Creation In Death

“Not everything’s about you, ace.”

He smiled, as she’d meant him to, but his eyes stayed intense. “We’ll talk through, thoroughly, any plans you make to try to use this angle. To use yourself as bait.”

“Yes. My word on that.”

“All right, then. We need to go to bed. I’ll have my way on that, Lieutenant. It’s nearly two in the morning, and you’ll want to be up around five, I’d guess.”

“Yeah, okay. We’ll catch some sleep.”

She walked with him, but couldn’t stop the ball he’d launched from bouncing around in her mind. “It was shuffling around in my head,” she began. “The idea of me being a target. A lot of information and supposition was shuffling around in my head.”

“As I’ve marched along with you on this one for the past two days and three nights, I have a good understanding of how much is crowded in your head on this.”

“Yeah, but see-God, I’m becoming a woman even before the words come out of my mouth.”

“Please, you must be stopped.”

“I’m serious.” Mildly embarrassed by it, she shoved her hands in her pockets. “The way women just nibble and gnaw at something, just can’t let it alone. Any minute I’m going to start wondering which color lip dye works best with my complexion. Or my shoes.”

He laughed, shook his head. “I think we’re safe from that.”

“If I ever start going that way, put me down. Okay?”

“My pleasure.”

“But what I have to say, which is a

“You often go to strangers’ houses to interview them or take statements.”

“Okay, yeah.” She pushed at her hair as they entered the bedroom. “But I’m rarely solo, and I’m logged, and Jesus, Roarke, I’m a cop. It wouldn’t be a snap for some old guy to get the drop on me.”

“Which makes you quite the challenge. That would be an added appeal.”

“And that’s shuffling around, too. But-”

“He might have targeted you instead of Ariel Greenfeld. If you’ve been in his sights the last few days-weeks, come to that-it could’ve been you he took today.”

“No, it couldn’t.” And this, she realized as she undressed, was why she was gnawing at this. He had to see, accept, and relax. “Think about it. I’ve barely had an hour alone in my own office since Friday night. Outside this house or Central, I’ve been with you or Peabody. Maybe you think he can get the drop on me, but is he going to get the drop on both of us, or on two cops?”

He stopped, studied her. The clenched fist in his gut relaxed fractionally. “You have a point. But you’re considering changing that.”

“Considering. If we go that route, and that’s still a major if, I’ll be wired, I’ll be protected. I’ll be armed.”

“I want a homing beacon on your vehicle.”

“There will be.”

“No, I want one on before we leave the grounds in the morning. I’ll see to it.”

Give and take, she reminded herself. Even when-maybe especially when-give and take was a pain in the ass. “Okay. But there go my plans to slip off and meet Pablo the pool boy for an hour of hot, sticky sex.”

“We all have to make sacrifices. Myself, I’ve had to reschedule my liaison with Vivien the French maid three times in the last couple of days.”

“Blows,” Eve said as they slipped into bed.

“She certainly does.”

She snorted, jabbed her elbow back lightly as he drew her back against him. “Perv.”

“There you go, stirring me up when we need our sleep.” His fingers brushed lightly over her breast, trailed down her torso, teased, trailed lightly up again.

On a sigh, she laid her hand over his, encouraging the caress. This was better, she thought, this was the way to end a long, hard day. Body to body, sliding away in the dark.

When his lips found the nape of her neck, she stretched like a lazy cat. “Sleep’s only one way to recharge.”

“So it seems. Just as it seems I can’t keep my hands off you.”

She felt him harden against her, and heat. “Fu

“There’s a better place.” Now his hand glided down, pressed against her as he pleasured them both with long, slow strokes.

She went soft, breath catching, body fluid as wine. His hands were free to touch, to take, to tease. Breasts, torso, belly, that glorious heat where they joined.

He could feel every quiver and quake that passed through her even as she surrounded him.

She breathed out his name as she rolled up and over, rolled through the climax. In the utter dark he knew all of her: body, heart, mind. Steeped in the moment, he murmured to her in the language of his shattered childhood. With her, he was complete.

So easy, so exquisite and simple, this merging, this melding. No empty spaces when he was with her, no haunting images of blood and death. Just peace, she knew only peace and pleasure. Those hands, so skilled, so patient. The whispers she knew were love dipped from a deep and turbulent well.

Here she could be pliant, here she could yield. So she rose up, and up, trembling as she clung, one moment, just one moment more to that breathless peak. Holding as she felt him climb with her, hold with her.

And so she slid down again, wrapped with him.

In the dark, she smiled, clutched his hand to bring it between her breasts. “Buenas noches, Pablo.”

“Bo

She dropped, gri

I t was a shame. A true shame. But he could do nothing more with Gia. Nothing in his research of her had indicated she would have a mind so easily broken. Honestly, he felt as if they’d barely begun, and now he had to end it.

He’d risen early, hoping against hope that she’d revived sometime in the night. He’d given her dopamine, tried lorazepam-which weren’t easy to come by, but he felt the trouble he’d gone to was necessary.

He’d tried electric shock, and that he could admit had been very interesting. But nothing-not music, not pain, not drugs, not the systemic jolts-had been able to reach in and find the lock to the door her mind had hidden behind.

After the truly rousing success with Sarifina, this was a crushing disappointment. But still, he reminded himself, it took two to make a partnership.

“I don’t want you to blame yourself, Gia.” He laid her arms in the cha

When he’d opened the veins on her right wrist, he walked around the table, took her left. “I’ve enjoyed our time together, even though it was brief. It’s simply your time, that’s all. As my grandfather taught me, every living thing is merely a clock that begins winding down with the very first breath. It’s how we use that time that counts, isn’t it?”

When he was done, he moved away to wash and sterilize the scalpel, to scrub the blood off his hands. He dried them thoroughly under the warm air of his blower.

“Well now,” he said cheerfully, “we’ll have some music. I often play ‘Celeste Aida’ for my girls when it’s time for them to go. It’s exquisite. I know you’ll enjoy it.”

He ordered the aria and, as the music filled the room, sat, eyes dreamy, his memory stretching back decades, to her.

And watched the last moments of Gia Rossi’s life drain away.