Brotherhood in Death (In Death 42)

“I could be wrong. It may turn out I’m completely out of orbit on this angle, but it’s what I see.”

“And the way you’ve gone through the steps, it’s what I see. There will be more of them. If you’re right, and he forced or coerced these three, there will be more.”

“Yeah, there will be more. Yale students, or women who he encountered somehow through that connection when they were college age. There’s a three-year span between when MacKensie was at Yale, and when Downing was at NYU. Five between MacKensie and Su at Yale. So there will be others. But I’m not seeing those others—not yet anyway—on my list. His daughter . . .”

“I don’t believe so.” At least, Roarke thought, he could give her that peace of mind. “I don’t think you need to go there. I looked into her, and her brother, and there’s no sign of that.”

“I got all the way to lieutenant of the NYPSD, and nobody saw any signs.”

Now he brushed a hand over her short cap of hair. “Do you really believe Mira saw nothing, saw no signs?”

She needed to move, so she stuffed her hands in her pockets while she prowled the office. “No, you’re right. She probably saw plenty way be

fore I got to the point I could talk to her about it. Still—”

“You didn’t have her when it was happening to you. You had no one. Gwendolyn Sykes did. She had her brother, she had the Miras. Everything I turned up on them reads they had a rigid, unloving childhood, leaned on and were embraced by Charlotte and Dennis as often as possible. And they’ve made strong and happy lives. Mira would have seen the signs, Eve.”

“You’re right. You’re right.” Though she’d have to ask, directly at some point. “That’s something anyway. It’s going to be rough enough on the Miras.”

“We’ll be there for them. Whatever they need from us. Now it’s late, and you’ll need to reinterview with all this in mind tomorrow. And considering how this may go, we could both use the sleep while we can get it.”

“You hardly sleep anyway.” She continued to prowl. “I don’t want you worrying about me before there’s even anything to worry about. I can deal with what was, Roarke, just like I can deal with . . .” She stopped at the desk, ran her hand over it. “What was.”

She had dealt with it, she reminded herself. And didn’t need replications of what she’d once had, not when she knew and cherished what she had now.

She sent him a speculative look. “Do you really want to get rid of this desk?”

“That will be up to you.”

She shook her head, waved that off. “No, I’m asking you. Do you want to get rid of it?”

“For reasons of aesthetics, efficiency—Christ, yes. It’s a bloody, miserable excuse for a workstation.”

“Huh. You’re seriously soft on me to leave it sitting here for nearly three years, offending your aesthetics and efficiency levels. Its days are probably numbered, so . . . we should send it off with a bang.”

She boosted up to sit on it, sent him a slow smile. “Come on over here, pal, and bang the hell out of me on my bloody, miserable excuse of a workstation.”

He let out a half laugh. “I never know what odd path that mind of yours might take. But it never disappoints.”

It wasn’t about the ridiculous desk, he thought—though knowing her, that could be part of it. But it was to show both of them she could take whatever ugliness would come her way. She’d face the nightmares, the fears, the brutal memories to do the job she’d sworn to do.

So he went to her. Though the glint in her eyes dared and demanded, he cupped her face again. And thinking of the nightmares, the fears, the memories, laid his lips gently on hers.

To cherish.

In response she took two fistfuls of his hair, yanked him to her, hard. “Uh-uh. This is desk sex. That means it might hurt a little.” So saying, she bit him.

Then she shoved him back, deliberately rough, so she could pull off her sweatshirt. “Give me what you have.”

“What I have?”

“Yeah. And more.”

“And when you say you can’t take it, remember what you asked for.”

“Oh, I can take it. Let’s see if you can when—”

He slid a hand between her legs, pressed, and the rest of the words died in a gasp. Before she could draw the next breath, his free hand clamped on the back of her neck, holding her in place while his mouth ravaged hers.