Apprentice in Death Read online

  TITLES BY J. D. ROBB

  Naked in Death

  Glory in Death

  Immortal in Death

  Rapture in Death

  Ceremony in Death

  Vengeance in Death

  Holiday in Death

  Conspiracy in Death

  Loyalty in Death

  Witness in Death

  Judgment in Death

  Betrayal in Death

  Seduction in Death

  Reunion in Death

  Purity in Death

  Portrait in Death

  Imitation in Death

  Divided in Death

  Visions in Death

  Survivor in Death

  Origin in Death

  Memory in Death

  Born in Death

  Innocent in Death

  Creation in Death

  Strangers in Death

  Salvation in Death

  Promises in Death

  Kindred in Death

  Fantasy in Death

  Indulgence in Death

  Treachery in Death

  New York to Dallas

  Celebrity in Death

  Delusion in Death

  Calculated in Death

  Thankless in Death

  Concealed in Death

  Festive in Death

  Obsession in Death

  Devoted in Death

  Brotherhood in Death

  Apprentice in Death

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Silent Night

  (with Susan Plunkett, Dee Holmes, and Claire Cross)

  Out of This World

  (with Laurell K. Hamilton, Susan Krinard, and Maggie Shayne)

  Remember When

  (with Nora Roberts)

  Bump in the Night

  (with Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

  Dead of Night

  (with Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

  Three in Death

  Suite 606

  (with Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

  In Death

  The Lost

  (with Patricia Gaffney, Mary Blayney, and Ruth Ryan Langan)

  The Other Side

  (with Mary Blayney, Patricia Gaffney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

  Time of Death

  The Unquiet

  (with Mary Blayney, Patricia Gaffney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

  Mirror, Mirror

  (with Mary Blayney, Elaine Fox, Mary Kay McComas, and R. C. Ryan)

  Down the Rabbit Hole

  (with Mary Blayney, Elaine Fox, Mary Kay McComas, and R. C. Ryan)

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Nora Roberts

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Robb, J. D., (date–)

  Title: Apprentice in death / J. D. Robb.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley Books, 2016. | Series: In death

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015045549 (print) | LCCN 2015050071 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101987971 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781101987988

  Subjects: LCSH: Dallas, Eve (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Policewomen— New York (State)—New York—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Suspense. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3568.O243 A87 2016 (print) | LCC PS3568.O243 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015045549

  International edition ISBN: 9780451488688

  First Edition: September 2016

  Jacket design by Anthony Ramondo based on an original design by George Cornell

  Jacket photo by Natalie Amrossi / Misshattan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  One impulse from a vernal wood

  May teach you more of man,

  Of moral evil and of good,

  Than all the sages can.

  —WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

  Are God and Nature then at strife,

  That Nature lends such evil dreams?

  —ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  CONTENTS

  Titles by J. D. Robb

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraphs

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  It would be the first kill.

  The apprentice understood the years of practice, the countless targets destroyed, the training, the discipline, the hours of study, all led to this moment.

  This cold, bright afternoon in January 2061 marked the true beginning.

  A clear mind and cool blood.

  The apprentice knew these elements were as vital as skill, as wind direction, humiture, and speed. Under the cool blood lived an eagerness ruthlessly suppressed.

  The mentor had arranged all. Efficiently, and with an attention to detail that was also vital. The room in the clean, middle-class hotel on Second Avenue faced west, had privacy screens and windows that opened. It sat, unpretentiously, on a quiet block of Sutton Place, and offered a view of Central Park—though from nearly a mile away.

  The mentor had planned well, booking a room on a floor well above the trees. To the naked eye, Wollman Rink was only a blob of white catching glints from the strong sun. And those who glided over it were only dots of moving color.

  They’d skated there—student and teacher—more than once, had watched the target skimming, twirling, without a care in the world.

  They’d scouted other areas. The target’s workplace, the home, the favored shops, restaurants, all the routines. And had decided, together, the rink in the great park offered everything they wanted.

  They worked well together, smoothly, and in silence as the the mentor adjusted the bipod by the west-facing window, as the apprentice attached the long-range laser rifle, secured it.

&nb
sp; Cold winter air eked in the window as they raised it a few inches. Breath even, hands steady, the apprentice looked through the scope, adjusted.

  The ice rink jumped close, close enough to see blade marks scoring the surface.

  All those people, the brightly colored hats, gloves, and scarves. A couple, holding hands, laughing as they stumbled over the ice together. A girl with golden-blond hair, wearing a red skin suit and vest, was spinning, spinning, spinning until she blurred. Another couple with a little boy between them, their hands joined with his as he grinned in wonder.

  The old, the young, the in-between. The novices and the show-offs, the speedsters and the creep-alongs.

  And none of them knew, none of them, that they were caught in the crosshairs, seconds from death. Seconds from the choice to let them live, make them die.

  The power was incredible.

  “Do you have the target?”

  It took another moment. So many faces. So many bodies.

  Then the apprentice nodded. There, the face, the body. The target. How many times had that face, that body been in the scope? Countless. But today would be the last time.

  “Have you selected the other two?”

  Another nod, as cool as the first.

  “In any order. You’re green to go.”

  The apprentice checked the wind speed, made a minute adjustment. Then with a clear mind, with cool blood, began.

  The girl in the red skin suit circled in back crossovers, building speed for an axel jump. She began the rotation forward, the move from right skate to left, arms lifting.

  The lethal stream struck the center of her back, with her own momentum propelling her forward. Her body, already dying, struck the family with the little boy. Like a projectile, that already dying body propelled them back, down.

  The screaming began.

  In the chaos that followed, a man gliding along on the other side of the rink slowed, glanced over.

  The stream hit him center mass. As he crumpled, two skaters coming up behind him swerved around, kept going.

  The couple, holding hands, still tripping along, skated awkwardly to the rail. The man gestured toward the jumble of bodies ahead of them.

  “Hey. I think they’re—”

  The stream punched between his eyes.

  In the hotel room, in the silence, the apprentice continued to watch through the scope, imagined the sounds, the screams. It would have been easy to take out a fourth, a fifth. A dozen.

  Easy, satisfying. Powerful.

  But the mentor lowered his field glasses.

  “Three clean hits. Target’s down.” A hand laid on the apprentice’s shoulder signaled approval. Signaled the end of the moment.

  “Well done.”

  Quickly, efficiently, the apprentice broke down the rifle, stored it in its case as the mentor retracted the bipod.

  Though no words were exchanged, the joy, the pride in the act, in the approval spoke clearly. And seeing it, the mentor smiled, just a little.

  “We need to secure the gear, then we’ll celebrate. You earned it. We can debrief after that. Tomorrow’s soon enough to move on to the next.”

  As they left the hotel room—wiped clean before they’d begun and after they’d finished—the apprentice thought the next couldn’t come soon enough.

  1

  When Lieutenant Eve Dallas strode into the bullpen of Homicide after an annoying appearance in court, she wanted coffee. But Detective Jenkinson had obviously been lying in wait. He popped up from his desk, started toward her, leading with his obnoxious tie of the day.

  “Are those frogs?” she demanded. “Why would you wear a tie with piss-yellow frogs jumping around on—Christ—puke-green lily pads?”

  “Frogs are good luck. It’s feng shui or some shit. Anyways, the fresh meat you brought in took a pop in the eye from some chemi-head down on Avenue B. She and Uniform Carmichael hauled him and the dealer in. They’re in the tank. New girl’s in the break room with an ice patch. Figured you’d want to know.”

  Fresh meat equaled the newly transferred Officer Shelby. “How’d she handle it?”

  “Like a cop. She’s all right, LT.”

  “Good to know.”

  She really wanted coffee—and not crap break-room coffee, but the real coffee in her office AutoChef. But she’d brought Officer Shelby on board, and on her first full day she’d taken a fist in the eye.

  So Eve, tall and lanky in her black leather coat, walked to the break room.

  Inside, Shelby sat drinking crap coffee, squinting at her PPC while wearing a cold patch over her right eye. She started to get to her feet, but Eve gestured her down.

  “How’s the eye, Officer?”

  “My kid sister hits harder, Lieutenant.”

  At Eve’s finger motion, Shelby lifted the patch.

  The bloodshot white, the black and purple raying out from it had Eve nodding. “That’s a nice one. Stick with the patch awhile.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good work.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  On the way to her office, she stopped by Uniform Carmichael’s cube. “Run it through for me.”

  “Detectives Carmichael and Santiago caught one down on Avenue B. We’re support, just crowd control. We spot the illegals deal going down, five feet away. Can’t just ignore it, but since we’ve got a body coming out, we’re just going to move them along. Dealer? He’s hands up, no problem. Chemi-head’s jonesing some, and he just punched her. Sucker punch, sir. She took him down, and fast, I’ll give her that. A little bit on the reckless side, maybe, but it’s her eye his fist punched. We hauled them both in, with assaulting an officer added to the doper.

  “She can take a punch,” Uniform Carmichael added. “I’ll give her that, too.”

  “Keep her tight for a few days, and let’s see how she rolls.”

  Before somebody else wanted her for anything else, Eve cut straight through to her office. She programmed coffee, black, without bothering to take off her coat.

  She stood by her skinny window drinking the coffee, her whiskey-colored cop’s eyes scanning the street traffic below, the sky traffic above.

  She had paperwork—there was always paperwork—and she’d get to it. But she had just closed an ugly case, and had spent the morning testifying over another ugly case. She supposed they were all ugly, but some twisted harder than others.

  So she wanted a minute with her coffee and the city she’d sworn to protect and serve.

  Maybe, if she was lucky, a quiet night would follow. Just her and Roarke, she thought. Some wine, some dinner, maybe a vid, some sex. When a murder cop ended up with a busy, billionaire businessman, quiet nights at home were like the biggest, shiniest prize in the box.

  Thank God he wanted those quiet nights, too.

  Maybe sometimes they did the fancy bits—it was part of the deal, part of the Marriage Rules in her book. And more than sometimes he worked with her over pizza in her home office. The reformed criminal with the mind of a cop? A hell of a tool.

  So maybe a quiet night for both of them.

  She set the coffee on her desk, took off her coat and tossed it over her deliberately uncomfortable visitor’s chair. Paperwork, she reminded herself, and started to rake her hand through her hair. Hit the snowflake hat she tried not to let embarrass her. After tossing that on top of the coat, she finger-combed her short, choppy cap of brown hair, sat.

  “Computer,” she began, and her desk ’link sounded.

  “Dallas.”

  “Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.”

  Even before the rest, she knew the shiny prize would have to stay in the box for a while.

  —

  With her partner, Eve walked from Sixth Avenue where she’d double-parked her DLE.

  With a scarf of purple-and-g
reen zigzags wrapped around her neck, Peabody clomped along the path, shooting unhappy looks at the snow blanketing everything else.

  “I figured, hey, we’ll be in court, and we got temps in the forties, I can wear my cowgirl boots no problem. If we’ve got to go tramping through the snow—”

  “It’s January. And what cop wears pink to a murder trial?”

  “Reo had on red shoes,” Peabody pointed out, referring to the APA. “Red’s just dark pink when you think about it.”

  When Eve thought about it, she wondered why the hell they were talking about footwear when they had three DBs on tap. “Suck it up.”

  She flashed her badge when they came to the first police line, kept walking—ignored reporters who pushed against that line and shouted questions.

  Somebody had their head on right, she decided, holding the media hounds back out of sight of the rink. That wouldn’t last, but it kept what was bound to be complicated a little simpler for the time being.

  She spotted more than a dozen uniforms coming or going and at least fifty civilians. Raised voices, a few edged with hysteria, carried clearly.

  “I thought we’d have more civilians, more witnesses.”

  Eve kept scanning. “Bodies drop, people run. We probably lost half of them before the first-on-scene got here.” She shook her head. “Media doesn’t need to get within camera range. They’re going to have dozens of people sending them vids.”

  Since nothing could be done about that, Eve set it aside, flashed through the next barricade.

  As she did, a uniform peeled off, lumbered toward her. She recognized the thirty-plus-years vet, and knew the relative order established was due to his experience and no-bullshit style.

  “Fericke.”

  He gave her a nod. He had a dark bulldog face on a broad-chested bulldog body. And eyes of bitter chocolate-brown that had seen it all, and expected to see worse at any moment.

  “Hell of a mess.”

  “Run it through for me.”

  “Got the first dispatch at ’round fifteen-twenty. I’m baby-walking a rook, and had him doing some foot patrol on Sixth, so we hotfooted it. Had him start a line back aways, keep people out. But Christ on a crutch, you can’t block the whole freaking park.”

  “You’re first-on-scene.”

  “Yeah. Nine-one-ones started pumping in and so did cops, but people were already running from the scene when I got here. Had to work with park security to hold what we could. Had some injuries. We got MTs in to treat the minors, but we had a kid, about six, broken leg. The way the wit reports shake out—once you cut through the crap—is the first vic collided with him and the kid’s parents, and the kid’s leg got broke in the fall. Got their contact info, and the hospital for you.”