Présentation de l'éditeur
#1 New York Times bestselling author J. D. Robb continues her “sexy and suspenseful” (Publishers Weekly) In Death series in this futuristic thriller in which technology and humanity collide—and a new computer virus has become the latest form of terrorism…
Reva Ewing was a former member of the Secret Service, and then a security specialist for Roarke Enterprises—until she was found standing over the dead bodies of her husband, renowned artist Blair Bissel, and her best friend. But Lieutenant Eve Dallas believes there was more to the killing than jealous rage—all of Bissel’s computer files were deliberately corrupted.
To Roarke, it’s the computer attack that poses the real threat. He and Reva have been under a code-red government contract to develop a program that would shield against techno-terrorists. But this deadly new breed of hackers isn’t afraid to kill to protect their secret—and it’s up to Lieutenant Eve Dallas to shut them down before the nightmare can spread to the whole country.
Extrait
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Marriage is a desperate thing.
—JOHN SELDEN
PROLOGUE
KILLING WAS TOO GOOD FOR HIM.
Death was an end, even a release. He’d go to hell, there was no question in her mind, and there he would suffer eternal torment. She wanted that for him—eventually. But for the time being, she wanted him to suffer where she could watch.
Lying, cheating son of a bitch! She wanted him to snivel and beg and plead and slither on his belly like the gutter rat he was. She wanted him to bleed from the ears, to scream like a girl. She wanted to twist his adulterous dick into knots while he shrieked for the mercy she’d never give.
She wanted to pound her fists into his beautiful liar’s face until it was a pulpy, pustulated mass of blood and bone.
Then and only then, the dickless, faceless bastard could die. A slow, withering, agonizing death.
Nobody, nobody cheated on Reva Ewing.
She had to pull over and stop the car in the breakdown lane of the Queensboro Bridge until she calmed down enough to trust herself to continue. Because someone had cheated on Reva Ewing. The man she’d loved, the man she’d married, the man she’d believed in utterly was, even now, making love to another woman.
Touching another woman, tasting her, using that skilled deceiver’s mouth, those clever cheating hands to drive another woman wild.
And not just any other woman. A friend. Someone else she’d loved and trusted, believed in, counted on.
It wasn’t just infuriating. It wasn’t just painful to know her husband and her friend were having an affair, and right under her oblivious nose. It was embarrassing to discover herself a cliché. The deceived wife, the clueless dolt who accepted and believed the adulterer every time he said he had to work late, or had a dinner meeting with a client, or was zipping out of town for a few days to nail down, or hand deliver, a commission.
Worse, Reva thought now as traffic whizzed by her car, that she of all people had been so easily duped. She was a goddamn security expert. She’d spent five years in the Secret Service and had guarded a president before going into the private sector. Where were her instincts, her eyes, her ears?
How could Blair have been coming home to her, night after night, fresh from another woman and she not know?
Because she’d loved him, Reva admitted. Because she’d been happy, deliriously happy to believe a man like Blair—with his sophistication and amazing looks—had loved and wanted her.
He was so handsome, so talented, so smart. The elegant bohemian with his dark silky hair and emerald green eyes. She’d been sunk, she thought now, the minute he’d turned those eyes on her, the instant he’d sent her that killer smile. And six months later, they’d been married and living in the big, secluded house in Queens.
Two years, she thought, two years she’d given him everything she had, shared every piece of herself with him, and
