New York to Dallas (46 page)

“The job.” She sobbed in a breath. “It hurts. It hurts.”

“I’ll fix it.” Slowly, watching her eyes, he knelt on the other side of the unconscious McQueen. “I love you, Eve. Trust me now. Give me the knife.” Gently, he closed his hand over hers on the bloody hilt.

“Roarke.”

“Yes. Give me the knife now, Eve.”

“Take it. Please take it. I can’t let it go.”

He pried it out of her trembling fingers, tossed it aside.

As he reached out, lifted her into his arms, his security team rushed in. He started to snap out orders, and realized the ones that came first to mind were the wrong ones—restrain McQueen, an ambulance for his wife. The wrong ones for her.

“Doctor Charlotte Mira, room fifty-seven-oh-eight. One of you go, tell her Lieutenant Dallas needs her, and her medical bag. Now. The rest of you go down, wait for the police.”

He carried her to the sleep chair, where the cat immediately leaped to crawl into her lap.

“No,” she said when Roarke started to nudge him aside. “He saved me. He saved me. You saved me.”

“You saved yourself, but we had a part in it. Let me look at your arm.”

“Is it broken?”

“No, baby, not broken. It’s dislocated. I know it hurts.”

“Not broken.” She closed her eyes, shuddered out another breath. “Not this time.”

She took his hand with her good one. “I wanted to kill him. But I couldn’t. I need you to know.” She hissed between her teeth, struggling to think, to speak through the pain. “I need you to know.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He laid his fingertips over the purpling bruise on her cheek. “Let’s wait for Mira.”

“It matters. I couldn’t do it. There was something inside me—I was inside me, I guess. Just a child, and she was screaming. But I was there, too. Me. It was like being frozen between. I don’t know how to explain it. I couldn’t do it, but I couldn’t let go, not until you came. Until you touched me. I couldn’t do it, Roarke, but I couldn’t move, and finish it the way I need to finish it, until you came.”

“Can you finish it now?”

“I have to. I think, if I don’t . . . I have to.”

“Let me have your restraints. I’ll do that part.”

While she cradled her injured arm, he took the cuffs off her belt, and rising, shoved McQueen over, knelt, and snapped them on. Mira ran in as Roarke dragged McQueen faceup again.

“Oh, dear God.”

“She’ll keep.” Roarke got to his feet, moved to block Mira’s dash toward Eve. “Give him something to bring him around.”

“She needs—”

“She needs to read her prisoner his rights. She needs to know he sees her, hears her while she does.”

With one long look at Eve, Mira nodded. Roarke turned to the door as the room filled with cops, security, feds. “This is for her to do. This is Lieutenant Dallas’s job.”

He wanted to give her his hand, but she shook her head, got shakily to her feet as Mira brought McQueen around.

“Can you hear me?” she demanded.

“You’re bleeding.” He spoke through gritted teeth while Mira put pressure on the gash in his side.

“You, too. Isaac McQueen, you’re under arrest for the murder of Nathan Rigby, for the murder of the unidentified subject known as Sylvia Prentiss, for the kidnapping and forced imprisonment of Melinda Jones. For the kidnapping, rape, and forced imprisonment of Darlie Morgansten. For the assault with a deadly on a police officer. For the attempted murder of a police officer. And for other charges yet to be determined.”

“I’ll find you again.” Rage burned like acid in his voice. “I’ll get out and find you again.”

“Look how scared I am. Isaac McQueen, you have the right to remain silent.” The churning sickness in her belly ebbed as she read him his rights.

“Detective Jones, would you take charge of the prisoner?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can tell your family we got him.”

“What the hell happened here?” Nikos demanded.

“I did my job.”

“How did—”

“Lieutenant Dallas needs medical attention.” Before Roarke could, Mira strode forward. “Questions have to wait. Roarke, help me take her upstairs. We’ll use the elevator.”

Cops parted for them. “I have to tell Darlie. I promised. We need to secure the scene,” Eve said just as the elevator doors shut. Then thought—
Uh
-
oh.

“Shit. I think I’m going to pass out.”

“Go ahead. Nobody can see but us.” As she did, he lifted her into his arms. Then just pressed his face to her throat.

When she came to, she was on the bed, her arm in a stabilizer, with Mira working on the gash on her hip.

“Nothing hurts.”

“Not for the moment.”

“But I feel . . . Crap, you gave me something. I feel weird.”

“It’ll pass.”

“How bad is it?”

“Bad enough. You’ve been stabbed, beaten, choked, and had your arm nearly twisted off. But you’ll heal.”

“Don’t be mad.” Eve smiled at her. Drugs always made her stupid. “He was going to rape me. For a minute when it was crazy, I thought he was raping me. But he didn’t get the chance.”

“No.” Mira laid her hand on Eve’s cheek. “You stopped him.”

“You got blood on you. You always look so pretty, and you got blood on your dress, suit, skirt. Whatever. Sorry.”

“It’s all right. I’m nearly done.”

“Okay. Am I naked?”

“Not quite.”

“Good, ’cause that’s just embarrassing. Roarke? Where’s Roarke?”

“I convinced him I could take care of you while he spoke with the police, gave a statement. He’s contacting Darlie for you. You can speak with her a little later if you like.”

“He loves me. Roarke, I mean. He loves me.”

“Oh, so very much.”

“Nobody did before. Before Mavis, she just wouldn’t give up and leave me alone. And Feeney. But he’d feel weird saying the whole love thing, so . . .” She mimed zipping fingers over her lips.

“But Roarke doesn’t feel weird about it. He’s full of it, the love, I mean. And when he loves me, things that never worked in me did—do. It was easier when they didn’t work, but it’s better when they do. You know?”

“I do. You should rest now.”

“Want to finish, give my report. Is my face messed up? I hate when that happens. Not like I’m pretty or anything, but—”

“You’re the most beautiful woman ever born,” Roarke said from the doorway, and Eve sent him a woozy, drugged smile.

“See, told ya he’s full of it. Gonna give my report, then let’s go home, ’kay? Let’s all go home.”

He walked over, sat on the side of the bed. “Let’s.”

 

EPILOGUE

M
ira refused to clear her for travel for twenty-four hours, and Mira was a nut that wouldn’t crack. Still it gave Eve time to sort out all the details and tie them off.

“McQueen’s being transferred to off-planet max-security facilities on a prison transport,” she told Roarke. “But the Dallas PSD and the feds have filed the additional charges. He’ll stand trial by holo.”

“You’ll have to testify.”

“With extreme pleasure. How’s your hotel security woman, and the guest?”

“Recovered. We’ll be implementing some changes in our security procedures in that hotel.”

“Nobody could’ve foreseen what he’d do. It was lunacy.”

“But it worked, didn’t it?” And that he’d never forget. “He got to you.”

“You and I both know that with some skill, a lot of determination and luck, anybody can get to anybody, anywhere. That’s why we have cops.”

She leaned back. God, she hated to fly, but at least this time, the shuttle headed in the right direction.

“And how’s my cop?”

“Feeling pretty good, actually. The arm’s the worst of it.”

“You slept well last night.”

“Hard not to, loaded up with tranqs.” She took his hand. “I know I’m going to have to think about it, deal with it. The whole ugly mess of it. But I can, because in the end I did the job. You helped me to do it.”

“I always wondered, if such things were possible, if I’d go back, kill your father to spare you that. Then I stood in that room in Dallas and saw so clearly what happened that night, what he’d put you through, what he’d done.”

He brought her hand to his lips, the hand he’d covered with his on the knife, sharing the blood with her. “I could have taken the knife from you and put it into his heart. McQueen, your father. I could have done that.”

“You didn’t.”

“No. You loved me, and things in me that didn’t work did, and do.”

“You heard me,” she murmured. “With Mira.”

“I did. And I can say to you it was easier when they didn’t work, but it’s better, very much better, when they do.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “For two people who started out so fucked up, we’re okay.”

Beside him, she watched out the window, ignored the pitching in her stomach on descent. The cat leaped onto her lap, circled with his questing claws, settled.

And beside Roarke, with the cat snoring, she watched New York break through the clouds.

Dallas to New York, she thought. Where she belonged.

TITLES BY J. D. ROBB