Possession in Death (8 page)

“It’s going to be fine.” He rose to go to her. “We’ll do whatever needs to be
done, then we’ll do whatever comes after that. You’ll be fine.”

“I have to live with the dead, Roarke, I don’t want to chat with them. I see
the advantage for a murder cop. Hey, sorry about the bad luck, but who killed
you? Oh yeah, we’ll go pick him up. Move on. I don’t want to work that way. I
don’t want to live that way. I don’t think I can.”

“You won’t have to.” He took the tray, set it aside. “I swear to you, we’ll
find whatever needs finding.”

She believed him. Maybe she had to, but she believed him.

“In the meantime…” She took his hand. “Can you be with me? I need to
be
me
. I need you to touch me—
me
—and feel what I
do when you’re with me. Know that you feel me.”

“There’s no one but you.” He slid onto the chair beside her. “Never anyone
but you.”

“Don’t be gentle.” She dragged his mouth to hers. “Want me.”

She needed those seeking hands, that mouth hungry for hers. Needed to feel
and taste and ache, needed to know that it was her mind, her body, her heart
meshed with his.

Love, the dark and the light of it, was strength, and she took it from him.

He tugged her jacket down her shoulders, hit the release on her weapon
harness as his mouth captured and conquered hers. And those hands, those
wonderful hands lit fresh fires, a new fever that raged clean and bright in her
blood. Her fingers fumbled for the chair controls so they tumbled back when it
slid flat.

It wasn’t comfort she wanted, he knew, but lust—the greed and speed.
Perhaps he needed the same. So he pinned her arms over her head, used his free
one to torment until she bucked beneath him, crying out as she came.

And there was more. Dewy flesh quivering under his hands, frantic pulses
jumping at the nip of his teeth. The lust she wanted beat inside him as wildly as
her heart.

His woman. Only his. Her flesh, her lips, her body. Strong again.

“Now. Yes. Now!” Her nails dug into his hips as she arched against him,
opened to him.

Hot and wet, she closed around him, crying out again as he thrust hard and
deep, as she bowed to take him. Holding there, holding for one heady moment as
he looked in her eyes. As he saw only Eve.

Then the whirlwind, wicked and wild, spinning them both too high for air,
too fast for fear.

And when the world settled back, all the colors and shapes and light, then
came the comfort. She lay locked in his arms, breathing him in. Her
body—
her
body—felt used and raw and wonderful.

Eyes closed, she ran a hand through his hair, down his back. “No problem,
considering you might have just indirectly banged a ninety-six-year-old woman?”

“If I did, she gave as good as she got.”

She laughed, tangled her legs with his. “We’ll still bang when we’re ninety,
right?”

“Count on it. I’ll have developed a taste for old women by then, so this
could be considered good practice.”

“It’s got to be sick to even be thinking this way, but it’s probably like
making jokes in the morgue. It’s how you get through.” She untangled, sat up.
“What I’m going to do is grab a shower, then coffee, then go over your runs. I’m
going to work this like it needs to be worked and keep this other thing off to the
side. Because if I think about it too hard, I’m just going to wig out.”

He sat up with her, took her shoulders. And what she saw in his eyes
blocked the air from her lungs. “What? What?”

“You are who you are. I know you. You believe that?”

“Yeah, but—”

“You’re Eve Dallas. You’re the love of my life. My heart and soul. You’re a
cop, mind and bone. You’re a woman of strength and resilience. Stubborn,
hardheaded, occasionally mean as a badger, and more generous than you’ll
admit.”

Fear edged back, an icy blade down the spine. “Why are you saying this?”

“Because I don’t think you can put what’s happened aside, not altogether.
Take a breath.”

“Why—”

“Take a breath.” he said it sharply, adding a shake so she did so
automatically. “Now another.” He kept one hand on her shoulder as he shifted
and touched the other to her ankle.

And the tattoo of a peacock feather.

She got her shower, got her coffee. She told herself she was calm—would
be calm. Panic wouldn’t help; raging might feel good, but in the end wouldn’t
help either.

“There are options,” Roarke told her.

“Don’t say the E word. No exorcisms. I’m not having some priest or witch
doctor or voodoo guy dancing around me, banging on his magic coconuts.”

“Magic… Is that a euphemism?”

“Maybe.” It helped to see him smile—to think she might be able to. “But
I’m not going there, Roarke.”

“All right then. What about Mira?”

“You think she can shrink Szabo out of me?”

“Hypnosis might find some answers.”

She shook her head. “I’m not being stubborn. Or maybe I am,” she admitted
when he cocked his eyebrows. “Right now I’d rather not bring anybody else into
this. I just don’t want to tell anybody I invited a dead woman to take up
residence in my head, or wherever she is. Because that’s what I did.”

She shoved up, began to pace. “I said sure, come right in. Maybe if I’d been
paying attention to what she was saying, what she meant, I’d have locked the
door. Instead I’m all, yeah, yeah, whatever, because I’m trying to keep a woman
science says was already dead from bleeding out. It doesn’t make any sense,
goddamn it. And because it doesn’t, I have to set it to one side. I have to,” she
insisted. “I have to work the cases—cases—with my head, my gut. Fucking A
mine
. Which I damn well would’ve done anyway if she’d left me the hell alone.”

“So you’ll fight this with logic and instinct?” He decided they could both use
a glass of wine.

“It’s what I’ve got. It’s what’s mine. And if there’s any logic to this other
part, the part that makes no sense, when I find the killer, when I find Beata, it—
she—goes away. If I don’t believe that, I’m going to lock myself in a closet and
start sucking my thumb.”

He took her the wine, touched her cheek. “Then we’ll find the killer and
Beata. And for now, we’ll keep the rest of it between you and me. Twenty-four
hours. We’ll work it your way, and I’ll find someone who can undo what was
done. If this isn’t resolved in twenty-four hours, we’ll work it my way.”

“That sounds like an ultimatum.”

“It most certainly is. You can waste time arguing, or you can get to work.
I’m not going to share my wife with anyone for more than a day.”

“I’m not your possession either, pal.”

He smiled again. “But you belong to me. We can fight about it.” He
shrugged, sipped his wine. “And you’ll have wasted part of your twenty-four.
Still, it might fire you up, so I’m open to it.”

“Smug bastard.”

“Maybe you’d like to swear at me in Russian or Hungarian.”

“And you said
I
was mean. Twenty-four.” She took a slug of wine,
considered how she’s push for more if she needed it. “Let’s look at the runs.”

Roarke ordered data on-screen, leaned a hip against the side of her desk.
“Your prime suspect,” he began. “You had most of this, but the second-level run
added a bit, and I extrapolated from your notes. Allie Madison’s apartment,
where it’s verified Alexi Barin began the day, is an easy ten-minute walk to the
alley—considerably less if a healthy, athletic man took it at a jog, even a run. It’s
about the same from the restaurant where he had brunch. As is his own
apartment,” Roarke added, ordering the map he’d generated on-screen. “These
locations are clustered, more or less, in the general area.”

“So he could’ve slipped out, slipped away, put on a mask, sliced Szabo up,
and gotten back. Which would involve knowing she’d be in the alley at that
convenient moment, and wearing something for the blood spatter. Because you
don’t hack somebody up the way she was hacked and walk away clean and fresh
to take your alibi to brunch.”

She paced in front of the screen. “He could have set a meet with her,
pinning the timing. Told her he had some information on Beata. It’s a lot of
planning for an impulsive guy with a temper.”

“Something set him off at the brunch if we go with your TOD, or prior if we
stay with science,” Roarke suggested. “He went to confront her, saw her in the
alley—he’d have come from this direction, so he’d have passed the alley. He
snaps, pulls the knife, goes in.”

“Why is he disguised?”

“She could have seen his face, Eve. The condition she was in when you
found her? It’s not a stretch to believe she wasn’t lucid.”

“She didn’t see it. She saw the devil.” Eve paused a moment. “I know. It’s
what I saw. I had… a moment in the alley. I know what she saw.”

“All right.”

Because she’d expected an argument, even yearned for one, she rounded on
him. “I don’t know whether to be grateful or pissed off that you accept so easily.”

“Not as easy as it might seem, just easier than you. So if you say you saw
what she saw, I know you did. The occult, on some level, is involved—even
that’s logical.”

“If you’re a superstitious Irish guy.”

“If you’re currently able to curse in Hungarian and make goulash,” he
countered—and shut her up. “It could be your suspect has some power of his
own.”

“I’m not going there. Logic, facts, data. So while it’s possible Alexi slipped
out, did the murder, it’s low on the logic and probability scale with the data we
have at this time. Give me the guy Beata worked with. The one who walked out
of the restaurant with her the night she was last seen.”

“David Ingall, twenty-two, single. He’s had two bumps. One for an airboard
incident where he lost control and mowed down a group of pedestrians in Times
Square, and another for manufacturing and using false ID—he was underage and
got into a sex club before an undercover busted him. He dropped out of NYU
and takes a couple of virtual courses a semester, lives in a one-bedroom
apartment a few blocks from the restaurant with two roommates. He’s worked
at Goulash for three years.”

“Doesn’t sound particularly murderous.”

“In addition, the file from your Detective Lloyd has a statement from one of
the roommates confirming his arrival home—and the drunken night of computer
gaming that followed, on the night Beata Varga went missing.”

“Roommates make it harder for him to take Beata, hold her, unless they’re
complicit.”

“The information on the roommates is as benign as this one.”

“Switch to the theater,” Eve decided. “Where she was understudying. What
did Peabody get?”

She studied the data as it scrolled, listened to Roarke’s summaries. And
paced.

None of them popped for her. Holding a woman against her will for an
extended length of time required privacy, sound-proofing, supplies, and time.

Maybe she was wrong—maybe the old woman had been wrong—and the
girl was dead. And the thought of that pierced her so deep, she shuddered.

“Eve—”

“No, it’s nothing. Keep going. I need to set up a murder board. I should’ve
done it already.”

She pinned up her photos, let the information Roarke provided wind
through while she arranged what she needed on the board.

“Work and the school,” Eve said. “Her most usual and regular spots other
than her apartment. We focus there. She went out on auditions, and that’ll be
another level if we bomb here. Work, school, her neighbors. Then the theater,
then audition sites, shops, and so on.

“Let me see the map again.”

She moved closer to the screen. “She takes this route basically every day.
Home to morning class. Then from class to work if she was scheduled. Back to
class, back to work or an audition. Evening class three nights a week, and work
again four nights.”

“A regular customer at the restaurant,” Roarke suggested. “Someone she
waited on routinely. Wanted her, took her.”

She nodded. “Possible. Someone she knew is most probable. Someone who
could lure her where he wanted her to go. Doesn’t make the ripples a forced
abduction would. Had to have a place. Underground. A basement? A cellar?”

“The underground itself,” Roarke commented. “There are places under the
streets no one would pay attention to a woman struggling, screaming, calling for
help.”

“Too many,” Eve agreed. “But it’d be risky. Someone could take her from
you. Private,” she said again. “Can you get the blueprints for the building—the
dance school?” When his answer was simply a long look, she rolled her eyes. “Go
ahead, show off. Let me see the uncle’s data. Sasha Korchov.”

“I’ve got deeper data on Natalya Barinova as well.”

“It’s a man. Go with the man first.”

Benign. That was the word Roarke had used to describe Beata’s coworker
and his roommates. It was a word that came to mind with Sasha. Dreamy eyes,
she remembered—a little like Dennis Mira there—and indeed his ID photo
showed the same, along with the soft smile.

But the images Roarke had dug up from before the accident that had cost
him his career and his lover showed a dynamic, intense, passionate man. Leaping,
spinning a long, leanly muscled body showcased in dramatic costumes. The mane
of hair coal black, the eyes on fire.

“How do you lose that?” she murmured. “Lose that energy, that passion, that
fierceness? It must be almost like death or losing someone to death. Something
breaks, something more than a leg, an arm. Something gets crushed, more than a
foot, more than ribs.”

How do you get over the anger—that’s what she’d asked Lopez about
survivors, about families who lost someone to murder.