by J. D. Robb
Eve’s initial relief that she had hair to be fussed with faded quickly as she stared directly at a snaking pink spring. “Who does your hair, Trina?”
“Nobody touches me but me.” She winked. “And God. Take a look.”
Braced for the worst, Eve turned. The woman in the mirror was definitely Eve Dallas. At first she thought it had all been some elaborate joke, and nothing had been done at all. Then she looked closer, stepped closer. Gone were the wild tufts and stray spikes. Her hair was still casually cropped, unstructured, but it seemed to have a shape after all. And certainly it hadn’t had that pretty shine before. It followed the lines of her face nicely, the fringe of bangs, the curve at the cheeks. And when she shook her head it fell back into place obediently.
Eyes narrowed, she raked fingers through it and watched it tumble back. “Did you put blond in it?”
“Nope. Natural highlights. Brought them out with Sheena, that’s all. You got deer hair.”
“What?”
“Ever seen a deer hide? It’s got all those colors from russet, brown, gold, even touches of black. That’s what you’ve got there. God’s been good to you. Trouble is, whoever’s been doing you must have been using hedge trimmers and no highlight puncher, either.”
“It looks good.”
“Damn right it does. I’m a genius.”
“You look beautiful.” Suddenly, Mavis put her face in her hands and wept. “You’re getting married.”
“Oh, Christ, don’t do that, Mavis. Come on.” Feeling helpless, Eve gave her encouraging pats on the back.
“I’m so drunk, and I’m so happy. And I’m so scared. Dallas, I lost my job.”
“I know, baby. I’m sorry. You’ll get another one. A better one.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care. I’m not going to care. We’re going to have the most mag wedding, aren’t we, Dallas?”
“You bet.”
“Leonardo’s making me the most rocking dress. Let’s show her, Leonardo.”
“Tomorrow.” He came over, scooped her into his arms. “Dallas is tired.”
“Oh, yeah. She needs to rest.” Mavis let her head loll on his shoulder. “She works too hard. She’s worried about me. I don’t want her to worry, Leonardo. Everything’s going to be fine, isn’t it? It’s going to be fine.”
“Just fine.” Leonardo sent Eve one last uneasy look before he carried Mavis off.
Eve watched them go, sighed. “Fuck.”
“Like that sweet little thing could bash anybody’s face in.” Trina scowled as she gathered up her tools. “I hope Pandora’s burning in hell.”
“You knew her?”
“Everybody in the business knew her. Loathed her ever fucking guts. Right, Biff?”
“She was born a bitch, died a bitch.”
“Did she just use, or did she deal?”
Biff slanted a look at Trina, then shrugged. “She never dealt in the open, but you’d hear talk now and again that she was always well supplied. The buzz was she was an Erotica junkie. She liked sex, and she might deal to her partner of choice.”
“Were you ever her partner of choice?”
He smiled. “Romantically, I prefer men. They’re less complicated.”
“How about you?”
“I prefer men, too—same reason. So did she.” Trina picked up her kit. “Last runway gig I had, the gossip was she was mixing business and pleasure. Had some guy she was bleeding. She was flashing a lot of new glitters. Pandora liked to decorate her body with real rock, but she didn’t like to pay for it. People figured she’d made some deal with a source.”
“Got a name on the source?”
“Nope, but she was on her palm ’link between changes all day. That was about three months ago. I don’t know who she was talking to, but at least one of the calls was intergalactic, because she got royally pissed at the delay.”
“Did she always carry a palm ’link?”
“Everybody in fashion and beauty does, honey. We’re just like doctors.”
It was close to midnight when Eve settled down at her desk. She couldn’t face the bedroom, preferred the suite she used for privacy and work. She programmed coffee, then forgot to drink it. Without Feeney, she had no choice but to go a roundabout route to try to trace a three-month-old intergalactic call from a palm ’link she didn’t have.
After an hour, she gave up and crawled onto the sleep chair. She’d take a nap, she told herself. Set her mental alarm for five A.M.
Illegals, murder, and money, she thought. They went together. Pin down the source, she thought groggily. Identify the unknown.
Who were you hiding from, Boomer? How did you get your hands on a sample and the formula? Who broke your bones to get them back?
The image of his battered body flashed into her mind and was ruthlessly shut off. She didn’t need to drift into sleep with that loop playing.
It might have been a better choice than the show she ended with.
The dirty red light was flashing. Over and over through the window. SEX! LIVE! SEX! LIVE!
She was only eight, but her mind was quick. She wondered if people would pay to see dead sex. Lying on her bed, she watched the light blink. She knew what sex was. It was ugly, it was painful, it was frightening. It was inescapable.
Maybe he wouldn’t come home tonight. She’d stopped praying that he would forget where he’d left her or fall down dead in some handy ditch. He always came back.
But sometimes, if she was very, very lucky, he would be too drunk, too buzzed to do more than stumble to the bed and snore. Those nights, she would shiver with relief and huddle in the corner to sleep.
She still thought about escape. Of finding a way out of the locked door, or down the five stories. If the night was very bad, she imagined just jumping from the window. The flight down would be quick, and then it would be over.
He wouldn’t be able to hurt her then. But she was too much a coward to jump.
She was only a child, after all, and tonight she was hungry. And she was cold because he had broken the temperature control in one of his rages and it was stuck on full air.
She padded toward the corner of the room, the excuse for a kitchenette. Experienced, she pounded the drawer first, to send any roaches scattering. She found a chocolate roll inside. The last one. He would probably beat her for eating the last one. Then again, he would beat her anyway, so she might as well enjoy it.
She bolted it like an animal, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Hunger churned still. A further search turned up a hunk of moldy cheese. She didn’t want to think what had been nibbling on it. Carefully, she took a knife, began to shear off the nasty edges.
Then she heard him at the door. In her panic, she dropped the knife. It clattered to the floor as he came in.
“What are you doing, little girl?”
“Nothing. I woke up. I was just going to get a drink of water.”
“Woke up.” His eyes were glazed, but not glazed enough, she saw without hope. “Missing your daddy. Come give your daddy a kiss.”
She couldn’t breathe. Already she couldn’t breathe and the place between her legs where he would hurt her began to throb in painful fear. “I have a stomachache.”
“Oh? I’ll kiss it better.” He was grinning as he crossed to her. Then the grin faded. “You’ve been eating without asking again, haven’t you? Haven’t you?”
“No, I—” But the lie, and the hope to evade both died as his hand swiped hard over her face. Her lip split, her eyes watered, but she barely winced. “I was going to fix some cheese. A snack for when you—”
He hit her again, hard enough to make stars explode inside her head. She went down this time, and before she could scramble up, he was on her.
Screams, her screams, because his fists were hard and merciless. Pain, blinding, numbing pain that was nothing beside the fear. The fear because however horrible, this would not be the worst he did to her.
“Daddy, please. Please, please.”
<
br /> “Have to punish you. You never listen. Never fucking listen. Then I’ll give you a treat. A nice big treat, and you’ll be a good girl.”
His breath was hot on her face and somehow smelled like candy. His hands tore at her already tattered clothes, poking, squeezing, invading. His breathing changed, a change she knew and feared. It became shallow, greedy.
“No, no, it hurts, it hurts!”
Her poor young flesh resisted. She batted at him, screaming still, was driven beyond fear to claw. His cry of rage bellowed out. He twisted her arm back. She heard the dry, hideous sound of her own bone snapping.
“Lieutenant. Lieutenant Dallas.”
The scream ripped from her throat and she came to, swinging blindly. In wild panic she scrambled up, her own legs tangling and taking her to the floor in a heap.
“Lieutenant.”
She reared away from the hand that touched her shoulder, huddled back as sobs and screams knotted in her throat.
“You were dreaming.” Summerset spoke carefully, his face impassive. She might have seen the realization in his eyes if her own hadn’t been clouded with memory. “You were dreaming,” he repeated, approaching her as he would a trapped wolf. “You had a nightmare.”
“Stay away from me. Go away. Stay away.”
“Lieutenant. Do you know where you are?”
“I know where I am.” She got the words out between quick gulps of air. She was freezing, boiling, and couldn’t stop the tremors. “Go away. Just go away.” She made it as far as her knees, then covered her mouth and rocked. “Get the hell out of here.”
“Let me help you to the chair.” His hands were gentle, but firm enough to keep hold when she tried to shove him away.
“I don’t need help.”
“I’m going to help you to your chair.” As far as he was concerned, she was a child now, a wounded one who needed care. As his Marlena had been. He tried not to think if his child had begged as Eve had begged. After he put her in the chair, he went to a chest, drew out a blanket. Her teeth were chattering and her eyes were wide with shock.
“Be still.” The order was brisk as she began to push up. “Stay where I’ve put you and be quiet.”
He turned on his heel, striding into the kitchen alcove and the AutoChef. There was sweat on his brow and he dabbed at it with a handkerchief as he ordered a soother. His hand was shaking. It didn’t surprise him. Her screams had chilled him to the bone and brought him to her suite at a dead run.
They’d been a child’s screams.
Steadying himself, he carried the glass to her. “Drink it.”
“I don’t want—”
“Drink it, or I’ll pour it down your throat, with pleasure.”
She considered knocking it out of his hand, then embarrassed them both by curling into a ball and whimpering. Giving up, Summerset set the drink aside, tucked the blanket more securely around her, and went out with the object of contacting Roarke’s personal physician.
But it was Roarke himself he met on the landing.
“Summerset, don’t you ever sleep?”
“It’s Lieutenant Dallas. She’s—”
Roarke dropped his briefcase, grabbed Summerset by the lapels. “Has she been hurt? Where is she?”
“A nightmare. She was screaming.” Summerset lost his usual composure and dragged a hand over his hair. “She won’t cooperate. I was about to call your doctor. I left her in her private suite.”
As Roarke pushed him aside, Summerset grabbed his arm. “Roarke, you should have told me what had been done to her.”
Roarke merely shook his head and kept going. “I’ll take care of her.”
He found her curled up tight, trembling. Emotions warred through him, anger, relief, sorrow, and guilt. He battled them back and lifted her gently. “It’s all right now, Eve.”
“Roarke.” She shuddered once convulsively, then curved into him as he settled back in the chair with her on his lap. “The dreams.”
“I know.” He pressed a kiss to her damp temple. “I’m sorry.”
“They come all the time now, all the time. Nothing stops them.”
“Eve, why didn’t you tell me?” He tipped her head back to look at her face. “You don’t have to go through this alone.”
“Nothing stops them,” she repeated. “I couldn’t not remember anymore. And now I remember all of it.” She rubbed the heels of her hands over her face. “I killed him, Roarke. I killed my father.”
chapter thirteen
He looked into her eyes, felt the tremors that still shook her. “Darling, you had a nightmare.”
“I had a flashback.”
She had to be calm, had to be to get it all out. To be calm and rational, she had to think like a cop, not like a woman. Not like a terrorized child.
“It was so clear, Roarke, that I can still feel it on me. Still feel him on me. The room in Dallas where he’d lock me. He’d always lock me in wherever he took me. Once I tried to get away, to run away, and he caught me. After that, he always got rooms high up, and locked the door from the outside. I never got to go out. I don’t think anyone even knew I was there.” She tried to clear her raw throat. “I need some water.”
“Here. Drink this.” He picked up the glass Summerset had left beside the chair.
“No, it’s a tranq. I don’t want a tranq.” She let air in and out of her lungs. “I don’t need one.”
“All right. No, I’ll get it.” He shifted her, rose, caught the doubt in her eyes. “Just water, Eve. I promise.”
Accepting his word, she took the glass he brought back and drank gratefully. When he sat on the arm of the chair, she stared straight ahead and continued.
“I remember the room. I’ve been having part of this dream for the past couple of weeks. Details were beginning to stick. I even went to see Dr. Mira.” She glanced over. “No, I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t.”
“All right.” He tried to accept that. “But you’re going to tell me now.”
“I have to tell you now.” She took a breath, brought it all into her mind as she would any crime scene. “I was awake in that room, hoping he’d be too drunk to touch me when he came back. It was late.”
She didn’t have to close her eyes to see it: the filthy room, the blink of the red light through the dirty windows.
“Cold,” she murmured. “He’d broken the temperature control, and it was cold. I could see my breath.” She shivered in reaction. “But I was hungry, too. I got something to eat. He never kept much around. I was hungry all the time. I was cutting the mold off some cheese when he came in.”
The door opening, the fear, the clatter of the knife. She wanted to get up, pace off the nerves, but wasn’t sure her legs were ready to support her.
“I could see right away that he wasn’t drunk enough. I could see. I remember what he looked like now. He had dark brown hair and a face gone soft from drinking. He might have been handsome once, but that was gone. Broken capillaries in his face, in his eyes. He had big hands. Maybe it was just because I was small, but they seemed awfully big.”
Roarke lifted his hands to her shoulders, began to massage the tension. “They can’t hurt you now. Can’t touch you now.”
“No.” Except in the dreams, she thought. There was pain in dreams. “He got mad because I’d been eating. I wasn’t supposed to take anything without asking.”
“Christ.” He tucked the blanket more securely around her because she was still shivering. And found he wanted to feed her, anything, everything, so she would never think about hunger again.
“He started hitting me, and hitting me.” She heard her voice hitch, made the effort to level it. It’s just a report now, she told herself. Nothing more. “Knocked me down and hit me. My face, my body. I was crying and screaming, begging him to stop. He tore my clothes and rammed his fingers in me. It hurt, horribly, because he’d raped me the night before and I was still hurting from that. Then he was raping me again. Panting in my face, telling me to be a g
ood girl and raping me. It felt like everything inside me was tearing. The pain was so bad I couldn’t take it anymore. I clawed at him. I must have drawn blood. That’s when he broke my arm.”
Roarke stood abruptly, paced away, jabbed the mechanism to open the windows. He needed air.
“I don’t know if I blacked out, maybe for a minute, I think. But I couldn’t get past the pain. Sometimes you can.”
“Yes,” he said dully. “I know.”
“But it was so enormous. Black, greasy waves of pain. And he wouldn’t stop. The knife was in my hand. It was just there, in my hand. I stabbed him with it.” She let out a shuddering breath as Roarke turned to her. “I stabbed him, and kept stabbing him. Blood was everywhere. The raw, sweet smell of it. I crawled out from under him. He might have been dead already, but I kept stabbing him. Roarke, I can see myself, kneeling, the hilt in my hand, blood past my wrists, splattered on my face. And the pain, the rage pounding at me. I just couldn’t stop.”
Who would have? he wondered. Who could have?
“Then I pulled myself into the corner to get away from him, because when he got up, he’d kill me. I passed out or just zoned, because I don’t remember anything else until it was daylight. And I hurt—I hurt so bad, everywhere. I got sick. Really sick, and when I was finished, I saw. I saw.”
He reached down for her hand, and it was like ice, thin, brittle ice. “That’s enough, Eve.”
“No, let me finish. I have to finish.” She pushed the words out as though she were shoving rocks off her heart. “I saw. I knew I’d killed him, and they’d come for me, put me in a cage. A dark cage. That’s what he’d always told me they did if you weren’t good. I went in the bathroom and washed off all the blood. My arm—my arm was screaming, but I didn’t want to go in a cage. I put on some clothes and I put everything else that was mine in a bag. I kept imagining he was going to get up and come for me, but he stayed dead. I left him there. I started walking. It was early, early in the morning. Hardly anyone was out. I threw away the bag, or I lost it. I can’t remember. I walked a long way, then I went into an alley and hid until night.”