by Robb, J. D.
“I bet you did. I respect that. Especially since we’ve made it our business to know and find out all those details, those names, those locations. We have it all, Mirium, and don’t need you. But thanks for the offer.”
Eve rose. “You’ve just confessed to first-degree murder, to multiple abductions feeding into human trafficking, to assault, and so on and so on. You can try the victim tune again, but it’s all on record now. You’re going to learn what it really means to be locked in a room. Or in this case, a concrete cage.
“Dallas and Peabody exiting Interview. Record off.”
“You can’t know it all! You can’t! I’m entitled to protect myself, my birthright!”
Peabody blew out a long, slow breath when Eve shut the door.
“If I needed a shower after Wilkey, I need the fume tube after that. She’s worse, Dallas.”
“She’s a lot worse, and she’s finished. Good job in there, Peabody. Good job with all of them.”
“Are we really going out for that big glass of wine?”
“That’s the plan. Any interviews still in progress should conclude, then we shut this down for the day. Hell, we’re still going past end of shift. My overtime paperwork is going to suck balls.”
She shook it off. “I’m going to talk to Reo, to Mira. Go ahead and write this up. We can close the book on Ariel Byrd’s murder.”
She talked to Reo and Mira, and found herself telling them both to join the damn pub party. Then she went into her office, sat, and contacted Ariel Byrd’s mother.
She hoped by letting the woman know they’d gotten justice for her daughter, she’d find some comfort.
When she finished, she sat back, looked at the photo on her board of the woman who’d started it all.
“Too high a price,” she stated. “You paid too high a price. And still, without you paying it, who knows how much longer, how many more.”
She rose, intending to go out to the bullpen and check on progress. Roarke stepped into the doorway. She hadn’t heard him—she rarely did. He moved like a cat.
She gestured him in. “Close the door, will you?”
When he had, she moved straight to him, wrapped around him, pressed into him.
“Hang on to me a minute, okay?” She shuddered once. Only once. “Just hang on.”
“Always. It’s all right now, baby. It’s done now.”
“She said—she said I couldn’t know what it was like to live in fear of a father, and I thought—God! She was never afraid of Wilkey. She never was afraid.”
“I know.”
“I just need a minute. Just need you for a minute.”
“You’ll have me a lot longer than that. And we two? We’ll have an evening with a lot of the very good men and women who helped end this madness.”
“Always more madness,” she murmured.
“True enough, but you know to take victory when it’s in your hand.”
“I do.” She breathed out, held tighter for a moment, then stepped back. “I do. So we’re going to go eat and drink with those good men and women. Then we two? We’re going home and having a whole bunch of really good sex.”
“That’s a fine victory lap, isn’t it?”
She started out with him and glanced back, just once more, at Ariel Byrd. Love, she thought, doomed some—she saw it nearly every day.
But … And bullpen full of cops or not, she took Roarke’s hand.
Some, love saved.
