J. Robb - Innocent In Death

“Okay, then. I’m just heading out, going to swing by the school.”

“For?”

“Not sure. I just want another run-through on scene.”

His smile was easy and still made her insides curl. “Would you like some company?”

“What about satellite and planetoid domination?”

“I believe we have that under control. I’ll meet you there.”

“Good. Great.” In fact, it was perfect. “See you.”

“Lieutenant?”

“Damn stupid traffic,” she muttered as she fought her way into it. “What?”

“I love you.”

Okay, that was perfect. “I heard that somewhere. There’s a rumor going around I love you, too. Goddamn maxibus. Gotta go.”

She stuffed her ’link back in her pocket and enjoyed the armed combat of driving uptown. Once there, she scouted out then fought for a parking spot, another type of warfare, then walked the block and a half to the school.

He was getting out of a car when she was half a block away. Tall and rangy, long black coat billowing in the wind. As the car cruised off-he’d have arranged that so they could drive home together-he turned. Just as he’d done the very first time. Turned as if he sensed her, knew she was there, and latched those wild blue eyes on her face.

Just like the first time, the very first time, something inside her leaped.

It wasn’t her style, it wasn’t her way, but there were times, she thought, you just went with the moment. She strode right up to him, gripped the front of his coat in her fists and took his mouth with hers. Strong and hot and real.

He drew her in. He always drew her in. So they stood, drenched in the heat of the kiss while the cold blew around them, and New York’s irritable traffic bitched and complained.

“There she is,” he murmured.

“Yeah, here I am.” She drew back. “You’ve got a great mouth, ace. I happen to know your hands are pretty damn good, too. Get us in.”

He lifted his brow. “Are you suggesting I break into the school, Lieutenant?”

“I’m ordering it, if you’re standing as expert consultant, civilian.”

“I love when you pull rank. Stirs me up.”

“A wink and a smile stirs you up, pal. Give it a shot.”

He strolled up to the door, removing a small palm device from his inside coat pocket. After keying in a code, he aimed it at the security plate, engaged.

The locks gave up without a whimper of protest.

“Showoff.”

“Well, I did have a minute or so to look over the system last night. And in anticipation of orders, programmed a little bypass.” He opened the door, gestured smoothly. “After you.”

“Security?”

“Please.”

She shrugged, stepped in. “Interior security? Log-in scan?”

He glanced up at the scanner, keyed another code into his palm unit. “There you go. As you could have done the same with your master, I assume you wanted to test how simple it might be to slide into the place without authorization or detection.”

“Something like that. Say someone didn’t have your sort of education. How much trouble would it be to do what you just did?”

“More, certainly, as I was top of my class, so to speak. But it’s not a complicated system. Your average going-out-of-business-endlessly sale shop on Fifth would have better.”

He tapped her side and her sidearm under the coat. “However, the fact that you’re carrying is a bit more problematic. I’ll need a minute to shut down the weapon scan.”

“Go ahead.” That was just for convenience, she thought. It wasn’t smuggling in a stunner or blaster that concerned her.

“Scanner wouldn’t detect poison. Why should it?” she mused. “Pressure syringe, same thing. Killer or killers could have walked right in, at any time, with both.”

“You’re clear.” He stood a moment, scanning the area. “So what are we doing here?”

“Not sure.”

“Not, I imagine-unfortunately-to play teacher-keeps-the-naughty-student-after-school.”

“No,” she agreed. “Empty schools are even creepier than when they’re otherwise.” She slid her hands into her pockets as she walked.

“The ghosts of students past. Bloody prisons, really.”

She laughed, gave him a friendly elbow bump. “Yes!”

“Not that I spent a great deal of time inside places like this. At least not until Summerset took charge of me. He was rather insistent about attendance.”

“The state-run schools I was stuck in weren’t like this. None of this air of privilege, and the security was a hell of a lot tighter. I hated them.”

She stopped by an open classroom door. One of the cells-or so it had seemed to her-of the prison. “First few years I just felt scared and stupid, then later it was ‘Okay I get all this. When can I get out?’”

“And once you did, you jumped right into the police academy.”

“That was different.”

“Because it was a choice.” He touched her arm, just a brush of understanding. “And a need.”

“Yeah. And nobody in the academy gave a shit if you recognized a dangling participle or could write a brilliant essay on the sociopolitical ramifications of the Urban Wars. Then there was geometry. That’s sort of the thing, though.”

“Geometry’s the thing?”

“Lines and spaces and crap. Area, radius, blah, blah. It gave me a headache. But I’m thinking geometry. The distance, the angles, the shortest route between two points.” She started up the stairs.

“First vic’s classroom. That’s the-Shit, what’s the middle of the thing.”

“Which thing?”

“The middle of the space.” She lifted her hand, fashioned a space in the air.

“Well, that would depend, wouldn’t it? If you’re meaning a circle, it might be simply the center. Or, staying with a circle as the space, you may mean the central angle, and that’s the angle whose vertex is at the center.”

She stopped walking atvertex to stare at him.

“Then, as every central angle cuts the circle in two arcs, there’d be the minor arc-the smaller, which would be less than one hundred and eighty degrees, and the major, the larger, which is always more.”

“Jesus.”

He grinned, shrugged. “I always liked geometry.”

“Geek.” She scowled down the hallway. “Now I forgot what I was doing.”

“Or you may be after the tangent,” he said, unconcerned. “The point of tangency would be the point where a line intersects the circle at precisely one point, and one only.”

“Shut up.”

“You asked. Of course, your shape might be a triangle, say, and in that case-”

“I’m going to draw down on you in five flat seconds and stun you senseless.”

“You know what I liked even more than geometry? Finding the blind spots on the security cams,” he said. “Which, in fact, geometry helped me with. Then snagging some sweet young thing, and-”

He snagged her, whipped her around, back to the wall, and, grinning, kissed her lavishly.

His mouth managed just what geometry did. It fuzzed her mind.

“Work now, tonsil hockey later.”

“You romantic fool. Now then, I think I understand what you’re trying to figure out, and it’s more to do with intersections and betweenness.”

She actually had to press her fingers under her eye to still a twitch. “‘Betweenness’ can’t possibly be an actual word.”

“It is, in fact, in math language. And I think it would be your first victim’s classroom. That’s the point between the others. And also, I’d think, where your lines intersect, in the first theorem.”

“Let’s just leave the higher math out of it because it’s going to separate my mind from my body, and I’d rather save that for sex. Foster’s classroom.” She gestured. “Which was empty for at least fifty minutes, twice that day-before class and during his fourth period, giving the killer ample opportunity to doctor the go-cup, or simply replace it. I’m going to push on the replacement angle tonight. Maybe get lucky there. It was inscribed with his name. Anyway…”