He drank more wine. “If I jiggle my line a bit, we can call that fair enough. But I’d never jeopardize your investigation over fond memories.”
“He was the best shot I had so far. Markin’s another, but I haven’t been able to pin it down. Now this guy is off the list. I’m still checking out his alibi.”
“I’d expect no less. Nor would he. I’ll go make another couple of contacts. And you should drink some water. It’ll help revive the blocker a bit to push back the fresh headache.”
“It’s annoying when you look in my head.”
“I just have to look in your eyes. I know how they look when they’re fighting pain. Drink some water,” he said, and left her.
17
When he judged he’d done all he could for the night, Roarke found Eve asleep at her command center.
Second night running, he thought. She would push herself to exhaustion, carrying the weight of eighteen dead. And no point, he decided, in beating against that wall. That was the woman he loved, no matter how much she could—and did—infuriate him.
He glanced at the work on her screen, noted she’d juggled, yet again, names on her list. From most to least probable.
She’d do better, he knew, when she conducted her face-to-face interviews. She had a master’s skill in reading people, the nuances of tone, gestures, a look in the eyes, a turn of phrase.
Oh, she had her blind spots, he thought, but then he did as well. Still, he didn’t care for it, not one bit, when one of those blind spots centered on him.
However irritated he remained, he gathered her up.
She jerked, might have struck out. Fortunately for both of them her reflexes remained keen.
“I was just—”
“Past the point where coffee can keep you going,” he said as he carried her to the elevator.
“I drank the water.”
“Good.”
He carried her into the bedroom where Galahad was already sprawled on the bed, belly-up like roadkill. After sitting her on the side of the bed, Roarke sat himself to take his boots off.
His boots, she thought, not hers. Maybe a small, stupid thing, she considered, but she knew a flick in the eye when it stung her.
She was, as he’d thought himself only minutes before, very good at reading nuances.
“If you want to stay pissed off—”
“It isn’t a matter of want.”
“Fine. If you’re going to stay pissed off, I can stay right there with you.” She yanked off her own boots, tossed them aside before she shoved up to strip off her weapon harness.
“I took him off the list, didn’t I? I’m not going to report him over the fraudulent ID. But you should tell him he’s on my scope now.” In angry clicks and bangs, the contents of her pockets hit the dresser. “So if he’s not retired, or he gets a yen to come out of retirement, I’ll bust him. And that’ll be on him.”
Roarke rose to take off the sweater he’d changed into after his workday. “I did.”
“Fine. Good.” She dragged off her belt with a snap like a whip. “And goddamn it, if I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t get within fifty klicks of an investigation.”
“Unless it suited you.”
Hot, molten, flaming fury erupted against his cold and bitter ice. “Bullshit.” She stalked over to him. “Bullshit, bullshit.” Shoved him. “Bollocks.”
“Careful.” His voice, dangerously quiet, only pumped up the heat for her.
“Oh, bite me.” Shoved him again. “I opened the door, and I can close it because I’m the one with the badge. I’m in fucking charge. I opened it, and I leave it the hell open because I trust you. So knock it off.”
Viciously pleased to see flashes of heat melting the Arctic ice in his eyes—damned if she’d be the only one on boil—she pushed again. Then added an insulting gesture he’d once pulled on her. She flicked his shoulder.
“There, I knocked it off for you.” And there it was, the hot blue center of the flame. She started to flick his other shoulder. He grabbed her hand; she lifted her chin.
And they lunged at each other.
They landed on the bed in a grappling heap. The cat didn’t just leap up, he hissed, nearly spat before he stalked away. Ignoring him, they rolled over the bed, fighting for dominance.
Until she grabbed Roarke’s hair by the fistfuls and dragged his mouth down to hers.
A brutal meeting of lips, teeth, tongues became a greedy ravishing. Temper-fueled lust scorched through blood, burning away any thought of care, of caution, as he tore her sweater away, yanked down her tank.
And when that greedy mouth fixed on her breast, the shock of sensation held her on the tenuous edge between pleasure and pain. She clung there, breath tattered, a red haze of need clouding her mind, and her body alive, wildly alive.
Her fingers dug into his back, his hips, nails biting. She wanted flesh—the feel, the taste of flesh, wanted him—hard, hard, hard—inside her. She scissored her legs, shifted the balance to roll again, fought to strip him, strip herself, to take what she wanted.
Take him. Be taken. And now.
He reared up, and now his hand took her hair, yanking her head back to expose her throat. Fed there while his hands moved roughly down her body, that long warrior’s body he craved like his next breath.
When his fingers speared into her, she came on a cry that held triumph and shock. And wanting both, more of both, he drove her up again.
In that instant, that glorious instant when she went limp, before she could gather and rise again, he shoved her onto her back. Plunged into her.
One instant, one more instant while they both gripped that toothy edge, while they hung together in air too thick to draw in, where their eyes met—flaming blue, molten brown.
They took each other, driving, driven in a fever of need, a mad thirst for more, still more. Lost in the storm, he muttered in Irish, words both incoherent and savage.
When pleasure, building, building, impossibly building, peaked, it slashed like a blade.
She lay under him, weak, dizzy, empty of anger. And somehow tendrils of sorrow trailed in to fill the void.
“It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s never you.”
“It’s never me you want to distrust,” he countered. “But there are still times, just now and then, when those cop’s eyes are on me and say different.”
He rolled off of her. “The heart and the brain don’t always mesh, do they? I know your heart, darling Eve, but your brain still has some mysterious corners.”
They’d scattered clothes over the bed. He considered just kicking them to the floor, but as he needed a minute to settle himself, he rose to dump them in a handy chair.
When he turned back to the bed, she’d rolled onto her stomach, and slept.
Heart, brain, body, he thought, all meshing in this case with pure exhaustion.
He drew the covers over her, slipped in beside her. And waited for sleep to come.
* * *
The air smelled of smoke, blood, burnt flesh. She saw the charred remains, the blackened severed limbs where skin had bubbled off the bone. The blood—black as tar—splashed over the walls like a vicious painting.
One wall, blinding white, held all the names of the dead beneath the spatter.
Eighteen, and room for more.
Two men stood in the room, men dressed in black with white masks. They spoke in whispers, words she couldn’t quite hear. She reached for her weapon, but it wasn’t there. Not her sidearm, not her clutch piece. Prepared to take them on unarmed, she charged.
But what she’d seen as shadows stood as a wall. Impenetrable.
Desperate, she searched for a door, an opening, found none. She moved back through the dead to give herself room, ran full out, throwing her body up at the last minute to strike the wall with a violent kick.
It repelled her like a hand swatting at a fly. She tried again, again, slamming the wall with kicks and punches until her fists left smears of blood.
The men simply watched her from behind their masks.
One laughed, then slapped the second on the shoulder in a gesture of shared humor.
“Well now, how long you figure she’ll keep up with all that?”
She heard Ireland—thicker, deeper than Roarke’s. It made her stomach flutter in a kind of sick dread.
“That one? Always was a stubborn little bitch.”
Now her stomach twisted as dread dropped to fear and resignation. The men pulled off the masks—no need for them, after all.
She stood facing Richard Troy and Patrick Roarke with a shadowy wall between.
“The boy always was a fuckup,” Patrick Roarke claimed. “But still he’s got my looks, so you’d think he could do better than that one. And a cop for all of that as well.”
“She’s a killer.” Troy smiled wide and bright. “I’m dead proof of it.”
“That right. You’re dead,” Eve said. “Both of you. A long time dead.”
“But there are so many more like us,” Troy reminded her. “We just keep coming, little girl. Beat yourself against the wall of that, and we still keep coming.”
“There are always more like me.”
“Look around you. Can’t keep the dead from piling up, can you now?” Patrick Roarke laughed, then as the shadows shifted, poured whiskey from a bottle into two glasses.
As they clinked glasses, drank, she saw they stood in a room with a bed, and on the bed a figure struggled. She couldn’t see through the shadows, but saw the movements, heard the screams muffled by a gag.
“And more to come.” Troy lifted his glass in toast to another wall.
It cleared to show the people behind it. And her heart began to pound in her chest.
Peabody, Mavis, oh God, the baby, Feeney.
She rushed, beat against the wall.
Nadine, Baxter, Leonardo, McNab. More. Everyone, everyone who mattered. Summerset, Whitney, Trueheart, Charles, Louise, Crack. Her whole squad, Reo, everyone milling around the room as if at some goddamn party.
Mira, Dennis Mira, Morris.