The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  When she crawled away, shivering, panting, to huddle in the corner, he was sprawled on the floor, drowned in his own blood.

  As always.

  But this time she wasn’t alone with the man she’d killed. She wasn’t alone with the dead in the hideous room. There were others, countless others, men and women in dark suits, sitting in row after row of chairs. Like people at a play. Observers with empty faces.

  They watched as she wept. Watched as she bled and her broken arm hung limply at her side.

  They watched, and said nothing. Did nothing. Even when Richie Troy rose, as he sometimes did. When he rose, pouring blood from all the wounds she’d put into him and began to shuffle toward her, they did nothing.

  She awoke bathed in sweat with the scream tearing at her throat. Instinctively she rolled and reached out for Roarke, but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there to gather her in, to soothe away those horrible jagged edges.

  So she curled into a ball, battling the tears while the cat bumped his head against hers.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay.” She pressed her damp face against his fur, rocked herself. “God. Oh God. Lights on, twenty-five percent.”

  The low light helped, so she lay in it until her chest stopped burning. Then, still shivering, she rose to drag herself to the shower, and the heat of the water.

  Rose to drag herself into the day.

  21 IT WAS TOO early for the team to be up, and she was glad of it. She wasn’t quite in the frame of mind for teamwork. She’d close herself up in her office and review everything again. She would walk through it all with Bissel one more time.

  She resisted checking the house monitoring system to see where Roarke was. It was more important where he hadn’t been, and that was in bed with her. If he’d slept—and there were times she thought he needed less sleep than a damn vampire—he’d slept elsewhere.

  She wouldn’t bring it up, wouldn’t mention it, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of that. They’d finish the investigation, they would close this case, and when Bissel was wrapped, they would . . .

  She wished to God she knew.

  She programmed coffee in the kitchen off her office. Just coffee as even the thought of food made her stomach pitch. But she took pity on the pathetic begging from the cat, and poured him a double shot of kibble.

  She turned, and there he was, leaning against the doorjamb watching her. His beautiful face was unshaven—a rarity—and as expressionless and remote as those in her dream had been.

  The comparison turned her blood cold.

  “You need more sleep,” he said at length. “You don’t look well.”

  “I got all I’m getting.”

  “You worked late, and no one’s going to be up and around for at least another hour. Take a soother, for pity’s sake, Eve, and lie down.”

  “Why don’t you take your own advice? You don’t look so hot yourself, ace.”

  He opened his mouth. She could almost see the venom. But whatever poisonous thing he’d been about to say, he swallowed. She had to give him points for it.

  “We made some progress in the lab. I assume you’ll want to brief the team, and be briefed.” He moved in to program coffee for himself.

  “Yeah.”

  “Bruises look better,” he said as he lifted his cup. “On the face, anyway. How’s the rest?”

  “Better.”

  “You’re very pale. If you won’t lie down, at least sit and have something to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.” She caught the petulant tone, hated it and herself. “I’m not,” she said in a calmer voice. “Coffee’s enough.”

  She braced the mug in both hands when the first one trembled, just a bit. He stepped forward, took her chin in his hand. “You had a nightmare.”

  She started to jerk her head away, but his fingers tightened. “I’m awake now.” She put a hand to his wrist, nudged it away. “I’m fine.”

  He said nothing as she walked back into her office, but stood staring down into the black pool of coffee in his cup. She’d pushed him away, and that was more than a small ache. It was a vicious tear through the heart.

  He’d seen she was exhausted and hurt, and knew how much more susceptible she was in those states to the nightmares. But he’d left her alone, and that was another tear.

  He hadn’t thought of her. He hadn’t thought, so she’d awoke in the dark alone.

  He walked to the sink, upended the contents into it, set the cup down very carefully.

  She was already at her desk when he walked in. “I want to review, shuffle some of this around. It’s easier for me to do that alone, in the quiet. I took a blocker yesterday, and I let Mira treat me when I went by her place. I’m not abusing or neglecting myself. But I have work. I need to do my job.”

  “You do, yes. You do.” There was a space, just under his tattered heart, that felt hollowed out. “I’m up early to catch up on a bit of my own.”

  She glanced up at him, then away with a small nod.

  So she wouldn’t ask, he realized, where he’d slept or what he’d been doing. She wouldn’t say what was so clearly in her eyes. That he was hurting her.

  “You’ve given a lot of time to this,” she said. “I know both Reva and Caro appreciate all you’re doing. So do I.”

  “They’re important to me. So are you.” And thought: Aren’t we polite? Aren’t we just fucking diplomats? “I know you need to work, as do I, but I need you to come in my office for a moment.”

  “If it could wait until—”

  “I think it best it doesn’t, for all involved. Please.”

  She rose and moved away from the desk without her coffee. A sure sign, he thought, that she was agitated. He led the way through the connecting door, then closed it, and called for a lockdown.

  “What is this?”

  “Given the circumstances, I prefer absolute privacy. I looked in on you last night. Must’ve been near to two. Your feline knight was guarding you.”

  “You didn’t come to bed.”

  “I didn’t. I couldn’t . . . settle. And I was angry.” He searched her face. “We’re both so angry, aren’t we, Eve?”

  “I guess we are.” Though anger seemed the wrong term somehow, and she thought he knew it as well as she did. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “You didn’t let me know when you got home.”

  “I didn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Well.” He drew a breath as a man did after a quick, surprising blow. “Well. As it happens, I didn’t want to talk to you either. So after I saw you were sleeping, I took myself off to the unregistered to do the business I needed to do.”

  Whatever color had still been in her cheeks drained now. “I see.”

  “Aye.” His eyes never left hers. “You see. You may wish you didn’t, but you do.” He unlocked a compartment with a quick play of fingers over a panel, and took from it a single disc.

  “I have here, the names, the whereabouts, the financials, the medicals, the professional evaluations, and all other matter of data on the field operative, his supervisor, the director of the HSO, and any who were attached to the task force involving Richard Troy in Dallas. There’s nothing about them that’s relevant—and quite a bit that likely isn’t—that’s not on this disc.”

  The weight dropped on her chest, pressing against her heart so she could hear the panicked beat of it roaring in her ears. “None of that changes what happened. Nothing you can do changes what happened.”

  “Of course it doesn’t.” He turned the disc in his hands, and its surface caught light and shot it out again. Like a weapon. “They’ve all had very decent careers, some more than decent. They continue to work, or consult, play golf or, in one case, squash, of all things. They eat and they sleep. Some cheat on a spouse, some go to church every bloody Sunday.”

  His gaze whipped up to hers, a bolt of blue. Another weapon. “And do you think, Eve, do you suppose any flaming one of them gives that child they sacrificed
all those years back a single thought? Do they wonder, ever, if she suffers? If she wakes weeping in the dark?”

  Her head felt light now, and her knees weak. “What do I care if they think of me? It doesn’t change anything.”

  “I could remind them.” And his voice was utterly flat, more frightening than the hiss of a snake. “That would change something, wouldn’t it? I could remind them, personally, what they did by sitting back and leaving a child to defend herself against a monster. I could remind them how they listened and recorded and sat on their fat government asses while he beat and raped her, and she cried for help. They deserve to pay for that, and you know it. You bloody well do.”

  “Yes, they deserve to pay!” The words burst out, hot as the tears that burned behind her eyes. “They deserve it. Is that what you need to hear? They should fry in hell for what they did. But it’s not up to you, and it’s not up to me to send them there. If you do this thing, it’s murder. It’s murder, Roarke, and their blood on your hands changes nothing that happened to me.”

  He paused a long, long moment. “I can live with that.” He saw her eyes go dark, and dead. “But you can’t. So . . .”

  He snapped the disc in two, then shoved the pieces into the recycle slot.

  She only stared, and in the silence there was only the sound of her own shaky breaths. “You . . . you’re letting it go.”

  He looked down at the slot and knew his rage would never be so easily destroyed. He’d live with it, and the impotence that walked with it, the whole of his life. “If I did anything else it would be for myself, not for you. Hardly a point in that. So yes, I’m letting it go.”

  Her stomach fluttered, but she managed to nod. “Good. That’s good. Best.”

  “So it seems. End lockdown.” His cool order had the shields going up, and the light pouring in the windows. “I’ll give you some time later this morning, but I need to see to some matters. If you’ll close the door on your way out.”

  “Sure. Okay.” She started out, then pressed a hand on the door to brace herself. “You think I don’t know, that I don’t understand what that cost you. But you’re wrong.” She couldn’t keep her voice steady, gave up trying. “You’re wrong, Roarke. I do know. There’s no one else in the world who would want, who would need to kill for me. No one else in the world who would step back from it because I asked it. Because I needed it.”

  She turned, and the first tear spilled over. “No one but you.”

  “Don’t. You’ll do me in if you cry.”

  “I never in my life expected anyone would love me, all of me. How would I deserve that? What would I do with it? But you do. Everything we’ve managed to have together, to be to each other, this is more. I’ll never be able to find the words to tell you what you just gave me.”

  “You undo me, Eve. Who else would make me feel like a hero for doing nothing.”

  “You did everything. Everything. Are everything.” Mira was right, again. Love, that strange and terrifying entity, was the answer after all. “Whatever there is, whatever happened to me, or how it comes back on me, you have to know, you need to know that what you did here gave me more peace than I ever thought I’d find. You have to know that I can face anything knowing you love me.”

  “Eve.” He stepped away from the slot, away from what was gone. And toward her, toward what mattered. “I can’t do anything but love you.”

  Her vision blurred as she ran, wrapped herself around him. “I missed you. I missed you so much.”

  He pressed his face to her shoulder, breathed her. Felt the world steady again. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no, no.” She clung, then eased back only to take his face in her hands. “I see you. I know you. I love you.”

  She watched the emotion storm into his eyes before she pressed her lips to his.

  “It was like the world was off a step,” he murmured. “Nothing quite in time when I couldn’t really touch you.”

  “Touch me now.”

  He smiled, stroked her hair. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know, but touch me. I need to feel close to you again.” She turned her lips back to his. “I need you, and I need so bad, so bad to show you.”

  “In bed then.” He circled her toward the elevator. “In our bed.”

  When the elevator doors closed, she pressed against him, strained.

  “Gently now.” He ran his hands down her sides, then boosted her into his arms. “You’re bruised.”

  “I don’t feel bruised anymore.”

  “All the same. You look so delicate.” When her brow creased, he laughed and dropped a kiss on it. “That wasn’t an insult.”

  “Sounds like one, but I’m going to let it pass.”

  “You look pale,” he continued as he walked off the elevator into the bedroom. “And a bit fragile. There are tears on your lashes yet, and shadows under your eyes. Do you know how I love your eyes, your long golden eyes, Eve. My darling Eve.”

  “They’re brown.”

  “I like the way they watch me.” He laid her on the bed. “There are tears still in them.” He kissed them closed. “It kills me when you cry. A strong woman’s tears can cut a man to ribbons faster than a knife.”

  He was soothing her, seducing her, with words and those patient hands. It amazed her that a man of his energy, his needs, could be so patient. Violent and cold, tender and warm. The contradictions of him, the whole of him that meshed, somehow, with the whole of her.

  “Roarke.” She bowed up, wrapping her arms around him.

  “What?”

  She opened her eyes, laid her lips on his cheek, and searched for her own tenderness. “My Roarke.”

  She could soothe, she could seduce. She could show him that whatever the world threw at them, whatever reared up from the past or lurked in the future, they were together.

  She unbuttoned his shirt, pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “You’re the love of my life. I don’t care how corny that sounds. You’re the start of it, and the end of it. And you’re the best of it.”

  He took her hands, cupping them in his own and bringing them to his lips as love washed through him. It cleansed, he thought, this flood of feeling between them. And despite all the odds, what it left behind was pure.

  He parted her shirt, then traced his fingers lightly over the bruises. “It hurts me to see you marked like this, and to know you’ll be marked again. At the same time it makes me proud.” He brushed his lips lightly over injuries, pressed them softly to the image of her badge. “I married a warrior.”

  “So did I.”

  His gaze came back to hers, and held, as their mouths found each other’s. Hands stroked, in comfort, in passion. They moved together in the quiet of the morning and words slipped into sighs.

  When she rose over him, took him in, their fingers linked. Locked. With the pleasure, with the thrill, was the steady beat of love.

  She curled up beside him, realizing they both needed this space of intimacy as much as they’d needed the reassurance and release.

  Her world had been rocked. She only understood how violent the shake had been now that it was steady again. Only understood, she thought, that it had been the same for him now that they were reconciled.

  Reconciled, she realized, because he’d given her what she needed. He’d submerged or denied his own ego for her. And there was nothing simple or easy about it. His ego was . . . she’d just call it healthy since she was feeling so grateful.

  He’d given in, given up his own needs, not because he stood on the same moral ground as she at the end of the day, but because he valued her and their marriage more than that ego.

  “You could’ve lied to me.”

  “No.” He watched the light strengthen in the sky through the window over the bed. “I couldn’t lie to you.”

  “I don’t mean you, I mean in a general sense.” She shifted, skimming his hair away from his face with her fingers, then running those fingers over the stubble he’d neglected to remove t
hat morning. “If you were less of a man you could have lied to me, done what you wanted to do, stoked your ego, satisfied yourself and moved on.”

  “It’s hardly a matter of ego—”

  “No, no.” She rolled her eyes, but made sure she did so out of his range of vision. “Ego always plays a part, and I don’t mean that in an insulting way. I’ve certainly got an ego.”

  “Tell me,” he muttered.

  “Look, look, follow along here.” She shifted, scooting up so she could sit and face him.

  “Can’t we just lie here quietly for a few moments, so I can admire my naked wife?”

  “You should like most of this because it involves all sorts of compliments and admiring comments about you.”

  “Well then, don’t let me interrupt your train of thought.”

  “I really do love you.”

  “Yes.” His lips curved. “I know.”

  “Sometimes I think it’s because of that Plutonian-sized ego, sometimes despite it. Either way, I’m stuck on you, pal. But this isn’t about that.”

  He stroked the back of his fingers along her thigh. “But I’m liking this very much.”

  “I might be feeling a little sloppy yet, but—” She slapped his hand away. “I’m back on the clock.”

  “Yes, I’m admiring your badge right now.”

  The laugh snorted out before she could stop it, but she grabbed her shirt. “What I’m saying is you’re an important man, a successful man. Sometimes you make a splash about it, sometimes you don’t. Depends on the purpose. You don’t need to make a big deal about stuff because you are a big deal. That’s one part.”

  “Of what, exactly?”

  “Of the whole ego thing. Guys have a different kind of ego than women. I think. Anyway, Mavis claims it’s connected to the dick. She’s usually right about stuff like that.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about you discussing my dick with Mavis.”

  “I always say you’re hung like a bull and can go all night.”

  “That’s all right, then.” But since the direction of the discussion made him feel just a little exposed, he reached for his pants.