Secrets in Death (In Death #45)(22)

“Well, it’s stupid, and it’s no wonder people are perpetually fucked up, as nobody can depend on something as basic as February. Which is already screwed up because it insists on having less days, then adding one like a little prize every four years even though everybody wants February to get the hell over so we can move on.”

Adorable, he thought again, and really unassailable logic. “Who would argue with that?”

“And anyway—” She broke off.

It still gave her a little jolt to walk into her office, to see everything changed. For the better, she thought, for a whole hell of a lot better. But still, a jolt.

“Never mind,” she decided. “It all got me off track. I don’t get what books have to do with the house, the design.”

“Ah, yes, and I’ll explain. First, I know you want to set up your board, but I think we’ve earned some wine.”

He walked over, selected a bottle from the storage behind the wall while Eve drew out her board.

“Books, history, and Summerset saw to it that Irish history was included. So illustrations, descriptions, photographs of great houses, forts, castles, ruins, and so on. I’d think, I’ll have that one day, and build it just as I like. A great house in a great city with towers and treasure rooms, and every comfort I could devise.”

With a smile, he poured the wine. “Sometimes, in more fanciful moods, it might have run to moats and drawbridges as well.”

He brought her the wine, tapped his glass to hers. “But you asked is it Irish, this house. When I began to build it, I had—or thought I had—left Ireland behind me. So much of my life there had been brutal, even bloody. I felt no ties there—so I believed. And yet, this house I built springs from those books, those dreams, those needs and ambitions. It comes from Ireland, and so do I.

“Summerset was right. It matters who and what we come from.”

He felt her stiffen, saw her eyes go flat.

“It matters, Eve, that you came from monsters. Matters,” he continued, gripping her chin in his hand, “because, coming from them, you chose to make yourself into a woman who hunts the monsters. Not for vengeance, as would surely have been my choice, but for justice. I built a house. You built a hero.”

“I built a cop,” she corrected, relaxing again. “Had some help there, same as you. And you don’t give me hours of your time on an investigation for vengeance. If we don’t always toe the same line on justice, we do on truth. And you work with me for truth.”

His eyes stayed warm on hers as he skimmed his thumb over the shallow dent in her chin. “It wouldn’t have been my choice once, but then I met you, and loved you, and things changed. Like summer in February.”

Another truth, she knew, and it touched her, but she poked a finger in his belly. “Making it sound poetic doesn’t change how it’s screwed up.”

“And yet.” He kissed her. “We have pie.”

“That’s a bonus. But I need to get things set up before any pie.”

“And I need to check on some matters, as I left the work abruptly. Once I do, and you do as well, it’s my fondest wish—next to apple pie—to dip my fingers into the victim’s financials.”

“Always happy to grant those wishes.”

“I’ll come work on the auxiliary when I’m done with my own.”

On his way to his adjoining office, he ordered the fireplace on medium flame.

Another jolt. She had a fireplace in her office.

Mentally rubbing her hands together, she headed for the kickingest of kick-ass command centers.

Though she still had some trouble with the more advanced tech, she managed, generating what she needed from notes, her recording, official data, and carefully built her murder board, her murder book.

And completed the report she’d begun in the car.

She sent copies to her partner, her commander, and, after a moment’s thought, to Mira. As straightforward as this case seemed, it never hurt to have the department’s shrink and top profiler cued in.

When Roarke came back, she sat, boots up on her desk, still nursing the same glass of wine, watching the last moments of Mars’s life on the wall screen while the cat stretched out, full-length, on a curve of the command counter.

Roarke stood, slipped his hands in his pockets, studied as she did.

“Take another look,” she said to Roarke. “I’m looking for any sign the killer hung around. A lot of satisfaction to be gained by watching your target go down. I looked, and didn’t find a discarded weapon, but the sweepers’ report isn’t in yet. So I might have missed it.”

“Unlikely.”

“Unlikely’s not impossible. Computer, replay, half speed.”

Roarke saw several glasses shatter on the floor, the waiter Eve had interviewed wobbling as he tried to balance the tray and more glasses fell.

The image jerked—Eve leaping up, he thought.

He heard a laugh cut off in midstream, and the first screams. A man at a table shoved up, knocking his chair over. A woman standing at the bar glanced over, dropped her own glass, and lurched backward.

Larinda Mars, her right arm a sleeve of blood, continued her sleepwalker’s shuffle into the bar, her pupils so dilated her eyes read black. The image bobbled as Eve rushed toward the dying woman.

In the periphery, people froze. Some dropped to the ground, some started forward as if to try to assist, others moved away.