Betrayal in Death

Eve cursed under her breath and stalked away. She did her best to get her temper under control, and poured out two glasses of wine. He hadn't touched the brandy earlier.

She didn't need to watch the tape to live it again. She could close her eyes and see every movement, every horror. And she feared when she closed her eyes that night to sleep, she would see it again. Or worse, see herself, as a child, bleeding and broken in a filthy room where a red light blinked over and over and over again.

She bore down, and with Mozart soaring, walked back to finish the nasty job of watching it again beside her husband.

"Freeze image," Roarke ordered and his voice cut like sharpened ice. He stared at the screen, where Jonah Talbot lay unconscious and the man who would kill him stood in the act of unbuttoning his shirt.

"Enhance image, segment thirty to forty-two." And when the computer complied, Roarke nodded. "The little design on the cuff. The shirt's handmade, on Bond Street, London. Finwyck's. Computer, resume."

He saw it through, saying nothing, showing nothing. If Eve had been a fanciful woman she'd have said she could feel the heat pumping off him, the rage of it. And how that rage cooled, chilled, iced until the air in the room crackled with it.,

When it was done, he walked to the computer, ejected the disc, laid it on her desk. He took a moment, a moment only, to gather himself in again.

"I'm sorry I insisted on viewing that now, so that you felt obliged to watch it again. I'll never fully understand how you stand it, how you cope with it, day after day. Death after death."

"By telling myself I'll stop him, that I'll see to it he's put somewhere so that he can never do it again."

"It can't be enough. It never could be." He sipped the wine now, burying his grief and pity deep so that the cold fury held control. "His wrist unit was Swiss, which is to be expected. A multitask Rolex. I have one myself, as do thousands of others who insist on dependable accuracy in such matters. I can help you with that, as – "

"You own the factory."

"And several of the major outlets that sell that model," he finished. "And with the briefcase, and the shoes. The rest of the wardrobe will take more time, I assume, as they'll insist on proper paperwork and warrants and what have you to release any customer data. London's closed at this hour."

"I'll get on that in the morning. Get me what you can on the rest. I'm going to see what I can dig out on the Supreme Court judge."

He nodded but stayed where he was, drinking his wine. "You have McNab checking on season tickets for the symphony and so on. If he runs into any snags, I can have that for you, and through proper cha

"I'll let you know."

"As far as the black market on the porn and snuff discs, I still have contacts in that murky arena. Meaning I know people who know people and so on."

"No. It gets out you're looking in that muck, it could alert whoever's supplying him that I'm looking."

"I can cover that easily enough, but we'll see how lan does if you'd rather. My other equipment could cut through a great many layers without anyone being aware," he reminded her.

"Not this round, Roarke. I use unregistered here, even to tickle out some data, and I've got no way to justify it to myself, no way to explain to the rest of the team how I came by it. By the book."

"You're the boss." So saying, he carried his wine through the doorway into his own office.

Several blocks south, in his crowded, disordered downtown apartment, McNab huddled over his computer. Beside him, Peabody, down to her shirt and uniform pants, worked on one of his mini-units.

The man, she often thought, collects computers the way some men collect sport holos.

Working her way through the porn sites for names had begun to give her a headache, but she continued doggedly, concentrating on the titles and come-on, and the screen names of potential customers who took advantage of the thirty-second preview.

McNab's theory was that Yost might cruise the labyrinth of sex sites available online, make his selections through previews. It was possible he ordered them on-screen and that would be the luckiest of breaks as he'd have to use an ID and credit number to do so. But even if he simply sca

Most were laughable and obvious. Bigkok, Cumlvr, Hornydog. She didn't think Sylvester Yost would go for the crude or the foolish.

She sat back, rubbed her gritty eyes then began to root through her bag for a pain blocker.

Absently McNab reached over and rubbed her neck. "Want to take a break?"

"I just need to ditch the headache. Maybe stretch my legs."

She rose, rolling her shoulders as she went to the kitchen for water.

He knew she'd broken a date with Charles Monroe to work with him that night. McNab was darkly pleased that the suave LC had gotten the boot, even if it was for work. What he really wanted was to plant his own boot right in Monroe's pretty face, and one of these days…

The action on the screen scrambled his thoughts. He goggled as two men and two women began to roll and writhe on the floor in a mass of naked bodies and impossibly flexible limbs.

"Holy Jesus."

"What? What? Did you hit on something?" Peabody rushed back, leaned down to the screen, then with an oath rapped McNab over the head with the flat of her hand. "Damn it, stop jerking off. I thought you'd found…" She trailed off, stupefied. "Wow" was the best she could do.

Following the action both of them tilted their heads to the side.

"She must be double-jointed."

"Triple," McNab decided. "And it's obvious nobody in this group has a spine, otherwise they couldn't get in that position."

They turned their heads again, this time toward each other, and their eyes met with identical gleams of lust and challenge.

"We can't let a bunch of porn actors outdo us." McNab was already pulling at the hook of her trousers.

"Damn right we can't. But it's probably going to hurt."

"Cops feel no pain."

"Oh yeah? Try this." She was laughing as she pulled him to the floor.

In another part of town, Sylvester Yost finished his after-di

Of course, he would check on the job himself. Even well-programmed droids usually failed to see that all was in the perfect order Yost demanded.

He'd prepared himself a delightful veal picatta for di

But an indulgence like that dirtied pots and pans and so on. The droid came in handy there, as Yost preferred to relax with his brandy and cigar rather than loading the dishwasher.

With his eyes half-closed and his big, muscular body draped in a long robe of black silk, he listened to the swelling strains of Beethoven.

Such moments, he believed, were a man's right after a successful day's work.

And soon, very soon, such moments would stretch to days, and days to weeks as he moved into quiet retirement. Oh, he would miss the work, he supposed. Now and then. Of course, if he missed it enough he could certainly take the occasional contract.

Interesting ones, just to slay any dragons of tedium.

But for the most part he was certain he would be quite content with his music and his art, his leisure and his solitude.

When this contract had been offered, Yost had taken it as a sign. It was the perfect end to his career. Never before had he had occasion to come so close to a man of Roarke's stature or capabilities. Because of that, he'd been able to demand, and receive, three times his usual fee for three targets.