by J. D. Robb
“Is his motive important at this point?”
“You can’t get a full picture without it. Whoever’s pushing the buttons in Cassandra’s linked to him. But I don’t think they’re pissed.”
“Just crazy then?”
“No, not just. I haven’t figured out what else yet.”
She shifted, rolled her shoulders, then set up to run comparisons on the names Roarke had fed into her machine.
It was a slow process, and a tedious one that depended more on the computer than its operator. Her mind began to drift as she watched names, faces, data, skim over the screen.
She didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep. Didn’t know she was dreaming when she found herself wading through a river of blood.
Children were crying. Bodies littered the ground, and the ones that still had faces begged for help. Smoke stung her eyes, her throat, as she stumbled over the wounded. Too many, she thought frantically. Too many to save.
Hands snatched at her ankles, some no more than bones. They tripped her up until she was falling, falling into a deep, black crater piled with still more bodies. Stacked like cordwood, ripped and torn like broken dolls. Something was pulling her in, pulling her down until she was drowning in that sea of dead.
Gasping, whimpering, she clawed her way back, crawled frantically up the slippery side of the pit until her fingers were raw and bloody.
She was back in the smoke, crawling still, fighting to breathe, to clear her mind of panic so that she could do something. Do what needed to be done.
Someone was crying. Softly, secretly. Eve stumbled forward through the stinking, blinding mist. She saw the child, the little girl huddled on the ground, balled up, rocking herself for comfort as she wept.
“It’s all right.” She coughed her throat clear, knelt down, and pulled the girl into her arms. “We’ll get out.”
“There’s no place to go.” The little girl whispered in her ear. “We’re already there.”
“We’re getting out.” They had to get out, was all Eve could think. Terror was crawling over her skin like ants, crab claws of ice were scraping the inside of her belly. She dragged the child up and began to carry her through the smoke.
Their hearts thudded against each other’s, hard and in unison. And the girl’s fingers gripped like thin wires when voices slithered through the mist.
“I need a goddamn fix. Why the hell isn’t there money for a goddamn fix?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Eve stopped cold. She hadn’t recognized the woman’s voice, but the man’s, the one who’d answered with that sharp, sneering snap. It was one that lived in her dreams. In her terrors.
Her father’s voice.
“You shut the fuck up, you bastard. If you hadn’t got me knocked up in the first place, I wouldn’t be stuck in this hole with you and that whiny little brat.”
Breath shallow, the child like a stone doll in her arms, Eve crept forward. She saw figures, male, female, hardly more than smudges on the smoke. But she recognized him. The build, the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head.
I killed you, was all she could think. I killed you, you son of a bitch. Why won’t you stay dead?
“They’re monsters,” the child whispered to Eve. “Monsters never die.”
But they did, Eve thought. If you stood up long enough, they did.
“Should’ve gotten rid of it while you had the chance,” the man who had been Eve’s father said with a careless shrug. “Too late now, sweetie-pie.”
“I wish to Christ I had. I never wanted the little bitch in the first place. Now you owe me, Rick. Give me the price of a corner fix, or—”
“You don’t want to threaten me.”
“Goddamn you, I’ve been in this hole all day with that sniveling kid. You fucking owe me.”
“Here’s what I owe you.” Eve cowered back at the sound of a fist smashing into bone. The sharp cry that followed.
“Here’s what I fucking owe both of you.”
She stood paralyzed as he beat the woman, as he raped her. And realizing the child she held tight in her arms was herself, she began to scream.
“Eve, stop. Come on now, wake up.” Roarke had bolted out of his chair at the first scream, had her up and into his arms by the second. And still she thrashed.
“It’s me.” She shoved at him, kicked. “It’s me, and I can’t get out.”
“Yes, you can. You’re out now. You’re with me now.” Shifting her, he pressed the mechanism on the wall and brought out the bed. “Come on, all the way back. You’re with me. Understand?”
“I’m all right. Let go. I’m okay.”
“Not a chance.” She was shaking even as he sat on the edge of the bed and cradled her in his lap. “Just relax. Just hold onto me and relax.”
“I fell asleep, that’s all. I nodded off for a minute.” He eased her back to study her face. It was the understanding in his eyes, those fabulous eyes, the patience there and the love that did her in. “Oh God.” Surrendering, she pressed her face to his shoulder. “Oh God, oh God. Just give me a minute.”
“All you need.”
“I guess I hadn’t let go of today. Everything. All those people—what was left of them. You can’t let it get in the way of the job, or you can’t do the job.”
“So it slices you up when you shut down.”
“Maybe. Sometimes.”
“Darling Eve.” He brushed his lips over her hair. “You suffer for all of them. And always have.”
“If they’re not people to me, what’s the point?”
“None. Not for you. I love who you are.” He drew back again to stroke her cheek. “And still, it worries me. How much can you give and still stand up to it?”
“As much as it takes. It wasn’t only that.” She drew a breath, then another, steadying herself. “I don’t know if it was a dream or a memory. I just don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
She did, because with him she could. She told him of finding the child, of the vague figures in the smoke. Of what she’d heard, and what she’d seen.
“You think it was your mother.”
“I don’t know. I have to get up. I have to move.” She rubbed her hands over her arms when he released her. “Maybe I was—what do they call it? Projecting or transposing. What the hell. I’d been thinking of Monica Rowan, what kind of woman would have turned her kids over to a man like James Rowan. Like I said before, it reminded me.”
“We don’t know that she did.”
“Well, he had them, anyway, just like my father had me. It’s probably all it was. I’ve never had any memory of her. I’ve got nothing of her.”
“You’ve remembered other things,” he pointed out, and rose to warm her arms himself. “This could be one of them. Eve, talk to Mira.”
“I’m not ready for that.” She pulled back immediately. “I’m not ready. I’ll know when I am. If I am.”
“It eats at you.” And at him, when he saw her suffering like this.
“No, it doesn’t drive my life. It just gets in the way of it sometimes. Remembering her, if there’s anything to remember, isn’t going to bring me any peace, Roarke. To me, she’s as dead as he is.”
And that, Roarke thought as he watched Eve turn back to her machine, wasn’t nearly dead enough.
“You need some sleep.”
“Not yet. I can do another hour.”
“Fine.” He walked to her and had her up and over his shoulder before she could blink.
“Hey!”
“An hour should be just about right,” he decided. “You rushed me earlier.”
“We’re not having sex.”
“Okay, I’ll have sex. You can just lie there.” He rolled onto the bed with her.
There was something miraculous about the way his body fit to hers. But she wasn’t going to pay any attention to that little miracle. “What part of no didn’t you get?”
“You didn’t say no.” He lowered his head to nuzzle her
cheek. “You said you weren’t having sex, which is entirely different. If you’d said no . . .” His fingers busily unbuttoned her shirt. “I would, of course, respect that.”
“Okay, listen up.”
Before she could speak, his mouth was on hers, soft, seductive. And wonderfully sly. His hands were already sliding, slipping, searching over her. She didn’t quite choke back the moan.
“Fine.” She gave up and sighed when his lips laid a hot trail down her throat. “Be an animal.”
“Thank you, darling. I’d love to.”
He took every bit of the hour, while the machines hummed away. He pleased her, and himself, knowing when her body went lax with release under his, she would tumble mindlessly into sleep.
And for a night, at least, there would be no more dreams.
It was dark in the room when she awoke, with just the lights from the console and screens flickering. Blinking, her brain still musty, she sat up and saw Roarke at the controls.
“What time is it?” She didn’t remember she was naked until she swung her legs from the bed.
“Just six. You have some matches here, Lieutenant. They’re on disc and hard copy.”
“Did you sleep?” She started to search for her pants, and saw the robe neatly laid across the foot of the bed. The man never missed a damn step.
“Yes. I haven’t been up long. I assume you’re going straight in today?”
“Yeah. Team briefing at eight hundred.”
“The report on Henson—what there is of it—is printed out.”
“Thanks.”
“I have a number of things to see to today, but you can reach me if you need to.” He rose, looking dark and dangerous in the half light, the night’s growth of beard shadowing his face, the black robe carelessly belted. “There are a couple of names on the match list I recognize.”
She took the hard copy he offered. “I guess it was too much to expect otherwise.”
“Paul Lamont rings the clearest bell. His father fought in the French Wars before the family immigrated here. Paul’s father was very skilled and passed considerable knowledge on to his son. Paul is a member of the security team for one of my businesses here in New York. Autotron. We make droids and various small electronics.”
“You pals?”
“He works for me—and we . . . developed a project or two several years ago.”
“And it’s not the kind of project a good cop needs to know about.”
“Exactly. He’s been with Autotron for more than six years now. We haven’t had contact beyond that relationship for nearly that amount of time.”
“Uh-huh. And what are these skills his dear old dad passed along to him?”
“Paul’s father was a saboteur. He specialized in explosives.”
chapter thirteen
Peabody hadn’t slept well. She dragged into work heavy-eyed and vaguely achy, as if she were coming down with some nasty little bug. She hadn’t eaten, either. Though her appetite was dependable—sometimes too dependable—she expected few could eat hearty after spending several hours tagging body parts.
That she could have lived with. That was the job, and she had learned how to channel all thoughts and energies into the job during the months she’d worked under Eve.
What she couldn’t live with, and what spread a thin layer of cranky over fatigue, was the fact that a great deal of her thoughts—and not pure ones—and entirely too much of her energies had been centered on McNab during the long night.
She hadn’t been able to talk to Zeke. Not about this sudden weird compulsion for McNab. McNab, for Christ’s sake. And she hadn’t wanted to talk about the bombing at The Plaza.
He’d seemed distracted himself, she thought now, and they’d circled each other the night before and again that morning.
She’d make it up to him, Peabody promised herself. She’d carve out a couple of hours that night and take him to some funky little club for a meal and music. Zeke loved music. It would do them both good, she decided as she stepped off the guide and tried to rub the stiffness out of the back of her neck.
She turned toward the conference room and rammed straight into McNab. He sprang back, collided with a pair of uniforms who toppled into a clerk from Anticrime.
Nobody took his apology very well, and he was red-faced and sweaty by the time he managed to look Peabody in the eye again. “You, ah, heading into the meeting.”
“Yeah.” She tugged at her uniform coat. “Just now.”
“Me, too.” They stared at each other a moment while people shoved by them.
“You shake anything loose on Apollo?”
“Not much.” She cleared her throat, tugged her coat again, and finally managed to start moving. “The lieutenant’s probably waiting.”
“Yeah, right.” He fell into step beside her. “You get any sleep?”
She thought of warm slick bodies . . . and stared straight ahead. “Some.”
“Me, either.” His jaw ached from gritting his teeth, but it had to be said. “Look, about yesterday.”
“Forget it.” She snapped it out.
“I already have. But if you’re going to walk around all tight-assed about it—”
“I’ll walk any way I want, and you just keep your hands off me, you moron, or I’ll rip your lungs out and use them for bagpipes.”
“Same goes, sweetheart. I’d rather kiss the back end of an alley cat.”
Her breath was coming quick now. Outrage. “I bet that’s just your style.”
“Better that than a stiff-necked uniform with an attitude.”
“Asshole.”
“Twit.”
They turned together into an empty office, slammed the door. And leapt at each other.
She bit his lip. He nipped her tongue. She body pressed him against the wall. He managed to get his hands under her thick coat to squeeze her ass. The moans that ripped from their throats came out as one single, tortured sound.
Then her back was against the wall and he filled his hands with her breasts.
“Oh God, you’re built. You are so built.”
He was kissing her as if he could swallow her whole. As if the universe centered on that one taste. Her head was spinning too fast for her to catch her own thoughts. And somehow the bright buttons of her uniform were open and his fingers were on her flesh.
Who’d have thought the man had such fabulous fingers?
“We can’t do this.” Even as she said it she was scraping her teeth along his throat.
“I know. We’ll stop. In a minute.” The scent of her—all starch and soap—was driving him crazy. He was fighting with her bra when the ’link behind them beeped and had them both muffling a scream.
Panting like dogs, clothes twisted, eyes glazed, they stared at each other with a kind of horror. “Holy God,” he managed.
“Step back, step back.” She shoved him hard enough to knock him back on his heels and began to fumble with her buttons. “It’s the pressure. It’s the stress. It’s something, because this is not happening.”
“Right, absolutely. If I don’t have sex with you, I think I’m going to die.”
“If you’d die, I wouldn’t have this problem.” She did her buttons up wrong, swore, and fumbled them open again.
Watching her, he felt his tongue go thick. “Having sex would be the mother of all mistakes.”
“Agreed.” She buttoned her uniform again, then met his eyes dead-on. “Where?”
“Your place?”
“Can’t. My brother’s staying with me.”
“Mine then. After shift. We’ll just do it, and it’s done and we’ll, you know. Get it out of the way and be back to normal.”
“Deal.” With a brisk nod, she bent and picked up her cap. “Tuck in your shirt, McNab.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea quite yet.” He grinned at her. “Dallas might wonder why I’ve got a hard-on the size of Utah.”
Peabody snorted, straightened her cap. “Your ego, maybe
.”
“Baby, we’ll see what you say about that after shift.”
She felt a little tingling between her thighs, but sniffed. “Don’t call me baby,” she told him and yanked open the door.
She kept her head up and her eyes straight ahead as she walked the rest of the way to the conference room.
Eve was already there, which gave Peabody a quick twinge of guilt. Three boards were set up, and her lieutenant was busy covering the last of them with hard copy data.
“Glad you could make it.” Eve said it dryly without turning around.
“I ran into . . . traffic. Do you want me to finish that for you, sir?”
“I’ve got it. Get me coffee, and program the screen for hard copy. We won’t be using discs on this.”
“I’ll get the screen,” McNab volunteered. “And I could use some coffee, too. No discs, Lieutenant?”
“No, I’ll update when the full team’s here.”
They went to work quietly, so quietly that Eve got an itch between her shoulder blades. The two of them should’ve been sniping at each other by now, she thought, and glanced over her shoulder.
Peabody had given McNab his coffee, which was weird enough. But while she printed out hard copy of her own discs, she smiled at him. Well, not really a smile, Eve mused, but close.
“You two take happy pills this morning?” she asked, then frowned when they both blushed. “What’s the deal?” she began, then shook her head when Anne Malloy and Feeney came in. “Never mind.”
“Dallas.” Anne stayed in the doorway. “Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure.”
“Make it quick,” Feeney suggested. “Whitney and the chief are heading in.”
“I’ll keep it short.” Anne drew a breath when Eve joined her at the door. “I want to apologize for yesterday. I had no call coming down on you that way.”
“It was a tough scene.”
“Yeah. I’ve done tough scenes before.” She glanced into the room, lowered her voice another notch. “I didn’t handle it well, and that won’t happen again.”