Seduction in Death (14 page)

"Congratulations," Louise told her, and laughed a little as Moniqua slithered out of the room.

She slithered right up to the booth where the man she knew as Byron was already standing, holding out a hand. "Ready?"

She took his hand, leaned in, and rubbed her body provocatively over his. "Want to hear what I'm ready for?"

Though she whispered as they walked, they skirted close enough to where Charles sat that he caught one very imaginative suggestion. Idly, he glanced after them and wondered because of the man's subtle detachment, if he was an LC on the job.

Then he looked over, saw Louise walking back. And couldn't think of anything but her.

Moniqua Cline worked hard as a paralegal in one of the city's mid-level firms. She had aspirations and ambitions, most of which were oriented toward career. But she had more intimate ones as well, which involved fantasies about the perfect mate who would share her love of neo-classic art, tropical get-aways, and poetry.

A man, in her dreams, with a sophisticated edge, a toned body, a romantic mind, and some good urban polish.

It seemed she'd found him in Byron.

He was so handsome, with his shoulder-sweeping bronze hair, his golden tan. Her nervous pulse had jumped like dice in a cup when she'd seen him waiting in the booth they'd agreed upon.

He'd already had champagne poured and ready.

When he'd spoken her name, the warmth, the faintest of British accents in his voice had made her want to melt.

The first glass of champagne had gone to her head. She'd been so hot, so itchy. When she'd slid across the booth, she hadn't been able to stop herself from getting her hands on him. Her mouth on him, she'd felt drunk and happy.

Now they were alone in her apartment, and everything seemed soft and fluid. As if she were looking through a thin veil of warm, rippling water.

There was music playing, sweeping rainbow arches of music. And more champagne to dance in her head and sweeten her tongue.

His mouth was silky as it skimmed over hers. His hands so skilled that everywhere he touched her throbbed and ached. Unbearably. He said lovely things to her, though it was hard to understand them through the dizziness, the arousal that bloomed inside her like roses.

Then he drew away and made her moan in protest.

"I want to prepare." He took her hands, traced kisses over the backs. "Set the stage. You want romance, Moniqua. I'm going to give it to you. Wait here for me."

Her head spun as she watched him get to his feet, pick up his bag. She couldn't quite... think.

"I want -- I need to..." She got shakily to her feet, gestured toward the bathroom. "Freshen up. For you."

"Of course. Don't be long. I want to be with you. I want to take you places you've never been."

"I won't." She strained against him, lifting an eager mouth to his. "It's so perfect, Byron."

"Yes." He led her to the bathroom door, nudged her gently inside. "It's perfect."

He lighted the candles. He turned down the bed, sprinkled rose petals on the sheets, plumped the pillows.

He'd chosen well, he decided, as he studied the bedroom. He approved the art, the colors, the good fabric of the spread. She was a woman of taste. He touched the slim, old volume of poetry on her bedside table. And intellect.

He might have loved her. If love existed.

He set two fresh flutes of champagne on the table. Added three drops of the drug to one. He would dilute it this time, extend the experience. Lucias had told him she could live for two hours, perhaps a bit more, with the combination of drugs in this proportion in her bloodstream.

He could do a great deal with her in two hours.

He turned when she came to the bedroom door. He held out a hand.

"Beautiful, Moniqua. My love. Let's discover each other."

It was better this time. Even better. Lucias was right. He was always right. The excitement of knowing this experience would be her last, that he would be the last thing she saw, felt, smelled, even tasted was almost unbearably erotic.

Oh, she responded to him, tirelessly. Her heart stormed against his. And still she pleaded with him for more.

She gave him two hours. Two magnificent hours.

When he felt her dying, he watched her almost tenderly. "Say my name," he whispered.

"Byron."

"No. Kevin. I want to hear you say it. Kevin. I want to hear you scream it."

He rammed himself into her, plunging toward the end. And when she screamed his name, he knew the most perfect pleasure of his life.

Because of it, he drew the sheet gently over her body, laid his lips on her brow in a soft kiss before he walked out of her apartment.

He couldn't wait to get home and tell Lucias everything.

It was an hour later when she moved. Her fingers scraped over the sheet, the eyes behind her closed lids twitched. There was a numbness in her chest, and under it a kind of terrifying, unspeakable pain. Her head burned like the sun.

Tears leaked out, trickled down her cheek as she struggled to lift her arm. It felt dead, and the effort had small, strangled sounds trembling on her lips.

Her fingers brushed a glass on the table, knocked it to the floor where it shattered. And the sound of it was dim, like glass breaking under a pillow.

Her fingers crawled over the table, bumped the 'link. Sweat sheathed her as she forced those fingers up, forced her confused mind to count. Slot by slot until she reached the top key on memory.

She pushed it, then her hand fell limp and her body lay drenched in exhaustion.

"What is your emergency, Miss Cline?"

"Help me." Her lips tripped over the words as if they were some exotic foreign language. "Please. Help me," she managed to whisper before she fell back into unconsciousness.

Eve woke when the world started to sway. She opened gritty eyes and stared into Roarke's.

"Why are you carrying me?"

"Because, Lieutenant, you need to sleep. Not at your desk," he added as he stepped into the elevator in her home office. "In a bed."

"I was just resting my eyes."

"Rest them in bed."

She should, on principle, insist he set her back on her feet. But it was kind of nice to get carted around, especially when she only had to turn her head to sniff his neck. "What time is it?"

"Just after one." He carried her into the bedroom, climbed the short steps to the platform, then sat, cradling her, on the side of the bed.

"Do you know what I was thinking?"

She snuggled in. "I've got a pretty good idea."

He laughed, ran a hand over her hair. "I can put my mind to that as well. But I was thinking when I walked into your office and saw you with your head on your desk and your face pale the way it gets when you're finally too exhausted to take another step, that in a matter of weeks we'll have been married a full year. And I'm still fascinated by you."

"We're doing okay, huh?"

"Yes, we're doing just fine." He tugged on the chain she wore around her neck, slid the diamond pendant he'd once given her out from under her shirt where she most often wore it. "You were angry with me when I gave you this. Yet you wear it more often than anything I've ever given you but your wedding ring."

"You told me you loved me when you gave it to me. It pissed me off. And it scared me. I guess maybe I wear it because it doesn't piss me off anymore. But it still scares me sometimes."

Though his cheek rested on the top of her head, he traced a finger unerringly along the mark the knife had left on her throat. "Love's a scary business."

She turned into him. "Why don't we terrify each other?"

Her lips were a breath from his when the 'link beeped.

"Ah, damn it, damn it." She crawled over the bed to answer it.

Eve burst out of the elevator into ICU, strode down the deathly quiet corridor. She hated hospitals more than morgues. She slapped her badge on the counter at the nurses' station. "I need to see whoever's in charge. I need to see Moniqua Cline."

"Dr. Michaels is in with her now. If you'd just wait -- "

"In there?" Eve jabbed a finger toward a set of thick glass doors. She was through them before the nurse could do more than let out a piping sound of protest.

She knew who she was looking for. She'd gotten a solid description from the med-tech who'd helped transport the victim into the ER.

She passed a glass-walled room, scanned the bed inside. The woman lying on it looked a hundred and fifty and was tethered to so many machines she no longer looked human.

Give me a full blast, right in the heart, Eve thought, and end my time clean.

In the next room the man was much younger, and cocooned in a thin transparent tent.

She found Moniqua one door down, with the doctor scanning the readout on a monitor while his patient lay white as death and still as stone.

He glanced over with annoyance, and a frown marred the face set off by a natty beard and mustache the color of paprika.

"You're not allowed in here."

"Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD." She offered her badge. "She's mine."

"On the contrary, Lieutenant. She's mine."

"Is she going to make it?"

"I can't say. We're doing all that can be done."

"Look, I don't want the company line. Two other women haven't made it to the hospital. They went straight to the morgue. MT told me she had a cardiac incident, a bp that hit the cellar, and complications from the OD. I need to know if she's going to come out of it enough to tell me who put her here."

"And I can't tell you. Her heart was damaged. We're unable to determine as yet if there was brain damage as well. Her vitals are low and weak. She's in a coma. Her system's been so compromised by the drugs it's a minor miracle she was aware enough to call nine-eleven."

"But she did, and I say that makes her tough." She looked down at Moniqua, willed her to consciousness. "The drugs were administered without her knowledge. Are you aware of that?"

"That hasn't been confirmed, but I've heard the media reports on the two murders."

"He doused her with the two illegals, then he raped her. I need someone in here with a rape kit."

"I'll have one of the physician's assistants take care of it."

"I need a police rep, too, to collect whatever evidence she's got in her."

"I know the drill," Michaels said with a snap of impatience in his voice. "Get your rep, get your evidence. That's not my concern. Keeping her alive is."

"And mine is pinning the son of a bitch who put her here. That doesn't make her less to me. You've examined her? Personally?"

He opened his mouth again, then whatever he read on Eve's face had him nodding. "I have."

"Any trauma? Bruises, bites, cuts?"

"No, none. Nor any sign of forced sexual activity."

"Was she sodomized?"

"No." He laid a hand, almost protectively over Moniqua's. "What are we dealing with, Lieutenant?"

"Don Juan, with an attitude. Who'll know he didn't finish the job once this hits the media. I'm putting a guard on her, twenty-four-seven and I don't want any visitors. None. No one gets into this room except authorized staff and cops."

"Her family -- "

"You clear them through me first. Me personally," she added. "I need to know if and when there's any change in her condition. I need to know the instant she wakes up. And I don't need any bullshit about her not being able to answer questions. He meant her to die, and she didn't. Two others have. He's having too much fun to stop now."

"You wanted to know her chances? Less than fifty percent."

"Well, I'm betting on her." Eve leaned over the bed, spoke quietly, spoke firmly. "Moniqua? You hear that? I'm betting on you. If you give up, he wins. So you're not going to give up. Let's kick this bastard in the balls."

She stepped back, nodded at Michaels. "You contact me when she wakes up."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

By the time she left Central it was nearly four a.m., and exhaustion was wrapped around her like a damp blanket that smothered the senses. Rather than trust her reflexes, she programmed for auto. And hoped the jokers down in Maintenance hadn't played any pranks with the mechanism.

Still, she was too tired to care if she ended up in Hoboken. There were bound to be beds in Hoboken.

The recycle trucks were already out, limping along with their monotonous whoosh-bang-thump, and their teams moving like shadows to dump contents of sidewalk receptacles and bins and prepare the city for another day's garbage.

A utility crew in their ghostly white reflector suits was tearing up a half block section along Tenth. The nasty, tooth-drilling buzz of their hydro-jack competed with the headache spiking into her left temple.

A couple of the guys gave her the once-over from behind their safety goggles as she idled at the light. One smooth customer grabbed at his crotch, grinning with what she imagined passed for charm in his limited world while he jerked his hips.

The pantomime had several of his cronies laughing uproariously.

She knew she was past her personal threshold when she couldn't drum up the irritation to step out of the car and bust their balls while she cited them for sexual harassment.

Instead, she let her head lay against the seat, closed her eyes as the sensors picked up the light change and the car cruised through.

Mentally, she took herself through Moniqua's apartment again. Champagne this time. Eve had recognized the label as one of Roarke's and knew the bubbly could go for upwards of a grand a bottle. A hell of an outlay, in her opinion, for some pop and fizz.

He'd taken glasses into the bedroom this time, but the rest of the setup was identical to the others.

Creatures of habit, she thought, drifting a little. Taking turns.

Keeping score? Most games were competitions, weren't they? The goal hadn't been reached with Moniqua. Would they try to finish it? Or just sit back and hope she did the job for them and coded out?

She shifted in the seat, seeking comfort.

Call Michaels in the morning, check status. Brief guards at change of shift. She'd put the dependable Trueheart on the first shift. He'd be solid. Process data on Allegany and J. Forrester. Follow through with Dr. Theodore McNamara. Nag Feeney re cutting through blocks on the account number Charles had provided. Continue to nag re data search on unit impounded from cyber-joint.

So far, she'd gotten nowhere on the roses. Take another push at the flowers.

Take dose of goddamn Awake, and swallow a stupid pain blocker before your head explodes.

She hated drugs. They made her feel stupid or weak or overcharged.

Drugs would be trickling into Moniqua's system now. Sliding inside her, working to bolster her heart, clear brain channels, and God knew. If the tide turned the right way, she'd wake up. And remember.

She'd be scared, confused, disoriented. Her mind would feel detached from her body, at least at first. There'd be blank spots, and the questions that had to be asked would drop into some of them.

The mind, she knew, protected itself from horror when it could.

To wake in the hospital, with the machines, the pain, the strange faces. What could the mind do but hide?

What's your name ?

They'd asked her that. It was the first thing they'd asked her. Doctors and cops, standing over the gurney while she'd stared up at them.

What's your name, little girl?

The phrase sent her heart racing, made her try to curl up into herself. Little girl. Terrible things happened to little girls.

They'd thought at first she was mute, either physically or psychologically. But she could speak. She just didn't know the answers.

The cop hadn't looked mean. He'd come after the doctors and the others in flapping white coats or pale green smocks.

She'd learned later that it had been the police who'd brought her out of the alley where she'd hidden. She didn't remember it, but she had been told.

Her first memory was of the light over her head, burning into her eyes. And the dull, detached pressure of her broken arm being set.

She was filthy with sweat, dirt, and dried blood.

They spoke gently to her, those strangers, as they poked and prodded. But like the cop, the smiles didn't reach their eyes. Those were grim or aloof, filled with pity or questions.

When they went down, down to where she'd been torn, she fought like an animal. Teeth, nails, with the howling screams of a wounded animal.

That's when the nurse had cried. A tear sliding down her cheek as she helped hold her down until the calmer in the pressure syringe could be administered.

What's your name? the cop had asked her when she'd drifted back. Where do you live? Who hurt you?

She didn't know. She didn't want to know. She closed her eyes and tried to go away again.

Sometimes the drugs let her slip under. But if they took her too deep the air was cold, cold, cold and smeared dirty red. She was afraid, more afraid down there than of the strangers with their quiet questions.

Sometimes, when she was in that cold place, someone was with her. Candy breath and fingers that skittered over her skin like the roaches that skittered across the floor when the lights came on.

When those fingers were on her, even the drug couldn't stop her screams.

They thought she couldn't hear them, couldn't understand when they spoke in their hushed murmurs.

Beaten, raped. Long-term sexual and physical abuse. Suffering from malnutrition, dehydration, severe physical and emotional trauma.

She's lucky to have survived.

Bastard who did this ought to be cut into little pieces.

One more victim. World's full of them.

No identity records. We're calling her Eve. Eve Dallas.

She woke with a jolt when the car stopped, stared blankly at the dark stone of the house, the glow of lights against the glass.

Her hands were shaking.

Fatigue, she told herself. Just fatigue. If she related to Moniqua Cline, it was only natural. One more tool, she thought as she climbed out of the car, in the investigation.

She knew who she was now. She'd become Eve Dallas, and it was more than a name the system had labeled her with. Who she'd been before, what had come before, couldn't be changed.

If that broken, frightened child still lived inside her, that was okay.

They'd both survived.

She dragged herself upstairs, stripping off her jacket, releasing her weapon harness. Stumbling and peeling off her clothes as she headed for the bed. She tumbled in, curling under warm, smooth sheets and willing the voices that still echoed in her head to quiet.

In the dark, Roarke's arm came around her, drew her back against him. She shuddered once. She knew who she was.

She felt his heart, the steady beat of it, against her back. His arm, the comforting weight of it, over her waist.

The tears that stung her throat shocked and appalled her. Where had they been hiding? The sudden wave of cold warned her the shakes would follow.

She turned to him, into him. "I need you," she said as her mouth found him. "Need you."

Desperate for warmth, for him, she fisted her hands in his hair.

She knew him in the dark -- taste, scent, texture. Here, with him, there were no questions. Just answers. All the answers. She felt his heart that had been so steady against her back leap against her breast.

He was there for her as no one else had ever been.

"Say my name."

"Eve." His lips ran warm over the bruise on her face, took the ache away. "My Eve."

So strong, he thought. So tired. Whatever images that were playing in her brain she sought to fight, he'd fight with her. It wasn't tenderness she sought, but a kind of ruthless comfort. He slid a hand down her body, used his mouth and fingers to bring her that first sharp release.

She trembled, but no longer from cold. The aches that ravaged her body were no longer from fatigue. She arched against him when he found her breast. Quick little bites that shot flashes of pleasure into her. A busy tongue that laved heat over heat.

She rolled with him, her breath ragged as they tangled in the sheets. Her body was a rage of wants and grew slick under the hands that met them.

He loved the long, lean length of her, craved it with a hunger that was never quite sated. Her skin, always a surprise of delicacy, was damp and hot so that it slid like wet silk over his as they moved together. Her mouth came back to his, burning like a fever, and drenched them both in madness.

"Inside me." She rolled, crawling, clawing over him. Straddling him. "Inside me." And took him hard, fast, deep.

Her hips pistoned, a speed that blurred his brain. He could see the shape of her over him, the gleam of her eyes against the dark as she drove them both, brutally.

Battered, he rocked in the pleasure, let her take and take until her head fell back, until he felt the orgasm punch through her like a fist through glass.

Until she shattered.

Then he reared up, dragged her still shuddering body against him. And let go.

She fell into sleep like it was a pit and stayed there, sprawled facedown, for three hours.

She felt considerably better when she woke. She told herself the headache was gone, and it was so deeply buried under denial, it was nearly the same thing.

And a couple of catnaps during the day, she was sure, would do more for her than some chemical.

She didn't even make it out of bed before Roarke was sitting beside her, fully dressed. He had his morning stock reports on screen, muted, a pot of coffee still seductively steaming on the table in the sitting area.

And he held a pill in one hand, a suspicious-looking glass of liquid on the bedside table.

"Open up," he ordered.

"Uh-uh."

"I hate to give you more bruises, but if I must, I must."

They both knew he'd enjoy using brute force. "I don't need anything. You're nothing but a chemi-head pusher."

"Darling, you say the sweetest things." In a move too fast to evade, he had her earlobe pinched between his thumb and forefinger. One flick of his wrist and the shock of the twist had her mouth dropping open.

He popped the pill in. "Phase one."

She swung at him, but since she was choking her aim was off. The next thing she knew he was yanking her head back by her hair and pouring the liquid down her throat.

She swallowed twice in self-defense before she managed to shove at him.

"I'll kill you."

"All of it." With grim efficiency, he pinned her and forced the rest of the booster into her. "Phase two."

"You're a dead man, Roarke." She swiped the back of her hand over her chin where some of the booster had dripped. "You don't know it, but you've already stopped breathing. The walking dead."

"I wouldn't have to put us both through that if you'd take reasonable care of yourself."

"And when you finally realize you're dead, and drop to the ground -- "

"Feeling better?"

" -- and you're laying there, I'm going to step over your cold, lifeless body, open the doors of that department store you call a closet, and I torch it."

"Really, darling. No need to get nasty. Yes, better," he decided with a nod.

"I hate you."

"I know." He leaned in to give her a light kiss. "I hate you, too. I'm in the mood for eggs Benedict. Why don't you have your shower, then you can update me over breakfast?"

"I'm not talking to you."

His grin flashed as he rose. "Such a cliched and female weapon." He turned, started down the stairs. And wasn't the least surprised when she landed on his back.

"That's more like it," he managed as she squeezed his windpipe with her crooked arm.

"Just be careful who you call a female, ace."

She dropped off, strode naked into the bath. Watching the indignant twitch of her ass, Roarke chuckled. "I don't know what I was thinking."

She only ate because there was no point in wasting the food. She only updated him because it helped her sort through data when she relayed events out loud.

He listened, idly stroking the cat.

"Between the hospital and MT staff," he commented, "the media will have been fed by now. That could work in your favor."

"I'm figuring. These two, they're not the type to go into the wind. Too much ego on the line for them to stop cold. I've got a lot of data on them. Maybe too much, maybe that's part of the problem. Too much data, not enough focus. You got all these lines to tug, they can get tangled on you."

She got up to strap on her shoulder harness. "I've got to streamline it."

"Why don't you let me take Allegany? It's mine, after all. People would be more likely to tell me things they wouldn't tell a badge. And what they don't tell me," he added, "I can find out in other ways. Ways that would probably be legal, more or less, since I now own the company."

"Your definition of more or less has a wider scope than mine." But it would save her time, and time was essential. "Try to stay close to the line on it."

"Whose line would that be? Yours or mine?"

"Har. I've got a briefing with the team at Central. Pass me anything you pick up."

"Naturally." Bringing the cat with him, he rose and crossed to her. Kissed her. "Take care of yourself, Lieutenant."

"Why should I?" She headed for the door. "You get such a charge out of doing it for me."

Roarke glanced down at the cat as he listened to his wife's boots click down the hall. "That's a point."

In the conference room she'd booked at Central, Eve played the security disc from Moniqua's building.

"We see here she's more in line with Bryna Bankhead. Similar physical type, more sophisticated appearance and lifestyle. He uses yet another look himself here, which tells me he doesn't like to repeat his character. Keeps it fresh for him. Same pattern, but he can walk through the performance from a new angle. Feeney?"

He picked up the rhythm. "According to the overscan of her home unit, he used the name Byron in correspondence with her. Probability indicates this is from the poet guy. Lord Byron. The e-mail messages go back two weeks."