Die for You by Lisa Unger Page A

Or so I’m told. Separated more than a year, legally divorced three months ago, can’t bring myself to take off the ring. Stupid, right? She’s already engaged to someone else. Getting married in a week.”
    I heard the hard edge of Brooklyn in his accent, Brooklyn in a prep-school cage. The gentleman cop with his nice clothes and fancy pen, but underneath he was a kid from the neighborhood, no doubt about it.
    “Point is, I never saw it coming. I thought we were going to the Bahamas for our anniversary,” he said. “She’s going to the Bahamas on her honeymoon with another cop she met at the precinct Christmas party. How about that?”
    I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve so much unwanted candor. Maybe it was just his shtick.
    “Our marriage was fine. Not perfect,” I said with a shrug. “He had a brief affair a couple of years ago. It was long over. This is not about that.”
    He gave a careful nod, rubbed at his chin but didn’t hold my gaze, seemed to look at some point above me. His eyes were so black that I couldn’t discern the pupil from the iris. I wanted to lie back down, I was feeling so light-headed—but I couldn’t stand the vulnerability of it. I stayed upright.
    “And all that stolen computer equipment. Brand-new, right?” he said.
    “Yes, that’s right. Over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth.”
    “There was another break-in, right? Last month?”
    “Yes,” I said slowly.
    “Was there an insurance payout?”
    I saw how things were adding up for Detective Crowe. “Where are you going with this?”
    “Was there?”
    “Yes,” I said. “A check for about a hundred and fifty thousand arrived—” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
    “This week sometime?”
    “It came Monday.”
    “And where’s that money now?”
    “Probably in the business bank account. I don’t have much to do with Marcus’s company. I don’t know.”
    “Software, right? Razor Technologies.”
    “That’s right.” An angry headache was starting, radiating out from the gash on my temple. The pain traveled down my neck and into my shoulders. The drugs they’d given me must have been wearing off.
    “What kind of software?”
    “Gaming software. They’re freelance designers, creating games for a variety of systems, as well as for cell phones and personal computers.”
    “They do well?”
    “It has been very lucrative. They sold a PC game to Sony last year called The Spear of Destiny and it was wildly popular, in fact. They have other clients, too. Smaller.”
    “Like who?”
    I searched my memory for names of other companies Marcus might have mentioned but I couldn’t remember. “I don’t know,” I said finally.
    “You don’t know?” He looked at me with a skeptical frown and a quick cock of the head.
    “You know, I honestly don’t have that much to do with Razor Tech. And Marcus is really the brains of the company, conceptualizing games, writing the code, and running the business. Rick Marino, his partner, does most of the client interface.” Distantly, I remembered Rick Marino in handcuffs. But I hadn’t asked myself what happened to him if the people who stormed the office were not FBI agents. The possibilities lurked in the periphery of my awareness, nagging but not acknowledged.
    The detective scribbled something in his book.
    “Look,” I said, starting to feel a terrible constricting in my chest. “Something awful has happened to my husband. Are you going to help us?”
    “Mrs. Raine,” he said softly. “I am here to help you. But I need to know everything about this situation before I can determine what happened to your husband.”
    I nodded and finally decided it was time to lie back. He reached to help me but I held up a hand. I didn’t want him to touch me.
    “Is there family we can call, somewhere or someone he might have gone to without telling you?”
    I shook my head. “Marcus doesn’t have any family. His parents died when he was a boy. He was