In Death 26 - Strangers in Death

impossible. But still.”
    “I’d have fallen for you even if your head was twice as hard, again virtually impossible. And still.”
    “We’re good,” she said, then continued on to her office.

19
    WHEN HE CAME IN, SHE SAT AT HER DESK, HER jacket tossed on the back of her sleep chair. The jacket, he knew, would bother her while she worked. The weapon she still wore? Its weight wouldn’t register any more than the weight of her own arms.
    Steam rose out of the mug on her desk. Coffee, he thought, nearly equaled the weapon as part of her essential makeup.
    She hadn’t yet worked herself into exhaustion on this one. He’d seen her work, worry, wrangle with a case until her system simply collapsed from neglect. But this one, he realized, was different. She was juiced.
    “It’s a competition.”
    She glanced over, brows knit. “What?”
    “You’re as involved and determined as you are, always. You’ve made the victim yours, as you always do. But you’re not suffering this time around.”
    “Suffering? I don’t suffer.”
    “Oh, but you do, darling Eve. Murder infuriates you, insults you, and the victims haunt you. Every one. But for this, for this particular one, it’s challenged you above all else. She challenges you—and your attitude toward her, which strikes me as a personal level of dislike, kicks that up a notch. You’re damned if you aren’t going to beat her.”
    “Maybe. Whatever works. Whatever gets the job done. So, the efficient Leopold came through. I’ve got his incoming here, the list of parents Ava tapped for grunt work. The ones he had some record of or remembered, anyway. We’ll split those if you’re up for it.”
    “Shoot my share to my unit.”
    “Okay. We’ll divide by alpha. We should…I don’t like her,” Eve said suddenly. “Didn’t like her pretty much from the jump. Didn’t like her when I stood watching her on the security screen as she walked into the house the morning of.”
    “With her well-groomed hair and coordinating wardrobe,” Roarke remembered.
    “Yeah. It was…” Eve snapped her fingers. “But that screws objectivity, so I pushed it back. Thing is, it kept pushing back in again. It took me a while—well, not that much while, but some—to figure out why.”
    Since he sensed something there, he sat on the corner of her desk. “All right. Tell me why.”
    “Don’t get bent over it.”
    He angled his head. “Why would I?”
    “She reminds me of Magdelana.”
    He said nothing for a moment, just watched her face, then rising, he walked over to the murder board to study Ava’s.
    “Not just the high-class blonde thing,” Eve began.
    “No,” he said quietly, “not just.” He thought of Magdelana, the woman he’d once cared for. The woman who’d betrayed him, and on the return trip had done everything in her power to hurt Eve and chip away at their marriage.
    “Not just,” he repeated. “They’re both users, aren’t they? Manipulators with a wholly selfish core polished over with sophistication and style. Very much the same type. You’re right about that.”
    “Okay.”
    Hearing the relief in her voice, he looked over at her. “Did you think I’d be annoyed or upset by the comparison?”
    “Maybe some, maybe more if I’d finished it out and said that because she reminds me of Magdabitch, I’m going to experience a tingly, even orgasmic satisfaction by bringing her down.”
    “I see. Revenge by proxy.”
    “She deserves the cage on her own merits or lack thereof. But yeah, maybe some element of revenge by proxy.”
    Walking back, he leaned down, kissed the top of Eve’s head. “Whatever works. And now that you’ve pointed it out, I’ll enjoy some of that tingly satisfaction as well. Thanks for that.”
    “It’s small, petty, and probably inappropriate of us.”
    “Which will make it all the more orgasmic. Send over the file. I’ll just cop some of your coffee, then get started.”
    Whatever works, Eve thought again as he strolled into the kitchen. What really worked, was them.
    She ordered her unit to copy and send Roarke’s unit the names on file beginning with N surnames. Then she opened the first half of the file, took a quick scan.
    Plenty of little slaves and servants to pick from, she thought. A nice wide field of the vulnerable, the needy, the grateful. The bitch just had to keep circling until…
    “Wait. Whoa. Wait.”
    With coffee in hand, Roarke stepped back in. “That was fast.”
    “Wait, wait,