Treachery in Death (In Death #32)(8)

“See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, cha,” Peabody muttered.

McNab would have to play bad cop by himself for a while, Eve thought as she started out—then wished to God she hadn’t had the thought. On the heel of it, she remembered she hadn’t called home.

“Shit.” She reached for her pocket ’link.

“LT!” Detective Carmichael hustled after her. “Santiago and I are working a floater. I wanted to run a couple of the angles by you.”

“Walk and talk, I’m heading out.”

She listened, questioned, considered, taking the glides down rather than the elevator to give her detective more time. They paused on a level, with Carmichael tugging her ear.

“Are we cleared for the overtime, to move on this tonight?”

“I’ll clear it. Push it.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant.”

“How’s it working out with you and the new guy?”

“Santiago’s okay. Got a good nose. We’re getting a rhythm on.”

“Good to know. Good hunting, Carmichael.”

Eve took the elevator the rest of the way to the garage, thinking of Carmichael’s floater, the angles, authorizing the OT.

She crawled through traffic awhile, played a little game of outwit the other drivers by changing routes a couple times. By the time she remembered the marriage rules again, she was nearly home.

No point now, she decided. She’d just . . . make it up to Roarke. He’d have worked while waiting for her, she thought, so now they could have a nice dinner together. She’d even program it herself—one of those fussy, fancy deals he liked—open a bottle of wine.

Relax, hang. Maybe she’d suggest they watch one of those old vids he liked. A very married evening at home, she thought, followed by some very married sex.

No murder, no mayhem, no work, no pressure. Just the two of them. Hell, she might even dig out one of those sexy, seduce-your-partner get-ups, just to top it off.

She could program some music—go full-out romance.

Pleased with the plan, she zipped through the gates of home. Her mood throttled up another notch or two as she watched the lights shine in the multitude of windows in the gorgeous stone house. They could eat outside, she decided, on one of the terraces. She looked up as she drove, considering the towers and turrets. Maybe the rooftop terrace with its little pool and sweeping view of the city.

Pretty damn perfect.

She left her vehicle out front, and telling herself she was in too good a mood to be bothered by Summerset lurking in the foyer ready to sneer at her for being late, she jogged inside.

The foyer was empty, hitching her stride a moment.

No Summerset?

“Don’t question your luck,” she told herself, and continued her jog upstairs.

She swung into Roarke’s office first, surprised not to find him there, wheeling some deal, calculating some complicated equation.

Frowning, she turned to the house monitor. “Where is Roarke?” she demanded.

Darling Eve, Roarke is on the terrace, main level, rear, section two.

“We have sections? Which is—”

Location highlighted.

“Okay.” She pursed her lips, studied the house map and the blinking light. “Got it.”

She headed down. What was he doing out there? she wondered. Maybe having a drink with Summerset—which would answer the other question. Talking about old times, jobs pulled, booty stolen, burglaries accomplished.

The sort of thing it wasn’t ... polite to reminisce about with a cop present.

Time to break up the nostalgia and—

She pulled up short when she stepped out. Roarke was indeed with Summerset, but they weren’t having a drink—or not only—and they weren’t alone.

Two people she’d never seen before in her life sat with them at a white-draped table, with candles flickering prettily against the late-summer evening, apparently enjoying a very fussy, fancy dinner.

The strangers, a couple she judged in their middle sixties, included a woman with gold-coin hair forming a short, straight frame for a face dominated by big, round eyes, and a man sporting a trim goatee that set off his angular, somewhat scholarly face.

Everyone laughed uproariously.

She felt her shoulders tighten even as Roarke lifted his wineglass. He looked relaxed, happy, those strongly sculpted lips curved as he listened to something the complete stranger, female, said to the group at large in a tony Brit accent.

His sweep of midnight hair gleamed in the candlelight nearly to the shoulders of his suit jacket. She heard him respond—the richness and warmth of Ireland like wisps of smoke in his voice.

Then his eyes, wickedly blue, met hers.

“Ah, here’s Eve now.” He pushed back his chair, stood long and lanky, and held a hand out to her. “Darling, come meet Judith and Oliver.”

She didn’t want to meet Judith and Oliver. She didn’t want to talk to strangers with tony Brit accents, or have all attention focused on her coming home late, probably sweaty and with blacktop grime on the knees of her trousers from her altercation with three ass**les.

But she could hardly just stand there.

“Hi. Sorry to interrupt.”

Before she could think to stick it in her pocket, Roarke had her hand and pulled her another foot toward the table. “Judith and Oliver Waterstone, my wife, Eve Dallas.”