J. Robb - Bump in The Night

„What I’m getting at is… shit. Shit.“ She paced to his window, to the doorway, turned around again.

Rules of marriage – and hell, one of the benefits of it, she admitted – were that she could say to him what she might even find hard to say to herself.

„I have to live with so many of them.“ There was anger in her over it, and a kind of grief she could never fully explain. „They don’t always go away when you close the case, never go away if you leave a crack in it. I got a freaking army of dead in my head.“

„Whom you’ve defended,“ he reminded her. „Stood over, stood for.“

„Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean they’re going to say Thanks, pal,’ then shuffle off the mortal whatever.“

„That would be coil – and they’ve already done the shuffle before you get there.“

„Exactly. Dead. But they still have faces and voices and pain, at least in my head. I don’t need to think about one wifting around sending me messages from beyond. It’s too much, that’s all. It’s too much if I have to start wondering if there’s some spirit hovering over my shoulder to make sure I do the job.“

„All right.“

„That’s it?“

„Darling Eve,“ he said with the easy patience he could pull out and baffle her with at the oddest times. „Haven’t we already proven that you and I don’t have to stand on exactly the same spot on every issue? And wouldn’t it be boring if we did?“

„Maybe.“ Tension oozed back out of her. „I guess. I just never expected you’d take something like this and run with it.“

„Then perhaps I shouldn’t tell you that if I die first, I’m planning to come back to see you naked as often as possible.“

Her lips twitched, as he’d intended them to. „I’ll be old, with my tits hanging to my waist.“

„You don’t have enough tit to hang that low.“

She pursed her lips, looked down as if to check. „Gotta point. So are we good now?“

„We may be, if you come over here and kiss me. In payment for the insult.“

She rolled her eyes. „Nothing’s free around here.“ But she skirted the desk, leaned down to touch her lips to his.

The moment she did, he yanked her down into his lap. She’d seen it coming – she knew him too well not to – but was in the mood to indulge him.

„If you think I’m playing bimbo secretary and homy exec – “

„There were actually a few insults,“ he interrupted. „And you’ve reminded me that you’re going to get old eventually. I should take advantage of your youth and vitality, and see you naked now.“

„I’m not getting naked. Hey! Hey!“

„Feel you naked then,“ he amended, as his hands were already under her sweatshirt and on her breasts. „Good things, small packages.“

„Oh yeah? Is that what I should say about your equipment?“

„Insult upon insult.“ Laughing, he slid his hand around to her back to hold her more firmly in place. „You have a lot of apologizing to do.“

„Then I guess I’d better get started.“

She put some punch into the kiss, swinging around to straddle him. It would take some agility as well as vitality to pull off a serious apology in his desk chair, but she thought she was up to the job.

He made her feel so many things, all of them vital and immediate. The hunger, the humor, the love, the lust. She could taste his heat for her, his greed for her as his mouth ravished hers. Her own body filled with that same heat and hunger as he tugged at her clothes.

Here was his life – in this complicated woman. Not just the long, alluring length of her, but the mind and spirit inside the form. She could excite and frustrate, charm and annoy – and all there was of her somehow managed to fit against him, and make him complete.

Now she surrounded him, shifting that body, using those quick hands, then taking him inside her with a long, low purr of satisfaction. They took each other, finished each other, and then the purr was a laughing groan.

„I think that squares us,“ she managed.

„You may even have some credit.“

For a moment, she curled in, rested her head on his shoulder. „Ghosts probably can’t screw around in a desk chair.“

„Unlikely.“

„It’s tough being dead.“

At eight-fifteen in the morning, Eve was in her office at Central scowling at the latest sweeper and EDD reports.

„Nothing. They can’t find anything. No sign of electronic surveillance, holographic paraphernalia, audio, video. Zilch.“

„Could be it’s telling you that you had a paranormal experience last night.“

Eve spared one bland look for Peabody. „Paranormal my ass.“

„Cases have been documented, Dallas.“

„Fruitcakes have been documented, too. It’s going to be a family member. That’s where we push. That and whatever Hopkins may or may not have had in his possession that his killer wanted. Start with the family members. Let’s eliminate any with solid alibis. We’ll fan out from there.“

She glanced at her desk as her ‘link beeped – again – and, scanning the readout, sneered. „Another reporter. We’re not feeding the hounds on this one until so ordered. Screen all your incomings. If you get cornered, straight no comment, investigation is active and ongoing. Period.“

„Got that. Dallas, what was it like last night? Skin-crawly or wow?“

Eve started to snap, then blew out a breath. „Skin-crawly, then annoying that some jerk had played with me and made my skin crawl for a minute.“

„But kind of frigid, too, right? Ghost of Bobbie Bray serenading you.“

„If I believed it was the ghost of anyone, I’d say it was feeling more pissy than entertaining. What someone wants us to think is we’re not welcome at Number Twelve. Trying to scare us off. I’ve got Feeney’s notes on the report from EDD. He says a couple of his boys heard singing. Another swears he felt something pat his ass. Same sort of deal from the sweepers. Mass hysteria.“

„Digging in, I found out two of the previous owners tried exorcisms. Hired priests, psychics, parapsychologists, that kind of deal. Nothing worked.“

„Gee, mumbo didn’t get rid of the jumbo? Why doesn’t that surprise me? Get on the ‘link, start checking alibis.“

Eve took her share, eliminated two, and ended up tagging Serenity Massey’s daughter in the woman’s Scotts-dale home.

„It’s not even seven in the morning.“

„I’m sorry, Ms. Sawyer.“

„Not even seven,“ the woman said testily, „and I’ve already had three calls from reporters, and another from the head nurse at my mother’s care center. Do you know a reporter tried to get to her? She has severe dementia – can barely remember me when I go see her – and some idiot reporter tries to get through to interview her over Bobbie Bray. My mother didn’t even know her.“

„Does your mother know she was Bobbie Bray’s daughter?“

The woman’s thin, tired face went blank. But it was there in her eyes, clear as glass. „What did you say?“

„She knows, then – certainly you do.“

„I’m not going to have my mother harassed, not by reporters, not by the police.“

„I don’t intend to harass your mother. Why don’t you tell me when and how she found out she was Bobbie’s daughter, not her sister.“

„I don’t know.“ Ms. Sawyer rubbed her hands over her face. „She hasn’t been well for a long time, a very long time. Even when I was a child…“ She dropped her hands now and looked more than tired. She looked ill. „Lieutenant, is this necessary?“

„I’ve got two murders. Both of them relatives of yours. You tell me.“

„I don’t think of the Hopkins family as relatives. Why would I? I’m sorry that man was killed because it’s dredged all this up. I’ve been careful to separate myself and my own family from the Bobbie phenomenon. Check, why don’t you? I’ve never given an interview, never agreed to one or sought one out.“