by J. D. Robb
“Wait, wait! Whoa. What’s the matter? What happened?”
“I have to go. You’ll have to handle Zero, the PA. Next of kin of the victims may be calling in for more answers. They usually do. You have to deal with them. I have to go.”
“Wait. Jesus, did something happen to Roarke?”
“No.”
“Will you wait one damn minute!”
Instead, feeling her stomach revolt, Eve sprinted into the closest bathroom. She let the sickness come—what choice did she have? She let it come, the bitter bile of it, pouring through the fear and panic and memory, until she was empty.
“Okay. Okay.” She was shaking, and her face ran with sweat. But there were no tears. There wouldn’t be tears to add to the humiliation.
“Here. Here you go.” Peabody pushed dampened tissues into her hand. “It’s all I’ve got. I’ll get some water.”
“No.” Eve let her head fall back on the wall of the stall. “No. Anything goes in now is just going to come up again. I’m okay.”
“My ass. Morris has guests in the morgue that look better than you.”
“I just need to go.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I just need to go. I’m taking the rest of the day, comp time. You can handle the case, you’re up to it.” I’m not , she thought. I’m just not. “Any problems, just… just stall ‘til tomorrow.”
“Screw the case. Look, I’ll get you home. You’re in no shape to—”
“Peabody, if you’re my friend, back off. Let me be. Just do the job,” Eve said as she got shakily to her feet. “And let me be.”
Peabody let her go, but she pulled out her pocket ‘link as she headed back up to Homicide. Maybe she had to back off, but she knew someone who didn’t.
And wouldn’t.
* * *
Eve’s first thought was to set her vehicle on auto. But it was better to be in control, better to concentrate on navigating the trip uptown. Better, she thought, to deal with the traffic, the snags, the time, the sheer bad temper of New York than her own misery.
Going home, that was the object. She’d be okay once she was home.
Maybe her stomach was raw and her head pounding, but she’d been sick before, and unhappy before. The first eight years of her life had been a slow ride through hell, and the ones following it hadn’t been a damn picnic at the beach.
She’d gotten through, she’d gotten by.
She’d get through, she’d get by again.
She wasn’t going to be sucked back in. She wasn’t going to be a victim because some voice from the past panicked her.
But her hands shook on the wheel nonetheless, and she kept all the windows down to the harsh air, the city smells.
Soy dogs smoking on a glide-cart, the sour belch of a maxibus, a curbside recycler that hadn’t been serviced in recent memory. She could take the stench of all that, and the sheer weight of aromas layering the air from the mass of humanity that thronged the streets and glides.
She could take the noise, the blats and the beeps that thumbed their collective noses at noise pollution laws. The tidal wave of voices rolled toward her, through her, past her. Thousands crammed the streets, the natives clipping along, tourists gawking and getting in the way. People juggling and hauling boxes and shopping bags.
Christmas was coming. Don’t be late.
She’d bought a scarf off the street from a smart-ass kid she’d enjoyed. Green and black checks, for Dr. Mira’s husband. What would Mira have to say about her reaction to today’s ugly flashback?
Plenty. The criminal profiler and psychiatrist would have plenty to say in her classy and concerned way.
Eve didn’t give a rat’s bony ass.
She wanted home.
Her eyes blurred when the gates opened for her. Blurred with weariness and relief. The great, grand lawn flowed, acres of peace and beauty in the center of the chaos of the city she’d made hers.
Roarke had the vision, and the power, to create this haven for himself, and for her the sanctuary she hadn’t known she’d wanted.
It looked like an elegant fortress, but it was home. Just home, for all its size and fierce beauty. Behind those walls, that stone and glass, was the life they’d created together. Their lives, their memories, spilled out into all those vast rooms.
He’d given her home, she needed to remember that. And to remember that no one could take it from her, no one could rip her back to when she’d had nothing, had been nothing.
No one could do that but Eve herself.
But she was cold, so cold, and the headache was tearing through her skull like demon claws.
She dragged herself out of the car, swayed on a hip that now ached horribly. Then she put one foot in front of the other until she’d made it up the steps, through the door.
She barely registered Summerset, Roarke’s majordomo, glide into the foyer. She didn’t have the energy to spar with him, hoped she had enough to get up the stairs.
“Don’t talk to me.” She gripped the newel post, and the cold sweat on her palms made it slick. She pulled herself up the stairs, one tread at a time.
The effort had her breath coming short. Her chest was so tight, so tight it felt as if someone had banded steel around it.
In the bedroom, she pulled off her coat, let it fall, dragged off her clothes as she aimed for the bathroom.
“Jets on,” she ordered. “Full. One hundred and one degrees.”
Naked, she stepped under the spray, into the heat. And exhausted, lowered herself to the shower floor, curled up, and let the heat and force of the water battle the cold.
* * *
That’s where he found her, curled on the wet tiles with water beating over her. Steam hung like a curtain. It ripped at his heart to see her.
He grabbed a bath sheet. “Jets off,” Roarke ordered, and crouched down to bundle her up.
“No. Don’t.” She slapped out at him, automatic defense without any sting. “Just leave me alone.”
“Not in this lifetime. Stop it!” His voice was sharp, and the Irish in it had a bite. “You’ll have boiled your bones in another minute.” He hauled her up, lifting her off her feet and into his arms when she tried to curl up again. “Just hush now. Ssh. I’ve got you.”
She closed her eyes. Shutting him out, he knew well enough. But he carried her into the bedroom, over to the platform that held their bed, and sitting with her on his lap rubbed the towel over her.
“I’m going to get you a robe, and a soother.”
“I don’t want—”
“Didn’t ask what you wanted, did I ?” He lifted her chin with his hand, traced his thumb down its shallow dent. “Eve, look at me. Look at me now.” There was resentment as well as fatigue in her eyes—and it nearly made him smile. “You’re too sick to argue with me, and we both know it. Whatever’s hurt you… well, you’ll tell me about it, then we’ll see what’s to be done.” He touched his lips to her forehead, her cheeks, her lips.
“I’ve already taken care of it. Nothing has to be done.”
“Well, that’ll save us some time, won’t it?” He shifted her, then rose to get her a warm robe.
She’d gotten his suit wet, she noted. Damn suit probably cost more than the tailor made in two years. Now the shoulders and sleeves were damp. She watched in silence as he shrugged out of the jacket, laid it over the back of a chair in the sitting area.
Graceful as a cat, she thought, and a lot more dangerous. He’d probably been in one of his hundreds of weekly meetings, making plans to buy a freaking solar system. Now he was here, flipping through the closet for a robe. Long and lean, a body of elegant and disciplined muscles, the face of a young Irish god who could seduce with one look out of those Celtic blue eyes.
She didn’t want him here. Didn’t want anyone here.
“I want to be alone.”
He arched an eyebrow, cocked his head a little so that silky mane of midnight flowed around his face. “To suffer and brood,
is it? You’d have a better time fighting with me. Here, put this on.”
“I don’t want to fight.”
He laid the robe beside her, bent so their eyes were level. “If I have the opportunity, I’ll take whoever put that look on your face, my darling Eve, and peel the skin from their bones. One thin layer at a time. Now put on your robe.”
“She shouldn’t have called you.” Her voice hitched before she could steady it, and added another tear to humiliation. “Peabody contacted you, I know it. She should’ve left it alone. I’d‘ve been all right in a little while. I’d be fine.”
“Bollocks. You don’t go down easy. I know it, and so does she.” He crossed to the AutoChef, programmed for a soother. “This will take the edge off that headache, settle your stomach. No tranqs,” he added, glancing back at her. “I promise.”
“It’s stupid. I let it get to me, and it’s stupid. It’s not worth all this.” She pushed at her hair. “It just caught me off guard, that’s all.” When she got to her feet, her legs felt loose and ungainly. “I just needed to come home for a while.”
“Do you think I’m going to settle for that?”
“No.” Though she wanted to crawl into the bed, pull the covers over her head for an hour, she sat, met his eyes as he brought her the soother. “No. I left Peabody with a mess. I let her take primary, and she did good, but right at the sticking point I left her to deal with it by herself. Stupid. Irresponsible.”
“Why did you?”
Because it was drink the damn soother or have him pour it into her, she drank it in three gulps. “There was a woman waiting for me in my office. I didn’t recognize her, not at first. Not at first.” She set the empty glass aside. “She said she was my mother. She wasn’t,” Eve said quickly. “She wasn’t, and I knew it, but having her say it knocked me. She’s probably about the right age, and there was something familiar, so it knocked me hard.”
He took her hand, held it tight. “Who was she?”
“Her name’s Lombard. Trudy Lombard. After they… When I got out of the hospital in Dallas, I went into the system. No ID, no memory, trauma, sexual assault. I know how it works now, but then, I didn’t know what was happening, what was going to happen. He told me, before, my father, that if the cops or the social workers ever got me, they’d put me in a hole, they’d lock me in the dark. They didn’t, but…”
“Sometimes the places they put you aren’t much better.”
“Yeah.” He’d know, she thought. He’d understand. “I was in a state home for a while. Few weeks, maybe. It’s sketchy. I guess they were looking for parents or guardians, trying to track where I’d come from, what had happened. Then they put me in a foster home. That was supposed to help mainstream me. They gave me to Lombard. Someplace in east Texas. She had a house, and a son a couple years older than me.”
“She hurt you.”
It wasn’t a question. He would know that, too. He would understand that. “She never hit me, not like he did. She never left a mark.”
He swore, with a quiet viciousness that eased the tension balled in her more than the soother.
“Yeah, it’s easier to cope with a direct punch than subtle little tortures. They didn’t know what to do with me.” She pushed at her wet hair, and now her fingers were steady. “I wasn’t giving them anything. I didn’t have anything to give. They probably figured I’d do better in a house with no male authority figure, because of the rape.”
He said nothing, simply drew her toward him to brush his lips over her temple.
“She never yelled at me, and she never hit me—no more than a few slaps. She saw to it I was clean, that I had decent clothes. I know the pathology now, but I wasn’t even nine. When she told me I was filthy and made me wash in cold water every morning, every night, I didn’t understand. She always looked so sad, so disappointed. If she locked me in the dark, she said it was only to teach me to behave. Every day there were punishments. If I didn’t eat everything on my plate, or I ate it too fast, too slow, I’d have to scrub the kitchen with a toothbrush. Something like that.”
I set store by a clean kitchen.
“She didn’t have domestics. She had me. I was always too slow, too stupid, too ungrateful, too something. She’d tell me I was pathetic, or I was evil, and always in this soft, kindly voice with this look of puzzled disappointment on her face. I was still nothing. Worse than nothing.”
“She should never have passed the screening.”
“It happens. Worse than her happens. I was lucky it wasn’t worse. I had nightmares. I had nightmares all the time, almost every night back then. And she’d… oh, God, she’d come in and she’d say I’d never get healthy and strong if I didn’t get a good night’s sleep.”
Because she could, she reached for his hand, let it anchor her in the now while she took herself back. “She’d turn off the lights and lock the door. She’d lock me in the dark. If I cried, it was worse. They’d take me back, put me in a cage for mental defectives. That’s what they did to girls who wouldn’t behave. And Bobby, her boy, she’d use me there, too. She’d tell him to look at me, and remember what happened to bad children, to children without a real mother to take care of them.”
He was touching her now, rubbing her back, smoothing her hair. “They did home checks?”
“Yeah. Sure.” She dashed a tear away—tears were useless, then and now. “It all looked nice and clean on the surface. Tidy house, pretty yard. I had my own room, clothes. What would I have told them? She said I was evil. I’d wake up from a nightmare where I was covered with blood, so I must’ve been evil. When she told me someone had hurt me, thrown me away with the garbage because I was bad, I believed her.”
“Eve.” He took both her hands, brought them to his lips. He wanted to gather her up, cover her in something soft, something beautiful. He wanted to hold her until every horrid memory was washed away. “What you are is a miracle.”
“She was a vicious, sadistic woman. Just another predator. I know that now.” Had to remember that now, Eve thought as she drew a deep breath. “But then all I knew was that she was in charge. I ran away. But this was a small town, not Dallas, and they found me. I planned it better when I ran the second time, and I got over into Oklahoma, and when they found me, I fought them.”
“Damn right you did.”
He said it with such a combination of pride and anger, she heard herself laugh. “Bloodied one of the social workers’ noses.” And that memory, she realized, wasn’t so bad. “Ended up in juvie for a while, but it was better than her. I put it away, Roarke. I put it aside. Then there she was, sitting in my office, and I was back to being scared.”
He wished she’d bloodied goddamn Trudy Lombard’s nose, gotten some little bit of her own back. She’d have been better for that. “She’ll never hurt you again.”
Eve faced him now, eye to eye. “I fell apart. Disintegrated. I’m feeling just steady enough now for that to piss me off. The Icove case.”
“What?”
She lowered her head to her hands, rubbed them hard over her face before she lifted it again. “She said she’d seen me giving an interview about the Icove murders, the Quiet Birth fiasco. I asked how she’d found me, and she said she’d heard about the case.”
He rolled his healing shoulder out of habit. “I doubt there’s anyone in the known universe who hasn’t by now. She came here, specifically, to see you?”
“Said she wanted to catch up, see how I’d turned out. Wanted a nice reunion.” She was recovered enough that her tone was sour and cynical. It was music to Roarke’s ears.
“She’s got her son and his wife with her, apparently. I kicked her out. At least I had enough left to do that. She gave me that look, that puzzled disappointment—with the nasty edge just under it.”
“You’ll want to make sure she goes away, stays away. I can—”
“No, I don’t.” She shoved back, stood up. “No, I don’t, and I don’t want you touching it. I want to forget this, forget her.
Whatever jollies she thought she might get by taking me down some memory lane she’s swept and polished, she won’t get them. If Peabody had kept her nose out, I’d‘ve been straightened out when you got home. We wouldn’t be having this discussion.”
He waited a long minute, then rose as well. “And that’s how you’d have handled this? By telling me nothing?”
“This one, yeah. It’s done, it’s over. It’s my problem. I let it twist me around. Now I’m untwisted. It doesn’t apply to us. I don’t want it to apply to us. If you want to help me out here, you’ll let it fade.”
He started to speak, thought better of it, then shrugged. “All right, then.”
But he took her shoulders, rubbed. He drew her in, and felt her body relax against his.
She was more twisted up than she realized, he thought, if she believed the woman had tracked her across the country, across the years, for no real purpose.
It was only a matter of time before that purpose became clear.
“It’s going dark,” he murmured. “Holiday lights, on.”
She turned her head on his shoulder, and together they studied the huge live pine in the window as the festive lights flashed on.
“You always go overboard,” she said quietly.
“I don’t think you can with Christmas, especially if you’re us, and had so many thin ones. Besides, it’s tradition for us now, isn’t it? A tree in the bedroom at Christmas.”
“You’ve got a tree in nearly every room in the house.”
He grinned at that. “I do, don’t I? I’m a slave to sentiment.” He kissed her, softly, then circled his arms around her again. “What do you say to a quiet meal up here? With no work for either of us. We’ll watch some screen, drink some wine. Make love.”
She tightened her arms around him. She’d needed home, she thought, and here it was. “I’d say, ‘Thanks.’”
* * *
And when she was asleep, he left her, briefly, for his private office. He crossed the tiles, laid his hand on the palm print. “Roarke,” he said. “Power up.”
As the console hummed, flickered with light, he used the house link to contact Summerset.
