Strangers in Death (In Death #26)(96)

“She’s getting them. Whined about it, but she’s getting them.”

“Whined, perhaps, because you contacted her at very close to midnight.”

“Mostly. You can put them together like that.” Eve lifted her hands, fingers open and pointed toward each other, then slid them together. “Like teeth. Like gears. You just have to see the big picture. It’s a nearly perfect, well, machine, to stick with the teeth and gears. Clean and efficient. The problem is the operators. She made her mistake selecting this operator.”

He eased back down on her desk. “Why was this particular operator a mistake?”

“Look at her.” Eve gestured toward the screen. “Look at her background data, look at her face. Ava looks and she sees somebody weak, easily manipulated, easily cowed because she stayed with a cheating, abusing husband. She sees ordinary, a woman nobody’s going to look at twice. A woman who owes her.”

“What do you see?”

“That, all that. But I also see a woman who takes the time and trouble to find something better for her kids, something that makes them happy. One who, according to the statements in Baxter’s knock-on-doors, kept those kids and herself clean and out of trouble. She never crossed the line before this. When you push somebody like that across the line, or seduce them over it, sooner or later they look back and regret it. I’m going to make her regret sooner.”

“You can get started on that in just under eight hours.”

“Why…Oh.”

“There’s nothing more you can do tonight.”

“Not really.” She saved, copied, shut down. “Probably better to let it cook anyway.”

He took her hand, tugged her along when she looked back at the murder board. “You should be interested that Suzanne Custer’s better off financially with a dead husband than she was with a live one.”

“Little life insurance, decent pension.”

“More than that. On a quick analysis of their financials for the past twelve months, he spent approximately forty-six percent of their combined incomes on his personal needs, wants, and pursuits. Leaving the fifty-four to cover housing, food, medical, clothing, transportation, educational supplies for the children, and so on. She has his life insurance payment now, and—as a widowed professional mother, with the pension from his employment—nearly the same income as before. About eight percent less.”

“With forty-six percent less outlay. So she’s actually—why do I have to do math at midnight?”

“Thirty-eight percent to the good—using that table, and one year as an example.”

“Good enough for me. It’s not the megabucks Ava reaps, but it’s solid. It’s…proportionate, if you think about it. And it’s another button to push when we get Custer into Interview. Thanks.”

She mulled it over as she undressed. “Some of the seminars Anders offered are on budgeting, financial planning. What do you bet Ava talked to Suzanne about her money situation and how it could get a lot brighter?”

“A basic strategy would be to list all advantages. And push home all the disadvantages of the status quo. I imagine some of those seminars dealt with being proactive, with empowerment, making tough choices to improve your family situation. Any and all could be twisted by a clever woman to seduce, as you said, a vulnerable one.”

“So many mind games,” Eve mused, “so little hard evidence.”

“It’s cooking until morning,” he reminded her. “And speaking of seductions.” He gripped her hips. “I believe we have to finish making up.”

“Oh yeah. I guess I could work that in now.” Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she pushed off the balls of her feet, rising up with his helpful boost to wrap her legs around his waist. “How mad were we?”

“Furious.”

“It didn’t seem that bad, looking back.”

“It was a pitched battle that nearly shook the foundation of our marriage.”

“My ass.”

“Yes, it is.” He gave it a squeeze before tumbling to the bed with her. He laughed down at her, then kissed her lightly. “It’s a good day when it ends like this.”

She laid a hand on his cheek. “They’re pretty much all good days for me now, even the bad ones.”

All good,she thought, with him. When her mouth lifted to his, they both sank in.

So it was to be slow and easy, quiet and sweet. And so married, Eve thought, with one anticipating the other. A rise, a fall, a turn, a glide. A thrill, yes, it would always and ever be a thrill—the feel of him, the taste of him. But comfort twined with it, a velvet ribbon through the silver blade.

Her pulse quickened, and muscles, tight from a long, long day, relaxed.

He felt her give, that slow, fluid yielding to him. To herself. She warmed his blood, steadied his heart even as its beat went fast and thick. He drank her in, there, just there under the line of her jaw where the skin was so amazingly sweet. Pleasure slid through him as her hands stroked, gripped, whispered over him.

It was she who took him in, opened and asked and took, guiding him into the heat. Surrounding him with it so that each long, slow thrust pulsed and pumped through them both.

Slow, beautifully slow, drawing out and out and out every drop of pleasure. She stared into his eyes, her fingers locked with his now, clamped together as they held each other to that lazy, that torturous pace. She held, even when her breath came short, her head arched back.