The In Death Collection, Books 21-25
Page 68
“Thing is,” she added, “she won’t see it in hers, either.”
“But you’ll see the truth. She won’t. I know it wasn’t easy for you, to do what you did. To do it from the start of this. How do you feel?”
“I’ve got to go to the hospital and tell that poor son of a bitch what she did, and why. I’ve got to go there and break his heart, leave that scar on him. I could feel a hell of a lot better.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“He’s going to need something, somebody, after. It’ll be up to him. But I think I have to do this, just the two of us. I think I owe him that. What do you think if I contacted the partner, they seem to be tight. Tell him to get his ass up here.”
“I think Bobby’s lucky to have you looking out for him.”
“Friends give you a cushion for the fall, even when you think you don’t need or want one. I appreciate you stopping by here, to see if I needed one. I’m okay.”
“Then I’ll let you finish.”
An hour later Eve was sitting beside Bobby’s hospital bed, helpless and miserable as tears tracked down his cheeks.
“There has to be a mistake. You’ve made a mistake.”
“There’s not. I haven’t. And I’m sorry, but I don’t know how else to tell you but straight out. She used you. She planned it. Parts of it maybe since she was thirteen. She claims she didn’t plan to kill your mother, and that may be true. It was of the moment. It always looked that way, so it could be that way. But beyond that, Bobby, and I know it’s a punch in the face, she planned, she covered up, she used. She wasn’t the woman she pretended to be. That woman never existed.”
“She—she just isn’t capable . . .”
“Zana Kline Lombard wasn’t capable. Marnie Ralston was and is. She confessed, Bobby, she walked me through it.”
“But we were married, all these months. We lived together. I know her.”
“You know what she wanted you to know. She’s a pro, a manipulator with a sheet as long as my arm. Bobby. Look at me, Bobby. You were raised by a manipulative woman, primed to be taken by another.”
“What does that make me?” His hand fisted, punched lightly on the bed. “What the hell does all that make me?”
“A target. But you don’t have to keep being one. She’s going to try to play you. She’s going to cry and apologize and tell you things like she started all this before she really knew you, that she fell for you on the way. She’ll say that part was never a lie. She’ll say things like she did this for you. She’ll have all the right words. Don’t be a target for her again.”
“I love her.”
“You love smoke. That’s all she is.” Impatient, a cinder of anger burning in her belly, Eve got to her feet. “You’ll do what you do. I can’t stop you. But I’m saying that you deserve better. I figure it took guts for a twelve-year-old kid to sneak me food, to try to make things a little easier for me. It’s going to take guts for you to face what you’re going to have to face. I’ll make it easier for you if I can.”
“My mother’s dead. My wife’s in prison, charged with her murder. With maybe trying to kill me. For God’s sake, how can you make it easier?”
“I guess I can’t.”
“I need to talk to Zana. I want to see her.”
Eve nodded. “Yeah, fine. You’re free to go down for visitation once they spring you.”
“There’ll be an explanation. You’ll see.”
You won’t, she decided. Maybe you can’t. “Good luck, Bobby.”
She went home, hating that she’d closed a case and still carried a sense of discouragement, of failure. The man would be manipulated. Maybe the system would as well.
She’d closed the case, but it wasn’t over. Sometimes, she thought, they never were.
She walked in, glanced at Summerset. “Let’s just keep this moratorium going another few hours. I’m too damn tired to screw around with you.”
She went straight to the bedroom. And there he was, stripped to the waist, pulling a T-shirt out of a drawer.
“Lieutenant. I don’t have to ask you about your day. It’s all over your face. She slipped through?”
“No, I got her. Full confession, for what it’s worth. PA’s going with Murder Two on Trudy, reckless endangerment on Bobby. She’ll go over, and for a long time.”
He pulled on the shirt as he crossed to her. “What is it?”
“I just left the hospital. Told Bobby.”
“You would do that yourself,” Roarke murmured, and touched her hair. “How horrible was it?”
“As much as it gets. He doesn’t believe it, or part of him does. You could see part of him knew I was giving it to him straight. It’s more he won’t see it, won’t accept it. He’s going to go down there, talk to her. She claimed he’d end up paying for her lawyers, and you know, she’s going to be right.”
Roarke slid his arms around her. “Love. Who can argue with it?”
“He’s a victim.” She dropped her forehead to his. “And one I can’t reach.”
“He’s a grown man, making his own decisions. Not helpless, Eve.” He tipped her face up. “You did your job.”
“I did my job. So what am I bitching about? It didn’t tie up the way I wanted. That’s the breaks. Nice that you’re here, though. Good that you’re here.”
She turned, wandered over toward the tree.
“What else?”
“She said we were alike. We’re not, I know we’re not. But there’s a piece of me like her, and that piece knows how she could pick up that sap and whale away. There’s a piece of me that understands that.”
“Eve, if you didn’t have that piece, didn’t understand why some use it and you don’t, you wouldn’t be such a damn good cop.”
Weight simply slid off her shoulders as she turned and looked at him. “Yeah. Yeah. You’re right. I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”
She walked back to him, tugged on the sleeve of his T-shirt. “What’s this for, ace?”
“I thought I’d grab a workout, but my wife got home earlier than expected.”
“I could use one myself. Burn off some of this annoyance.” She stepped back to remove her weapon harness, then angled her head. “If you found out I’d been putting on a sham, that I’d hooked you just to get to your bottomless vault of moolah, what would you do about it?”
He gave her that wicked smile, that bolt of blue from the eyes. “Why now, darling Eve, I’d kick your sorry ass, then invest a great deal of that moolah in making the rest of your life bloody hell.”
More weight lifted, and she grinned at him. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’m a very lucky woman.”
She tossed her weapon on the chair, dropped her badge beside it. Then she reached for his hand, linked fingers, and for a little while, put the job away.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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BORN IN DEATH
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Copyright © 2006 by Nora Roberts
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robb, J. D., date.
Born in death / J. D. Robb.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-1012-0588-4
1. Dallas, Eve (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 3. Missing persons—Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 5. Pregnant women—Fiction. 6. Policewomen—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3568 O243B668 2006 2005053485
813'.54—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
I am Alpha and Omega,
the beginning and the end,
the first and the last.
—REVELATION
Love begets love.
—ROBERT HERRICK
BORN IN DEATH
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
1
THE WAYS AND MEANS OF FRIENDSHIP WERE murderous. In order to navigate its twisty maze, a friend could be called upon to perform inconvenient, irritating, or downright horrifying acts at any given time.
The worst, the very worst requirement of friendship, in Eve Dallas’s opinion, was sitting through an entire evening of childbirth classes.
What went on there—the sights, the sounds, the assault on all the senses—turned the blood cold.
She was a cop, a Homicide lieutenant with eleven years on the job protecting and defending the hard, merciless streets of New York. There was little she hadn’t seen, touched, smelled, or waded through. Because people, to her mind, would always and could always find more inventive and despicable ways to kill their fellow man, she knew just what torments could be inflicted on the human body.
But bloody and brutal murder was nothing compared to giving birth.
How all those women with their bodies enormous and weirdly deformed by the entity gestating inside them could be so cheerful, so freaking placid about what was happening—and going to happen—to them was beyond her scope.
But there was Mavis Freestone, her oldest friend, with her little pixie body engulfed by the bulge of belly, beaming like a mentally defective while images of live birth played out on the wall screen. And she wasn’t alone. The other women had more or less the same God-struck look on their faces.
Maybe pregnancy stopped certain signals from getting to the brain.
Personally, Eve felt a little bit sick. And when she glanced over at Roarke, the wince on his angel-kissed faced told her he was right there with her. That, at least, was a big red check in the Pro-Marriage column. You got to drag your spouse into your personal nightmares and into that twisty friendship maze right along with you.
Eve let the images blur. She’d rather study a crime scene recording—mass murder, mutilation, severed limbs—than look up some laboring woman’s crotch and watch a head pop out. Roarke had horror vids in his collection that were less gruesome. She could hear Mavis whispering to Leonardo, the entity’s expectant father, but blocked out the words.
When, dear God, when would it be over?
Some setup here, all right, she thought, trying to distract herself by evaluating the birthing center. The whole damn building was a kind of cathedral to conception, gestation, birth, and babies. She’d managed to duck Mavis’s attempt to give her a tour of the entire place by pleading work.
Sometimes a well-placed lie saved friendships, and sanity.
The educational wing was enough. She’d sat through a lecture, several demonstrations that would haunt her dreams for decades, been forced as part of Mavis’s coaching team to assist in a mock birth with the labor droid and squealing droid infant.
And now there was this hideous vid.
Don’t think about it, she warned herself, and went back to studying the room.
Pastel walls covered with pictures of babies or pregnant women in various stages of bliss. All filmy and rapturous. Lots of fresh flowers and thriving green plants arranged artistically. Comfy chairs, supposedly designed to aid the women in hauling their loaded bodies up. And three perky instructors who were available for questions, lectures, demos, and serving healthy refreshments.
Pregnant women, Eve noted, were constantly eating or peeing.
Double doors at the back, one exit in the front, left of the vid screen. Too bad she couldn’t make a run for it.
Eve let herself go into a kind of trance. She was a tall, lanky woman with a choppy cap of brown hair. Her face was angular, and paler than usual, with whiskey-brown eyes currently glazed. The jacket she wore over her weapon harness was deep green and, because her husband had bought it, cashmere.
She was thinking about going home and washing the memory of the last three hours away in a full liter of wine when Mavis grabbed her hand.
“Dallas, look! The baby’s coming!”
“Huh? What?” Those glazed eyes popped wide. “What? Now? Well, Jesus. Breathe, right?”
Laughter erupted around them as Eve lurched to her feet.
“Not this baby.” Giggling, Mavis stroked her basketball belly. “That baby.”
Instinct had Eve glancing in the direction Mavis pointed, and getting a wide-screen blast of the bellowing, wriggling, gunk-covered creature sliding out from between some poor woman’s legs.
“Oh, man. Oh, God.” She sat down, before her own legs went out from under her. No longer caring if it made her a sissy, she groped for Roarke’s hand. When he gripped it, she found it as clammy as her own.
People applauded, actually clapped and cheered when the wailing, slippery-looking form was laid on its mother’s deflated belly, and between her engorged breasts.
“In the name of all that’s holy…” Eve muttered to Roarke. “It’s 2060, not 1760. Can’t they find a better way to handle this process?”
“Amen” was all Roarke said. Weakly.
“Isn’t it beautiful? It’s the ult, the extreme ult.” Mavis’s lashes—currently dyed sapphire blue, sparkled with tears. “It’s a little boy. Awww, look how sweet….”
Dimly she heard the lead instructor announce the end of the night’s coaching class—thank God—and invite people to stay for refreshments or questions.
“Air,” Roarke murmured into her ear. “I’m in desperate need of air.”
“It’s the pregnant women. I think they suck up all the oxygen. Think of something. Get us out of here. I can’t think. My
brain won’t work right.”
“Stand with me.” He hooked a hand under her arm, pulled her up.
“Mavis, Eve and I want to take you and Leonardo out for a bite. We can do better than the offerings here.”
Eve could hear the strain in his voice, but imagined anyone who didn’t know him as well as she would only hear that easy, fluid stream of Irish.
There was a lot of chatter going on and women were making a bee-line for the food or the bathrooms. Rather than thinking about what was being said or done, Eve focused on Roarke’s face.
If it couldn’t distract a woman, she was too far gone to worry about it.
He might have been a little pale, but the white skin only intensified the wild blue of his eyes. His hair was a black silk frame around a face designed to raise a woman’s heart rate. And that mouth of his. Even in her current state it was tempting to just lean in a little and take a good bite of it.
And the body only added to the fantasy: tall, leanly muscled, and slickly presented in one of his perfectly tailored business suits.
Roarke wasn’t just one of the richest men in the known universe, he also looked the part.
And at the moment, because he was taking her arm and leading her out of that nightmare, he was her ultimate hero. She grabbed her coat on the fly.
“We’re sprung?”
“They wanted to see if a friend of theirs could join us.” He still had Eve’s hand, and was rapidly walking toward the exit. “I told them we’d get the car, bring it around to the front. Save them steps.”