J. Robb - Big Jack

She liked alone.

When had she stopped liking alone?

God, it was irritating.

She dumped the cat on her desk, but he complained and bumped his head against her arm. “Okay, okay, give me a minute, will you?” Brushing the bulk of him aside, she picked up the memo cube.

“Hello, Lieutenant.” Roarke’s voice drifted out. “I thought this would be your first stop. I downloaded an audio of Gannon’s book as I couldn’t visualize you curling up with the paper version. See you when I get home. I believe there are fresh peaches around. Why don’t you have one instead of the candy bar you’re thinking about?”

“Think you know me inside out, don’t you, smart guy? Thinks he knows me back and forth,” she said to the cat. “The annoying part is he does.” She put the memo down, picked up the headset. Even as she started to slip it into place, she noted the message light blinking on her desk unit.

She nudged the cat aside again. “Just wait, for God’s sake.” She ordered up the message and listened once again to Roarke’s voice.

“Eve, I’m running late. A few problems that need to be dealt with.”

She cocked her head, studied his face on the screen. A little annoyed, she noted. A little rushed. He wasn’t the only one who knew his partner.

“If I get through them I’ll be home before you get to this in any case. If not, well, soon as possible. You can reach me if you need to. Don’t work too hard.”

She touched the screen as his image faded. “You either.”

She put on the headset, engaged, then much to the cat’s relief, headed into the kitchen. The minute she filled his bowl with tuna and set it down for him, he pounced.

Listening to the narrative of the diamond heist, she grabbed a bottle of water, took a peach as an afterthought, then walked through the quiet, empty house and down to the gym.

She stripped down, hanging her weapon harness on a hook, then pulled on a short skinsuit.

She started with stretches, concentrating on the audio and her form. Then she moved to the machine, programming in an obstacle course that pushed her to run, climb, row, cycle on and over various objects and surfaces.

By the time she started on free weights, she’d been introduced to the main players in the book and had a sense of New York and small-town America in the dawn of the century.

Gossip, crime, bad guys, good guys, sex and murder.

The more things changed, she thought, the more they didn’t.

She activated the sparring droid for a ten-minute bout and felt limber, energized and virtuous by the time she’d kicked his ass.

She snagged a second bottle of water out of the mini-fridge and, to give herself more time with the book, added a session for flexibility and balance.

She peeled off the skinsuit, tossed it in the laundry chute, then walked naked into the pool house. With the audio still playing in her ear, she dove into the cool blue water. After some lazy laps, she floated her way over to the corner and called for jets.

Her long, blissful sigh echoed off the ceiling.

There was home alone, she thought, and there was home alone.

When her eyes started to droop, she boosted herself out. She pulled on a robe, gathered up her street clothes, her weapon, and took the elevator up to the bedroom before she thought of missed opportunity.

She could have run naked through the house. She could have danced naked through the house.

She’d have to hold that little pleasure in reserve.

After a shower and fresh clothes, she went back to her office. She turned off the audio long enough to handle some details, to make new notes.

Top of her list were: Jack O’Hara, Alex Crew, William Young and Jerome Myers. Young and Myers had been dead for more than half a century, with their lives ending before the first act of the drama.

Crew had died in prison, and O’Hara had been in and out of the wind until his death fifteen years ago. So the four men who’d stolen the diamonds were dead. But people rarely got through life without connections. Family, associates, enemies.

A connection to a thief might consider himself entitled to the booty. A kind of reward, an inheritance, a payback. A connection to a thief might know how to gain access to a secured residence.

Blood tells, she thought. People often said that. She, for one, had reason to hope it wasn’t true. If it was true, what did that make her, the daughter of a monster and a junkie whore? If it was all a matter of genes, DNA, inherited traits, what chance was there for a child created by two people for the purpose of using her for profit? For whoring her. For raising her like an animal. Worse than an animal.

Locking her in the dark. Alone, nameless. Beating her. Raping her. Twisting her until at the age of eight she would kill to escape.

Blood on her hands. So much blood on her hands.

“Damn it. Damn it, damn it.” Eve squeezed her eyes shut and willed the images away before their ghosts could solidify into another waking nightmare.

Blood didn’t tell. DNA didn’t make us. We made ourselves, if we had any guts we made ourselves.

She pulled her badge out of her pocket, held it like a talisman, like an anchor. We made ourselves, she thought again. And that was that.

She laid her badge on the desk where she could see it if she needed to, then, reengaging the audio, she listened as she ordered runs on the names of her four thieves.

Thinking about coffee, she rose to wander into the kitchen. She toyed with programming a pot, then cut it back to a single cup. One of the candy bars she’d stashed began to call her name. And after all, she’d eaten the damn peach.

She dug it out from under the ice in the freezer bin. With coffee in one hand, frozen chocolate in the other, she walked back into the office. And nearly into Roarke.

He took one look, raised an eyebrow. “Dinner?”

“Not exactly.” He made her feel like a kid stealing treats. And she’d never been a kid with treats to steal. “I was just… shit.” She pulled off the headset. “Working. Taking a little break. What’s it to you?”

He laughed, pulled her in for a kiss. “Hello, Lieutenant.”

“Hello back. Ignore him,” she said when Galahad slithered up to meow and beg. “I fed him already.”

“Better, no doubt, than you fed yourself.”

“Did you eat?”

“Not yet.” He slid a hand around her throat, squeezed lightly. “Give me half that candy.”

“It’s frozen. You gotta wait it out.”

“This then.” He took her coffee, smirked at her scowl. “You smell… delicious.”

When the hand at her throat slid around to cup the nape of her neck, she realized he meant her, not the coffee. “Back up, pal.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “I’ve got agendas here. Since you haven’t eaten, why don’t we go try this Italian place I heard about downtown.”

When he said nothing, just sipped her coffee, studied her over the rim, she frowned. “What?”

“Nothing. Just making certain you really are my wife. You want to go out to dinner, sit in a restaurant where there are other people.”

“We’ve been out to dinner before. Millions of times. What’s the bfd?”

“Mmm-hmm. What does an Italian restaurant downtown have to do with your case?”

“Smarty-pants. Maybe I just heard they have really good lasagna. And maybe I’ll tell you the rest on the way because I sort of made reservations. I made them before I realized you’d be this late and might not want to go out. I can check it out tomorrow.”

“Is there time for me to have a shower and change out of this bloody suit? It feels as though I was born in it.”

“Sure. But I can cancel if you just want to kick back.”

“I could use some lasagna, as long as it comes with a great deal of wine.”