The In Death Collection Books 6-10 - J. D. Robb [374]
“Karen.” With one quiet word he had her subsiding, in obvious distress and puzzlement. “You a cop?” he asked Roarke.
“No, indeed not.” He laid a hand on Eve’s shoulder. “She’s the cop.”
“Out of New York,” Eve continued. “I need some of your time. A case I’ve been working on crosses one you had before you retired.”
“That’s the operative word.” She caught resentment mixed in the wariness in his tone. “I’m retired.”
“Yeah.” She kept her eyes steady and level on him. “Just recently, someone’s been wanting to see me retire. One way or the other. Could be a . . . medical thing.”
His eyes flickered, his mouth tightened. Before he could speak, Roarke stepped forward and aimed a charming smile at Karen. “Ms. McRae, I wonder if I could trouble you for some coffee? My wife and I drove straight in from the airport.”
“Oh, of course. I’m so sorry.” Her hands fluttered up from their resting place on her belly to her throat. “I’ll make some right away.”
“Why don’t I help you?” With a smile in place that could have melted a woman’s heart at fifty paces, he put a gentle hand on the small of her back. “We’ll let our respective spouses talk shop. You have a lovely home.”
“Thank you. Will and I have been putting it together for nearly two years now.”
As their voices faded, Will never took his eyes off Eve’s. “I’m not going to be able to help you.”
“You don’t know what I want or what I need. Yet. I can’t show you ID, McRae, because they took my badge a few days ago.” She watched his eyes narrow. “They found a way to get me out, off the case, so I figure I was getting close to something. Or they just didn’t like the heat. And I figure they found a way to get you out and have that asshole Kimiki take over the investigation.”
Will snorted, and some of the wariness faded. “Kimiki can barely find his own dick with both hands.”
“Yeah, I got that. I’m a good cop, McRae, and their mistake this time was another good cop’s got the case now. We’ve got three bodies in New York with parts missing. You had one here, same MO. There’s another in Paris, one in London. We’re still running like crimes.”
“I can’t help you, Dallas.”
“What’d they use on you?”
“I’ve got a family.” He said it, low and fierce. “A wife, a five-year-old son, a baby on the way. Nothing happens to them. Nothing. You get that?”
“Yeah.” She got something else, too. Fear that wasn’t for himself. Frustration at being helpless against it. “Nobody knows I’m here, and nobody’s going to know. I’m on my own in this, and I’m not letting go.”
He walked past her to the window, smoothed the pretty white curtains. “You got kids?”
“No.”
“My boy, he’s spending a couple of days with Karen’s mother. She’s due any day. The kid’s amazing. Beautiful.” He turned, gestured with a jerk of his head to a framed holoprint on the end table.
Obligingly, Eve moved over, lifted it, and studied the cheerfully grinning face. Big brown eyes, dusty blond hair, and dimples. Kids mostly looked the same to her. Cute, innocent, and unfathomable. But she knew the response expected of her. “He’s a beaut, all right.”
“They said they’d do him first.”
Eve’s fingers tightened on the frame before she set it carefully down again. “They contacted you?”
“Set a fucking droid on me. Caught me by surprise, knocked me around some. I don’t give a shit about that.” He whirled back. “Told him to tell his keeper to go to hell. I did the job, Dallas. Then the droid explains just what’ll happen to my family, my little boy, my wife, the baby she’s carrying. Scared me bloodless. So I figure I’ll send them away, do the job, get these bastards. Then I get pictures in the mail, pictures of Karen and Will, coming out of a toy store, the market, playing in the yard at my mother’s, where I sent them. And one of that fucking droid holding Will. Holding him,” he said in a voice pitched low but vibrating with vicious fury. “He had his hands on my son. Message that came with it said the next time they’d cut