Seduction in Death (In Death #13)(46)

"Peabody."

"Okay, well. We narrowed it down to ten most-likelies, going with the outlets McNab came up with in-city for the enhancements. The wigs are taking longer because he's got to target the manufacturer, and he says there's about two hundred who use that high-grade human material -- then hit the brand, then the product name. The style used in the first murder is a pretty popular hair alternative, and goes by several names, depending on the brand and material used."

She flipped her empty take-out carton into a recycler, and began to peel the wrapper off her candy bar with the slow precision and intense concentration of a woman stripping her lover.

"He wants to have pizza tonight."

"What? Roarke wants pizza?"

"No, McNab. McNab wants to have pizza with me tonight. He says he wants to talk and stuff, but this morning we broke a couple of public moral codes outside your gates."

"Shit. Shit." Eve pressed her fingers under her eye where a muscle began to tic wildly. "There it goes again. Why do you tell me this stuff? It makes me spasm."

"If we have pizza, we're going to have sex. What does that mean?"

"It's more than a spasm. I think it's an embolism. One of those brain bombs, and you have your finger twitching on the button."

"I don't want to get messed up again. But I feel messed up anyway."

Eve sighed. "What do I know about this kind of stuff, Peabody? It's taken me more than a year to find my rhythm with Roarke, and I still screw it up half the time. Cops are bad bets."

She turned, jamming her hands in her pockets. The street was dirty, the traffic loud, and the smoke that belched from the glide-cart they passed stank of fried rehydrated onions. She could see an illegals deal in the making a half block down and across the street.

"Trying to have a life off the job is work. Two of you trying to have a life off it, I don't know. Damn it." Her heart might have been going soft for her aide, but her eyes were still hard and clear. "That's going bad. Call for the beat cops, then back me up."

She pulled out her badge, pulled out her weapon, and was already zagging across the street when one of the men on the opposite sidewalk drew a blade.

There was a swipe, a dodge, then the second man flashed out a knife of his own.

They jabbed, circling each other. Bystanders scattered.

"Police! Drop your weapons."

They ignored her, and she could see one was jonesing, the other high. That made both of them dangerous.

"Lose the stickers, or I drop you both."

As one, they turned on her. The man desperate for his fix lunged wildly. She heard one of the pedestrians screaming. As the knife arched up, she took her man down with a stun across the knees.

He fell toward her. She pivoted, blocked, then brought the heel of her boot down hard on his knife hand.

While he wailed, flopped, she saw the second man had moved fast. He had the side of his blade lodged at the throat of the screaming pedestrian. And he had Zeus in his eyes, that elixir that made gods of men.

"Drop it. Let her go and drop it."

"Fuck you. Fuck her. This is my goddamn corner!"

"You cut her, you'll die on this goddamn corner." The man on the ground was weeping now. She could smell the piss leaking onto the sidewalk where his bladder had let go.

"You put your piece down or I cut her from ear to ear." He leaned in, running his tongue over the terrified woman's cheek. "And drink the blood."

"Okay. Looks like you've got me." She lowered her weapon, watching his eyes follow it down. Then watching them jitter as Peabody stepped in from behind and laid her stunner against the back of his neck.

Eve sprang forward, grabbing his knife hand, twisting it. The civilian slid to the ground like an empty sack. "Stun him again!" Eve shouted as the drug-induced strength had the knife jamming toward her throat. She felt the prick, that hot sting of metal against flesh.

And both of them scented her blood.

His body jerked, then lifted when Eve plowed her knee into his groin. She shifted her weight, sliced her heel into his instep, then curled to use the momentum to flip him over her back.

He landed like a felled tree, flat out, and with a solid crack of skull on concrete.

Eve scooped up the knife, and wheezing, stayed bent over.

"Dallas? You okay? Did he cut you?"

"Yes, damn it. Get that one." She pointed at the first man, still weeping, trying to crawl away.

She heaved the second man over, clapped on restraints. The hostage was on the ground as well, and still screaming.

Eve wiped the blood off her throat with the back of her hand and glanced over. "Somebody shut her up."

CHAPTER TEN

She had a long, shallow cut from just under her right ear to just above the jugular. A little more pressure, the MT Peabody had summoned behind her back had cheerfully noted, a little more depth, and she'd have pumped herself dry quick, fast, and in a hurry.

As it was, it wasn't so bad. Though she had blood on her shirt.

"They've got stuff that'll take the blood right out," Peabody assured her as they drove uptown. "My mother always used salt and cold water though. Does the job. Mostly."

"So does chucking it in the rag pile." Though she imagined Summerset would pluck it out again, work some sort of household voodoo, and it would end up back in her closet. Good as new.