Strangers in Death (In Death #26)(92)

“Yeah, we’ll go into those possibilities tomorrow. But I need to spread it out. Maybe it’s not a repeater on the mommy breaks. Or somebody with some smears and smudges. She goes for clean, say—the way you liked it—and keeps her away from the group. Makes her more a personal pet.

“So many damn names,” she complained. “It’ll take weeks to get through them. Chasing my tail. Pisses me off.”

“I’ll give you a hand with it. You’d eliminate anyone with a husband or cohab, I’d assume. As she wouldn’t have wanted to risk her surrogate telling her mate. Single parents would be highest probability. Ones without any close family—but for the children—or friends, for that matter. Someone smart enough to follow directions, and also weak enough or frightened enough to follow them.”

“See, you should’ve been a cop.”

He only sighed. “Why would you want to start another fight when we’ve just made up?”

“We have to have sex to really make up.”

“Well then.”

“Not now, ace.” She gave him a light shove back. “Work first, makeup sex later.” Rising, she wondered if she’d regret scarfing down that last slice of pizza. “I need to take another hard look at the case file on the old man’s death. Her father-in-law. Pick it apart, find the chinks. People don’t commit perfect murders, and she sure as hell didn’t pull off every last detail twice. If I can find the cracks there, they could lead to the cracks here. Or vice versa.”

“I guess you’ll be wanting that hammer again.”

She grinned at him. “Sex, sex, sex. That’s all it is with you.”

“That’s my one-track mind.” He stood, pulled her close and took her in a kiss that had her eyes rolling to the back of her head. “Just collecting my down payment,” he told her.

She glanced back at the room as they walked out together. “Redecorating, redecorating. How much lead time did you need to get somebody in to do the room?”

“Essentially none, but I do own the firm who did the job.”

“Yeah, you being you. How much for normal people?”

“It would depend on the size of the job, the demands of the client, and how much money the client was willing to throw at the decorating team.”

“I bet your people could find out easy who Ava used, and when she had her first consult.”

“I bet they could. I’ll make a call.” He gave her ass a friendly pat. “I’ll be in shortly. I want to change out of this suit.”

She kept going, then turned, walked backward. “Roarke?”

He glanced back. “Hmm?”

“I’d have fallen for you even if you had twice as much money, which is virtually impossible. But still.”

“I’d have fallen for you even if your head was twice as hard, again virtually impossible. And still.”

“We’re good,” she said, then continued on to her office.

19

WHEN HE CAME IN, SHE SAT AT HER DESK, HER jacket tossed on the back of her sleep chair. The jacket, he knew, would bother her while she worked. The weapon she still wore? Its weight wouldn’t register any more than the weight of her own arms.

Steam rose out of the mug on her desk. Coffee, he thought, nearly equaled the weapon as part of her essential makeup.

She hadn’t yet worked herself into exhaustion on this one. He’d seen her work, worry, wrangle with a case until her system simply collapsed from neglect. But this one, he realized, was different. She was juiced.

“It’s a competition.”

She glanced over, brows knit. “What?”

“You’re as involved and determined as you are, always. You’ve made the victim yours, as you always do. But you’re not suffering this time around.”

“Suffering? I don’t suffer.”

“Oh, but you do, darling Eve. Murder infuriates you, insults you, and the victims haunt you. Every one. But for this, for this particular one, it’s challenged you above all else. She challenges you—and your attitude toward her, which strikes me as a personal level of dislike, kicks that up a notch. You’re damned if you aren’t going to beat her.”

“Maybe. Whatever works. Whatever gets the job done. So, the efficient Leopold came through. I’ve got his incoming here, the list of parents Ava tapped for grunt work. The ones he had some record of or remembered, anyway. We’ll split those if you’re up for it.”

“Shoot my share to my unit.”

“Okay. We’ll divide by alpha. We should…I don’t like her,” Eve said suddenly. “Didn’t like her pretty much from the jump. Didn’t like her when I stood watching her on the security screen as she walked into the house the morning of.”

“With her well-groomed hair and coordinating wardrobe,” Roarke remembered.

“Yeah. It was…” Eve snapped her fingers. “But that screws objectivity, so I pushed it back. Thing is, it kept pushing back in again. It took me a while—well, not that much while, but some—to figure out why.”

Since he sensed something there, he sat on the corner of her desk. “All right. Tell me why.”

“Don’t get bent over it.”

He angled his head. “Why would I?”