Dark in Death (In Death 46)

He took it for an invitation, began to dry hump her while the laughter rose, the music screamed.

Her gasps for breath only made the man with his hand up her skirt moan.

Then the music faded; the lights dimmed.

When she went limp, Bennie—it was Bennie—tried to haul her up.

“Fuck, she passed out.”

He dumped her back on the booth. Unconscious, essentially already dead, she rolled onto the floor and began to seize.

The woman who currently embodied Bliss Cather’s killer smiled, satisfied. Vindicated. She turned away, caught the stunned, horrified stare of the bartender.

He looked straight at her, into her. And had a ’link in his hand. When he shouted something, something drowned in the music, she snatched a coat off the back of the dead woman’s booth and sprinted away.

Not toward the front. The bartender continued to shout, to gesture now. And to her own shock leaped over the bar to push through people, to push in her direction.

She turned sharply, slammed into the kitchen, ran through and out the back. Kept running, running, shot around a corner, dragged on the coat.

A coat that turned out to be a hip-length fur—mink!—with a hood.

She ran another block, turned another corner.

She dragged at the dreads, yanking them—and some of her own hair—off. She slowed her rush long enough to shove them in a recycler. And pulling the fur hood over bold red hair, shed the character.

Strongbow walked through the icy night, stroking the fur.

She thought: To the victor go the spoils.

Eve walked into chaos and knew it was too late. Just as she knew whose body she’d find. Loxie Flash had been the only one on the list who hadn’t answered her ’link as Roarke raced over the icy roads downtown.

She badged the big bulk of the bouncer. “Stay on the door,” she told him, and shoved her way to the first uniform she spotted.

“I want this scene secured.”

“We’re trying, Lieutenant. We’ve got close to three hundred and fifty in here, and a lot of them are drunk, a lot are stoned, a lot are both. I just called for more uniforms.”

“Tap Dispatch for Officer Carmichael out of Central, and his partner.”

“Got it. We’ve got two men on the DB, got people moved back from there. Looks like an OD. Somebody called the MTs, but she was already gone. LT, the bartender—ah, Brad Smithers—claims you told him to BOLO for a woman with red hair, blue side dreads. Says he saw her, tagged you.”

“That’s correct.”

“We’ve got him over there. But he stated she took off. He’d just alerted security, and they were on the main door. She caught on to him, he thinks, and she took off the other way. He tried to pursue. She went out the kitchen—again, according to his statement. He didn’t see a trace of her by the time he hit the back door.”

Eve nodded, continuing to push through. She found some relief the body had been blocked off, and two uniforms kept the area clear. Someone had covered the body with a long, black leather coat.

As it was bound to be death by poison, she opted not to grind her teeth over the possible screwing with trace and forensics.

She lifted the coat enough to verify the victim, then called it in, with a request to notify her partner.

“Your field kit, Lieutenant.” Roarke held it out to her.

“Hold on to that a minute. I need to establish some damn order in here first.”

She elbowed her way to the stage. Some guy in leather pants and nothing but tats to his waist stepped up to block her.

“You can’t touch the equipment.”