Naked in Death (7 page)

Eve, who rarely gave a thought to her appearance, wished she’d worn something more suitable to the occasion than jeans and a sweater.

“So, how’d you get rich?” she asked him.

“Various ways.” He liked to watch her eat, he discovered. There was a single-mindedness to it.

“Name one.”

“Desire,” he said, and let the word hum between them.

“Not good enough.” She picked up her wine again, meeting his eyes straight on. “Most people want to be rich.”

“They don’t want it enough. To fight for it. Take risks for it.”

“But you did.”

“I did. Being poor is… uncomfortable. I like comfort.” He offered her a roll from a silver bowl as their salads were served — crisp greens tossed with delicate herbs. “We’re not so different, Eve.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You wanted to be a cop enough to fight for it. To take risks for it. You find the breaking of laws uncomfortable. I make money, you make justice. Neither is a simple matter.” He waited a moment. “Do you know what Sharon DeBlass wanted?”

Her fork hesitated, then pierced a tender shoot of endive that had been plucked only an hour before. “What do you think she wanted?”

“Power. Sex is often a way to gain it. She had enough money to be comfortable, but she wanted more. Because money is also power. She wanted power over her clients, over herself, and most of all, she wanted power over her family.”

Eve set her fork down. In the firelight, the dancing glow of candle and crystal, he looked dangerous. Not because a woman would fear him, she thought, but because she would desire him. Shadows played in his eyes, making them unreadable.

“That’s quite an analysis of a woman you claim you hardly knew.”

“It doesn’t take long to form an opinion, particularly if that person is obvious. She didn’t have your depth, Eve, your control, or your rather enviable focus.”

“We’re not talking about me.” No, she didn’t want him to talk about her — or to look at her in quite that way. “Your opinion is that she was hungry for power. Hungry enough to be killed before she could take too big a bite?”

“An interesting theory. The question would be, too big a bite of what? Or whom?”

The same silent servant cleared the salads, brought in oversize china plates heavy with sizzling meat and thin, golden slices of grilled potatoes.

Eve waited until they were alone again, then cut into her steak. “When a man accumulates a great deal of money, possessions, and status, he then has a great deal to lose.”

“Now we’re speaking of me — another interesting theory.” He sat there, his eyes interested, yet still amused. “She threatened me with some sort of blackmail and, rather than pay or dismiss her as ridiculous, I killed her. Did I sleep with her first?”

“You tell me,” Eve said evenly.

“It would fit the scenario, considering her choice of profession. There may be a blackout on the press on this particular case, but it takes little deductive power to conclude sex reared its head. I had her, then I shot her… if one subscribes to the theory.” He took a bite of steak, chewed, swallowed. “There’s a problem, however.”

“Which is?”

“I have what you might consider an old-fashioned quirk. I dislike brutalizing women, in any form.”

“It’s old-fashioned in that it would be more apt to say you dislike brutalizing people, in any form.”

He moved those elegant shoulders. “As I say, it’s a quirk. I find it distasteful to look at you and watch the candlelight shift over a bruise on your face.”

He surprised her by reaching out, running a finger down the mark, very gently.

“I believe I would have found it even more distasteful to kill Sharon DeBlass.” He dropped his hand and went back to his meal. “Though I have, occasionally, been known to do what is distasteful to me. When necessary. How is your dinner?”

“It’s fine.” The room, the light, the food, was all more than fine. It was like sitting in another world, in another time. “Who the hell are you, Roarke?”

He smiled and topped off their glasses. “You’re the cop. Figure it out.”

She would, she promised herself. By God she would, before it was done. “What other theories do you have about Sharon DeBlass?”

“None to speak of. She liked excitement and risk and didn’t flinch from causing those who loved her embarrassment. Yet she was…”

Intrigued, Eve leaned closer. “What? Go ahead, finish.”

“Pitiable,” he said, in a tone that made Eve believe he meant no more and no less that just that. “There was something sad about her under all that bright, bright gloss. Her body was the only thing about herself she respected. So she used it to give pleasure and to cause pain.”

“And did she offer it to you?”

“Naturally, and assumed I’d accept the invitation.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I’ve already explained that. I can elaborate and add that I prefer a different type of bedmate, and that I prefer to make my own moves.”

There was more, but he chose to keep it to himself.

“Would you like more steak, lieutenant?”

She glanced down, saw that she’d all but eaten the pattern off the plate. “No. Thanks.”

“Dessert?”

She hated to turn it down, but she’d already indulged herself enough. “No. I want to look at your collection.”

“Then we’ll save the coffee and dessert for later.” He rose, offered a hand.

Eve merely frowned at it and pushed back from the table. Amused, Roarke gestured toward the doorway and led her back into the hall, up the curving stairs.

“It’s a lot of house for one guy.”

“Do you think so? I’m more of the opinion that your apartment is small for one woman.” When she stopped dead at the top of the stairs, he grinned. “Eve, you know I own the building. You’d have checked after I sent my little token.”

“You ought to have someone out to look at the plumbing,” she told him. “I can’t keep the water hot in the shower for more than ten minutes.”

“I’ll make a note of it. Next flight up.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have elevators,” she commented as they climbed again.

“I do. Just because I prefer the stairs doesn’t mean the staff shouldn’t have a choice.”

“And staff,” she continued. “I haven’t seen one remote domestic in the place.”

“I have a few. But I prefer people to machines, most of the time. Here.”

He used a palm scanner, coded in a key, then opened carved double doors. The sensor switched on the lights as they crossed the threshold. Whatever she’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this.

It was a museum of weapons: guns, knives, swords, crossbows. Armor was displayed, from medieval ages to the thin, impenetrable vests that were current military issue. Chrome and steel and jeweled handles winked behind glass, shimmered on the walls.

If the rest of the house seemed another world, perhaps a more civilized one than what she knew, this veered jarringly in the other direction. A celebration of violence.

“Why?” was all she could say.

“It interests me, what humans have used to damage humans through history.” He crossed over, touching a wickedly toothed ball that hung from a chain. “Knights farther back than Arthur carried these into jousts and battles. A thousand years…” He pressed a series of buttons on a display cabinet and took out a sleek, palm-sized weapon, the preferred killing tool of twenty-first century street gangs during the Urban Revolt. “And we have something less cumbersome and equally lethal. Progression without progress.”

He put the weapon back, closed and secured the case. “But you’re interested in something newer than the first, and older than the second. You said a thirty-eight, Smith & Wesson. Model Ten.”

It was a terrible room, she thought. Terrible and fascinating. She stared at him across it, realizing that the elegant violence suited him perfectly.

“It must have taken years to collect all of this.”

“Fifteen,” he said as he walked across the uncarpeted floor to another section. “Nearly sixteen now. I acquired my first handgun when I was nineteen — from the man who was aiming it at my head.”

He frowned. He hadn’t meant to tell her that.

“I guess he missed,” Eve commented as she joined him.

“Fortunately, he was distracted by my foot in his crotch. It was a nine-millimeter Baretta semiautomatic he’d smuggled out of Germany. He thought to use it to relieve me of the cargo I was delivering to him and save the transportation fee. In the end, I had the fee, the cargo, and the Baretta. And so, Roarke Industries was born out of his poor judgment. The one you’re interested in,” he added, pointing as the wall display opened. “You’ll want to take it, I imagine, to see if it’s been fired recently, check for prints, and so forth.”

She nodded slowly while her mind worked. Only four people knew the murder weapon had been left at the scene. Herself, Feeney, the commander, and the killer. Roarke was either innocent or very, very clever.

She wondered if he could be both.

“I appreciate your cooperation.” She took an evidence seal out of her shoulder bag and reached for the weapon that matched the one already in police possession. It took her only a heartbeat to realize it wasn’t the one Roarke had pointed to.

Her eyes slid to his, held. Oh, he was watching her all right, carefully. Though she let her hand hesitate now over her selection, she thought they understood each other. “Which?”

“This.” He tapped the display just under the. 38. Once she’d sealed it and slipped it into her bag, he closed the glass. “It’s not loaded, of course, but I do have ammo, if you’d like to take a sample.”

“Thanks. Your cooperation will be noted in my report.”

“Will it?” He smiled, took a box out of a drawer, and offered it. “What else will be noted, lieutenant?”

“Whatever is applicable.” She added the box of ammo to her bag, took out a notebook, and punched in her ID number, the date, and a description of everything she’d taken. “Your receipt.” She offered him the slip after the notebook spit it out. “These will be returned to you as quickly as possible unless they’re called into evidence. You’ll be notified one way or the other.”

He tucked the paper into his pocket, fingered what else he’d tucked there. “The music room’s in the next wing. We can have coffee and brandy there.”

“I doubt we’d share the same taste in music, Roarke.”

“You might be surprised,” he murmured, “at what we share.” He touched her cheek again, this time sliding his hand around until it cupped the back of her neck. “At what we will share.”

She went rigid and lifted a hand to shove his arm away. He simply closed his fingers over her wrist. She could have had him flat on his back in a heartbeat — so she told herself. Still, she only stood there, the breath backing up in her lungs and her pulse throbbing hard and thick.

He wasn’t smiling now.

“You’re not a coward, Eve.” He said it softly when his lips were an inch from hers. The kiss hovered there, a breath away until the hand she’d levered against his arm changed its grip. And she moved into him.

She didn’t think. If she had, even for an instant, she would have known she was breaking all the rules. But she’d wanted to see, wanted to know. Wanted to feel.

His mouth was soft, more persuasive than possessive. His lips nibbled hers open so that he could slide his tongue over them, between them, to cloud her senses with flavor.

Heat gathered like a fireball in her lungs even before he touched her, those clever hands molding over the snug denim over her hips, slipping seductively under her sweater to flesh.

With a kind of edgy delight, she felt herself go damp.

It was the mouth, just that generous and tempting mouth he’d thought he’d wanted. But the moment he’d tasted it, he’d wanted all of her.

She was pressed against him; that tough, angular body beginning to vibrate. Her small, firm breast weighed gloriously in his palm. He could hear the hum of passion that sounded in her throat, all but taste it as her mouth moved eagerly on his.

He wanted to forget the patience and control he’d taught himself to live by, and just ravage.

Here. The violence of the need all but erupted inside him. Here and now.

He would have dragged her to the floor if she hadn’t struggled back, pale and panting.

“This isn’t going to happen.”

“The hell it isn’t,” he shot back.

The danger was shimmering around him now. She saw it as clearly as she saw the tools of violence and death surrounding them.

There were men who negotiated when they wanted something. There were men who just took.

“Some of us aren’t allowed to indulge ourselves.”

“Fuck the rules, Eve.”

He stepped toward her. If she had stepped back, he would have pursued, like any hunter after the prize. But she faced him squarely, and shook her head.

“I can’t compromise a murder investigation because I’m physically attracted to a suspect.”

“Goddamn it, I didn’t kill her.”

It was a shock to see his control snap. To hear the fury and frustration in his voice, to witness it wash vividly across his face. And it was terrifying to realize she believed him, and not be sure, not be absolutely certain if she believed because she needed to.

“It’s not as simple as taking your word for it. I have a job to do, a responsibility to the victim, to the system. I have to stay objective, and I — “

Can’t, she realized. Can’t.

They stared at each other as the communicator in her bag began to beep.

Her hands weren’t quite steady as she turned away, took the unit out. She recognized the code for the station on the display and entered her ID. After a deep breath, she answered the request for voice print verification.

“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. No audio please, display only.”

Roarke could just see her profile as she read the transmission. It was enough to measure the change in her eyes, the way they darkened, then went flat and cool.

She put the communicator away, and when she turned back to him, there was very little of the woman who’d vibrated in his arms in the woman who faced him now.

“I have to go. We’ll be in touch about your property.”

“You do that very well,” Roarke murmured. “Slide right into the cop’s skin. And it fits you perfectly.”