Apprentice in Death (5 page)

“Then we move on. Number two.”

She shifted her feet as she studied it. Felt stupid and ungrateful. “The stuff here's okay. It doesn't have that I'm-new-and-cutting-edge-and-really-important deal going on. I could work here without feeling like somebody whose name begins with Summerset would give me the fish eye if I messed it up or spilled something.”

“But?”

“Well, the colors are strong. Strong colors are good, I guess, but it's a little in-your-face. Distracting, I guess.”

“How about these?” He brought up the third option.

She didn't know what fancy name the colors went by in some designer speak. Bullshit names like Contented Fawn and Zen Retreat and Chocolate Drizzle.

To her it was browns and sort of greens and whites that weren't bright and shiny.

“Yeah, see, the colors are good, and they're quiet but not girlie. They're not saying, Hey look at me. It's more like they've been there awhile. And the command center looks, well, commanding. No bullshit. But, I guess, most of the other stuff doesn't look like anybody lives with it.”

“Try this.” He stepped over to her computer, keyed in a code. The second design slid on—with the color scheme from the third.

“Huh. You can just . . . Okay, yeah, this is . . .”

“If you're not sure, not pleased, we wait. I'll give her your input and she'll incorporate what you like and take away what you don't.”

“It's just that . . . I like it. I really like it, and I didn't expect to. The stuff doesn't look as, I don't know, fussy in these colors like it does in the in-your-face ones. It looks more . . . real, I guess. I like it. I figured I'd live with the one I could live with, and that would be okay. But I like it. It's efficient, it's not fussy or weird.” Sincerely baffled, she turned to him. “I like it. Jesus, the appreciation sex is going to get out of hand.”

“My fondest wish.” Hip-to-hip with her, he studied her choice, and found himself pleased he liked it, very much, as well. Still.

“Do you want to take a few days, think it over, make any changes that might occur to you?”

“No. Really no. It would make me crazy. Let's just go for it. But I can't have this place torn up or people running around in there when I'm working an investigation.”

“Leave that to me.” He turned to her, took her shoulders, dropped a kiss on her forehead. “This will be good for both of us.”

“I know that, too. I won't miss it. I remember how I felt when you first brought me in here, when I saw what you'd made for me. That doesn't change.”

“The reason I made it for you doesn't change, either.” He slid an arm around her waist, led her out. “Hopefully you remember how you felt the first time I took you into the bedroom.”

“That's imprinted.”

“Good, as she'll have designs for the bedroom for us to go over in a day or two.”

“You were serious about that?”

“Absolutely.”

“But the bedroom—”

“Is ours, but was designed for me. Now it will reflect both of us, our needs, wants, tastes.”

“We don't have the same tastes, exactly. I don't even know if I have tastes.”

“You know what you like, what you don't. And won't it be interesting to see how it all melds? And as with your office, it has to suit you. It has to suit me as well, so may it take a bit more work than the two minutes you spent picking your office design.”

It wouldn't take two minutes, no, not with Roarke weighing in on it. “Are we going to fight over, like, fabric?”

“I sincerely doubt it, but if we do, I'm sure we'll make up, on whatever bed we choose together.”

Frowning, she stepped into the bedroom, looked at the enormous bed on its platform under the sky window. And couldn't imagine anything that could suit her more.

“I like that bed.”

“And we may end up designing around it, but if not, we should bid it farewell as we did your desk. In anticipation.”

“The way you are, we'll have nailed each other another five dozen times on this one before it's gone.”

“Think of it as an undress rehearsal,” he said, and scooped her up.

Since it was hard to laugh and protest at the same time, she just went with it, so when she hit the bed, she wrapped her legs, boots and all, around him.

“We're still dressed.”

“I can fix that. In a minute,” he added, and took her mouth.

Here was the payoff for a long and difficult day. His body pressed down on hers, that magic mouth sparking heat, spreading thrills. No dark thoughts pressing like bloody fingers against glass, pushing, pushing to come in. Here, she could have, she could take, love.

She heard the
click
as his fingers—as magical as his mouth—released her weapon harness. She shifted so he could tug it off, shove it aside.

“You're disarmed, Lieutenant.”

“That's not my only weapon.”

“I'm aware. But I've a few of my own.”

When his teeth scraped lightly down the side of her neck, she thought: Yeah, you do. In response, she pressed up, center to center.

“And yours is, as usual, already cocked.”

Against her skin, his lips curved. “Someone has her punny pants on.”

“I'm thinking about trading them in for naked.”

She managed to toe off her boots, the rise and fall of her hips with the effort pleasing them both. Rather than pull her sweater off, he slid his hands under it, skimmed them over the tank she wore beneath. When her nipples hardened against the snug material, he roamed down to unhook her belt, then up again to mold her breasts, to tease.

Down to unclasp a button, to slowly, slowly ease the zipper open.

He could spend years on her with just his hands. The firm breasts and long, lean torso under the thin, simple tank, the taut belly, the narrow hips.

He tugged her trousers down, just another inch, traced a fingertip under the waistband of the panties—as simple as the tank. His cop wasn't one for frills and lace. Yet those simple, unadorned underpinnings never failed to entice him.

He knew what lived beneath.

Just as he knew she'd relaxed, she'd put all else aside—the blood and the dead—for this. For him. For them. So he'd give her everything he had in this time away from the cold and the dark.

Now he peeled her sweater up and away, and the tank with it. When he cupped her breasts in his hands, she cupped his face in hers. Smiled.

“It's nice.”

“Nice, is it?”

“Yeah.” Lowering her hands, she began unbuttoning his shirt. “It's nice.”

“I can do better than nice.”

“I'm aware,” she said, making him laugh as his lips brushed over hers.

She could do better than nice, too, but didn't mind that pace. For now. Like sliding into comfort. Under his shirt, that tough, disciplined body was hers to touch, to take—all that warm, warm skin, those tight muscles.

Hers to take, she thought again as he deepened the kiss. Fire kindled under her skin. With her legs again hooked around him, she levered over, reversed their positions. Now straddling him, she curved down, using her teeth to nip at his lips, his tongue while she rocked them both to quivering.

Even as she tugged off his belt, he flipped her over again. Dragging off her trousers, his hand brushed over the clutch piece strapped above her ankle. It added a quick, dangerous thrill. Leaving it, he used his mouth, his hands to destroy her.

She cried out, tossed up as his tongue swept over her, into her. Her fingers dug into the sheets, then into his back as he drove her relentlessly higher.

The orgasm ripped through her, a fast, hard jolt of staggering pleasure. Then the aftershocks, shuddering, shuddering, even as he urged her up again.

Breathless, blind, she dragged him up to her, rolling together now over the blue lake of the bed while she fought to strip away the rest of his clothes.

When he plunged into her, the world quaked.

His mouth—God, she loved his mouth—took hers again, ravishing like a man starving. Then he drove her, they drove each other, hands gripped together, bodies joined. On the edge, fused to the edge as the pleasure swelled to bursting.

When she came again, all she could see was the wild blue of his eyes.

After a long moment, after they both lay limp, like survivors of some brutal wreck, he turned his head enough to graze her throat with his lips.

“Nice, was it?”

“Worked for me. Appreciation?”

“Paid in full.”

“Huh. And no costumes or props.”

“You're still wearing your clutch piece.”

Her eyes blinked open. “What?”

“That worked for me.” On a half groan, he rolled off her, sat up. Letting his gaze wander over her as she sprawled, naked but for the fat diamond around her neck and the weapon at her ankle. “And would again.”

“Men are just twisted.”

He only smiled, then got up and fetched a bottle of water. After he drank, he held it out. “Hydrate.”

She propped up on an elbow and did just that. But when she started to reach for her clutch piece, he took her hands.

“Not quite yet.”

“I'm not going to sleep wearing it.”

“Not sleep.” Stretching out, he picked up her weapon harness. As he began to put it on her, she shoved out at him.

“What the hell?”

“Indulge my curiosity.” Quick and efficient, he hooked it on her, then pushed off the bed again to take a good long look.

Propped on her elbows, a wonderfully baffled expression on her face, her eyes still glazed from sex, she stirred his heart.

And propped on her elbows, a weapon on her ankle, another hitched over the shoulders of that lean and naked warrior's body, she stirred something else entirely.

“Yes, I've imagined that.”

“You've imagined me wearing my weapons without a shirt? Or pants?”

“I see now that even my exceptional imagination fell short. So, Lieutenant.”

Her bafflement went to shock as he straddled her. “You've got to be kidding.”

“Not even remotely.” He gripped her hands again, pinned her.

“You can't possibly . . .” She glanced down, saw he absolutely could. “How did you do that?”

“It's something to do with being twisted, I suppose.”

When he thrust into her, she cried out, came instantly. “Oh my God.”

“I want to watch you, my well-armed cop.” He thrust again, again. “Watch you while I take you, and take you, until we're both empty.”

He took her slowly down into the dark, drenching her, saturating her with sensation. He made her helpless, took her past the point of caring that she had no defenses. Into that dizzying desperate dark she slid, boneless, even as her body ached for more.

In the dark, he plundered until she was empty. Until he let himself go and emptied into
her.

Eve woke by sluggish degrees, like someone who'd been drugged. When her brain roused enough to work her eyes, she opened them. It had already revived enough—first degree—to smell coffee.

Roarke drank his on the sofa in the sitting area, a tablet in one hand, the morning stock reports scrolling on the wall screen.

He'd already dressed as the ruler of the business world. Dark gray suit today, a shirt a few shades lighter, a perfectly knotted tie that picked up the gray in thin stripes on a navy blue background.

Since his half boots were the exact shade of the suit, she imagined one had been made for him to match the other. His socks, she decided, probably matched, too.

And, though it was just shy of oh-six-hundred, she bet her ass he'd already wheeled deals or made decisions and given orders in any number of foreign countries and off-planet projects.

She, on the other hand, had to order herself to sit up, to get the hell out of bed, without groaning.

“Morning, darling.”

She grunted—best she could do—stumbled to the AutoChef for life-giving coffee and, gulping it, stumbled into the bathroom and the shower.

“Full jets, one-oh-one degrees.” She gulped more coffee while the glorious caffeine and the hot pump of water woke her the rest of the way.

If world order depended on it, maybe she could go back to all those years of fake coffee and piss-trickle showers.

Maybe.

And maybe it was a damn good thing she wasn't responsible for world order, just murder in New York.

And, she decided, if her thoughts could wind around all that, she was definitely awake.

Ten minutes later, feeling human again, she came out wrapped in a robe, noted Roarke had two covered plates and a pot of coffee on the table. The man, as he'd proven countless times in countless ways, worked fast.

He lowered the tablet, closed it in a way that had her cop senses quivering, just a little.

“What's on the tablet?” she asked as she walked over to join him.

“My tablet? Many things.”

She just twirled a finger, poured more coffee. “Let's see it, pal.”

“It might be a lewd photo from my lover, Angelique.”

“Yeah, yeah. We'll frame it with the ones from my lovers, Julio and Raoul, the twins. Meanwhile.”

Stalling, he lifted the covers from the plates, distracting her for a moment.

Oatmeal. She should have known. At least he'd surrounded the bowl
with some bacon, a scoop of scrambled egg that looked cheesy, and there was a dish of berries, another of brown sugar—the real thing.

But still.

“This should start us both off well for the day.”

“Your day started a couple hours ago, easy.”

“Not my day with you.”

“Uh-huh.” She went for bacon first, saw Galahad's whiskers twitch and he strolled—as if just out for a little exercise—toward the table. “Tablet.”

First Roarke gave the cat a look that had Galahad sitting down to vigorously wash. “Charmaine sent me the draft of a design for the bedroom, late last night, it seems. When we were otherwise occupied. She just wants to know if she's going in the right direction. I didn't think you'd want to see something this early on, or want to think about it.”

Eve just twirled her finger again as she added heaps of brown sugar, heaps of berries to the oatmeal.

“I'll put it on the wall screen.”

Roarke swiped the tablet. The strange scrolling symbols faded to the design.

Eve ate, frowned at it.

“First, those curtain things, they're too fussy. Too, I don't know, regal or something.”

“I agree.”

“I guess I mostly like the way she's got this area here laid out. The couch is roomier, but it's—”

“Too ornate. I've actually seen a piece in the Sotheby's catalog I like. I'll send it to both of you, and see. And the bed itself?”

Ornate was the word there, too—and massive with its four tall and burly posts and both the high headboard and the long footboard edged with a frame carved with Celtic symbols. All dark, rich, glossy wood that looked old and . . . important.

Still.

“I . . .”

“If you don't like it—”

“That's the thing. I do, a lot. I don't know why. It's not simple, and I figured I'd talk you into simple. But—I don't usually care about stuff like this, but, man, that's a hell of a bed. Where did she find it?”

“I found it, months ago. It's in storage as I bought it on impulse, then realized you'd more likely want the simple.” As she continued to study it, he picked up his coffee. “There's a story with it, if you want to hear it.”

“Let's hear it.”

“Well then. There was an Irishman of some wealth and station who had this built as his marriage bed, though he had yet to find his bride.”

“An optimist.”

“You could say. When it was complete and moved into his manor, he was still a bachelor, so he had the room with the bed closed off. Years went by, and he was no longer young, no longer believed he would find the woman to share that bed with him, or his life, his home, to make a family with him.”

“Sounds like an unlucky bed to me.”

“Well, wait for the rest. One day, it seems, he walked through his forest as he often did, and came upon a woman sitting on the banks of his stream. Not the young beauty he'd once envisioned as his bride, but a handsome woman who engaged his mind. One who lived in a pretty cottage not far from the manor.”

Considering, Eve scooped up some heavily doctored oatmeal. “He should've run into her before. I mean, how many people lived around there, and—”

“Well, he didn't run into her before, did he?”

“Maybe if he'd gotten out and about more, on his own land, he'd have found that bride.”

With a shake of his head, Roarke sampled the eggs. “Maybe it was
meant for that time and place. In any case,” he continued, before she could interrupt with logic again, “they met, and conversed. And began to walk together now and then over that spring and into the summer. He learned she'd been widowed barely a month after she'd wed her young man, and had never wed again. They talked of her garden and his business, and the gossip and politics of the day.”

“And fell in love and lived happily ever after.”

Roarke shot her the look he often shot the cat. “It was a friendship they forged, a good strong one, and the man never thought of love over that year, for he believed that time for him had passed. But he valued her, her person, her mind, her manner, her humor. So he told her, and asked if she wanted to marry and they'd be companions for the rest of their days. When she agreed, he was content, but never thought to open the room or use the bed he'd once had made.

“But it was to that room she led him on their wedding night. And the bed gleamed in the moonlight, and spring, this new one, came through the windows. The linens, fresh and white, and flowers from her own cottage garden in vases, the candles lit. And in her he saw the bride he'd once imagined. Not the young beauty, but the woman, the substance, the constancy, the wit, and the kindness. And in this marriage bed, friendship, strong and true, became a strong and true love. Now it's said that those who share this bed will know the same.”

A pretty story, obviously bullshit, but pretty. So Eve nodded. “We're definitely keeping the bed.” And she realized she'd eaten the stupid oatmeal without thinking about it. “What color is that? The cover on it.”

“It's bronze, a hint of copper.”

She nodded again, polishing off her bacon. “It looks like the same color and fabric thing as my wedding dress.”

“Because it is.”

“Sap.”

“That's twisted sap, I'll remind you.”

“I like the color, and the bed, so that's a start.”

“As do I, so I'll have Charmaine work from there.”

“Good enough.” She rose, went to her closet.

“It's to be colder today,” he warned her. “Likely sleeting before afternoon.”

“Peachy.” She stuck her head back out. “Why isn't it
appley
or
melony
, or just
fruity
?”

He studied her, his cynical and often literal wife. Simply shrugged. “I've never given it a thought, and couldn't say.”

“Exactly.” She vanished inside again. “I'm hitting the morgue first, then the lab—I have to use Dickhead. Apparently he's the laser king.” She grabbed a dark green sweater, warm brown trousers. As she reached for a jacket, it occurred to her if she picked wrong, Roarke would get up and get another one for her. So she took another minute, then two minutes studying her choices.

Why did she have so many? Why did it seem there were more choices every time she walked in here?

No one was more surprised than she was when she pulled out a jacket a few shades darker than the trousers that had that dark green subtly woven through.

She snagged boots, a belt, considered it done.

“I'll be in Midtown most of the day,” he told her when she came out to dress. “I have a walk-through at An Didean this afternoon.”

She thought of the youth shelter he'd built. “How's that going?”

“We'll see with this walk-through, but it's been going very well. We should be able to take residents in by April.”

“Good.” She hooked on her weapon harness, shrugged into the jacket, then sat to pull on the boots. Caught his glance. “What?
What's
wrong with these clothes?”

“Absolutely nothing. You look perfect, and completely a cop.”

“I am completely a cop.”

“Precisely. You're completely my cop, so have a care.”

He sat, finishing his coffee, the cat sprawled beside him. And he smiled at her, in just that way. She went to him, caught his face in her hands, kissed him.

“I'll see you tonight.”

“Catch the bad guys, Lieutenant, but stay safe doing it.”

“That's the plan.”

She found her coat, the snowflake hat she'd become weirdly attached to, a made-by-Peabody scarf, and fresh gloves on the newel post.

Her car, heater running, waited outside.

She glanced in the rearview mirror once at the warmth and comfort of home, then headed out to the morgue and the dead.

The sleet didn't wait for afternoon and started to fall, mixed with snapping little bits of ice, by the time she fought her way downtown.

That didn't stop the ad blimps blasting about cruise wear, white sales, inventory clearances, but it did cause the already lumbering maxibuses to slow to a crawl. And since even the thought of winter precipitation caused the majority of drivers to lose any shred of competency they might own, she spent most of her trip avoiding, leapfrogging over, and cursing every cab and commuter.

The long white tunnel leading to the dead came as a relief, even when she passed an open door and heard someone's cackling laugh.

To her mind no one should cackle in the dead house. The occasional chuckle, fine. But cackling was just creepy.

She pushed through the doors to the autopsy room, into the cool air and the quiet strains of classical music.

The three victims lay on slabs, almost side by side.

Morris had a protective cloak over his steel-gray suit. He wore a royal blue shirt that picked up the needle-thin lines in the suit jacket and had twined cord of the same color through the complex braid of his dark hair.

Microgoggles magnified his eyes as he glanced up from the body of Ellissa Wyman.

“A cold, dreary morning to start our day.”

“It's probably going to get worse.”

“It too often does. But for our guests, the worst is over. She made me think of Mozart.” He ordered the music down to a murmur as he lifted the goggles. “So young.”

He'd already opened her, and gestured with a sealed hand smeared with blood toward his screen.

“She was healthy, had exceptional muscle tone. I see no signs of illegals or alcohol abuse. She had a hot chocolate—soy milk, chocolate substitute—and a soft pretzel about an hour before death.”

“A snack before she hit the ice. They have carts selling that kind of thing right outside the park. She'd been skating just under twenty-five minutes before she took the hit.”

“Laser strike, mid-back, almost severing the spine between the T6 and T7—thoracic vertebrae.”

“Yeah, I got that. Severing?”

“Very nearly, so this was a high-powered strike. Had she survived it, she would have been a paraplegic without a long, expensive—and brilliant—treatment. But with the intensity of the strike, she would have been gone in seconds.”

“The classic ‘never knew what hit her.'”

“Exactly so, and a blessing as, though I've only begun on her internal organs, I see considerable damage.”

She might not have been big on internal organs, but Eve had passed squeamish in autopsy long ago. So she accepted the goggles Morris offered, took a closer look.

“Am I looking at massive internal bleeding?”

“You are. With a burst spleen—as was her liver.” He gestured to his scale, where that particular organ sat.

“Are internal injuries like this usual with a laser hit?”

“I've seen it before. But it's more common in combat injuries, where the enemy is intent on destroying as many opponents as quickly as possible.”

“The beam pulses—like vibrates—once it hits the target, right?” Straightening, Eve took off the goggles. “I've heard of this. It's outlawed in police weaponry, in collections.”

“I believe so, yes. This would be Berenski's area.”

“Yeah, I heard that. He's my next stop.”

After setting the goggles aside, Eve studied Wyman's body, turned to the two waiting for Morris.

“So somebody got their hands on a military weapon, or adapted another to military level. And somebody wanted to make sure these three people went all the way down.”