Midnight in Death (In Death #7.5)(2)

She opened her mouth, closed it again. Tricky ground, she acknowledged. “Commander, my name’s on the list.”

“Exactly. One more reason for you to take a pass here.”

Part of her wanted to—the part that wanted, badly, to put it all aside for the day, to go home and have the kind of normal Christmas she’d never experienced. But she thought of Wainger, stripped of all life and all dignity.

“I tracked David Palmer, and I broke him. He was my collar, and no one knows the inside of his mind the way I do.”

“Palmer?” Whitney’s wide brow furrowed. “Palmer’s in prison.”

“Not anymore. He escaped on the nineteenth. And he’s back, Commander. You could say I recognized his signature. The names on the list,” she continued, pressing her point. “They’re all connected to him. Wainger was the judge during his trial. Stephanie Ring was APA. Cicely Towers prosecuted the case, but she’s dead. Ring assisted. Carl Neissan was his court-appointed attorney when Palmer refused to hire his own counsel, Justine Polinksy served as jury foreman. Dr. Mira tested him and testified against him at trial. I brought him in.”

“The names on the list need to be notified.”

“Already done, sir, and bodyguards assigned. I can pull the data from the files into my home unit to refresh my memory, but it’s fairly fresh as it is. You don’t forget someone like David Palmer. Another primary will have to start at the beginning, taking time that we don’t have. I know this man, how he works, how he thinks. What he wants.”

“What he wants, Lieutenant?”

“What he always wanted. Acknowledgment for his genius.”

“It’s your case, Dallas,” Whitney said after a long silence. “Close it.”

“Yes, sir.”

She broke transmission as she drove through the gates of the staggering estate that Roarke had made his home.

Ice from the previous night’s storm glinted like silver silk on naked branches. Ornamental shrubs and evergreens glistened with it. Beyond them, the house rose and spread, an elegant fortress, a testament to an earlier century with its beautiful stone, its acres of glass.

In the gloomy half-light of morning, gorgeously decorated trees shimmered in several windows. Roarke, she thought with a little smile, had gotten heavily into the Christmas spirit.

Neither of them had had much in the way of pretty holiday trees with gaily wrapped gifts stacked under them in their lives. Their childhoods had been miseries, and they had compensated for it in different ways. His had been to acquire, to become one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. By whatever means available. Hers had been to take control, to become part of the system that had failed her when she was a child.

Hers was law. His was—or had been—circumventing law.

Now, not quite a year since another murder had put them on the same ground, they were a unit. She wondered if she would ever understand how they’d managed it.

She left her car out front, walked up the steps and through the door into the kind of wealth that fantasies were made of. Old polished wood, sparkling crystal, ancient rugs lovingly preserved, art that museums would have wept for.

She shrugged off her jacket, started to toss it over the newel post. Then, gritting her teeth, she backtracked and hung it up. She and Summerset, Roarke’s aide-de-camp, had declared a tacit truce in their sniping war. There would be no potshots on Christmas, she decided.

She could stand it if he could.

Only marginally pleased that he didn’t slither into the foyer and hiss at her as he normally did, Eve headed into the main parlor.

Roarke was there, sitting by the fire, reading the first-edition copy of Yeats that she’d given him. It had been the only gift she’d been able to come up with for the man who not only had everything but owned most of the plants where it was manufactured.

He glanced up, smiled at her. Her stomach fluttered, as it so often did. Just a look, just a smile, and her system went jittery. He looked so… perfect, she thought. He was dressed casually for the day, in black, his long, lean body relaxing in a chair probably made two hundred years before.

He had the face of a god with slightly wicked intentions, eyes of blazing Irish blue and a mouth created to destroy a woman’s control. Power sat attractively on him, as sleek and sexy, Eve thought, as the rich fall of black hair that skimmed nearly to his shoulders.

He closed the book, set it aside, then held out a hand to her.

“I’m sorry I had to leave.” She crossed to him, linked her fingers with his. “I’m sorrier that I’m going to have to go up and work, at least for a few hours.”

“Got a minute first?”

“Yeah, maybe. Just.” And she let him pull her down into his lap. Let herself close her eyes and simply wallow there, in the scent and the feel of him. “Not exactly the kind of day you’d planned.”

“That’s what I get for marrying a cop.” Ireland sang quietly in his voice, the lilt of a sexy poet. “For loving one,” he added, and tipped her face up to kiss her.

“It’s a pretty lousy deal right now.”

“Not from where I’m sitting.” He combed his fingers through her short brown hair. “You’re what I want, Eve, the woman who leaves her home to stand over the dead. And the one who knew what a copy of Yeats would mean to me.”