Loyalty in Death

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The first charge went off in the upper deck of section B in Madison Square at precisely eight forty-three. The game, a hockey match between the Rangers and the Penguins, was in the bitterly contested first period. There'd been no score and only one minor injury when the offensive guard from the Penguins had cross-checked his man – a little on the high side.

The Ranger defensive lineman had been carried off, bleeding profusely from the nose and mouth.

He was already in the ER when the bomb blew.

The NYPSD had moved fast once the explosives had been detected. The game was halted, and the announcement was made that the arena was to be evacuated.

This was met with catcalls, profanities, and from the Ranger side of the stadium, a rain of recycled toilet paper and beer cans.

New York fans took their hockey seriously.

Despite it, the swarm of uniforms and officials had managed to move close to twenty percent of the attendees out of the Garden in more or less an orderly fashion. Only five cops and twelve civilians had reported minor injuries. There were only four arrests for assault and lewd conduct.

Below the Garden, Pennsylvania Station was being cleared as rapidly as possible, with all incoming trains and transpos diverted.

Even the most optimistic of officials didn't expect to scoop up every beggar and sidewalk sleeper who hid in the station for warmth, but an effort was made to sweep through the usual flop spots and hiding places.

When the bomb blew, spewing steel and wood and pieces of the drunk who'd been dozing on the floor of the bleachers along seats 528 through 530, people got the picture fast.

They flooded like a raging tide for the exits.

When Eve arrived on scene, it looked as though the grand old building was vomiting people.

"Do what you can," she shouted at McNab. "Get these people away from here."

"What are you doing?" He shouted over the screams and sirens, made a grab for her, but his fingers skidded off her jacket. "You can't go in there. Holy God, Dallas."

But she was already pushing, punching, and peeling her way through the press of fleeing bodies.

Twice she was slammed hard enough to make her ears ring as she fought to get clear of the doors and the frantic rush for escape.

She swung up toward the closest set of stairs, climbing over seats as people leaped for safety. Above, she could see one of the emergency team efficiently putting out several small fires. The nosebleed seats were in smoking splinters.

"Malloy!" she shouted into her communicator. "Anne Malloy. Give me your location."

Static hissed in her ear, words hiccupping through it. "Three – cleared… scanned ten…"

"Your location," Eve repeated. "Give me your location."

"Teams spread…"

"Goddamn it, Anne, give me a location. I'm helpless here." Helpless, she thought, watching people claw their way over each other to get out. She saw a child shoot out of the crowd like soap from wet fingers, feet tripping over him as he slid out and bounced facefirst on the ice.

She swore again, viciously, and leaped over the rail. She hit the ice on her hands and knees, skidding wildly until she slammed in with the toes of her boots. She grabbed the boy by the collar of his shirt and dragged them both away from the stampeding crowd.

"Up to five." Anne's voice came through, clearer now. "We're clicking here. Update on evacuation."

"I can't tell. Shit, it's a zoo." Eve pushed a hand over her face, saw blood smeared on her palm. "Fifty percent clear, up here. Maybe more. I've got no contact with the team in Penn. Where the hell are you?"

"Moving toward sector two. I'm under the floor in Penn. Get those civilians out."

"I've got a kid here. Injured." She spared the boy under her arm a glance. He was sheet white with a lump the size of a baby's fist on his forehead, but he was breathing. "I'll get him clear and be back."

"Get him out, Dallas. Clock's ticking."

She managed to get to her feet, skidded, grabbed clumsily for the rail. "Move your men out, Malloy. Abort and move out now."

"Cleared six, four to go. Have to stick. Dallas, we lose it down here, we take out Penn and the Garden."

Eve dumped the boy over her shoulder in a fireman's carry and pulled herself onto the steps. "Get them out, Anne. Save lives, fuck property."

She stumbled through the seats, kicking aside the bags and coats and food people had left behind.

"Seven, down to three. We're going to make it."

"For God's sake, Anne. Move your ass."

"Good advice."

Eve blinked the sweat out of her eyes and saw Roarke just as he plucked the boy off her shoulder. "Get him out. I'm going for Malloy."

"The hell you are."

It was all he managed before the floor began to tremble. He saw the crack in the wall behind them split. Eve's hand was caught in his.

They leaped off the platform and ran for the door where cops in full gear were pushing, shoving, all but tossing the last of the civilians through. She felt her eardrums contract an instant before she heard the blast. The wall of sizzling heat slammed them from behind. She felt her feet leave the ground, her head reel from the noise and heat. And the tidal wave force of air shot them through the door. Something hot and heavy crashed behind them.

Survival was paramount now. Hands gripped, they scrambled up, kept moving blindly forward while rock and glass and steel rained down. The air was full of sounds, the shrieks of metal, the crash of steel, the thunder of spewing rock.

She tripped over something, saw it was a body trapped under a concrete spear as wide as her waist. Her lungs were on fire, her throat full of smoke. Diamond-sharp fists of glass showered down, propelled by vicious secondary explosions.

When her vision cleared, she could see what seemed to be hundreds of shocked faces, mountains of smoking rubble, and too many bodies to count.

Then the wind slapped her face, cold. Hard. And she knew they were alive.

"Are you hurt, are you hit?" she shouted to Roarke, unaware that their hands were still fused together.

"No." Somehow, he still had the unconscious boy over his shoulder. "You?"

"No, I don't think… No. Get him to the MTs," she told Roarke. Panting, she stopped, turned, blinked. From the outside, the building showed little damage. Smoke billowed from me jagged opening where doors had been, and the streets were littered with charred and twisted rubble, but the Garden still stood.

"They got all but two. Just two." She thought of the station below – the trains, the commuters, the vendors. She wiped grime and blood off her face. "I have to go back, get the status."

He kept her hand firmly in his. He'd looked behind as they'd flown through the door. And he'd seen. "Eve, there's nothing to go back for."

"There has to be." She shook him off. "I have men in there. I have people in there. Take the kid to an MT, Roarke. He took a bad spill."

"Eve…" He saw the expression on her face, and let it go. "I'll wait for you."

She crossed the street again, avoiding little pots of flame and smoking stone. She could already see looters joyfully racing down the block, crashing in windows. She grabbed a uniform, and when he shook her off and told her to move along, dug out her badge.

"Sorry, Lieutenant." His face was dead white, his eyes glazed. "Crowd control's a bitch."

"Get a couple of units together, get the looting stopped. Start moving the perimeter back and get some security sensors up. You!" she called to another uniform. "Get the medical teams a clear area for the wounded and start taking names."

She kept moving, making herself give orders, start routines. By the time she was ten feet from the building, she knew Roarke was right. There was nothing to go back for.

She saw a man sitting on the ground, his head in his hands, and recognized him as part of E and B by the fluorescent yellow stripe across his jacket.

"Officer, where's your lieutenant?"

He looked up, and she saw he was weeping. "There were too many. There were just too many, all over hell and back."

"Officer." Her breath wanted to hitch, her heart to pound. She wouldn't let them. "Where's Lieutenant Malloy?"

"She sent us out, down to the last two. She sent us out. Just her and two men. Only two more. They got one. I heard Snyder call it over the headphones, and the lieutenant told them to clear the area. It was the last one that took them. The last fucking one."

He lowered his head and sobbed like a child.

"Dallas." Feeney came on the run and out of breath. "Damn, goddamn, I couldn't get closer than half a block by the time I got here. Couldn't hear a damn thing over the communicator."

But he'd heard her heart on the tracker, loud and strong, and it had kept him sane.

"Sweet holy Jesus." His hand gripped her shoulder while he looked at the entrance. "Mother of God."

"Anne. Anne was in there."

His hand tightened on her shoulder, then his arm was around her. "Oh hell."

"I was one of the last out. We were nearly clear. I told her to get out. I told her to abort and go. She didn't listen."

"She had a job to do."

"We need search and rescue. Maybe…" She knew better. Anne would have been all but on top of the bomb when it went off. "We need to look. We need to be sure."

"I'll get it started. You ought to see a med-tech, Dallas."

"It's nothing." She drew in a breath, blew it out. "I need her address."

"We'll get done what needs to be done here, then I'll go with you."

She turned away, scanned over the huddles of people, the wrecks of cars that had been too close to the building, the mangled hunks of steel.

And below the streets, she thought, in the transpo station, it would be worse. Unimaginably worse.

For money, she thought as the heat rose in her like a geyser. For money, she was sure of it, and for the memory of a fanatic without a clear cause.

Someone, she swore it, would pay.

It was an hour before she got back to Roarke. He stood, his coat rippling in the wind, as he helped MTs load wounded into transports.

"The kid okay?" Eve asked him.

"He will be. We found his father. The man was terrified." Roarke reached out, wiped a smear off her cheek. "The talk is casualties are light. Most were killed in the panic to get out. Most got out, Eve. What could have been a death toll in the thousands is, at this point, less than four hundred."

"I can't count lives that way."

"Sometimes it's all you can do."

"I lost a friend tonight."

"I know that." His hands lifted to frame her face. "I'm sorry for that."

"She had a husband and two children." She looked away, into the night. "She was pregnant."

"Ah, God." When he would have drawn her to him, she shook her head and stepped back.

"I can't. I'll fall apart, and I can't. I have to go tell her family."

"I'll go with you."

"No, it's a cop thing." She lifted her hands, pressed them to her eyes, and just held them there a moment. "Feeney and I will do it. I don't know when I'll be home."

"I'll be here awhile yet. They can use extra hands."

She nodded, started to turn.

"Eve?"

"Yeah."

"Come home. You'll need it."

"Yeah. Yeah, I will." She walked off to find Feeney and prepared to deliver news that crushed lives.

Roarke worked another two hours with the wounded and the weeping. He sent for oceans of coffee and soup – one of the comforts money could buy. As bodies were transferred to the already overburdened morgue, he thought of Eve and how she faced the demands of the dead every day.

The blood. The waste. The stink of both seemed to crawl over his skin and under it. This is what she lived with.

He looked at the building, the scars and the ruin. This could be mended. It was stone, steel, glass, and such things could be rebuilt with time, with money, with sweat.

He was driven to own buildings like this. Symbols and structures. For profit, certainly, he thought, reaching down to pick up a chunk of concrete. For business, for pleasure. But it didn't take a session with Mira to understand why a man who'd spent his childhood in dirty little rooms with leaking roofs and broken windows was compelled to own, to possess. To preserve and to build.

A human weakness to compensate, he supposed, that had become power.

He had the power to see that this was rebuilt, that it was put back as it had been. He could put his money and his energies into that and see it as a kind of justice.

And Eve would look to the dead.

He walked away, and went home to wait for his wife.

– =O=-***-=O=-

She drove home in the damp, frigid chill of predawn. Billboards flashed and jittered around her as she headed uptown. Buy this and be happy. See that and be thrilled. Come here and be amazed. New York wasn't about to stop its dance.

Steam spilled out of glida grills, belched out of street vents, pumped out of the maxibus that creaked to a halt to pick up a scatter of drones who'd worked the graveyard shift.

A few obviously desperate street LCs strutted their stuff and called out to the drones.

"I'll give you a ride, buddy. Twenty, cash or credit'll buy you a hell of a ride."

The drones shuffled on the bus, too tired for cheap sex.

Eve watched a drunk stumble along the sidewalk, swinging his bottle of brew like a baton. And a huddle of teenagers pooling money for soy dogs. The lower the temperatures fell, the higher the price.

Free enterprise.

Abruptly, she pulled over to the curb, leaned over the wheel. She was well beyond exhausted and into the tightly strung stage of brittle energy and racing thoughts.

She'd gone to a tidy little home in Westchester and had spoken the words that ripped a family to pieces. She'd told a man his wife was dead, listened to children cry for a mother who was never coming back.

Then she'd gone to her office and written the reports, filed them. Because it needed to be done, she'd cleaned out Anne's locker herself.

And after all that, she thought, she could drive through the city, see the lights, the people, the deals, and the dregs, and feel… alive, she realized.

This was her place, with its dirt and its drama, its brilliance and its streak of nasty. Whores and hustlers, the weary and the wealthy. Every jittery heartbeat pumped in her blood.

This was hers.

"Lady." A grimy fist rapped on her window. "Hey, lady, wanna buy a flower?"

She looked at the face peering through the glass. It was ancient and stupid and if the dirt in its folds were any indication, it hadn't seen a bar of soap in this decade.

She put the window down. "Do I look like I want to buy a flower?"

"It's the last one." He grinned toothlessly and held up a pitiful, ragged bloom she supposed was trying to be a rose. "Give ya a good deal. Five bucks for it."

"Five? Get a handful of reality." She started to brush him off, put the glass between them. Then found herself digging in her pocket. "I got four."

"Okay, good." He snatched the credit chips and pushed the flower at her before heading off in a shambling run.

"To the nearest liquor store," Eve muttered and pulled away from the curb with the window open. His breath had been amazingly foul.

She drove home with the flower across her lap. And saw, as she headed through the gates, the lights he'd left on for her.

After all she'd seen and done that day, the simple welcome of lights in the window had her fighting tears.

She went in quietly, tossing her jacket over the newel post, climbing the stairs. The scents here were quiet, elegant. The wood polished, the floors gleaming.

This, too, she thought, was hers.

And so, she knew, when she saw him waiting for her, was Roarke.

He'd put on a robe and had the screen on low. Nadine Furst was reporting, and looked pale and fierce on the scene of the explosion. She could see he'd been working – checking stock reports, juggling deals, whatever he did – on the bedroom unit.

Feeling foolish, she kept the flower behind her back. "Did you sleep?"

"A bit." He didn't go to her. She looked stretched thin, he decided, as if she might snap at the slightest touch. Her eyes were bruised and fragile. "You need to rest."

"Can't." She managed a half smile. "Wired up. I'm going to go back soon."

"Eve." He stepped toward her, but still didn't touch. "You'll make yourself ill."

"I'm okay. Really. I was punchy for a while, but it passed. When it's over, I'll crash, but I'm okay now. I need to talk to you."

"All right."

She moved around him, shifting the flower out of sight, going to the window, staring at the dark. "I'm trying to figure out where to start. It's been a rotten couple of days."

"It was difficult, telling the Malloys."

"Jesus." She let her brow rest against the glass. "They know. Families of cops know as soon as they see us at the door. That's what they live with, day in and out. They know when they see you, but they block it. You can see it in their faces – the knowledge and the denial. Some of them just stand there, others stop you – start talking, making conversation, picking up around the house. It's like if you don't say it, if you just don't say it, it isn't real.

"Then you say it, and it is."

She turned back to him. "You live with that."

"Yes." He kept his eyes on hers. "I suppose I do."

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry about this morning. I – "

"So you've said already." This time when he crossed to her, he touched, just a hand to her cheek. "It doesn't matter."

"It does. It does matter. I've got to get through this, okay?"

"All right. Sit down."

"I can't, I just can't." She lifted her hands in frustration. "I've got all this stuff churning inside me."

"Then get rid of it." He stopped her by putting a hand to hers, lifting the flower. "What's this?"

"I think it's a very sick, mutant rose. I bought it for you."

It was so rare to see Roarke taken by surprise, she nearly laughed. His gaze met hers and she thought – hoped – it might have been baffled pleasure she saw there before he looked down at the rose again. "You brought me a flower."

"I think it's sort of traditional. Fight, flowers, make up."

"Darling Eve." He took the stem. The edges of the bud were blackened and curled from the cold. The color was somewhere between the yellow of a healing bruise and urine. "You fascinate me."

"Pretty pitiful, huh?"

"No." This time his hand cupped her cheek, skimmed into her hair. "It's delightful."

"If it smells anything like the guy who sold it to me, you might want to have it fumigated."

"Don't spoil it," he said mildly, and touched his lips to hers.

"I do that – spoil things." She backed away again before she gave in and grabbed on. "I don't do it on purpose. And I meant what I said this morning, even if it pisses you off. Mostly, I think cops are better off going solo. I don't know, like priests or something, so they don't keep dragging the sin and sorrow home with them."

"I have sin and sorrow of my own," he said evenly. "It's washed over you a time or two."

"I knew it would piss you off."

"It does. And by God, Eve, it hurts me."

Her mouth dropped open, trembled closed again. "I don't mean to do that." Hadn't known she could do that. Part of the problem, she realized. Her problem. "I don't have the words like you do. I don't have them, Roarke, the kind you say to me – or even think, and I see you thinking them and it – my heart just stops."

"Do you think loving you to excess is easy for me?"

"No. I don't. I think it should be impossible. Don't get mad." She hurried on when she saw that dangerous flash in his eyes. "Don't get mad yet. Let me finish."

"Then make it good." He set the flower aside. "Because I'm damn sick and I'm tired of having to justify my feelings to the woman who owns them."

"I can't keep my balance." Oh, she hated to admit it, to say it out loud to the man who wobbled it so often and so easily. "I get it, and I cruise along for a while, realizing this is who I am now, who we are now. And then, sometimes, I just look at you and stumble. And I can't get my breath because all these feelings just rear up and grab me by the throat. I don't know what to do about it, how to handle it. I think, I'm married to him. I've been married to him for almost six months, and there are times he walks into the room and stops my heart."'

She let out a shuddering breath. "You're the best thing that ever happened to me. In my life, you're what matters most. I love you so much it scares me, and I guess if I had a choice about it, I wouldn't change it. So… now you can get pissed off, because I'm done."

"A fat lot of room you've given me for that." He watched her lips twitch into a smile as he went to her. His hands slipped over her shoulders, down her back. "I've no choice either, Eve. I wouldn't want one."

"We're not going to fight."

"I don't think so."

She kept her eyes on his as she tugged at the belt of his robe. "I stored up this energy in case I needed it to fight with you."

He lowered his head, bit her bottom lip. "It's a shame to waste it."

"I'm not going to." Slowly, she backed him toward the bed, up the short steps to the platform. "I drove through the city tonight. I felt alive." She tugged the robe away, closed her teeth over his shoulder. "I'm going to show you."

She tumbled to the bed on top of him, and her mouth was like a fever. The frantic burst of energy reminded her of the first time they'd come together on this bed, the night she'd thrown all caution and restraint aside and let him take her where they'd needed to go.

Now she would drive him, with fast, rough hands, hot greedy lips. She took exactly what she wanted, and what she took was everything.

The light was gray and weak, trickling through the sky window overhead, filtering down on her. His vision blurred, but he watched her as she destroyed him. Slim, agile, fierce, the bruises from the hideous night blooming on her skin like the medals of a warrior.

Her eyes gleamed as she worked them both toward frenzy.

Then, and then again, skin glowing, breath ragged, she lowered over him, sheathed him, surrounded him.

She arched back, arrowed with pleasure. He gripped her hips, said her name, and let her ride.

Her skin was slick with sweat when she collapsed onto him, melted into him. His arms came around her, holding her there. Her cheek to his heart.

"Sleep awhile," he murmured.

"I can't. I have to go in."

"You haven't slept in twenty-four hours."

"I'm okay," she answered as she sat up. "Almost better than okay. I needed this more than sleep – really, Roarke. And if you think you're going to force a tranq down my throat, think again."

She rolled off him and up. "I need to keep moving. If there's any down time, I'll catch a nap at the crib at Central."

She glanced around for a robe, took his. "I need a favor."

"Now would be an excellent time to ask for one."

She glanced over, grinned. He looked sleek and satisfied. "I bet. Anyway, I don't want Zeke stuck at the station the way he has been, but I need to keep him under wraps awhile longer."

"Send him here."

"Ah… if I took one of your vehicles in, I could leave mine here. Working on it would give him something to do."

Roarke turned his head. Eyed her. "Do you plan to be involved in any wrecks or explosions today?"

"You never know."

"Take anything but the 3X-2000. I've only driven it once."

She made some comment about men and their toys, but he was feeling mellow and let it pass.