rich wife. Too much pressure from Ziegler,” she speculated. “And he caved.”
“You’re putting another suspect on your board. The mistress.”
“Mistress is too nice a word for a woman who lets some cheating bastard buy her shoes. I prefer lazy, greedy bitch.”
“Harsh, without knowing circumstances. Perhaps she loves the cheating bastard.”
“Nobody loves a cheating bastard. He has hidden accounts, he has a separate address, a side piece, and very likely he’s been paying his personal trainer blackmail. He definitely tops the list, with the wife and the greedy, lazy bitch right up there.
“Maybe she knew.”
“I’m going to assume you mean the wife.”
“Yeah.” Eve nodded, lining it up in her head. “She knows he’s got something going on the side. They mostly know even if they don’t know exactly. It causes tension in the marriage. Separate bedrooms.”
“Separate bedrooms is more than tension,” Roarke commented. “It’s a fracture in the foundation.”
“Yeah, Feeney said the same. So you’ve got your crater, or your fractured foundation,” she continued. “But Copley’s happy screwing the side piece so he’s fine not having to screw his wife. Except now he’s getting pressure. From the wife who retaliates by having sex with their mutual trainer, and is maybe thinking fuck this marriage. Maybe from the side piece who wants him to leave the wife, and he doesn’t want that because, lots and lots of money, and the prestige of the Quigley name and social status. He wouldn’t want to give that up. Then there’s Ziegler adding more pressure. Doubled the amount . . .”
“Copley ends it, or tries to, with the side piece,” Roarke suggested, “and that ups the ante. It’s more important now that little interlude be kept quiet.”
“Good thinking.”
“All in all, a sordid bit of business. I’m surprised the morgue’s not littered with bodies of the participants.”
“It’s not over yet. I still need to talk with Robbins. She fits fairly neatly. But Copley, he’s just tailor-made.”
Considering, Eve shifted, slid an arm around Roarke’s neck again, toyed with his hair. “I need two hours.”
“I have all the time in the world,” he assured her as his fingers danced up her thigh.
“Not for that. Jeez, sit on a guy’s lap and he goes straight into sex mode.”
“We’re weak and predictable creatures.”
“I need two hours tomorrow, first thing in the morning, to see if I can get a line on the side piece, talk to the blogger. If I find the side piece, I may need a little more time to work on Copley, but I could maybe do it in two.”
“You’re telling me this, while tacitly alluding to sex, because . . . ?”
“Just a couple hours.” She gave him a light, teasing kiss. “I can be back by ten. Noon latest. And I’ll dive right into party prep and all that. Total focus on it.”
“I’ve no problem with that. But,” he added when she smiled and leaned in for another kiss, “you didn’t make the deal with me. You made it with Summerset.”
“It’s our party, right? You could talk to him.”
“It’s your deal. You talk to him.”
“Damn it.”
“Meanwhile . . .” He scooped her up, stood, started out of the room with her.
“I’m not finished yet.”
“You’ve enough to chew on until morning. And you did sit in my lap.”
“Maybe I don’t want sex.”
“You should’ve thought of that before you tried to use it to wiggle out of your deal.”
“I didn’t make the deal with you.”
“Exactly.”
“Damn it.” Eve plotted how she could get out and back before Summerset knew the difference.
Then with the bed under her, her man on top of her, she decided to worry about it in the morning.
• • •
Somewhere in the dark, the dream formed. She didn’t fight it, didn’t try to struggle out of its grip, but gave over to it.
Through the dark came the bright, bright lights, the pounding music. She saw them on the treads, on the mats, on the other machines, decked in colorful gymwear, as their faces, their bodies, gleamed with sweat.
Trey Ziegler stood in the center, atop a kind of dais that slowly revolved to give him a three-sixty perspective of the space. He wore black—snug black to show off every cut and ripple.
He looked, she realized, like the trophy that had killed him.
“They have to do what I tell them,” he told Eve. “I’m the trainer.”
“At least one of them didn’t.” She gestured at the knife hilt protruding from his chest, and the note with its large red letters and its single line of blood.