[In Death 16] - Portrait in Death

by J. D. Robb

  Her partner in crime was pouring some sort of pink foam into a wide pitcher. There was no way to tell whether it was intended for topical or internal use.

  Mavis still had her bells on, and had donned a sunny yellow romper with a woman wearing a black g-string and leather boots painted across the butt.

  The PA was wearing an eye mask and a headset while her feet soaked in bubbling blue water. Her hair was coated with something thick and green.

  Pitcher in hand, Mavis turned and spotted him. “You’re home! Welcome to Summerset’s Totally Iced Salon. Want a strawberry smash?”

  He assumed she meant the pink foam. “Thanks, no.”

  “Dallas is hiding upstairs. Drag her down for us, will you? Trina wants to use this new skin product on her, and she needs—”

  She broke off as she got a good look at his face. There were shadows under his eyes. She’d known him more than a year, and this was the first time she’d seen him wear shadows. “Everything okay?”

  “Fine.” He stepped over to Summerset. “And you?”

  The eyes that peered out of the blue registered mortification, a little panic, and the faintest flicker of hope. “They really shouldn’t be bothering with me. I know we have a number of things to discuss now that you’re home, so—”

  “Actually, I have some work to see to.”

  “Yes, but—” Summerset groped for Roarke’s hand, gripped it like a vice. “As I explained to everyone, we need to go over the Rundale report, and the other matter.”

  “Can’t be working the old guy when he’s busted up.” Trina sent Roarke a dismissive glance. “He needs to relax. What he really needs is a full week of intensive treatments. I might be able to turn his skin around. Hair’s not bad.” She gave it a testing tug, transferring goo. “It’ll be better when I’m done.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Roarke.” Summerset all but croaked it, then cleared his throat. “If I could have a moment.”

  “Later.”

  “Now.” This time he snapped it out. “If you ladies would excuse us, for just a few minutes.”

  “No problem,” Mavis said before Trina could object. “Treen, let’s take these smashes into the kitchen. Don’t worry about her,” she added with a gesture at the PA. “She’s on a relaxation and meditation program. She’s zonked.”

  With a last worried glance at Roarke, she grabbed Trina’s hand and pulled her out of the room.

  “They don’t mean any harm,” Roarke began.

  “I’m not concerned about that. I’m concerned about you. You don’t look well.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “You’re always busy. Are you ill?”

  “For Christ’s sake. No, I’m not ill. Bloody hell, music off!” The blast crashed into silence. “I’ve a great deal to do. More as you’re incapacitated.”

  “I’m hardly incapacitated. I’m—”

  “You broke your fucking leg. So lie back and deal with it. If you’ve gotten yourself into the bog here with these women, you’ll have to lie back and deal with that as well. I can’t help you. There’s no point in whining about it.”

  Summerset’s fingers tightened on the arms of his chair. “I don’t whine, nor do I tolerate being spoken to by you in such a matter.”

  “Don’t have much choice in that, do you? I’m not a child requiring lessons in manners any longer. As long as you’re in my employ, I’ll speak to you as I wish. And frankly, I’m not going to stand here wasting my time arguing with a half-naked man with God knows what all over his face.”

  Roarke strode out, leaving Summerset blinking after him. The twist in his gut had him doing something he’d never have considered otherwise. He reached for the in-house ’link.

  “What?” Eve snarled, then grimaced at the image on her screen. “Mother of God, my eyes! Block the video for sweet Jesus’ sake.”

  “Quiet. Something’s wrong with Roarke. He’s not well.”

  “What? What do you mean? He’s sick?”

  “I said he’s not well. I expect you to do something about it as I’m unable to.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s home. Find him. Fix it.”

  “Done” was all she said.

  She did a search, located him in the gym. Switching to video scan, she watched him strip down, drag on shorts. He looked exhausted, she thought. Not just tired, which was rare enough for him, but wiped out.

  He went for the weights, and Eve bided her time. Go ahead, she decided, sweat some of it out. That’s what she’d have done.

  It wasn’t just the shadows under his eyes that worried her, but the cold set of his face as he pumped the weights. Cold and hard.

  He was pushing himself. Punishing himself? God, what was going on?

  While he worked, she paced her office, trying out a dozen possible approaches. After a brutal thirty minutes, he went into the pool house.

  Lap after lap, fast, strong, hard. Too hard, she thought, and was on the point of going down to stop him when he rolled over on his back. Seeing him floating there, eyes closed, misery in every line of his face broke her heart.

  “What is it?” she murmured and stroked her fingers over the screen. “Why are you so unhappy?”

  Work? No, didn’t compute. If it was trouble with work he might be pissed, but he’d be challenged by it. Even energized. It wouldn’t make him miserable.

  Summerset? Didn’t play either. She’d checked, personally, with the medicals and had been told the skinny son of a bitch was healing perfectly, and already ahead of schedule.

  Maybe it’s me, she thought, with a slow, sick dread. Maybe his feelings for her had just . . . clicked off somehow. Everything between them had happened so fast when you thought about it. And had never made any sense, not to her. If he’d stopped loving her, wouldn’t he be unhappy, guilty, tired, distraught. All the things she saw on his face now?

  That was just bullshit. She kicked the desk as Roarke pulled himself out of the water. Just raging bullshit. And if it wasn’t, well, he was going to be a lot more unhappy, guilty, tired, and distraught before she was done.

  She marched into the kitchen, pulled out a bottle of wine and drank a glass like medicine. She’d give him a few minutes to clean himself up, then she was going in.

  He was just getting out of the shower when she walked into the bath. Or swaggered, spoiling for a fight. She watched him hook a towel at his hip, met his eyes in the mirror.

  “You look like shit.”

  “Thanks, darling.”

  No smile, she noted. No glimmer of warmth or amusement, not even irritation. Just nothing at all.

  “I’ve got some things to say to you. Put some pants on.”

  “They’ll have to wait. I’ve a conference call scheduled shortly.” It was a lie. It passed through his mind he’d never lied to her before. And it didn’t go down well.

  “It’s going to have to go without you.” She stalked back into the bedroom, slammed the door shut.

  The sound of it cut through his aching head like a laser. “Perhaps I’m not hunting down the next murdering bastard who plagues New York, but my work’s important.” He crossed to the closet, yanked out a pair of trousers. “I don’t expect you to stop doing yours when it’s inconvenient for me.”

  “I guess I’m not as nice and agreeable as you are.”

  “There’s a bulletin. I’ll talk to you later,” he said as he yanked on the pants.

  “You’ll talk to me now.” Her chin angled, a challenge, when he simply turned his head and stared coolly. “You’ve got to get through me to get out of the room. And the way you look right now, champ, I can put you down in thirty seconds.”

  He could feel the temper eating through the misery now, like a hot bite. “Don’t bank on it.”

  “You want to fight?” She shifted her stance, crooked her finger. “Come on.”

  “You’ll have to save your pissing contest for later. I’m not in the mood.” He stepped toward her, intending on nudging he
r aside. She shoved him back.

  His eyes fired, and that pleased her.

  “Don’t.” His warning was low, and very, very calm.

  “Don’t what?” She shoved him again, saw his hands ball into fists. “You want to take a shot at me. Go right ahead. Get it out of your system before I knock you on your ass.”

  “I’m telling you to stay away from me for a bit.”

  She planted her hands on his bare chest and shoved him again. “No.”

  “Don’t push me!” At her next move, he grabbed her wrists, jerked her forward, back. Fury flooded him, gushing through his blood. “I don’t need you crawling up my back. Leave me be. I don’t want you around.”

  “Don’t want me around.” It was a slice in the gut, fast and bloodless, that she countered by running him back against a wall. “You son of a bitch, you’re the one that got me into this in the first place.”

  He had more left in him than she’d thought, and in a ten-second sweaty grapple, reversed their positions. She countered, feinting with an elbow toward his chin as she hooked her foot around his and tossed him to the floor.

  She saw the hot rage light on his face even as it flamed in her. She sprang.

  He saw stars, then lost himself in the red-hazed violence as they rolled and wrestled over the floor. Something crashed, shattered.

  He felt the black bloom out of that tiny core inside him. It wanted to spread. Wanted to wound. And as they grappled, breath coming fast and short, the diamond she wore on a long chain around her neck spilled out and struck his cheek.

  Appalled, disgusted, he dropped his guard and let her pin him.

  “Go ahead.” He closed his eyes. Rage had passed, leaving him raw and empty. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Not going to hurt me?” She lifted his head an inch by the hair, then let it thump on the floor. “You’re tired of me, don’t want me around, want to shake me loose, and you’re not going to hurt me?”

  “Tired of you?” He opened his eyes, and saw for the first time that hers weren’t simply angry. Tears sparkled in them. “Where the hell do you get these things? I never said that. I’ve a great deal on my mind, that’s all. Nothing that has to do with you.”

  He saw her face, the ripple of hurt that had her flinching as if he’d slapped her. Then she shut it down, so that her eyes went dry, went flat as she sat back on her heels.

  “What a stupid thing to say,” he murmured. “What a sublimely stupid thing to say.” He lifted his hands, scrubbed them over his face. “I’m sorry for it. I’m sorry for last night, sorry for this. I’m bloody sorry.”

  “I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to tell me what the hell’s going on. Are you sick?” Tears were rising in her throat when she cupped his face in her hands. “Please, tell me. Is there something bad wrong with you?”

  “No. There’s not, no, not the way you mean.” Gently, he closed his hands over her wrists, over bruises he’d put there. “I’ve hurt you.”

  “Forget it. Just tell me. If you’re not going to die, and you haven’t fallen out of love with me—”

  “I couldn’t fall out of love with you if I fell all the way to hell.” Emotion was storming back into his eyes, and with it some of the misery she’d seen there before. “You’re everything.”

  “For God’s sake, tell me. I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

  “Give me a minute, will you?” He touched her cheek where a tear had spilled over. “I want a drink.”

  She got up, held out a hand to help him to his feet. “Is it something to do with business? Did you do something illegal?”

  The faintest hint of a smile touched his mouth. “Oh, Lieutenant, all manner of things. But not for quite some time.” He walked over to the panel in the wall, pressed, and opened the wide, recessed bar. He chose whiskey and had her stomach churning again.

  “Okay. What, did you lose all your money?”

  “No.” He nearly laughed. “I’d have handled that better than I’ve handled this. You. All of it. Christ Jesus, I’ve mucked this up.” He took a drink, took a breath. “It has to do with my mother.”

  “Oh.” Of all the things that had gone through her mind, this hadn’t been so much as a blip on the radar screen. “Did she contact you? Does she want something? If she’s giving you grief I can help—flash the badge, whatever.”

  He shook his head, drank. “She didn’t contact me. She’s dead.”

  She opened her mouth, shut it again. Shaky ground, she decided. Family deals were always shaky ground. “I’m trying to figure out what to say. I’m sorry if you are. But . . . you haven’t seen her since you were a kid, right? You said she walked, and that was that.”

  “That’s what I said, yes, and that’s what I believed. All this time believed. But it happens the woman who walked wasn’t my mother. I thought she was and that was that. I’ve learned differently.”

  “Okay. How did you learn about it?”

  Calm, he thought. Calm and cool, his cop, when she had something to puzzle out. And how foolish he’d been not to tell her right off. He stared into the glass, then walked over to sit on the sofa.

  “I met a woman at the shelter, a counselor there. She’s from Dublin, and she told me a story I didn’t believe at first. Didn’t want to believe. About a young girl she’d tried to help. A young girl and her child.”

  Slowly, Eve walked over to sit beside him. “You?”

  “Me. She was very young, this girl, and from the west. A farm in the west. She’d come to Dublin for the adventure, and to work. And she met Patrick Roarke.”

  He told her the rest.

  “You’ve verified it? The counselor, everything she told you. You’re sure it’s not some scam.”

  “Very sure.” He wanted another whiskey, but didn’t have the energy to get up and pour. “This girl who was my mother tried to give me a family, to do what was right. She loved him, I imagine, and was afraid of him. He had a way of making women love, and fear him. But she loved me, Eve.”

  Eve’s fingers linked with his, and gave him comfort. Steadied by it, he brought their joined hands to his lips. “I could see it in the picture of us. She never left me. He killed her. Another thing he was good at was destroying beauty and innocence. He killed her, and brought Meg back.”

  He laid his head back, looked up at the ceiling. “They were married. I found those records. Married before he met and ruined my mother, but there were no children. Maybe Meg couldn’t give him a son, so he cast her out. Or she’d had enough of his whoring and scheming and left him. Hardly matters why.”

  He gave what passed for a shrug, keeping his eyes closed as fatigue dragged at him. “A girl like Siobhan Brody would have appealed to him. So young and malleable, so ripe for plucking. And when she had me, he’d have little use for a young girl like her, nagging at him to marry her and make a proper family.”

  “She was with him for, what, under two years. But wouldn’t someone have told her about Meg? Wouldn’t someone have told her he was already married?”

  “If they did, he’d have lied his way around it. He had a quick and clever tongue, and was always ready with the credible lie.”

  “Or, you have a girl, not even twenty, gone over this guy and pregnant by him—maybe already a little afraid of him. Could be she just didn’t hear what people said.”

  “True enough. Though there’d have been those back in that day, back in his prime, who’d have risked speaking of him in a way he’d dislike. But if Meg’s name came to her ears, she may have pretended not to hear.”

  He fell silent for a moment, thinking it through. “Meg was more his match, if you understand me. Hard, with a liking for drink and a fast pound. Siobhan, she’d have irritated him eventually, simply because of what she was. But nobody walked out on Patrick Roarke—and to take his son, the symbol of his virility? No, indeed that wouldn’t be permitted. So she had to be punished for trying. I can see how it was, see exactly how it would have been. He’d pull Meg back to
deal with me. A man can’t spend his time fussing over a baby, after all. Work to do, business to run. Get a woman to handle the dirty work. He was a right bastard, no doubt of it.”

  “No one ever mentioned her to you? Your mother.”

  “No one. I’d have found out about it myself, but I never bothered to look. It wasn’t closed off in my mind, as yours was, I just never bothered. I dismissed her, you see.”

  He squeezed his eyes tighter, then forced them open. “Not worth my time or trouble. I never gave her so much as a passing thought in all these years.”

  “You never gave Meg Roarke a passing thought,” she corrected. “You didn’t know.”

  “I never even troubled myself enough to hate her. She was nothing to me.”

  “You’re talking about two different women.”

  “She deserved better, that’s the point. Better all around, and better from me. I ask myself if she’d gone back to him if not for me. If not for thinking my son needs his father. Would she be alive now?”

  Worried, she wanted to yank him out of this maze of guilt he was circling. But she went with instinct, with training, and spoke quietly, as she would to a victim, a survivor on the verge of shock. “You can’t blame yourself for that. Or punish yourself for it.”

  “There should be some payment. Goddamn it, Eve, there should be something. I feel . . . helpless, and I don’t like it. Here’s something I can’t fix—can’t fight with my fists, can’t buy or steal or talk my way around. No matter how I line it up, she’s dead, and he never paid.”

  “Roarke, I don’t know how many times—you can’t keep them in your head or you go crazy—I don’t know how many times I’ve knocked on someone’s door and ripped apart the whole fabric of their life by telling them someone they loved is dead.”

  Hoping to comfort, she brushed her fingers over his hair. “They feel what you’re feeling now. And no matter how you line it up, the one who caused it never pays enough.”