In Death 10 - Witness in Death

draining of color. "That's a lie."
    "Draco had a recording unit installed in his bedroom. He had a collection of personal discs detailing certain sexual partners. There's one of you, recorded in February. It included the use of a certain apparatus fashioned of black leather and -- "
    Carly leaped off the sofa. "Stop. You enjoy this, don't you?"
    "No. No, I don't. You were unaware of the recording."
    "Yes, I was unaware," Carly snapped back. "I might very well have agreed to one, have been intrigued by the idea if he'd suggested it. But I detest knowing it was done without my consent. That a bunch of snickering cops can view it and get their kicks."
    "I'm the only cop who's viewed it so far, and I didn't get any kick out of it. You weren't the only woman he recorded, Ms. Landsdowne, without her consent."
    "Pardon me if I don't give a fuck." She pressed her fingers to her eyes until she could find a thread of control. "All right, what do I have to do to get it?"
    "It's in evidence, and I've had it sealed. It won't be used unless it has to be used. When the case is closed, and you prove to be cleared, I'll see that the disc is given to you."
    "I guess that's the best I can expect." She took a long breath. "Thank you."
    "Ms. Landsdowne, did you employ illegals in the company of Richard Draco, for sexual stimulation or any reason?"
    "I don't do illegals. I prefer using my own mind, my own imagination, not chemicals."
    You used them, Eve thought. But maybe you didn't know what he was slipping into that pretty glass of champagne.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    Roarke had two holo-conferences, an interspace transmission, and a head-of-departments meeting, all scheduled for the afternoon and all dealing with his Olympus Resort project. It was over a year in the works, and he intended for it to be open for business by summer.
    Not all of the enormous planetwide pleasure resort would be complete, but the main core, with its luxury hotels and villas, its plush gambling and entertainment complexes, was good to go. He had taken Eve there on part of their honeymoon. It had been her first off-planet trip.
    He intended to take her back, kicking and screaming no doubt, as interplanetary travel was not on her list of favorite delights.
    He wanted time away with her, away from work. His and hers. Not just one of the quick forty-eight-hour jaunts he managed to push her into, but real time, intimate time.
    As he pushed away from his in-home control center, he rotated his shoulder. It was nearly healed and didn't trouble him overmuch. But now and again, a faint twinge reminded him of how close both of them had come to dying. Only weeks before, he'd looked at death, then into Eve's eyes.
    They'd both faced bloody and violent ends before. But there was more at stake now. That moment of connection, the sheer will in her eyes, the grip of her hand on his, had pulled him back.
    They needed each other.
    Two lost souls, he thought, taking a moment to walk to the tall windows that looked out on part of the world he'd built for himself out of will, desire, sweat, and dubiously accumulated funds. Two lost souls whose miserable beginnings had forged them into what appeared to be polar opposites.
    Love had narrowed the distance, then had all but eradicated it.
    She'd saved him. The night his life had hung in her furious and unbreakable grip. She'd saved him, he mused, the first moment he'd locked eyes with her. As impossible as it should have been, she was his answer. He was hers.
    He had a need to give her things. The tangible things wealth could command. Though he knew the gifts most often puzzled and flustered her. Maybe because they did, he corrected with a grin. But underlying that overt giving was the fierce foundation to give her comfort, security, trust, love. All the things they'd both lived without most of their lives.
    He wondered that a woman who was so skilled in observation, in studying the human condition, couldn't see that what he felt for her was often as baffling and as frightening to him as it was to her.
    Nothing had been the same for him since she'd walked into his life wearing an ugly suit and cool-eyed suspicion. He thanked God for it.
    Feeling sentimental, he realized. He supposed it was the Irish that popped out of him at unexpected moments. More, he kept replaying the nightmare she'd suffered through a few nights before.
    They came more rarely now, but still they came, torturing her sleep, sucking her back into a past she couldn't quite