In Death 20 - Survivor in Death

promises.”
    “I promise, then. I have to go, finish this.”
    Nixie knelt on the seat, leaned over, and kissed Eve’s cheek. Then she laid her head on Eve’s good shoulder, sighed once. “I’m sorry you got hurt helping me.”
    “No big.” She found her hand lifting to stroke over the soft, pale hair. “Just part of the job.”
    She sat where she was when Nixie got out. Sat and watched the little girl walk to Roarke, and him bend down as they spoke. The way he gave the child a hug when she kissed him.
    Summerset put her in the car, secured her himself, brushed those bony fingers gently over her cheek. As they drove away, Roarke got in beside Eve.
    “All right?”
    She shook her head. “Need another minute.”
    “Take all you need.”
    “She’ll be okay. She’s got guts, and heart. Scared ten years off me when she came running in, but she’s got guts.”
    “She loves you.”
    “Oh, Jesus.”
    “You found her, you protected her, you saved her. She’ll love you more for it as her life heals. You were right to let her see his face.”
    “I hope, because I wasn’t thinking clear yet. The fall down the stairs--” She broke off, hissed. “Not just the fall. The blood, the knife, the pain. I heard her neck snap, and it was like an echo in my head. When I came out and saw you, there was this dull relief. Distant, in another part of me.”
    She drew a long breath. “You’d have let me do it. You’d have stood back and let me put that knife in him.”
    “Yes. I’d have stood back and let you do what you needed to do.”
    “Even cold-blooded murder.”
    “Nothing cold-blooded about it, Eve.” He touched her face, turned it to his. His eyes weren’t wild and blue now, she thought, but calm and deep and sure. “You couldn’t have done it.”
    “I nearly did, I could feel the way it punched through his body.”
    “Nearly did. And if something had snapped that clean inside of you, we’d have dealt with it. But what’s inside of you, what you are down to the bone, wouldn’t have allowed it. You needed to kneel there with that knife in your hand, and to know that.”
    “Guess I did.”
    “Tomorrow, you’ll face him, both of them, in Interview. What you do will be worse to him than a knife in the heart. You beat him, you stopped him, you caged him.”
    “Cage him, and another crawls out from under the next rock.” She pressed her shoulder, gave her arm a testing turn. “So I guess I’d better get back in shape, so I can go after the next one.”
    “I love you, madly.”
    “Yeah, you do.” She smiled and, praying nobody was watching, touched her lips to his burned shoulder. “Let’s go clean up, and get back to work.”
    She flicked a glance in the rearview as they drove away. Just a house, she thought. They’d clean up the blood, sweep out the death. Another family would move in.
    She hoped they had a nice life.

Look out for the brand new novel in the Eve Dallas series: ORIGINS IN DEATH
     
    New York police lieutenant Eve Dallas and her partner Peabody enter the hallowed halls of the Wilfred B. Icove Center for Reconstructive and Cosmetic Surgery on an open and shut case of self-defence. But before they can leave they are called to another crime scene.
     
    Dr. Wilfred B. Icove himself has been found dead in his office murdered in a chillingly efficient manner: one swift stab to the heart. Struck by the immaculate condition of the crime scene, Dallas suspects a professional killing. Security discs show a stunningly beautiful woman calmly entering and leaving the building - the good doctor’s final appointment.
     
    Known as “Dr. Perfect,” the saintly Icove devoted his life to his family and his work. His record is clean. Too clean for Dallas. She knows he was hiding something and suspects that his son - and successor knows what it is. Then, like father like son, the young Dr. Icove is killed ... with the same deadly precision.
     
    But who is the mystery woman - and what was her relationship with the good doctors’? With her husband, Roarke, working behind the scenes, Dallas follows her darkest instincts into the Icoves’ pasts. And what she discovers are men driven to create perfection - playing fast and loose with the laws of nature, the limits of science, and the morals of humanity ...
     
    Coming soon from Piatkus Books