Chaos in Death

He could drown in her, he thought, every minute of every day he could lose himself in what she was, what she gave him, what she took. Now, with her warm and eager against him, he could drown himself, lose himself, and set his worry for her aside.

She didn’t want him to be careful, but he would take care, of her injuries at least. He gave her the controls, took his pleasure from the rise of her passion, from the sprint of her heartbeat under his lips.

When she took him in, she laid her hands on his face again. Her eyes looked deep into his. “You’re holding back. Don’t. Don’t hold back.

So he gripped her hips, careful to avoid the healing wound. And drove her as she drove him. Over the edge of that drowning pool.

With her brow resting on his, she fought to get her breath back. If anything twinged or ached, she didn’t feel it. All she felt was peace.

“Did you really have business downtown today?”

“You’re my business.”

She lifted her head, looked at him again. “You have to stop worrying.”

“That’s never going to happen. But I will stop hovering, which I’ve been doing a bit of. I love you beyond the telling of it, Eve, and what you went through—”

“We. We went through it.”

“All right, that’s true enough. What we went through doesn’t heal as quickly as a cut or a bruise.”

“Working on it, though. Okay?”

“Yes.” He pressed his lips to her healing shoulder. “Yes.”

“Okay. Well, now that I’m done with you, I’m going back to work.”

He sat where he was a moment as she got up, pulled the tank back on. “I feel so used. I find I like it.”

She rolled her injured shoulder, nodded in satisfaction. “Always more where that came from, ace.”

Eight

In her office she set up a second murder board while the cat sat on her sleep chair and watched her. Through the adjoining door she heard Roarke talking on the ’link. Probably dealing with business he’d postponed during the hovering mode.

Better now, she decided. Both of them were better now. Not just the sex, but the understanding that came with it—or out of it. And the normalcy that went hand in hand.

“Nothing normal about that,” she said as she studied the sketch. “Not a damn thing normal there.”

She circled around to her desk, noticed that her message light was activated. She called up the message, and actually jolted when Trina’s voice spiked into the room.

“Got the ugly bastard and the question. Could do the skin, hair, ears, nose, teeth, no prob. Could do the red eyes, but not so they look like red balloons coming out of the sockets. Couldn’t do the jaw, not that crooked. The answer is I couldn’t make anybody look like that, and I’m the best. You’ve got yourself a freakazoid, Dallas.

“You need a treatment—hair, face, body. The works. Mavis says she and Leonardo and Bella can come to your place for a visit on Saturday afternoon. I’ll be with them, and bring my gear.”

“Why,” Roarke wondered, “do you look more horrified by that than by the face on your board?”

“She’s coming. We have to stop her.”

“Don’t look at me. You could use a treatment.”

“Hey.” Though she was anything but vain, the careless comment gave her another jolt. “Insulting my hair, face, and body won’t get you banged again anytime soon.”

“You know very well I adore your hair, face, and body. You could use a massage, a relaxation treatment, and some downtime with good friends. In fact, so could I. I believe I’ll contact Trina and have her bring another operative. I’ll have a massage along with you.”

“Traitor.” She stomped to the kitchen for coffee, stomped back. “I’m not thinking about it. It’s not Saturday yet. Anything could happen.”

She wiped a hand through the air. “So. Everybody says it can’t be done. Not costuming, not physically. But it has to be one or the other. If it’s physical, maybe it’s long-term. Something he’s learned to live with. Peabody’s circus freak angle. And if that’s it, I eliminate everybody on my list.”

She scowled at her board. “Pisser.”

“Maybe one of your suspects hired the killings.”

“I’m going to run probabilities on that, but it rips up the theory—and it’s more than a theory—that the killer knew the vics. That it was personal.”

“Maybe he just takes pleasure in his work.”

“Crap. Crap. Crap. Somebody’s wrong. Either the medical experts or the cosmetic/costume experts. I like it better if the cosmetics are wrong, but I’ve got to work it both ways. I’ve got to go back to the beginning.”

“You can go back with me over a meal.”

It usually helped to do just that, talk it through with him, bounce theories and angles off him. But this time, she felt she only circled without getting any closer to the center.

“I don’t believe anyone looks like that,” she said. “And if I decided to believe somebody did, I can’t believe he’d stay off the grid. I ran that sketch through every program we’ve got and didn’t get a single hit.”

“Maybe it’s more recent.”

“The hypo-whatever, the multiple organ failure—and why isn’t he dead, if so—and whatever trauma would cause the lower part of his jaw to be so dislocated it’s nearly under his right ear? I don’t think so. If he was a hire, how did anybody know about him—because he’d have popped if he was a pro, even semipro. If he killed them for himself, why doesn’t anyone else know about him? Unless . . . maybe he’s a patient at the Center. Maybe he’s a kind of experiment they’re keeping on the down low.”

“As in botched?” Roarke twirled some seafood linguine on his fork. “As in mad science?”

“Mad, bad. Maybe. It’s something to poke at. Maybe the vics knew him from before, and found out he was there, confronted the mad-bad scientist, or threatened to tell people on the outside.”

“You don’t like that very much.”

“Not as much as one of them slapping gunk on their face, pumping themselves full of a Zeus cocktail, and whaling away, but it’s another route to take.”

She took it, working angles, running probabilities, reformulating, juggling through the pieces. When Roarke finally tugged her out of her chair hours later, she was more than ready to give it up for the night.

Clear her head, she decided. Let it simmer for a few hours.

Shortly after midnight, Eton Billingsly coded himself into Justin Rosenthall’s lab using a cloned key card and a recording he’d made of Justin’s voice.

He thought himself very clever.

It was time—past it—to prove to Arianna she was wasting her time and resources on Justin. The man was obsessed with this serum, and far too secretive about it in the last weeks.

Because he was getting nowhere, Billingsly concluded. The financial resources Justin wasted had become intolerable, particularly since they could and should be redirected to his own department. Once Arianna saw the truth, she’d rethink the relationship, and this wedding business.

He went directly to the main comp station, noted Justin had locked it down for the night.

But no problem, or very little of one. He’d worked with Justin long enough to know the man kept such things simple, so his assistant and interns could access data when needed.

Justin called it teamwork. Billingsly called it naivete. One day one of those underlings would steal data and take credit for whatever advance Justin managed to stumble onto.

But in this case, it simply made the job easier.

He tried various names as passwords, working patiently. At one point he thought he heard a sound, froze, turned to look around. Then shook his head at his own foolishness.