In Death 24 - Innocent in Death

her.” The warmth shifted over his face. “And sometimes yet, it embarrasses her a little.”
    “I’ve heard of an embarrassment of riches, but can’t imagine being embarrassed by them.”
    “Money doesn’t mean to her what it does to either of us.”
    “Really?” She looked up at him, liquid eyes. “And what does it mean to us?”
    “Freedom, of course, and power and that comfort. But under it all”-he looked down at her, smiled a little-“it’s the game, isn’t it?”
    She smiled back, her face mirroring regret. “We always understood each other.”
    “That we didn’t, no.” He stepped out, automatically taking her arm to lead her across the marble expanse of the lobby with its moving maps, its busy shops, its banks of live flowers.
    Outside his limo, then hers, slid smoothly to the curb. When he walked her to her car, she turned. The dampness in her eyes shone now in the sunlight. “Maybe we didn’t understand each other. Maybe that’s true. But there were good times for us, weren’t there? There were good times.”
    “There were.”
    She lifted her hands to his cheeks. He curled his fingers gently around her wrists so they stood a moment in the cold and the wind. “Good-bye, Maggie.”
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    “Good-bye, Roarke.” Tears glimmered on her lashes as she slipped into the warmth of the limo.
    He watched it pull away, a sleek white whip through the ocean of traffic.
    Then he got into his own car to go to his wife.
     
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Chapter 11
    EVE WAS DRAGGED THROUGH THE STATION BY A peppy little assistant named Mercy. Eve decided she had none as she bounced along the corridors, whipping Eve through checkpoints and keeping up a rapid-fire monologue as she all but skipped along in zippy black skids.
    “Everyone’s positively juiced to extreme about tonight’s premiere. Nadine’s about the biggest thing in media right now, and the station’s totally gone that she opted to stay with us and do this show. And having you as the first guest is beyond mag. I mean, the two of you are, like, so extremely scorching.”
    Mercy had pink hair tailed up in little butterfly pins, with what seemed to be their tiny progeny flying out of the arch of her left eyebrow.
    It was disconcerting.
    “You need to meet the producer and the director and the exec tech, then we’re going to head straight to makeup and wardrobe. I can get you anything you want. I’m totally yours for the show-coffee, tea, water-we got flat and fizzy-soft drinks. Nadine says you go for coffee. We’re going to pop in on the director, real quick.”
    “I don’t want to-”
    But she was almost shoved into an office, had her hand pumped, before she was corralled into another office, with another hand pump.
    The air was vibrating so fast it made her head ache.
    Then, with Mercy still yapping like a Pomeranian on Zeus, Eve was dragged into makeup where the brightly lit mirrors gleamed over the long, long counter crowded with a dizzying array of pots and tubes and brushes and strange instruments that looked like some wicked tools designed for torture.
    Worse-worse than the idea she was pressured by the brass and by friendship to appear on screen, worse than the yapping in her ear, worse than the knowledge that some or all of those instruments and pots and tubes would be used on her-was the woman who stood behind a high-backed black chair grinning a toothy grin.
    “Oh, Mother of God.”
    “You two know each other, right?” Mercy babbled on. “Trina, I’m going to leave Lieutenant Dallas in your magic hands, go get her coffee. Nadine stocked some special for her. Anything you want?”
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    Trina, her hair a black-and-white fountain on top of her head, her eyes an unearthly green, whipped a bright blue cape from a hook. “Water’d be good. Flat.”
    “Be right back!”
    “You look like dog shit, Dallas,” Trina commented.
    “This is a recurring nightmare. I’m just going to punch myself in the face until I wake up.”
    “You’ve got enough bruising under your eyes, you look like you’ve already been decked a few times today. I’ll fix it.”
    “Why are you here? Why is it you?”
    “First, because I’m the best and Nadine knows it. She can get the best. Second, because of you. If it wasn’t for you, I’d never have worked on Nadine at your place.”
    Trina snapped the cape like a matador at a bull. “Appreciate it.”
    “So, somehow, I brought this on myself.”
    “You’re lucky it’s me. Because I’m the best, and