Survivor in Death (In Death 20)

He eased into her, slowly, so slowly she knew from the tremors in his body how rigidly he controlled himself. Then his breath caught, and his eyes, his beautiful eyes, went blind. “Christ.”

“I don’t know if we’ll live through it,” she managed, and wrapped her legs around him. “Let’s find out. Don’t hold back.”

He wasn’t sure he could have, not now, not with the sensations that pounded him, not with her reckless words ringing in his ears. He let the chain snap and rode it with her, wave by hot, towering wave.

When the last swamped him, it swamped them both.

She wasn’t sure she would ever get her breath back, or the full use of her limbs. Her arms had slid away from him, limply, until her fingers trailed in the water.

“Is that thing legal?”

He was flat out on top of her, breathing like a man who’d climbed up, or fallen off, a mountain. And his laugh rumbled against her skin. “God, only you.”

“Seriously.”

“We really ought to have Trina tattoo that damn badge on your breast permanently. Yes. It’s been tested, and approved, and licensed. A bit tricky to acquire yet. And as you can see, its effects are transitory.”

“Good thing. Wicked effective.”

“Erotic, arousing, enhancing, without taking away the will or choice.” He lifted the flower, twirled it, then tossed it into the water where it floated. “And pretty.”

“Are all of these like that?”

“No, just the one.” He kissed her again, savored the fading heat on her lips. “But I can get more.”

“I bet.” She started to stretch, and frowned at the sound of a beep.

“Ah. Looks like we’re through the first levels, and my attention’s required.”

She sat up, shoved at her hair. She took one last look at blue water, white sand, and flowers strewn like jewels on the shoreline. “Playtime’s over.”

He nodded. “End program.”

18

EVE SAT AT ONE OF ROARKE’S SUBSTATIONS AND began to pick her way through the lives of Kirkendall and Clinton. They needed a base of operations, a place to set up, to store equipment, to plan strategies and do sims.

A place to take someone like Meredith Newman.

She started with childhood—Kirkendall in New Jersey, Clinton in Missouri. Kirkendall relocating to New York with custodial parent at the age of twelve. Clinton doing the same, to Ohio, at the age of ten. And both had enlisted in the army at eighteen. Both had been recruited into Special Forces at twenty.

Corporals Kirkendall and Clinton had both trained at Camp Powell, Miami.

“It’s like a mirror,” Eve said. “No, like magnets. They just kept duplicating each other’s moves until they slapped together.”

“No talking.”

Eve frowned over at him. Sleeves rolled, hair tied back, he hammered at a keyboard with one hand and tapped icons on a viewboard with the other. And for the last ten minutes, he’d been muttering in a stylish combination of Gaelic—she supposed—and the weird Irish slang he fell into when revved up.

Bugger this, bollocks to that, shagging, bloody, and a heavy sprinkling of fucks that sounded more and more like fook as he geared up.

“You’re talking.”

“Feisigh do thoin fein!” He rattled that off, sat back for a moment, and studied his board. “What? I’m not talking, I’m communing. Ah yes, there you are, you bitch.”

Communing, she thought as he hunkered over the keys. Get him. But she turned back to her own work. If she wasn’t careful, she’d get caught up watching him. He made a hell of a picture when he was in the zone.

The army had—as the army did—shuffled them around over the next few years. They’d lived in military housing, even after they married their respective spouses—within three months of each other. And when they had opted to leave the military, to buy homes, they’d plunked down in the same development.