New York to Dallas

19

Roarke understood her silence. It didn’t matter that she’d agreed to talk with Mira, even acknowledged she needed to. He’d forced her hand—made her stop her forward motion and her focus on the crimes, the perpetrator, the victims, the questions and answers. Stopping the forward motion meant facing the past—her past.

Dealing with her feelings about her mother’s life, and her mother’s murder.

He could accept her need, and her ability, to turn her reluctance into resentment aimed at him. In her place he’d likely have done the same.

What a pair they were.

He expected, and accepted, her reaction when the elevator opened. And Mira turned from her place by the windows. The single glance Eve spared him, one ripe with the shock of betrayal stabbed him right through the heart.

“I’ve been admiring your view,” Mira said.

“It’s good to see you.” Roarke walked over to greet her. “How was the flight?”

“Very smooth.”

“And your room here?”

“It’s lovely.”

Behind them, Eve’s silence was a roar of fury.

“Why don’t we have some wine?” Roarke began.

“You two go ahead with your social hour,” Eve interrupted in a tone like cracked ice. “I need a shower.”

She stormed upstairs, had nearly slammed the bedroom door. Then she saw the cat sitting on the bed, blinking at her with bicolored eyes.

Pressure thudded into her chest, burned in her throat, behind her eyes as she rushed forward, dropped to her knees by the bed.

“Galahad.”

He bumped his head against hers, purred like a cargo jet.

“He had her bring you.” She rubbed her face against his fur. “He had her bring you for me. God, God, I’m a mess.”

She sat on the floor, braced her back against the bed. Comfort flooded her when the cat jumped off the bed, padded into her lap. And circled there, digging thin claws into her thighs.

“Okay. Okay,” she murmured, giving him a long stroke down the back. She closed her eyes, and holding the fat, purring cat, tried to find her center again.

“I’m sorry,” Roarke said downstairs. “I didn’t tell her you’d be waiting for us. I knew she’d stall otherwise, and we’d end up . . . I thought it would be harder. I’m going to get us that wine.”

He chose a bottle at random from the rack in the bar area. While he uncorked it, Mira walked over.

“You look very tired. You rarely do.”

“I’m not particularly. Frustrated, I suppose. This should breathe a bit, but bugger that.” He poured two glasses.

“Frustrated with Eve?”

“No. Yes.” He swallowed wine. “No. Not really. She has enough to deal with, more than anyone should. With myself. I don’t know what to do for her, what to say to her. I dislike not knowing what to do for or say to the person who means everything to me.

“I’m sorry, please, sit down. Have some wine.”

“Thank you.” She sat, and in her quiet way sipped and waited while he roamed the room as a wolf might a cage.

“What do you think you should do, or say?” she asked him.

“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I don’t bloody know. Does she need me to just let her work herself into exhaustion? That can’t be right. Yet I know very well she needs the work, the routine of it, the structure to get through the rest.”

He shoved a hand in his pocket, found the gray button, turned it over and over in his fingers. “But it’s not routine this time, is it? It’s not simply another case, another investigation.”

“It’s difficult, coming here. Being here.”

“Bad enough if it were only that, with all the memories it shoves down her throat. The nightmares, they’d eased off, until we came here. Now she’s had one worse than anything I know of since we’ve been together. She’s made of courage, you know? And for her to be so terrified, so absolutely defenseless . . .”

“Makes you feel the same.”

He stopped, and the anguish lived in his eyes, on his face, in the set of his body. “I couldn’t get her back. For . . . it seemed forever, I couldn’t pull her out. And this was before her mother. This was just being here, being here, tracking a man who makes her think of her father.”

“You understood it would be difficult for her, physically, emotionally. Did you try to stop her from coming?”

“As if I could.”

“Roarke.” She waited until he again stopped his restless movements, looked at her. “You know you could have. You’re the only one who could have stopped her from coming to Dallas. Why didn’t you?”

He stood for a moment, and when the storm in his eyes faded, sat across from her. “How could I? If she hadn’t come, hadn’t done whatever she could and McQueen had hurt, worse, killed Melinda Jones, Eve would never have forgiven herself. It would have cut something out of her. Neither of us could have lived with that.”

“Now Melinda and the girl McQueen abducted are safe.”

“But it’s not done, and not just because he’s still out there. She stood over her mother’s body today. God.” He rubbed at his temple. “Could it only be today? There’s been no time, you see, to deal with it, to understand it. To cope. She won’t take it. Do I force her to? Pour a tranq into her so she gets some rest? Let her run until she drops? Do I just watch her suffer, and continue to do nothing?”

“You feel you’ve done nothing?”

“Tracking financials and making her eat a goddamn sandwich?” The brittle, brutal frustration snapped out of him. “Anyone could do the same, so it’s next to nothing. She needs more from me than that, and I don’t know what it is.”

“You brought me the cat.”

Eve stood on the stairs, Galahad at her feet. Roarke stood as she crossed the room.

“Who else would think—would know—I needed the stupid cat? Who else would do that for me?”

“Maybe I did it for myself.”

She shook her head, laid her hands on his face, and watched everything—the sorrow, the fatigue, the love, swirl into his eyes. “You brought Mira and Galahad. Why didn’t you toss in Peabody and Feeney, add Mavis for comic relief?”

“Do you want them?”

“God.” She did what she rarely did in company. She took his lips with hers, let the kiss spin out, felt his hand fist on the back of her jacket. “I’m so sorry.”

“No. No. I don’t want you to be sorry.”

“Too bad. You needed to stop, and I wouldn’t. Wouldn’t let either of us take a breath. Routine, procedure, logic. It’s necessary. And it’s all fucked up.” She leaned on him a moment, let herself lean on him. “It’s so fucked up. So, I guess we’ll take a breath now. I’d better use the first one to tell you I love you because there’s going to be others that fuck it up again.”

He murmured to her in Irish, brushed his lips on her brow. “We’re used to that, aren’t we? A ghra, you’re so pale. She’s lost weight, you see,” he said to Mira. “It’s only been a couple of days, but I can see it.”

“He worries. He nags like a”—she nearly said “mother,” caught herself—“wife. He’s a damn good wife.”

“Now you’re just trying to piss me off. But under the circumstances, I’ll let it pass. Why don’t you sit, and I’ll get you a glass of wine?”

“Oh yeah, a really big glass of wine.” She dropped into a chair, let out a long, long breath. “I know I was rude before,” she said to Mira. “And I figure you know a defense mechanism when you see one. Still, sorry about that. I appreciate, a lot, that you came.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’ve work to catch up on,” Roarke said as he handed Eve her wine. “I’ll go upstairs, let the two of you talk.”

“Don’t.” Eve took his hand. “You should stay. You’re part of this.”

“All right.”

“I don’t know where to start. How to start. It’s like trying to navigate a maze in the dark, and . . .” Then the cat sprawled weightily over her feet. And that was it, the start. “I miss home. Roarke had you bring the cat, because the cat’s home. I never had anything, didn’t want anything until that cat. I don’t even know why I took him, exactly, but I made him mine.”

She took a long, slow drink of wine. “I missed him. I miss Peabody and her smart mouth and steady ways. I miss Feeney and Mavis and my bullpen. Hell, it’s so bad I even miss Summerset.”

When Roarke made some sound, she turned narrowed eyes on him. “If you ever tell him I said that, I’ll shave you bald in your sleep, dress you in frilly pink panties, and take a vid that I’ll auction and sell for huge amounts of money.”

“So noted,” he said, and thought: There’s Eve. There she is.

“It’s not just being away. Since Roarke, I’ve gone away, from home, from work. It’s here, and it’s working here without my people, my place. And it’s more than that,” she admitted when Mira waited her out. “McQueen’s another beginning for me. Not just the real start of the job for me. When I opened the door in New York where he had all the girls, when I saw them, knew what he’d done to them, I went back, for a minute, to that room in Dallas.

“I’d probably remembered things before, but that was the first time I couldn’t pretend I didn’t. He’d done to them what someone had done to me. I knew it. Even if I didn’t know all of it, I knew that.”

“How did you feel?” Mira asked her.

“Sick, scared, enraged. But I put it away, could put it away for a long time. Maybe little parts would slip out, give me a bad time, but I could shove them back into the shadows again. Then, right before I met Roarke there was an incident. A girl—baby, just a baby really. And I was too late.”

“I remember,” Mira said. “Her father was crazed on Zeus, and murdered her before you could get to her.”

“Cut her to pieces. Right after, I caught the DeBlass case, and Roarke was a suspect. He was so . . . he was Roarke, and while I could eliminate him from my suspect list, I couldn’t shake him. And the case built, and everything turned around inside me.”

“How did you feel?” Mira asked again, and Eve managed a smile.

“Sick, scared, enraged. What does he want from me? I mean, look at him. What does he want from me, with me?”

“Should I tell you?”

She looked at him. “You tell me every day. Sometimes I still don’t get it, but I know it. And with everything turned around and opening up and breaking apart, I remembered. My father, what he did to me. It can’t go back in the box anymore.”

“Is that what you want? To shut it away?”

“I did. I did,” Eve repeated in a murmur. “Now? I want to deal with it, accept it, move on. I was, I think. When I remembered the rest. Remembered that night when he came in and he went at me, hurting me, raping me. He broke my arm.” She rubbed it, as if she felt the shock of pain. “And I killed him. I didn’t think I could live with that, get through that memory. I don’t think I would have without Roarke. Without you. But I know more, coming back here again, this time. With McQueen and my father twisting together in my head.”

“Do they?” Mira asked.

“Yes. I guess they always did. I know I killed to survive. I know it was a child, striking out to save herself. But I know, too, I felt . . . joy in the killing. In driving that knife, that little knife, into him again and again and again, I felt euphoric.”

“And why shouldn’t you?”

In absolute shock, Eve stared at Mira. “I’ve killed since, in the line. There’s no joy. There can’t be.”

“But this wasn’t in the line. This wasn’t a trained officer acting in the line of duty. This was a child, one who had been continually, systematically, brutally abused, physically, mentally, emotionally. A child in terror and pain, killing a monster. And that joy, Eve, didn’t last. It’s only part of the reason you suppressed. It frightened you, that joy, because of who and what you are. He couldn’t make you an animal, couldn’t make another monster out of you. You killed a beast, and felt glad. You took a life, and punished yourself.”

“If I ever felt that again, ever felt glad again with blood on my hands, I couldn’t come back from it.”

“Is that what frightens you?”

“It . . . disturbs me to know that’s in me.”

“In all of us,” Mira said. “Most are never put in a position where they experience, or choose to experience it. Some who understand it become monsters. Others who understand it become the ones who hunt the monsters, and protect the rest of us.”

“Most times I understand, and accept that. Here, it blurs.

“I attacked Roarke when I had a nightmare here.”

“It was nothing,” he began, and she rounded on him.

“Don’t say that! Don’t protect me. I clawed, and I bit. I drew his blood, for God’s sake. If I’d had a weapon, I’d have used it. I’m afraid to sleep.” It jerked out of her. “I’m afraid I’ll do it again.”

“Have you?”

“No, but I looked into my mother’s eyes this morning, and I knew her. I stood over her body this afternoon, and I remembered her. Some. I remember some.”

“And you’re afraid, with those emerging memories, you’ll become more violent when your defenses are down in sleep.”

“It follows, doesn’t it?”

“I can’t promise you there won’t be more nightmares, or that they won’t become violent. But I can tell you what I believe. Your first night here, under such strain, with your past so close to the surface, you . . . overloaded.”

“Is that a shrink term?”

“It’s one you understand. You couldn’t hold any more, couldn’t contain any more. You weren’t attacking Roarke, but defending yourself against the person trying to hurt you.”

“I did hurt her,” Roarke admitted.

“And with the physical and psychic pain merging, you fought back.”

“What’s to stop me from doing just that again?” Eve demanded. “How long are either of us supposed to lie down at night and wait for the battle and the blood?”

“I could give you medications for the short term. Or,” Mira continued, “you could consider something you haven’t yet spoken of. If you recognized your mother, isn’t it possible your subconscious already had when you studied the photos of the woman you suspected was McQueen’s partner?”

“Yeah. I knew there was something, but I couldn’t get down to it. I couldn’t reach it.”

“Consciously. You’re not only trained to be observant, Eve, you’re naturally so. Often uncomfortably so. If you recognized her, added the strain of that to the rest, it’s hardly a wonder it manifested in a traumatic and violent nightmare. She was part of what you hadn’t yet come to terms with, what you continued to block out. The mother, the symbol of everything intended to nurture, to tend, to love and protect.”

“She hated me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I saw it, I felt it. I knew it even when I was—who the hell knows? Three, four, five. She liked to knock me around. She had me because he got the bright idea to breed their own moneymaker. I was less than a dog to her, and the reality of me was more than she’d bargained for. She wanted to sell me, but he wouldn’t. The investment wasn’t ripe enough, not yet. She’d hit me when he wasn’t there, or just shove me in a closet. It’s dark, and there’s nothing to eat. She didn’t even give me a name. I was nothing to her. Less than nothing.”

She took a shaky swallow of wine. “She didn’t know me. When we were face-to-face again, and she looked right at me. She didn’t know me.”

“Did that hurt you?”

“No. I don’t know. I couldn’t think. I just know that for a minute I was nothing again. Like they—she—took everything from me. Roarke, my badge, my life, myself. For a minute it was just gone because she was there. I can’t be nothing again.”

“You could never be nothing.” Roarke spoke in a voice of barely controlled rage. “You’re what you made yourself against the impossible. Even when you were helpless they couldn’t destroy what you are. You’re a miracle. You’re my miracle, and you’ll never be anything else.”

“They’re in me.”

“And what’s in me? You know. You know how I chose to beat it back, and still you’re mine. Of all the choices you could have made, you chose to protect. To stand for the victim. Even her. Now, even her.”

“I saw what she was, in that hospital bed, where I put her. Hurt and bruised and knocked around.”

“The way you’d been,” Mira prompted.

“The way I’d been. And I felt . . . maybe contempt or disgust, studying her like a bug, hoping I’d been wrong, that she wasn’t the one. But I knew she was, and what she was.”

“What was she?”

“Selfish is too easy a word. Selfish and vicious and sly, and still I don’t know how or why.

“So much blood,” Eve said quietly. “At the end, so much blood, and I thought, what’s in it? What’s in the blood, hers, mine? Our eyes are the same.”

“No.” Roarke spoke with absolute certainty. “You’re wrong.”

“She changed the color, but—”

“No,” he repeated, looking into Eve’s troubled eyes. “Who knows yours—and all their moods—better than I? Do you think I haven’t studied those ID shots?”

He remembered what his aunt had said to him on their first meeting, and gave it to Eve, in his own words. “Color changes on a whim. The shape of things counts for more. Your eyes are yours, Eve. The color, the shape, and more what’s behind them. You got none of it from her.”

“I don’t know why that’s important, except I don’t want to look in the mirror and see her. I don’t want you to ever look at me and see—”

“Never.”

“It’s stupid to pick at it,” Eve said wearily. “I know, I do know I’m not like her. Melinda and the kid, they were just means to an end to her. Not human, not important. Her next hit, that was important. Fucking with the cops, that was important. Getting back to McQueen, that was the most important. Weak spot. A certain kind of man, that’s a weak spot, makes her do what’s unnatural to her. Have a child, run errands, fix a meal. Because he makes her feel like the drug makes her feel. She lives a lie, but that’s second nature. Like using and exploiting. She stole another woman’s child knowing what he’d do to her. She left me with my father and she had to know what he was, what he’d do. He’d already started doing it. But she left me with him.”

“As she left Darlie with McQueen,” Mira added.

“Yeah. I knew what she was, and I felt nothing but that contempt. Then I felt sick, then cold. Then I had to step out of it. Had to, because if we didn’t find them, find Melinda and Darlie, without her help, I’d have to work her again. Go back, knowing who and what she was and work her again. But she went to him. Killed a cop without a second thought to get to him. And when I walked into that place, his place, and saw her on the floor, the blood, the death, I felt . . .”

“What?” Mira asked her. “What did you feel?”

“Relief!” It burst out of her. “Relief. She didn’t know me, and now she never would. God, the thought that she might realize . . . I wouldn’t ever have to think of her somewhere in the world. Wouldn’t have to think someday, somehow, she might remember me, might put it together, might know. Use that against me, against Roarke, against everyone I care about. She was dead, and I was relieved.”

In the silence, she pressed a hand to her mouth, struggling to hold back sobs.

“You didn’t say you felt joy,” Roarke said quietly.

She stared at him, eyes wet, shoulders trembling. “What?”

“You didn’t feel joy.”

“No! God. He’d slit her throat like a pig for slaughter. Whatever she was, he had no right to take her life.”

“And that’s who you are, Lieutenant.”

“I . . .” She swiped at tears, looked at Mira.

“It’s an exceptional thing to have someone in your life who knows and understands you so well. Who loves who you are. A very exceptional thing. He asks the question, as I was about to do, already knowing the answer. You felt relief because a threat to everything you are, everything you have, and what you love ended. It ended in blood so you’re struggling to treat her like another victim. She’s not.”

“She was murdered.”

“And McQueen should pay for it. You need to have a part in that not because of the connection, but because she was murdered. She was murdered here, in Dallas, by a man you see as very like your father. You want to walk away from it, and you can’t. Relief won’t stop you from seeking justice for her. That conflict causes you stress, unhappiness, self-doubt. I hope by admitting what you felt, what you feel, some of that will ease.”

“I would’ve put her away, built the case to put her away. I thought there’d be some justice. Locking her up, the way she’d done to me.”

“She chose the monster, again.”

“She thought he was still alive. Richard Troy. I brought him up, testing, I guess. She thought he was still alive. I let her think he’d given us information on her.”

“Well played,” Roarke commented, then lifted his eyebrows at her frown. “Sorry, was that cold? Am I supposed to feel otherwise?”

“No.” Eve looked down at her wine. “No.”

“I wish she were alive, that’s the God’s shining truth. So I could imagine her in a cage for the decades to come. But we live with disappointment.”

“You hate her. I can’t.”

“I’ve enough for both of us.”

“I feel disgust, and—God, I wish I had the words. I feel a little shame, and there’s no point getting pissed off because I feel what I feel. I’d rather feel hate. If she’d lived, I might’ve gotten there. So maybe I feel a little cheated as well as relieved. I don’t know what that says.”

“In my professional opinion?” Mira crossed her fine legs. “It says you have a very healthy reaction to a very unhealthy situation. The two of you have been scraped raw by this, yet here you are. With your cat.”

Eve let out a weak laugh while Galahad continued to snore at her feet, all four legs in the air.

“You need sleep. If you want medication, I can arrange it.”

“I’d rather not.”

“I’ll be here if you change your mind.”

“It’s good to have a doctor on tap in case I bloody him again.”

“For now I prescribe food and rest.”

“I could eat,” Eve realized. “It’s the first time I’ve actually wanted to all day.”

“That’s a good sign. I’m just next door if you need me.”

“Stay, have a meal with us,” Roarke began.

“Another time. I think the two of you should just be together awhile. If anything breaks on the case, I’d like to be informed.”

“Sure.” Eve stepped forward when Mira rose. “It helped, a lot, you coming. Listening.”

Mira brushed a hand over Eve’s hair. “Maybe it’s the influence of my daughter—the Wiccan. While I think we have to make the most out of our life while we’re here, I believe we get more than one chance. When we get another chance, there are connections, people, recognition. I recognize you, Eve, and always have. That’s unscientific, and absolute truth. I’ll be right here.”

Roarke walked her to the door, then, leaning down, kissed Mira softly on the lips. “Thank you.”

After closing the door, he turned to Eve. “You’re loved. One day, I hope when you think of ‘mother’ you’ll think of her.”

“When I think of good I think of her. That’s something.”

“It is.”

“I’m sorry. I made this harder on you than I needed to.”

“That goes both ways.”

“It’ll probably still get screwed up before it’s over.”

“Oh, almost certainly. So why don’t we eat before it does?”

“Good idea.” But she walked to him first, wrapped her arms around him. “I’d rather be screwed up with you than smooth with anybody else.”

“Again, both ways.” He drew her back, traced his finger over the dent in her chin. “What do you say to spaghetti and meatballs?”

“I say yay.” She hugged him again, then let out a genuine laugh as Galahad wound between their feet. “In a dead sleep he hears you say spaghetti and meatballs.”

“Three plates, then. If you can’t spoil your cat, who can you spoil?”

“But no wine for him. He’s a mean drunk.”

She held on another moment, taking comfort, giving it back. “I want to say just one more thing about it, then set it aside, at least for now.”

“All right.”

“When I was a kid—after, I mean. When I was in the system, I used to imagine somebody stole me from my parents. They’d find me, take me home. Somewhere nice, with a yard and toys. And they’d be great, perfect. They’d love me.”

She closed her eyes when he tightened his grip. “After a while I had to deal with what’s real. Nobody was coming for me. There was no house and yard and toys. I did okay, and one day I did a whole hell of a lot better. I found you.”

She stepped back, gripping his hands in hers. “I got really lucky because, Roarke, you’re my what’s real.”

He brought her hands to his lips. “Always.”