Seduction In Death

She looked back at Feeney, who with his magic fingers and droopy eyes was giving the unit its first check. "He's a creature of habit, too," she said. "And the habits are a trail. Can you find him on this?"

"He used it, we can find out when and how. Go

With a nod, she pushed away from the table and walked back to where the image tech worked with the droids. The one thing about droids, she thought, was no matter how a

Already she could see the face and features coming to life on the tech's comp-canvas.

Soft face, bland features. A hairline starting to recede from a wide dome of brow and left to shag messily over the ears. The kind of face that passed through a crowd u

Except for the eyes. They were sharp and cold.

Whatever he did to his face, Eve knew when she looked into those eyes, she would know him.

There was no cyber-joint within view of Grace Lutz's building. No coffee shop or little diner. There was a small, walk-in deli with one long narrow aisle, but Eve's morning run of luck ran out there.

She'd sent for Peabody, and her aide walked in just as she was buying a candy bar.

"That's a very childish lunch," Peabody said, craving it. "Is that veggie hash fresh?"

"What have you got for me?"

"A big, gaping pit where my stomach used to be," Peabody told her, and ordered a take-out serving of the hash. "I'm trying this new diet where you eat only the white of a hard-boiled egg for breakfast. Then – "

"Peabody." Cruelly, Eve unwrapped the candy, took a slow, deliberate bite. "Have you somehow mistaken me for someone who has an interest in dietary matters?"

"That's really mean. You're got a mean temperament because you're spending your caloric intake on processed sugar and… is that caramel?"

"Bet your ass." Eve licked a glossy string of it off her index finger while Peabody enviously followed the move. "Outside. I need to walk."

"Oh well, if we're going to exercise give me one of what she's got," Peabody demanded, and dug for more money.

On the street, she scooped up forksful of hash slowly to make it last and matched her stride to Eve's.

"If you can manage to swallow, Peabody, I'd like your report."

"It's pretty good. I think they used dill. We listed sixteen possibles," she said quickly. "Roarke, well, I don't have to tell you, but he's one mag tech. So fast and smooth. And when he does manual searches… Have you ever noticed his hands?" She ate more hash at Eve's steely stare. "Yeah, guess you have. Anyway, we've had sixteen names that jibed with the purchases, and we factored them down to ten, deleting two guys who got married in the last two weeks. May and June, still big months for weddings. Another who got run over by a maxibus a couple days ago. Did you read about that? This guy, he's walking along doing his stock checks on his PPC, and steps right off the curb in front of the bus. Blap."

"Peabody."

"Okay, well. We narrowed it down to ten most-likelies, going with the outlets McNab came up with in-city for the enhancements. The wigs are taking longer because he's got to target the manufacturer, and he says there's about two hundred who use that high-grade human material – then hit the brand, then the product name. The style used in the first murder is a pretty popular hair alternative, and goes by several names, depending on the brand and material used."

She flipped her empty take-out carton into a recycler, and began to peel the wrapper off her candy bar with the slow precision and intense concentration of a woman stripping her lover.

"He wants to have pizza tonight."

"What? Roarke wants pizza?"

"No, McNab. McNab wants to have pizza with me tonight. He says he wants to talk and stuff, but this morning we broke a couple of public moral codes outside your gates."

"Shit. Shit." Eve pressed her fingers under her eye where a muscle began to tic wildly. "There it goes again. Why do you tell me this stuff? It makes me spasm."

"If we have pizza, we're going to have sex. What does that mean?"

"It's more than a spasm. I think it's an embolism. One of those brain bombs, and you have your finger twitching on the button."

"I don't want to get messed up again. But I feel messed up anyway."

Eve sighed. "What do I know about this kind of stuff, Peabody? It's taken me more than a year to find my rhythm with Roarke, and I still screw it up half the time. Cops are bad bets."

She turned, jamming her hands in her pockets. The street was dirty, the traffic loud, and the smoke that belched from the glide-cart they passed stank of fried rehydrated onions. She could see an illegals deal in the making a half block down and across the street.

"Trying to have a life off the job is work. Two of you trying to have a life off it, I don't know. Damn it." Her heart might have been going soft for her aide, but her eyes were still hard and clear. "That's going bad. Call for the beat cops, then back me up."

She pulled out her badge, pulled out her weapon, and was already zagging across the street when one of the men on the opposite sidewalk drew a blade.

There was a swipe, a dodge, then the second man flashed out a knife of his own.

They jabbed, circling each other. Bystanders scattered.

"Police! Drop your weapons."

They ignored her, and she could see one was jonesing, the other high. That made both of them dangerous.

"Lose the stickers, or I drop you both."

As one, they turned on her. The man desperate for his fix lunged wildly. She heard one of the pedestrians screaming. As the knife arched up, she took her man down with a stun across the knees.

He fell toward her. She pivoted, blocked, then brought the heel of her boot down hard on his knife hand.

While he wailed, flopped, she saw the second man had moved fast. He had the side of his blade lodged at the throat of the screaming pedestrian. And he had Zeus in his eyes, that elixir that made gods of men.

"Drop it. Let her go and drop it."

"Fuck you. Fuck her. This is my goddamn corner!"

"You cut her, you'll die on this goddamn corner." The man on the ground was weeping now. She could smell the piss leaking onto the sidewalk where his bladder had let go.

"You put your piece down or I cut her from ear to ear." He leaned in, ru

"Okay. Looks like you've got me." She lowered her weapon, watching his eyes follow it down. Then watching them jitter as Peabody stepped in from behind and laid her stu

Eve sprang forward, grabbing his knife hand, twisting it. The civilian slid to the ground like an empty sack. "Stun him again!" Eve shouted as the drug-induced strength had the knife jamming toward her throat. She felt the prick, that hot sting of metal against flesh.

And both of them scented her blood.

His body jerked, then lifted when Eve plowed her knee into his groin. She shifted her weight, sliced her heel into his instep, then curled to use the momentum to flip him over her back.

He landed like a felled tree, flat out, and with a solid crack of skull on concrete.

Eve scooped up the knife, and wheezing, stayed bent over.

"Dallas? You okay? Did he cut you?"

"Yes, damn it. Get that one." She pointed at the first man, still weeping, trying to crawl away.

She heaved the second man over, clapped on restraints. The hostage was on the ground as well, and still screaming.

Eve wiped the blood off her throat with the back of her hand and glanced over. "Somebody shut her up."