false
Betrayal in Death (In Death Series #12) by J. D. Robb, Nora Roberts, Nora D. Roberts
BUY IT NEW
- $7.99 Online Price$7.19 Member price(Save 10%)Limited Time Offer! Everyone receives the Member Price on books.
See Details
- Add To List uiAction=GetAllLists&page=List&pageType=list&ean=9780425178577&productCode=BK&maxCount=100&threshold=3
DELIVERY & GIFT DETAILS:
Usually ships within 24 hours
Delivery Time and Shipping Rates
Eligible for gift wrap & gift message.
Reserve it at BN.com & pick it up in 60 minutes at your local store.
Enter a zip code
(Paperback)
- Pub. Date: March 2001
- 368pp
- Sales Rank: 4,784
| More Formats | |
|---|---|
| Available in eBook | $6.39 |
| Audio - Abridged | $24.95 |
| Compact Disc - Unabridged, 10 CDs, 11 hours | $35.10 |
| MP3 on CD - Unabridged | $23.70 |
Buy it Used: 127 copies from $1.99 See All Available
Customers who bought this also bought
Product Details
- Pub. Date: March 2001
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Paperback, 368pp
- Sales Rank: 4,784
- Series: In Death Series, #12
- ISBN-13: 9780425178577
- ISBN: 0425178579
Synopsis
At the luxurious Roarke Palace Hotel, a maid walks into suite 4602 for the nightly turndown - and steps into her worst nightmare. A killer leaves her dead, strangled by a thin silver wire. He’s Sly Yost, a virtuoso of music and murder. A hit man for the elite. Lieutenant Eve Dallas knows him well. But in this twisted case, knowing the killer doesn’t help solve the crime. Because there’s someone else involved. Someone with a more personal motive. And Eve must face a terrifying possibility - that the real target may, in fact, be her husband Roarke…
Publishers Weekly
This 12th installment in Robb's (aka Nora Roberts) popular and critically praised futuristic cop series, set in the year 2059, finds Lt. Eve Dallas butting heads with the FBI in a race to take down a hired killer who appears to be targeting the employees of her wealthy hotelier husband, Roarke. Adding to Eve's suspicions is the sudden and unexpected visit by one of Roarke's boyhood chums from Dublin a shady character named Mick Connelly who used to run with Roarke when they were petty thieves and con men shortly after the first murder. Eve knows Mick is not the killer; in fact, she's tussled with the prime suspect, Sly Yost, before, and his signature modus operandi, what he would call "murder with class," is unmistakable. Sly's an anal sort with a taste for fine art, classical music, rape and strangulation by silver wire. But, master of disguise that he is, finding him is virtually impossible. Since the murders all take place at Roarke's hotel, Eve allows him to assist in the investigation, a stroke of creative genius on Robb's part that plays on the strengths that brought them together way back in book one (Naked in Death), and that serves to bring out Eve's softer side. So certain is Robb at maintaining an atmospheric setting for this well-paced and expertly rendered series, followers will feel as if they have gone home to the future. (Mar. 6) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
One of the most prolific and popular writers in the world, Nora Roberts (who also writes as her edgier alter-ego J. D. Robb) publishes multiple books a year. Not that it’s enough for her fans, who tear through her unconventional romances. With her trademark mix of fantasy, mystery, and romance, Roberts has created her own genre -- and romance fans are grateful for it!
More About the AuthorCustomer Reviews
- Reader Rating:
- Ratings: 30Reviews: 11
- See All Reviews
Betrayal In Deathby chiggers2u
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
June 21, 2009: I purchased the audio version of this book and was extremely satisfied. I have not been dissapointed with any book in this series.
great story lineby Anonymous
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
July 26, 2004: nora roberts is the best author i have read her in death series is gripping and you can imagine your self there in the story it is that vivid. i have read most of the series my newly aquired is that of visions in death. i try to get most from my library but it is very hard as she is a poular read with most people.
Fact File
Name:
Nora Roberts
Also Known As:
J. D. Robb; Sarah Hardesty; Jill March; Eleanor Marie Robertson (birth name)
Current Home:
Keedysville, Maryland
Date of Birth:
1950
Place of Birth:
Silver Spring, Maryland
Awards:
Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame, 1986; Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, 1991; Romance Writers of America Centennial Award, 1997; Romance Writers of America Golden Medallion Award (seven times); Quill Award for Blue Smoke, 2006
Biography
Not only has Nora Roberts written more bestsellers than anyone else in the world (according to Publishers Weekly), she’s also created a hybrid genre of her own: the futuristic detective romance. And that’s on top of mastering every subgenre in the romance pie: the family saga, the historical, the suspense novel. But this most prolific and versatile of authors might never have tapped into her native talent if it hadn't been for one fateful snowstorm.
As her fans well know, in 1979 a blizzard trapped Roberts at home for a week with two bored little kids and a dwindling supply of chocolate. To maintain her sanity, Roberts started scribbling a story -- a romance novel like the Harlequin paperbacks she'd recently begun reading. The resulting manuscript was rejected by Harlequin, but that didn't matter to Roberts. She was hooked on writing. Several rejected manuscripts later, her first book was accepted for publication by Silhouette.
For several years, Roberts wrote category romances for Silhouette -- short books written to the publisher's specifications for length, subject matter and style, and marketed as part of a series of similar books. Roberts has said she never found the form restrictive. "If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations," she explained. "If this doesn't suit you, you shouldn't write it. I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure."
Roberts never violated the reader's expectations, but she did show a gift for bringing something fresh to the romance formula. Her first book, Irish Thoroughbred (1981), had as its heroine a strong-willed horse groom, in contrast to the fluttering young nurses and secretaries who populated most romances at the time. But Roberts's books didn't make significant waves until 1985, when she published Playing the Odds, which introduced the MacGregor clan. It was the first bestseller of many.
Roberts soon made a name for herself as a writer of spellbinding multigenerational sagas, creating families like the Scottish MacGregors, the Irish Donovans and the Ukrainian Stanislaskis. She also began working on romantic suspense novels, in which the love story unfolds beneath a looming threat of violence or disaster. She grew so prolific that she outstripped her publishers' ability to print and market Nora Roberts books, so she created an alter ego, J.D. Robb. Under the pseudonym, she began writing romantic detective novels set in the future. By then, millions of readers had discovered what Publishers Weekly called her "immeasurable diversity and talent."
Although the style and substance of her books has grown, Roberts remains loyal to the genre that launched her career. As she says, "The romance novel at its core celebrates that rush of emotions you have when you are falling in love, and it's a lovely thing to relive those feelings through a book."
Good to Know
Roberts still lives in the same Maryland house she occupied when she first started writing -- though her carpenter husband has built on some additions. She and her husband also own Turn the Page Bookstore Café in Boonsboro, Maryland. When Roberts isn't busy writing, she likes to drop by the store, which specializes in Civil War titles as well as autographed copies of her own books.
Roberts sued fellow writer Janet Dailey in 1997, accusing her of plagiarizing numerous passages of her work over a period of years. Dailey paid a settlement and publicly apologized, blaming stress and a psychological disorder for her misconduct.
Feature Interview
Excerpted from the March/April 2002 issue of Book magazine.One afternoon when Nora Roberts was four, her two oldest brothers broke into a violent argument while they were baby-sitting her. "I peeked out of the bedroom, and they're beating the hell out of each other," Roberts says. Then her mother walked in, with a grocery bag in each hand. "One bag goes here, one bag goes there, she steps right in the middle of these two six-foot guys and she goes, boom, bam. Two backhands. And both of them go, 'Maaaaaawwwmm.' I thought right then, There's the power. She's the power."
Elly, as her family still calls her, the youngest of five and the only girl, was a quick study. "She bossed her brothers around," says her mother, Eleanor; today, "her brothers have got her on a throne." Roberts reigns over more than her family, which now includes her husband and two sons. Since her writing debut in 1981, she has helped lead American romance away from its clichés of simpering heroines and heroic rapists toward more complex characters and contemporary, multifaceted plots. Of course, sex -- passionate, tender, delayed, avoided, forced, in castles, in fields, in treetops -- continues to be a central hook. And often, the prose remains purple; Roberts herself has a propensity for phrases like "she rocked them both toward madness." But the genre with which her name is synonymous is one -- the only one -- that always puts women at the center of the universe.
***
Two Mercedes -- a Kompressor convertible and an M-Class SUV -- and a Chrysler PT Cruiser are parked outside the rural Keedysville, Maryland, home Roberts shares with her husband. Inside, several gauzy photographs of nude models hang above the bed in the ground-floor master bedroom, and a rendition of the Casablanca movie poster -- with the couple painted in as Ilsa and Rick -- is prominent above the fireplace. Three ebullient dogs and one gnarled old mutt track in dirt and litter the house with deer bones that they've found outside.
Since moving here twenty-nine years ago, Roberts has divorced her first husband, raised their two sons (Dan, now twenty-nine, lives with his wife down the lane; Jason, twenty-six, is just over an hour away) and remarried. She has also added on a few rooms and an indoor pool; a few years ago, she bought twenty adjoining acres so she could continue to shoo deer out of the garden in her underwear without worrying about neighbors. She and her husband own a tiny bookshop in nearby Boonsboro, but Roberts spends most of her time in an upstairs office where she types, smokes and drinks diet colas eight hours a day, five days a week. It's a routine that's produced an average of seven books a year since 1981, many of them bestsellers.
Roberts knows that her work is commercial fiction and doesn't lose any sleep waiting for National Book Award nominations. The high-art literary tradition isn't what's gotten her to where she is; what has is her "real talent for storytelling," as author Jennifer Crusie (Fast Women; Welcome to Temptation) says, and a commensurate skill with plot and pacing. Readers are pulled into her story lines (which often bounce from one continent to the next) and her well-drawn characters. Fans especially admire Roberts' tough, independent heroines. "When they fit with your own circumstances," says Elizabeth Mayfield, a database administrator from Norwalk, Connecticut, "you think, Gee, there's hope for me." Roberts, however, contends that she's not writing to provide role models for anyone. "I'm gonna tell a good, entertaining story," she says. "I'm not looking to change the world."
Roberts was born Eleanor Marie Robertson, and she grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, about an hour from where she lives now. Her father worked as a projectionist at the local movie theater and as a stagehand until 1964, when he started a lighting company -- which is where most of the Robertson family still works. Her mother ran the family. "Mom was a very strict disciplinarian," says Roberts' brother Buzz, who is now the president of his dad's company, "but as long as you followed the rules and were polite, you didn't have a problem." He says Nora had it a little easier than her brothers. "Us boys, we knew we were low men on the totem pole. Mom was tickled pink when she had Nora."
"Her daddy worked two jobs all his life, and during the Depression, I took in roomers," says Eleanor Robertson, who at eighty-five still lives in Silver Spring and is now secretary-treasurer of the company her husband started (Bernie Robertson died in 2000). "She knows how hard we worked to give them an education and a nice home." Roberts went to Catholic schools as a child and credits much of her success to the nuns who taught her -- the discipline and guilt in her formative years did her a lot of good.
In her sophomore year of high school, Roberts transferred to public school, where she met Ronald Aufdem-Brinke; she married him at seventeen, in 1968, right after graduation. The young couple moved to Keedysville and had a small house built in the woods. While Aufdem-Brinke worked at his father's sheet-metal business and later the Robertson lighting company, Roberts took care of their two children and the house. "Oh God, I had craft addictions," Roberts says, taking a drag on a cigarette. (She runs through a pack of Winstons at a pace that doesn't quite catch up to chain-smoking but runs several steps beyond casual.) "You name it, I made it. I macraméd two hammocks once. I did ceramics, I sewed the kids' clothes. I even put flies into overalls -- that is sick. I was a sick woman. I baked bread once a week. I canned jellies and made my own spaghetti sauce using my own tomatoes."
Sometime during the next decade (she calls the period her "Earth Mother" years), Roberts started to read Harlequin novels -- the short books were easy for her to finish while the kids were napping. During a blizzard in 1979, trapped inside with little more than her three- and six-year-old sons and a game of Candy Land, Roberts sat down with a pencil and wrote a manuscript of her own, a romance that she's since described as "very bad." In the next year and a half, while her kids were napping or at T-ball practice, she wrote at least six manuscripts in longhand. She submitted some of them to Harlequin, which at the time was using mainly British writers. Roberts didn't hear back, but her enthusiasm wasn't subdued. "I became a writing junkie," she says. Although she was rejected several times, she continued to write -- but started filing her manuscripts in a back drawer rather than submitting them.
Roberts then heard that a new romance publisher, Silhouette, was looking specifically for American writers, so she sent in her work. In 1980 she got a call from Nancy Jackson, a Silhouette editor, saying she had plucked one of Roberts' manuscripts -- Irish Thoroughbred, a slender love story about an Irish stable hand and her boss -- out of the slush pile. Jackson told Roberts she wanted to publish it. Eleanor Aufdem-Brinke changed her name to Nora Roberts because she says she assumed all romance authors used a nom de plume. The book "didn't make waves when it first came out," says Isabel Swift, her current editor, but it sold well in reprint. Roberts was hooked on the process, though, and published five more books the following year, eight the following and ten the year after that.
Roberts hit it big in 1985 when she wrote the first of her MacGregor family series, Playing the Odds. The book, which focuses on a matchmaking Scottish patriarch and his brood, became an immediate bestseller. Romance readers began associating the name Nora Roberts with multigenerational sagas: In addition to the MacGregors, she has written about the Donovans, a modern family of Irish magicians; the Calhouns, a family of pigheaded sisters in Maine; and the Stanislaskis, tempestuous Ukrainian immigrants.
***
From the beginning, Roberts' heroines were not content to wear aprons or take dictation. In Irish Thoroughbred, though Roberts' heroine was young (early twenties) and virginal (well, she was a virgin), she was a horse groomer with an independent streak. Roberts wasn't alone in giving her female characters more authority in the workforce; other American romance authors -- like Jayne Ann Krentz, Sandra Brown and Elizabeth Lowell -- were doing the same. "I think one of the great things the American writer has brought to the romance novel," Krentz says, "is a modern interpretation of women's roles and women's values." Author Janet Evanovich adds, "The genre reflects the increased power and opportunity afforded today's women. We see more variety in the genre in terms of heroine age and occupation. And today's heroine is stronger, more self-reliant. Of course, Nora was always ahead of the pack. Her heroines were always strong."
Rebecca Sullivan, a heroine in Roberts' latest romantic suspense, Three Fates, is a quintessential Nora Roberts lead: She runs the family business (giving boat tours off the western coast of Ireland) and engineers the search for the family's lost treasure. Rebecca's a smart, capable lady with a sense of humor. In the course of the story, she falls in love with a computer expert who eventually marries her -- the book ends in Ireland with the assumption that the husband will help her with the business. "I'm not interested in telling stories about weak women," Roberts says. "Or if they're weak, I want to show how they grow and how they become strong. I'm not writing about Cinderella sitting waiting for her prince to come and take her away. She'll get out of it herself. The prince is a bonus, a completion, another element -- but it's not the answer to all of her problems."
***
Perched on a stool next to her kitchen counter, Roberts doesn't look like a purveyor of dreams. She could be any of a million women, taking a break from a million jobs, looking toward the end of a million days. Right now, her husband is outside, working in the yard before heading to town. Later on, he'll pick up groceries, and Nora will cook dinner; favorites are pasta with red sauce or Cajun chicken. Around 7:30, the two will retire for the evening, probably settling down for a while in front of the television -- it's Thursday, so they'll probably tune in for some of Friends or ER. And that's a typical end to a typical day for the world's most popular romance author. "I always wonder if they asked Agatha Christie if she was homicidal," Roberts says with a laugh. "I don't have a romantic lifestyle."
Still, she says, it's romance books she turns to when she wants to escape reality, so maybe the queen of the realm is, finally, one of its true citizens as well. Roberts, after all, spends her days holed up in her office, writing, researching and investigating the backgrounds for her books. She loves it, she says, but it's work. And when she's done, she's done. "When I read for pleasure," she says, "give me a story."
If today's romance is escapism, millions of its readers would argue that it is also girl-power between pastel covers: adventures that belong to characters who are at their strongest -- and sexiest -- because they are women. So Roberts essentially shrugs off the contempt reserved for romance novels as sexist and ignorant. Still, she recognizes that the genre carries a lot of baggage -- even she finds herself sneaking reads when she's out in public. A lot of the embarrassment, she says, has to do with the way the books look. "It's mostly hard for me when she's falling out of her dress, and he has his mouth on her tit," Roberts says, describing what she calls "nursing mother" covers. She taps her lighter against the counter and rolls her eyes. "To sit on an airplane and read that?"
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
J. D. Robb, the pseudonymous mask for No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts, adds yet another twist to her highly popular futuristic series featuring the crime-fighting, lovemaking duo of police lieutenant Eve Dallas and her sexy, crime-savvy husband, Roarke.
It's spring in the year 2059 when Eve Dallas arrives at the scene of a horrific murder. A young maid working in the upscale Roarke Palace Hotel has been brutally beaten, raped, and garroted. It doesn't take long for Eve and her colleagues to identify the killer, who rented the room in his own name and made no attempt to cover his tracks: He's Sylvester Yost, a professional hit man with a resume that covers nearly 50 years and dozens of murders. But finding Yost is another matter. That task becomes even more urgent when a second murder victim is found bearing Yost's trademark handiwork. This time it's a man who works for a publishing company that, like the hotel, is owned by Roarke.
When comparing the two murders, the only common denominator Eve can find, other than the killer, is Roarke. Fearing he is the killer's ultimate target, she steps up her investigation, which brings a couple of proprietary FBI agents down on her case. As usual, Roarke manages to provide some assistance to Eve, even while he's managing his empire and trying to coordinate a billion-dollar auction at his hotel. Also as usual, this collaboration ignites plenty of sparks between the two of them, some of them romantic, others not. Adding fuel to the fire is Roarke's unexpected house guest, a master thief and con artist who knows Roarke from the days when they were young lads running a few savvy cons of their own. Eve is far from pleased at this reminder of Roarke's colorful past, but she has little time to worry about it as she races against the clock and the persistently interfering feds, hoping to stop Yost before he kills again.
The witty repartee between Robb's characters is as entertaining and attention-grabbing as are her many plot twists. Plus, Eve's gutsy, no-holds-barred attitude makes for a refreshing change of pace. The pace is snappy, the story line sizzles, and while the crime descriptions tend to be rather dark and gritty, there's plenty of comic relief to balance things out. Death should always be this enjoyable. (Beth Amos)
Beth Amos is the author of several novels, including Second Sight, Eyes of Night, and Cold White Fury.
From the Publisher
At the luxurious Roarke Palace Hotel, a maid walks into suite 4602 for the nightly turndown - and steps into her worst nightmare. A killer leaves her dead, strangled by a thin silver wire. He’s Sly Yost, a virtuoso of music and murder. A hit man for the elite. Lieutenant Eve Dallas knows him well. But in this twisted case, knowing the killer doesn’t help solve the crime. Because there’s someone else involved. Someone with a more personal motive. And Eve must face a terrifying possibility - that the real target may, in fact, be her husband Roarke…
Publishers Weekly
This 12th installment in Robb's (aka Nora Roberts) popular and critically praised futuristic cop series, set in the year 2059, finds Lt. Eve Dallas butting heads with the FBI in a race to take down a hired killer who appears to be targeting the employees of her wealthy hotelier husband, Roarke. Adding to Eve's suspicions is the sudden and unexpected visit by one of Roarke's boyhood chums from Dublin a shady character named Mick Connelly who used to run with Roarke when they were petty thieves and con men shortly after the first murder. Eve knows Mick is not the killer; in fact, she's tussled with the prime suspect, Sly Yost, before, and his signature modus operandi, what he would call "murder with class," is unmistakable. Sly's an anal sort with a taste for fine art, classical music, rape and strangulation by silver wire. But, master of disguise that he is, finding him is virtually impossible. Since the murders all take place at Roarke's hotel, Eve allows him to assist in the investigation, a stroke of creative genius on Robb's part that plays on the strengths that brought them together way back in book one (Naked in Death), and that serves to bring out Eve's softer side. So certain is Robb at maintaining an atmospheric setting for this well-paced and expertly rendered series, followers will feel as if they have gone home to the future. (Mar. 6) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
The year is 2059, the place, New York City, and Lieutenant Eve Dallas returns with her attractive group of eager colleagues to solve a series of brutal murders that seem targeted at her wealthy and charismatic husband, Roark. First, a maid in one of his hotels is raped and strangled, then a friend of Roark's, an athletic young editor, is similarly treated. Oddly, the murderer is identified immediately as an expensive hit man, yet clues to his whereabouts are not forthcoming. Furthermore, Dallas must deal with abrasive and uncooperative FBI agents who have been tracking the murderer for years unsuccessfully. Reader Susan Ericksen is given much scope for her talent with the variety of personalities and nationalities that she is called upon to portray. She does an excellent job with the comic moments as well as with the tense ones; listeners will fluctuate between laughter and chills throughout. Recommended for all mystery collections. Juleigh Muirhead Clark, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Lib., Colonial Williamsburg Fdn., VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Internet Book Watch
In May 2059, New York Police Department Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her spouse wealthy billionaire Roarke take a rest between cases. Since Roarke worked both sides of the law, he has enemies from his past wanting him dead as well as some new foes who also prefer he no longer breathes. Thus, he is not surprised when a paid assassin brutalizes, rapes, and kills an employee in one of his hotels, but he personalizes the ugly incident.Eve is assigned as primary investigator on the case. When a second homicide occurs with the victim being a close friend of Roarke's, he and Eve conclude that someone wants to hurt and distract the businessman. The police know the identity of the killer, but have no earthly idea where the hitman is hiding. However, the dynamic duo knows the main event is coming soon.Not since the "silver age" of Neal Adam's Green Lantern and Green Arrow has a crime duo won the hearts of readers as Eve and Roarke have. The current tale contains a well-executed mystery with many puzzle pieces that need placing together to obtain the full picture of the plot. Although the who-done-it remains the primary story line, the love story subplot between the lead protagonists provides cross genre appeal to romantic suspense fans. The audience will find this exciting novel impossible to put down until all the questions are answered.
Loading...Product Details
- Pub. Date: March 2001
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Paperback, 368pp
- Sales Rank: 4,784
- Series: In Death Series, #12
- ISBN-13: 9780425178577
- ISBN: 0425178579
Table of Contents
Read an Excerpt
Chapter OneIn death there were many layers. Violent death added more. It was her job to sift through those layers and find cause. In cause, to meet justice.
However the act of murder was committed, in cold blood or hot, she was sworn to pursue it to its root. And serve the dead.
For tonight, Lieutenant Eve Dallas of the New York City Police and Security Department wore no badge. It, along with her service weapon and communicator, was currently tucked in an elegant, palm-sized silk purse she considered embarrassingly frivolous.
She wasn't dressed like a cop, but wore a shimmering apricot-hued gown that skimmed down her long, slim body and was sliced in a dramatic V in the back. A slender chain of diamonds hung glittering around her neck. More sparkled at ears she recently, and in a weak moment, had been persuaded to have pierced.
Still more were scattered like raindrops through her short chop of brown hair and made her feel faintly ridiculous.
However glamorous the silk and diamonds made her appear, her eyes were all cop. Tawny brown and cool, they scanned the sumptuous ballroom, skimmed over faces, bodies, and considered security.
Cameras worked into the fancy plasterwork overhead were unobtrusive, powerful, and would provide full scope. Scanners would flag any guests or staff who happened to be carrying concealeds. And among the staff, weaving their way through the chatter to offer drinks, were a half-dozen trained security personnel.
The affair was invitation only, and those invitations carried a holographic seal that was scanned at the door.
The reason for these precautions, and others, was an estimated five hundred and seventy-eight million dollars' worth of jewelry, art, and memorabilia currently on dazzling display throughout the ballroom.
Each display was craftily arranged for impact and guarded by individual sensor fields that measured motion, heat, light, and weight. If any of the guests or staff had sticky fingers and attempted to remove so much as an earring from its proper place, all exits would close and lock, alarms would sound, and a second team of guards hand-selected from an elite NYPSD task force would be ordered to the scene to join the private security.
To her cynical frame of mind, the entire deal was a foolishly elaborate temptation for too many, in too large an area, in too public a venue. But it was tough to argue with the slick setup.
Then again, slick was just what she expected from Roarke.
"Well, Lieutenant?" The question, delivered with a whiff of amusement in a voice that carried the misty air of Ireland, drew her attention to the man.
Then again, everything about Roarke drew a woman's attention.
His eyes, sinfully blue, set off a face that had been sculpted on one of God's best days. As he watched her, his poet's mouth, one that often made her want to lean in for just one quick bite, curved, one dark brow lifted, and his long fingers skimmed possessively down her bare arm.
They'd been married nearly a year, and that sort of casually intimate stroke could still trip her pulse.
"Some party," she said and turned his smile into a fast, devastating grin.
"Yes, isn't it?" With his hand still lightly on her arm, he scanned the room.
His hair was black as midnight and fell nearly to his shoulders into what she thought of as his wild Irish warrior look. Add to that the tall, tautly muscled build in elegant black-tie, and you had a hell of a package.
Obviously a number of other women in the room agreed. If Eve had been the jealous type, she'd have been forced to kick some major ass just for the hot and avaricious looks aimed in her husband's direction.
"Satisfied with the security?" he asked her.
"I still think holding this business in a hotel ballroom, even your hotel ballroom, is risky. You've got hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of junk sitting around in here."
He winced a little. "Junk is not quite the descriptive phrase we hope for in our publicity efforts. Magda Lane's collection of art, jewelry, and entertainment memorabilia is arguably one of the finest to ever go to auction."
"Yeah, and she'll rake in a mint for it."
"I certainly hope so, as for handling the arrangements for security, display, and auction Roarke Industries gets a nice piece of the pie."
He was scanning the room himself, and though he was anything but a cop, he studied, measured, and watched even as his wife had.
"Her name's enough to push the bidding far above actual value. I think we're safe in predicting that twice the actual value will make up that pie by the end of things."
Boggling, Eve thought. Boggling. "You're figuring people will choke out half a billion for somebody else's things?"
"Conservatively and before the sentiment factors in."
"Jesus Christ." She could only shake her head. "It's just stuff. Wait." She held up a hand. "I forgot who I was talking to. The king of stuff."
"Thank you, darling." He decided not to mention he had his eye on a few bits of that stuff for himself, and his wife.
He lifted a finger. Instantly a server bearing a tray of champagne in crystal flutes was at his side. Roarke removed two, handed one to Eve.
"Now, if you've finished eyeballing my security arrangements, perhaps you could enjoy yourself."
"Who says I wasn't?" But she knew she was here not as a cop, but as the wife of Roarke. That meant mingling, rubbing shoulders. And the worst of human tortures in her estimation: small talk.
Because he knew her mind as thoroughly as he knew his own, he lifted her hand, kissed it. "You're so good to me."
"And don't you forget it. Okay." She took a bracing sip of champagne. "Who do I have to talk to?"
"I think we should start with the woman of the hour. Let me introduce you to Magda. You'll like her."
"Actors," Eve muttered.
"Biases are so unattractive. In any case," he began as he led her across the room, "Magda Lane is far more than an actor. She's a legend. This marks her fiftieth year in the business, one which often chews up and spits out those who dream of it. She's outlasted every trend, every style, every change in the movie industry. It takes more than talent to do that. It takes spine."
It was as close as Eve had ever seen him to having stars in his eyes. And that made her smile. "Stuck on her, are you?"
"Absolutely. When I was a boy in Dublin, there was a particular evening where I needed a bit of a dodge off the streets. Seeing as I had several lifted wallets and other pocket paraphernalia on my person and the garda on my heels."
The wide mouth she'd forgotten to dye for the evening sneered. "Boys will be boys."
"Well, be that as it may, I happened to duck into a theater. I was eight or thereabouts and resigned myself to sitting through some costume drama I imagined would bore me senseless. And there sitting in the dark, I had my first look at Magda Lane as Pamela in Pride's Fall."
He gestured toward the display of a sweeping white ballgown that shimmered under a firestorm of icy stones. The droid replica of the actor turned in graceful circles, dipped into delicate curtsies, fluttered a sparkling white fan.
"How the hell did she walk around in that?" Eve wondered. "Looks like it weighs a ton."
He had to laugh. It was so Eve to see the inconvenience rather than the glamour. "Nearly thirty pounds of costume, I'm told. I said she had spine.
In any case, she was wearing that the first time I saw her on screen. And for an hour I forgot where I was, who I was, that I was hungry or that I'd likely get a fist in the face when I got home if the wallets weren't plump enough. She drew me out of myself. That's a powerful thing."
He avoided interruption by simply aiming a smile or wave in the direction of those who called him. "I went back and saw Pride's Fall four times that summer, and paid for it. Well, paid the fee once anyway. After, whenever I needed to be drawn out of myself, I went to the movies."
She was holding his hand now, well able to visualize the boy he'd been, sitting in the dark, transported away by the images flickering on screen. At the age of eight he'd discovered another world outside the misery and violence of the one he lived in.
And at eight, she thought, Eve Dallas had been born to a young girl too broken to remember anything that had come before.
Wasn't it almost the same thing?
Eve recognized the actor. Roarke didn't really go to the movies these days-unless you counted his private theaters-but he had copies on disc of thousands of them. She'd watched more screen in the past year with him than she had in the previous thirty.
Magda Lane wore red. Screaming siren red that painted a stunning and voluptuous body like a work of art. At sixty-three she was just dipping into middle age. From what Eve could see, she was approaching it with a snarl. This was nobody's matron.
Her hair was the color of ripening wheat and tumbled to her bare shoulders in snaking spirals. Her lips, full and lush as her body, were painted the same bold red as her gown. Skin, pale as milk, was unlined and highlighted by a beauty mark just at the outer point of one slashing eyebrow.
Beneath those contrastingly dark brows were eyes of fierce and brilliant green. They landed on Eve coolly, a female to female measuring, then shifted to Roarke and warmed like suns.
She was surrounded by people, and simply shot them a careless smile, then stepped out of the circle, hands outstretched.
"My God, but you're gorgeous."
Roarke took her hands, kissed both. "I was about to say the same. You're stunning, Magda. As ever."
"Yes, but that's my job. You were just born that way. Lucky bastard. And this must be your wife."
"Yes. Eve, Magda Lane."
"Lieutenant Eve Dallas." Magda's voice was like fog, low and full of secrets. "I've been looking forward to meeting you. I was devastated I couldn't make the wedding last year."
"It seems to have stuck anyway."
Magda's brows rose, then the eyes beneath them began to glitter with appreciation. "Yes, it has. Go away, Roarke. I want to acquaint myself with your lovely and fascinating wife. And you're too much of a distraction."
Magda waved him away with one slim hand. Light shot off the diamond on her ring finger like the tail of a comet before she tucked her arm companionably through Eve's.
"Now, let's find someplace where a dozen people won't insist on speaking to us. Nothing more tedious than idle conversation, is there? Of course, you're thinking that's just what you're about to be trapped into with me, but I'll assure you I don't intend to make our conversation idle. Shall I start off by telling you one of my own regrets is that your ridiculously attractive husband is young enough to be my son?"
Eve found herself sitting at a table in the back corner of the ballroom. "I don't see why that would have stopped either of you."
Laughing delightedly Magda snagged fresh flutes of champagne, then shooed the server away. "My own fault. I made a rule never to take a lover more than twenty years older or younger. Stuck with it, too. More's the pity.
But . . ." She paused to sip, studying Eve. "It isn't Roarke I want to talk about, but you. You're exactly what I thought he'd fall for when his time came around."
Eve choked on her wine, blinked. "You're the first person who's ever said that." She struggled with herself a moment, then gave up. "Why do you say it?"
"You're quite attractive, but he wouldn't have been blinded by your looks.
You find that amusing," Magda noted, nodding in approval. "Good. A nice sense of humor's essential when dealing with any man, but particularly one of Roarke's nature."
They were solid looks though, Magda mused. Neither glamorous nor staggering, but solid with good bones, clear eyes, and an interesting dent in the center of a strong chin.
"Your looks might have attracted him, but they didn't snare him. I wondered about that as Roarke has an interest, and an affection, for beauty. So I, having some interest and affection of my own in the man, followed the media on you."
Eve angled her head, a kind of challenge. "Do I pass?"
Amused, Magda ran one scarlet-tipped finger around the rim of her flute, then lifted it to equally bold lips, and sipped. "You're a smart, determined woman who doesn't merely stand on her own feet but uses them to boot whatever asses need booting. You're a physical woman with brains, and a look in your eyes when you glance around an event like this that says: 'What a bunch of nonsense. Haven't we all got something better to do?'"
Intrigued, Eve studied Magda in turn. More here, she realized, than some fluff piece who liked to play make-believe. "Are you a shrink or an actor?"
"Either profession requires solid elements of both." She paused again, sipped again. "My guess is you didn't-don't-give a hang about his money.
That would have intrigued him. I can't see you falling at his feet either.
If you had, he'd likely have scooped you up and played with you awhile. But he wouldn't have kept you."
"I'm not one of his damn toys."
"No, you're not." This time Magda lifted her glass in a toast. "He's madly in love with you, and it's lovely to see. Now, tell me about being a policewoman. I've never played one. I have played women who go outside the law to protect what's theirs, but never one who works within it to protect others. Is it exciting?"
"It's a job. It has its ups and downs like any."
"I doubt like any. You solve murders. We . . . civilians, I suppose you'd say, can't help but find the process, including the murder, fascinating."
"That's because you're not the one who's dead."
"Exactly." Magda threw back her magnificent head and roared with laughter. "Oh, I like you! I'm so glad. You don't want to talk about your work, I understand. People from outside think mine is exciting, glamorous. When what it is . . . is a job, with its ups and downs like any."
"I've seen a lot of your work. I think Roarke has everything you've done on disc. I like the one where you're a scheming conwoman who falls for her mark. It's fun."
"Bait and Switch. Yes, it was. Chase Conner was my leading man in that, and I fell for him, too. It was also fun, while it lasted. I'm auctioning off the costume I wore in the cocktail party scene."
She glanced around the ballroom, scanning her things, things that had once been vital to her, with amusement. "It should bring a good price, and help get The Magda Lane Foundation for the Performing Arts off the ground. So many bits and pieces of a career, of a life, going on the block before much longer."
She turned, studying a display arranged like a lady's boudoir, with a shimmering nightgown, an open jewelry case where chains and stones spilled gloriously onto a gleaming dressing table. "That's a lovely bit of female business, isn't it?"
"Yeah, if you're into that."
Magda swiveled back, smiling. "At one time I was desperately into that.
But, a smart woman doesn't survive a fickle career like acting without regularly reinventing herself."
"What are you now?"
"Yes, yes," Magda murmured. "I like you very much. People ask me why I'm doing this, why I'm giving so much of it up. Do you know what I say?"
"No, what?"
"That I intend to live and to work for a great deal longer. Time enough to collect more." She gave that lusty laugh again, turned back to Eve. "That's true enough, but there's more. The Foundation's a dream of mine, a cherished one. Acting's been good to me. I want to pass it on, while I'm still around and young enough to enjoy it all. Grants, scholarships, facilities for all that new blood to swim in. It pleases me that a young actor or director might get his or her start from a break given in my name.
That's vanity."
"I don't think so. I think it's wisdom."
"Oh. Now I like you even more. Ah, there's Vince, giving me the eye. My son," Magda explained. "He's handling the media and assisting in the security for this extravaganza. Such a demanding young man," she added, signaling across the room. "God knows where he got that particular trait.
So that's my cue to get back to work." She rose. "I'm going to be in New York for the next several weeks. I hope we'll see each other again."
"That would be nice."
"Ah, Roarke, perfect timing." Magda turned to beam at him as he walked to the table. "I have to abandon your delightful wife as duty calls. I expect an invitation to dinner, very soon, so I can spend more time with both of you, and indulge in one of those spectacular meals your man arranges. What is his name?"
"Summerset," Eve said, lip curling.
"Yes, of course. Summerset. Soon," she said, and kissed both Roarke's cheeks before gliding off.
"You were right. I did like her."
"I was sure you would." As he spoke, he began to guide her smoothly toward the exit. "I'm sorry to interrupt your evening off, but we have some trouble."
"A problem with security? Somebody try to duck out with a pocketful of baubles?"
"No. It's nothing to do with theft, and everything to do with murder."
Her eyes changed. Woman to cop. "Who's dead?"
"One of the housekeeping staff, from what I'm told." He kept her arm, steered her toward a bank of elevators. "She's in the south tower, forty-sixth floor. I don't know the details," he said shortly before she could interrupt. "My head of hotel security just informed me."
"Have the police been contacted?"
"I've contacted you, haven't I?" Eyes grim, he waited while the elevator shot up to the south tower. "Security knew I was on site, and that you were with me. It was decided to inform me-and you-first."
"Okay, don't get testy. We don't even know if it's a homicide yet. People are always yelling murder at unattended deaths. Mostly they're accidents or natural causes."
The minute she stepped off the elevator, her eyes narrowed to slits. Too many people in the hallway, including one hysterical female in a housekeeper's uniform, lots of guys in suits, and several people who were obviously guests who'd popped out of their rooms to see what the commotion was.
She reached into her foolish little purse, pulled out her badge, and held it up as she strode forward.
"NYPSD, clear this area. You people go back in your rooms, anyone with hotel security stand by. And somebody deal with this woman here. Who's security chief?"
"That would be me." A tall lean man with a coffee-colored complexion and mirror-sheened bald head stepped forward. "John Brigham."
"Brigham, you're with me." Since she didn't have her master code, she gestured to the door.
When he opened it, she stepped through, scanned the parlor area.
Sumptuous, chock-full of fancy furniture, including a full bar setup. And tidy as a church. The privacy screens on the generous windows were engaged, and the lights on full.
"Where is she?" Eve asked Brigham.
"Bedroom, to the left."
"Was the door open or closed as it is now when you arrived on scene?"
"It was closed when I got here. But I can't say it was that way before. Ms. Hilo from Housekeeping found her."
"That's the woman in the hall?"
"That's right."
"All right, let's see what we've got." She moved to the door, opened it.
Music poured out. The lights were on full here as well, and shone harshly on the body lying on the bed like a broken doll that had been tossed there by a spoiled child.
One arm was cocked at an impossible angle, her face was raw and blackened from a vicious beating, and her uniform skirt was hiked up to her waist.
The thin silver wire used to strangle her cut deep into her throat like a slender and deadly necklace.
"I think you can rule out natural causes," Roarke murmured.
"Yeah. Brigham, who's been in this suite besides you and the housekeeper since the body was found?"
"No one."
"Did you approach the body, touch it or anything other than the doors in any way?"
"I know the drill, Lieutenant. I was on the job-Chicago PSD, Anti-Crime Division. Twelve years. Hilo alerted me. She was screaming into her communicator. I got here within two minutes. She'd run back to her base on the fortieth floor. I entered the suite, came to the doorway here, determined by visual that the victim was deceased. Aware that Roarke was on site, and accompanied by you, I contacted him immediately, then secured the suite, sent for Hilo, and waited for your arrival."
"I appreciate it, Brigham. Since you were on the job, you know how many times a crime scene's corrupted by helping hands. Did you know the victim?"
"No. Hilo called her Darlene. Little Darlene. That's all I could get out of her."
Eve was scanning the scene, keeping herself back from it, and calculating the steps that hadled to murder. "You could do me a big favor and get Hilo somewhere quiet and private where she can't talk to anyone but you until I send for her. I'm going to call this in. I don't want to go into the room until I can seal up."
Brigham reached in his pocket, pulled out a minican of Seal-It. "I had one of my men bring this up. And a recorder," he added, handing her a collar clip. "Didn't figure you'd have a field kit with you."
"Good thinking. Do you mind sticking with Hilo for a while?"
"I'll take care of it. You can tag me when you want to talk to her.
Meanwhile, I'll leave a couple of men at the door until your crime scene unit gets here."
"Thanks." Idly she shook the can. "Why'd you go off the job?"
For the first time Brigham smiled. "My current employer made me a hell of an offer."
"I bet you did," Eve said to Roarke when Brigham stepped out. "He's got a cool head, good eyes." She started to spray her shoes, then decided she'd do a hell of a lot better without them. After stepping out of them, she sprayed her feet, her hands, passed off the can, then the clip, to Roarke.
"I'll need you to record the scene." She pulled out her communicator and called it in.
"Her name's Darlene French." Roarke read off the data he'd called up from his PPC. "She's worked here for just over a year. She was twenty-two."
"I'm sorry." She touched his arm, waited until he shifted those hot, angry eyes to hers. "I'm going to take care of her now. Record on, okay?"
"Yes, all right." He slipped the PPC back in his pocket, engaged the clip recorder.
"The victim is identified as Darlene French, female, age twenty-two, employed as housekeeper, The Roarke Palace Hotel. Apparent homicide, this location, Suite 4602. Present and acting as primary, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Also present and acting as temporary aide in recording this log, Roarke. Dispatch has been notified."
Now Eve approached the body. "The scene shows little sign of struggle, but the body shows bruising and lacerations consistent with a violent beating, particularly around the face. Blood spatter pattern indicates that beating
was administered while the victim was on the bed."
She glanced around the room again, noted the beeper on the floor just outside the bath.
"The right arm is broken," she continued. "Other bruising on the victim's thighs and vaginal area indicates premortem rape."
Gently, Eve lifted one of the limp hands. Wishing for microgoggles, she examined it carefully. "Got a little skin here," she murmured. "Managed to get a swipe in, didn't you, Darlene? Good for you. We have skin, possibly hair and fiber under victim's fingernails."
Meticulous, she moved up the body. The uniform was still buttoned over the breasts. "He didn't bother with much foreplay. Didn't rip at her clothes or bother to take them off her. Just beat her, broke her, raped her. A thin wire, silver in appearance, has been used, garrote-style, to strangle the victim. The ends of the wire were crossed in front, then twisted into small loops, indicate the killer strangled her face-to-face, while he was ranged over her, and she was down. Have you got this from all angles?" she asked Roarke.
"Yes."
With a nod, she lifted the victim's head, tilting her own so that she could see the back of the wire. "Get this," she ordered. "It might shift a little when we turn her. The wire's unbroken in the back, and the bleeding's minimal. He didn't use it until he'd finished the beating, until he'd finished the rape. Straddling her," she said, narrowing her eyes to bring it into focus. "One knee on either side. She's not putting up much of a fight, if any, by this point. He just slips the wire over her head, crosses the ends in front, then pulls, opposite directions. It wouldn't have taken long."
But she'd have bucked, her body instinctively struggling to throw off the weight, her throat burning from the wire and the trapped screams of pain and terror. Her heart would have pounded, and that storm-at-sea sound would have exploded in her ears at the lack of oxygen.
Heels drumming, hands clawing for air. Until the blood begins to burst in the head, behind the eyes, and that frantic heart surrenders.
Eve stepped back. There was little more she could do without a field kit.
"I need to know who this room is registered to. What the housekeeping routine is. I'll need to talk to Hilo," she added as she walked to the closet, glanced in. "And it would help for me to be able to interview anyone on staff who knew her well." She checked the dresser.
"No clothes. Not even a lint ball. A couple of used towels she might have dropped or simply set down on her way out of the bathroom. Was anyone registered to this room?"
"I'll find out. You'll want her next of kin."
"Yeah." Eve sighed. "Husband, if she had one. Boyfriends, lovers, exes.
Nine times out of ten that's what you find in a sexual homicide. But I think this is number ten. Nothing personal about this, nothing intimate or passionate. He wasn't mad, wasn't particularly involved."
"There's nothing intimate about rape."
"There can be," Eve corrected. And she knew that, better than most. "When there's knowledge between the assailant and the victim, any sort of history-even just a fantasy on the part of the assailant, it lends intimacy. This was cold. Just ram it in and get off. I bet he spent more time beating her than he did with the rape. Some men enjoy the first more.
It's their foreplay."
Roarke switched off the recorder. "Eve. Turn the case over to someone else."
"What?" She blinked herself back to the moment. "Why would I do that?"
"Don't put yourself through this." He touched her cheek. "It hurts you."
He was being careful, she noted, not to mention her father. The beatings, the rapes, the terror she'd lived with until she was eight.
"They all hurt if you let them," she said simply, and turned back to look at Darlene French. "I won't turn her over to someone else, Roarke. I can't. She's already mine."
—Reprinted from Betrayal in Death by J.D. Robb by permission of Berkley Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright (c) 2001 by J.D. Robb. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.