Divided in Death Read Free

I lose it, or break it?"
     
     
"That would be a shame. But until you do, I enjoy seeing it on you. If it makes you feel any better, my aunt Sinead seemed equally flustered by the necklace I bought her."
     
     
"She struck me as a sensible woman."
     
     
He tugged a lock of Eve's hair. "The women in my life are sensible, enough to indulge me as giving them gifts brings me such pleasure."
     
     
"That's a slick way to box it in. It's beautiful." And she had to admit, at least privately, that she liked the way it slid fluidly over her skin. "I can't wear this to work."
     
     
"I don't suppose so. Then again, I like the way it looks on you now. When you're wearing nothing else."
     
     
"Don't get any ideas, ace. I'm on shift in-six hours," she calculated after a glance at the time.
     
     
Because she recognized the gleam in his eye, she narrowed her own. But the token protest she intended to give was interrupted by the bedside 'link.
     
     
"That's your signal." She nodded toward the 'link, then rolled off the bed. "At least when somebody calls you at two in the morning, nobody's dead."
     
     
She wandered off into the bathroom as she heard him block video, and answer.
     
     
She took her time, then as an afterthought snagged the robe off the back of the door in case he'd reinstated the video on the 'link.
     
     
She was belting it as she went back in, and saw he was up and at his closet. "Who was it?"
     
     
"Caro."
     
     
"You've got to go now? At two in the morning?" His tone, just the way he'd said his admin's name, had the skin on her neck prickling. "What is it?"
     
     
"Eve." He pulled out a shirt to go with the trousers he'd hastily put on. "I need a favor. A very large favor."
     
     
Not from his wife, she thought. But from his cop. "What is it?"
     
     
"One of my employees." He dragged on the shirt, but his eyes stayed on Eve. "She's in trouble. Considerable trouble. Someone is dead, after all."
     
     
"One of your employees kill someone, Roarke?"
     
     
"No." Since she continued to stand where she was, he moved to her closet, took out clothes. "She's confused and panicked, and Caro says somewhat incoherent. These are not traits one associates with Reva. She works in Security. Design and installation, primarily. She's solid as stone. She was with the Secret Service for a number of years, and isn't a woman who shakes easily."
     
     
"You're not telling me what happened."
     
     
"She found her husband and her friend in bed at the friend's apartment. Dead. Already dead, Eve."
     
     
"And finding two dead bodies, she contacted your administrative assistant instead of the police."
     
     
"No." He pushed the clothes he'd chosen into Eve's hands. "She contacted her mother."
     
     
Eve stared at him, cursed softly, then began to dress. "I have to call this in."
     
     
"I'm asking you to wait, until you see for yourself, until you talk to Reva." He laid his hands on hers, held them there until she looked back at him again. "Eve, I'm asking you, please, wait that long. You don't have to call in what you haven't seen with your own eyes. I know this woman. I've known her mother more than a dozen years, and trust her to the level I trust very few. They need your help. I need it."
     
     
She picked up her weapon harness, strapped it on. "Then let's get there. Fast."
     
     
***
     
     
It was a clear night with the heaviness that had dogged the summer of 2059 lightening toward the crispness of the coming fall. Traffic was light, and the short drive required little skill or concentration on Roarke's part. He judged by his wife's silence that she'd closed in. She asked no questions as she wanted no more information, nothing that would influence her from her own impressions of what she would see and hear and feel.
     
     
Her narrow, angular face was set, the long golden brown eyes cop flat. Unreadable even to him. The wide mouth that had been hot and soft against his only a short time before was firm and