Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42)(49)

It touched her because she knew he meant it, just exactly that. “You’re trying to seduce me with command centers.”

“I am. And the other part of why is purely selfish in that I need you to let this go. I want to know you can.”

“This?” She gestured. “It’s not that. It’s not. Mavis, Leonardo, the kid, the apartment’s theirs. They’ve made it so theirs, there’s nothing of what was mine. I don’t need that—not there, not here. I swear I’m not clinging to that. I’m used to this, that’s pretty big. But bigger, it’s that you gave it to me. You knew me, even then, and gave it to me. That’s what I don’t want to let go.”

She swallowed more wine, muttered, “Dumb-ass.”

He came back to her, trailed a fingertip down the shallow dent in her chin. “I’ll always have done that, when we both needed it. Dumb-ass. Let’s try this, for both of us. And if what you need is to keep this as it is, then it stays.”

“If I say okay, let’s try it, the redhead’s not going toward fancy.”

“Not within miles of fancy, my word on that.”

“Okay. But I’m not apologizing.”

“Neither am I.”

“I guess that works.”

He leaned down, touched his lips to hers. “Did you murder a droid?”

“I wanted to, but I didn’t because I knew you’d ask. I didn’t want to give you the satisfaction.” She smirked, then sighed. “But I kind of wish I had. It really has been a pissy day.”

“You were right about the senator. About finding his body.”

“Yeah, score one for me. They did a number on him—we didn’t release all the details, but they’ve already started to leak. I had to end the day with a media conference. And I need to begin tomorrow at the morgue. I didn’t get there today. No rush on that, really.”

She walked back to the board, around it. “They pushed through his tox, and they didn’t dose him. They wanted him to feel it, all of it. They beat him, face, genitals. Beat the shit out of him. Sodomized him and, unless Morris tells me different, the way I see it is he was alive, probably conscious when they put the noose around his neck, fastened it to the entrance hall chandelier, and used the mechanism. You know? Lowered it to hook him on, then raised it. Slow, I bet, slow so he’d feel every inch, so he’d choke, struggle. Left his hands free, because he clawed at his throat some. He died hard. They thought he deserved to die hard.”

A pissy day indeed, he thought. And though he wouldn’t bring it up, felt it proved his point. She should come home to a work space she deserved.

“‘They’?”

“Had to be at least two. At least one’s a woman.”

She needed to talk it out, Roarke thought as he leaned back on her desk. “How do you know?”

“Sex. Sodomy—and no evidence he went for men or boys. Plus Mr. Mira heard a female voice. I got that when I grilled him, in his own kitchen. While he made me hot chocolate.”

The tears burned up, nearly out. “Oh shit, oh shit.”

“Here now, what’s this?” He set his wine aside quickly, went to her. And took the wine out of her hand before she wrapped around him.

“I had to push him, dot the i’s. He did great, he did fine, and he understood. They all understood I had to, but, oh God, you could see he was grieving. He was grieving for the worthless son of a bitch, and trying to soothe me because he knew . . .”

“It was hard for you, but you were protecting him.”

“I wanted to punch the reporter who asked me if he was a suspect. If Professor Dennis Mira was a fucking suspect. But I couldn’t. I have to look out for him, Roarke, but the worthless son of a bitch is my victim, and I have to stand for him, whatever I think of him.”

“You did have an all-around pissy day.”

“That’s not all of it.” She won the war with tears, eased back.

“I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll have an early dinner, and you’ll tell me. Then we’ll work on it. Dennis matters to me as well, very much matters.”

“I know he does. I don’t know if I can eat.”

“That means it has to be pizza, and I’ll make that deal with you if there’s a side salad involved.”

“Okay. Let’s give it a shot.”

She paid a little more attention to the setup while they ate: the replica of her old table where she’d sat for a meal—occasionally. More often she’d eaten, when she’d eaten, at her desk.

It probably wouldn’t kill her to consider a better table, she thought as she poked at the salad. But—

“Tell me,” Roarke said.

So she did, from the early meeting at the Mira Institute to the break for Trueheart’s ceremony, finding the body, notifying next of kin, and on to the Mira home. Then the interviews and her impressions of the women who’d had affairs with the senator.

“You pushed a lot into one day.”

“It didn’t end there. And there’ll be more women, that’s a given. Bagging women was like his fricking hobby. And with them? Guilt or defiance, cold calculation, self-preservation. They all had reasons for cheating, and I don’t buy any of them.”

“You think they’re lying?”