Ceremony in Death - J. D. Robb [76]
The consistency of late-night appointments over the last two years, again bimonthly and always on the same date as the personal cash withdrawal, wasn’t enough to establish a solid connection with Selina Cross’s cult.
The lady herself was never mentioned.
He’d been divorced, childless, and he’d lived alone.
So she knocked on doors, talked to neighbors. Eve learned Wineburg hadn’t been the sociable sort. He’d rarely had visitors, and none of his neighbors had been curious enough or would admit to paying close enough attention to any of those rare visitors to give a description.
She came away with nothing but a raw feeling in the gut and a mounting sense of frustration. She knew, without a doubt, that Wineburg had been part of Cross’s cult, that he’d paid heavily, first monetarily and then with his life, for the privilege. But she was no closer to proving it, and her mind wasn’t as focused on the business at hand as it should have been.
When she headed home, alone, Feeney’s angry face and bitter words played back in her head, and frustration slammed up hard against misery.
She’d more than let him down, she knew. She had betrayed him by doing precisely what he had helped train her to do. She’d followed orders, she’d been a cop. She’d done her job.
But she hadn’t been a friend, she thought, as her temples throbbed with stress. She’d weighed her loyalties, and in the end had chosen the job over the heart.
Cold, he’d called her, she remembered and squeezed her eyes shut. And cold she had been.
The cat padded to her the moment Eve stepped in the door, winding around her legs as she stepped into the foyer. She kept walking, cursing lightly when he tripped her. Summerset slipped out of a doorway.
“Roarke has been trying to reach you.”
“Yeah? Well, I’ve been busy.” She nudged Galahad away impatiently with her foot. “Is he here?”
“Not as yet. You might reach him at his office.”
“I’ll talk to him when he gets home.” She wanted a drink, something strong and mind-misting. Recognizing the danger and the weakness of that crutch, she turned away from the parlor and walked in the opposite direction. “I’m not here to anybody else. Get it?”
“Certainly,” Summerset said stiffly.
As she strode away, Summerset bent and picked up the cat to stroke—something he never would have done had anyone been around to observe. “The lieutenant is very unhappy,” Summerset murmured. “Perhaps we should make a call.”
Galahad purred, stretched his neck in appreciation of Summerset’s long, bony fingers. Their mutual affection was their little secret.
It would have surprised Eve, though she wasn’t thinking of either of them. She took the stairs, moved through the indoor pool and garden area, and into the gym. Physical exertion, she knew, blocked emotional distress.
Keeping her mind blank, she changed into a black skin suit and high tops. She programmed the full body unit, ordering the machine to take her through a brutal series of reps and resistance exercises, gritting her teeth as the clipped computer voice demanded that she squat, lift, stretch, hold, repeat.
She’d worked up a satisfactory sweat by the time she switched machines for aerobics. The combo-unit took her on a punishing run, up inclines, down them, a race up endless flights of stairs. She’d set it for variety, and found the change of texture on her running surface from simulated asphalt to sand to grass to dirt interesting, but it wasn’t doing anything to ease the ache in her belly.
You could run, she thought with dull fury, but you couldn’t hide.
Her heart was pumping hard, her skin suit soaked with sweat, but her emotions were still fragile as glass. What she needed, Eve decided as she tugged on soft, protective gloves, was to pound on something.
She’d never tried out the sparring droid. It was one