“The last Mira sent tonight. Twenty-eight-year-old female, lives in New York, Lower West Side, works as a paralegal for a firm – her specialty is family law. She’s written eight times in the last year, with the gap between the correspondence narrowing as it goes. She knows we’d be best friends if we ever got together. She tries to advocate for victims and the innocent, too. We’re so much alike. Her boyfriend dumped her last summer, and there’s a long letter – more like a short story – where she cried on my shoulder, knew I was the only one who would understand. Nothing sexual in this one, it’s more like she’s decided we’re like sisters, best friends, and she wants to help me the way she thinks I’ve helped her. I helped her stand up for herself, take better care of herself, to be strong and find her courage.
“God.”
“Criminal?”
“No, nothing. A light tap for illegals possession a few years back. I’ve got a couple of DD calls. Neighbors complaining about shouting, crashing around. Fights with boyfriend, but no charges. I can’t find a connection to Bastwick. Can’t find a trigger, but… She comes off smart, has an unhealthy and completely fictional relationship with me, sees our work as similar, and is often frustrated by the rules of law not fully serving justice. She sounds weird but harmless, and yet —”
He leaned down, kissed the top of her head. “You’re upset because whether or not any of these apply to your investigation, you now understand you’re a central point in the lives of people you don’t know – and don’t really want to know. You dislike the center stage at the best of times. For you, it’s the victim, the perpetrator, the survivors, the job. Your life, our life.”
“Is that wrong?”
“It’s absolutely not wrong. But it’s a fact you’ll need to deal with to do your job this time.”
“It’s not just the book, the book and the vid. I wanted to blame it all on that – this weird attention – but some of it started before that. It’s fucking creepy.”
He made a sound of agreement, kissed the top of her head again. “You’ll deal with it because you are who you are, you do what you do. What you haven’t said, and we both know, is some of it springs from me – from the media and attention you get being mine.”
“I am what I am, do what I do, and a big part of that is being yours.”
“All right.” He came around, sat on the edge of her desk so they were face-to-face. “My people will also start looking at correspondence. I get quite a bit myself, so we’ll coordinate there, see if there’s any cross. Meanwhile, the finances I’ve looked at so far don’t lead to hiring a hit man. Stern does indeed have a couple of tucked-away accounts, as one might expect. But I haven’t found any withdrawals or transfers of funds that apply here.”
“Are they illegal enough I could use them as leverage?”
“Weak.” With a shake of his head, Roarke took a pull of her water. “Leverage for what?”
“Letting me see all of Bastwick’s client correspondence. He’s citing privilege. Reo’s on it,” she added, “and hell, if there was anything, Bastwick would’ve pulled it for the threat file. But it pisses me off getting blocked out.”
“That’s for tomorrow, as is all the rest.”
She would’ve argued, but the simple fact was she’d done all she could until morning.
Roarke waited until she’d shut down, took her hand. As he walked out of the room with her, he glanced at her board.
Seeing her face there brought him a quick and violent anger, and a cold, clammy fear.
6
She knew it for a dream, had been resigned to dreaming even before Roarke wrapped her close, before she’d shut her eyes.
She’d floated through them, dream to dream, a voice, an image, a memory.
In the car with Roarke, stopped in the driveway, falling on each other, tearing clothes, desperate, insane to feel, needing him inside her, pounding, pounding, as if her life depended on it.
And neither of them aware Barrow had planted that subliminal command, that life-or-death desperation to mate.
In the closet, at the party, and she injured and bruised. Roarke pushing her against the wall, tearing into her with no care, driven to the wild and feral by that same planted seed.
“Ssh, just a dream.”
Somewhere outside that dream she heard him, felt him soothing her, stroking all that hurt and insult away again.
That’s what Barrow had done, to both of them. That’s what Bastwick had defended.
And worse. Worse.
Mathias, hanged by his own hand, Fitzhugh bathed in his own blood. Devane, throwing her arms out, embracing death as she threw herself off the ledge of the Tattler Building.
He hadn’t used what had done that to them – someone else had – but he’d created it. For money, for profit, for power.
And Roarke, Roarke had very nearly been next. The trap had been laid, the seed waiting to be planted for him to take his own life.
And Bastwick had defended.
“I do my job, you do yours, correct, Lieutenant?”
In the packed courtroom, faces strange and familiar looked on as Bastwick rose from the defense table. She wore one of her sharp, lawyerly suits, bold red, perfect cut, with high, high heels in a steely metallic gray that would catch the eye. A subtle method of drawing attention to her legs. Her hair swept back from her coolly beautiful face, a sleek blond roll just above the nape of her neck.
Eve sat in the witness chair. A wide beam of sunlight poured through the window, flooding her. Behind her, oddly, a huge statue stood. Blind Justice with a smirk on her face.
“I’m doing mine,” Eve responded.
“Are you? Are you, Lieutenant, or are you just looking for yet another way to seek revenge on my client, Jess Barrow?”
Bastwick swept her arm, and part of that flooding sunlight fell over Barrow. He sat at a control center, turning knobs, adjusting levers. He grinned, winked at Eve. “Hey, sugar.”
“You’re not in this,” she said to him. “Not this time.” She turned her attention back to Bastwick. “I’m looking for your killer.”
“Oh really? Then why waste time with Jess? He’s in prison because you coerced a confession out of him, after you physically assaulted him. Your husband assaulted him.”
“Didn’t you like the sex, Dallas?” Jess called out. “Can’t blame me for that.”
“The courts ruled on Barrow,” Eve said evenly. “You lost that one. Deal with it.”
“And now you’re looking for my killer? You hated me as much as you hate Jess. More.”
“Knowing you’re a stone-cold bitch, a manipulator, a liar? That isn’t the same as hating you. And either way, I’ll do my job.”
“What’s your job?”
“Protecting and serving the people of New York.”
Bastwick slammed her hands down on the rail in front of Eve as blood welled in the thin wound in her throat.
Eve heard Blind Justice chuckle as if quietly amused.
“Does it look like you protected me?”
“I’ll protect and serve by getting your killer off the street. I’ll protect and serve by doing whatever I can to identify and apprehend your killer.”
“We already know who killed me. Everyone here knows who’s responsible for my death. You killed me.” Dramatically, she swung toward the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Lieutenant Eve Dallas killed me.”
Yes, familiar faces in the jury box, Eve noted. Faces of those, like Barrow, she’d helped put away.
Reanne Ott – the one who had used Barrow’s program to kill; Waverly, who’d killed in the name of medical advancement; the Icoves, of course; Julianna Dunne. Put you away twice, Eve thought.
Others, others who’d killed for gain, for the thrill, out of jealousy or greed. Or simply because they’d wanted to.
Stacked the jury against me, Eve decided as she looked back at Bastwick. Wrong play, Counselor, as seeing them helps me remember why I do what I do.
“You,” Bastwick said as Eve studied her coolly. “I’m dead because of you.”
“The problem with that argument, Counselor, is once justice was served in regard to Jess Barrow, I never gave you a thought. You didn’t mean anything to me. Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to get that asshole off by mouthing off to the media, doing what you could to shift attention to me.”
“Now it’s my fault?” Bastwick swiped a hand at her throat so her fingers came away red and dripping. “This is my fault?”
“No. It’s not on you. It’s not on me. It’s on whoever wrapped that wire around your throat. I’m going to find them, stop them, because that’s my job.”
“And what will you do?” Bastwick leaned closer. “What will you do, Lieutenant, when the one who killed me no longer sees you as so special, so worthy – and comes after you?”
“Whatever I have to do.”
“You’ll protect yourself! Protect yourself when it’s too late to protect me. Not protect whoever’s next, whoever will die in your name. You protect no one but yourself because you don’t have a job until someone’s dead. Without the killer, you’re nothing. The killer is your only true friend.
“I rest my case.”
She woke shaken as Roarke drew her closer and the thin gray dawn eked through the sky window over the bed.
“You haven’t slept long enough, or well.”
She wrapped around him, took in the warmth, the scent. “Then neither did you.”
“You’ve some time yet.” He stroked her back, long easy glides. “Try to sleep a bit more.”