when he looked into them and, for one brilliant moment, went blind when he plunged inside her.
She matched him, beat for frantic beat, riding and racing the violent pleasure as he dragged her arms over her head, as he pinned them there. As he battered them both over the last turbulent crest.
Her breath whistled in and out; he rested his cheek on her hair as he caught his own. And in sweet opposition to the force of their mating, he brushed his lips at her temple, soft as gossamer wings.
“I believe I was a bit more than mildly annoyed by having some poster boy for Dracula hit on my wife in front of my face.”
“Worked for me.” Grateful for the wall behind her, Eve leaned back, managed to focus on Roarke’s eyes. “Feel better?”
“Considerably, thanks.”
“Anytime. You know what, I feel like a big, fat hunk of red meat. How about you?”
He smiled, touched his lips to hers. “I could eat.”
CHAPTER SIX
She had an enormous hamburger while she backtracked through
Dorian Vadim’s criminal record. She burned up the ’link as she ate, as Dorian hadn’t just slithered through the system, but had wound his way around the country and in and out of Europe while he did so. She spoke to detectives and investigators in Chicago, Boston, Miami, New L.A., East Washington, and several European cities.
She took copious notes, requested files, and made promises to keep other cops in other cities in the loop.
At some point during the process, Roarke wandered out. She’d set up another murder board, typed up her notes, and was talking to the head of security at Tiara Kent’s building when Roarke wandered back in again.
She held up a finger.
“Go back as far as you can. If you see this guy on any of your discs, at any point, I want to know. Yeah, day or night. Thanks.”
She disconnected. “Gist from the cops I’ve talked to across the frigging globe is Vadim is a smart grifter with the conscience and agility of a snake, an ego as big as . . . how big is Idaho?”
“There are bigger,” Roarke considered, “but I’d say that’s big enough.”
“Okay, we’ll go with Idaho, and an appetite for rich females and illegal substances. I’m damned if he’ll slip through my fingers. Going to wrap him up quick, going to wrap him up tight,” she told Roarke. “If we get him on any of the building’s security discs, it’s one more—ha-ha—nail in his coffin.”
“Then you might be interested in what I ferreted out, regarding his financials.”
Her expression went from intent to annoyed. “I don’t have authorization to ferret in his financials, as yet.”
“Which is why I used the unregistered. I don’t like him,” Roarke said very clearly before Eve could complain.
“Yeah, loud and clear on that. But I don’t need his financial data at this point, and I can’t use anything you found by illegal means, so—”
“So don’t use it. And if you’re not as curious as I was, I’ll keep the information to myself.”
He walked over, opened a wall panel, and got out the brandy. She lasted until he’d poured himself a snifter.
“Damn it. What did you find?”
“He’s not officially listed as the owner of the club, but he owns it—such as it is. He’s built several fronts, and is registered as its manager.”
“Shady,” she commented, “but not strictly illegal.”
“He’s also sunk quite a bit into the club—more, in my opinion, than makes good business sense on an underground establishment. I’d say Idaho might be lacking in square miles, after all. His overhead’s considerably more than his take, particularly considering his payroll.”
“You hacked into his books for Bloodbath?”
“It wasn’t any trouble.” He swirled, then sipped brandy. “Not much of a challenge. He’s losing money on it, every week. Yet his personal finances don’t reflect that. Instead there’s a nice steady build. Nothing that would wave flags, which tells me he’s very likely tucked away other accounts. I only scraped off a few layers on this run.”
“What’s his other income?” Eve wondered, and Roarke smiled.
“That’s a question.”
“Illegals are likely one chute. Bilking, blackmail, extortion. Once a grifter . . . He could’ve been milking Kent, but if it was just about money, why kill the really rich cow before she runs dry? It’s not just about money,” she said before Roarke could. “That’s a shiny side benefit.”
“Agreed. And I’m going to wager very shiny. I can take a hard look at Kent’s finances, but I suspect she was the type who flung money about like confetti on New Year’s Eve.”
“Yeah, she had hundreds of shoes.”
“I don’t see the correlation, however,” he continued as she rolled her eyes. “With enough time, I could find his hidey-holes, and jibe any unusual income with the same outlay from Kent’s.”
“Given enough time,” Eve repeated. “Hours or days?”
“From the subjects in question, it could take a few days.”
“Crap. Poking there won’t hurt. But that’s not what’s going to get him.”
“Again, we agree.” He strolled over, sat on her desk. He liked it there, where he could look down into those whiskey-toned eyes. Those cop’s eyes. “It may be weight, but it won’t be your hammer. And as for the club, he’s certainly got a second set of books on that, one that includes any exorbitant, and likely illegal membership fees, illegals transactions, and the like. Which I’ll find for you, in time, as well.”
“You’re really handy to have around.” She tapped his knee with her finger. “And not just for the sex.”
“Darling, how sweet. I’ll say the same of you.” He bent down to kiss her lightly—another reason he liked sitting in just that spot. “On Vadim, if he were smarter, he’d be keeping his income and outlay closer on his official records. But he’s not as smart as he thinks he is.”
“But you’re smarter than even he thinks he is.” She paused, thought that through. “If you get me.”
“Aren’t we full of compliments tonight? I’ll have to bang you against the wall more often.”
She laughed, then picked up her coffee. She drank it even though it had gone cold. “I’ll have the DNA match in the morning, maybe get lucky and get a blip of him on Kent’s building’s security. I’m going to corner the bartender and break down her corroboration of his bullshit alibi. I’ll have him in a cage by noon. Then we can take his finances and his records apart, piece by piece. You can add weight to my hammer.”
Roarke angled his head. “Except? I can hear an ‘except’ in your voice.”
“Except it’s too easy, Roarke. It’s all too goddamn easy on his end. He gave up his blood without a blink, and with a smile.”
“I particularly dislike his smile,” Roarke commented.
“Yeah? With you on that. He has to know he left DNA at Kent’s that can hang him, but he didn’t demand I get a warrant. And the fact is, it might have taken me some fast talking to get one for it. He may not be as smart as he thinks, but he’s not stupid either. He’s not worried, and that worries me.”
“So, he has an ace in the hole somewhere. You’ll just have to trump it. Now, tell me, what else is it that worries you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You went somewhere else in your head once or twice when we were in the club. And you’ve been there again a time or two since. Where did you go that worries you?”
“I’ve got a lot to push through, think through,” she began.
“Eve.” It was all he said. All he needed to say.
“I saw my father. I stood there in that ugly place, and he came toward me. Toward me,” she repeated. “Not us, not the group of us, but me.”
“Yes. Yes, he did.”
“Like a dream, in a way. The fog, the lights, the noise. I knew it was for effect, for show, but . . . I got a hook in me, I guess, and then I looked in his eyes. You said sociopath. You said killer. And yeah, I saw that. But I saw more than that. When I looked into him I saw whatever monster it was that lived in my father. I saw it staring out at me. And it . . . it sickens me. It scares me.”
Roarke reached down, took her hand. “Knowing monsters exist, as you and I do, Eve, may not always make for easy sleep, or even an easy heart. But it arms us against them.”
“It was like he knew.” She tightened her grip on his hand. There was no one else she could have told such things to. There had been a time when there’d been no one at all she could have told such things to. “I know it was my imagination, my own . . . demons, I guess you could say, but when he stared back into me, it was like he knew. Like he could see what was small and scared inside of me.”
“You’re wrong on that. What he saw was a woman who won’t stand down.”
“I hope so, because for a couple seconds I wanted to run. Just rabbit the hell out of there.” She let out a shaky breath. “There are all kinds of vampires, you said that, too. Isn’t that what my father was? Trying to suck the life out of me, trying to make me into something less than human? I put a knife into him instead of a stake. Maybe that’s why he keeps coming back in my head.”
“It’s you who made you.” He leaned down now, framed her face with his hands. “And what you are your father would never have understood. Neither would Vadim. No matter how he looks, he’ll never really see you.”
“He thinks he does.”
“His mistake. Eve, do you want to talk to Mira about this?”
“No.” She considered it another moment, then shook her head and repeated, “No, not now anyway. Dumping on you levels it out a little. Taking him down, all the way down—that’ll take care of the rest.”
For a moment she studied their joined hands, then shifted her gaze up to his. “I didn’t want to tell you I’d been scared, much less why. I guess that was stupid.”
“It was.”
She scowled. “Aren’t you supposed to say something like ‘No, it wasn’t. Blah, blah, support, stroke, let me get you some chocolate’?”
“You haven’t read the marriage handbook’s footnotes. It’s another
woman
who does that sort of thing. I believe I’m allowed to be more blunt, then ask if you’d like a quick shag.”
“Shag yourself,” she said and made him laugh. “But thanks anyway.”
“Offer’s always on the table.”
“Yeah, yeah, and the floor, in the closet, or on the front stairs. Time to work, ace, not to play.”
She pushed up to study and circle her murder board, and he knew she was soothed and settled.
“Prior bad acts, and plenty of them. Mysterious income. Contact with the vic, and the profile fits him like a tailor-made suit. Bullshit alibi. He’s running a game in that club, skinning rich idiots with his vampire fantasy, maybe blackmailing them, selling illegals. But that’s only part of the picture. He’s got something,” she said in a mutter now. “He’s got something, and he’s feeling fucking smug about it.”
“Heads up, Lieutenant,” Roarke warned.
She glanced his way, caught the candy bar he tossed across the room. She grinned, tore the wrapper, and biting in, continued to study her board.
When Allesseria finished her shift, she was careful not to rush,
careful to do everything just as she did every night. She closed down her tabs, keyed in her codes, passed her station off to her replacement.
She stretched her back as she walked, casually, to the employeeonly area where she stowed her bag and her jacket every shift. Even there, behind closed doors, she kept her expression neutral and her movements routine. Everyone knew there were cameras in every section of the club, the boss had made that clear.