Trevor feels the best to me. Smarter to wait to move on him until I have it all lined up.”
“While it lines up, you lie down.”
She’d have argued, but her eyes were starting to throb. “Nag, nag, nag. I’ll just contact the team and tell them we’re going to brief at seven hundred instead of eight.”
“You can do that in the morning. It’s easier, and more humane.”
“Yeah, but it’s more fun to do it now,” she protested as he took her hand and pulled her out of the room. “This way I get to wake them up so they have to work at getting back to sleep. The other way, I just get them out of bed a little early.”
“You’re a mean one, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah. So?”
Chapter 12
While she slept it all played in her head. Father to son, murder and greed, blood gleaming on sparkling stones. There were legacies you couldn’t escape, no matter how fast or how far you ran.
She could see herself, a child, with no mother to panic or protect. No one to hide her or stand as a shield. She could see herself—she could always see herself—alone in a freezing room with the light washed red from the sign blinking, blinking, blinking from the building next door.
She could taste her fear when he came in, that bright, metallic flavor. As if there was already blood in her throat. Hot blood against the chill.
Children shouldn’t fear their fathers. She knew that now, in some part of her restless brain, she knew that. But the child knew nothing but fear.
There had been no one to stop him, no one to fight for her when his hand had slashed out like a snake. No one to protect her when he’d torn at her, torn into her. There’d been no one to hear her scream, to beg him to stop.
Not again, not again. Please, please, not again.
She’d had no one to run to when the bone in her arm had snapped like a twig broken under a careless foot. She’d had only herself, and the knife.
She could feel the blood flooding over her hands, her face, and the way his body had jerked when she’d hacked that blade into his flesh. She could see herself smeared with it, coated with it, dripping with it, like an animal at the kill. And even in sleep, she knew the madness of that animal, the utter lack of humanity.
The sounds she made were vile. Even after he was dead, the sounds she made were vile.
She struggled, jabbing, jabbing, jabbing.
“Come back. Oh God, baby, come back.”
Panic and protection. Someone to hear, to help. Through the madness of memory, she heard Roarke’s voice, scented him and curled up tight in the arms he’d wrapped around her.
“Can’t.” Couldn’t shake it off. There was so much blood.
“We’re here. We’re both right here. I’ve got you.” He pressed his lips to her hair, her cheek. “Let it go, Eve. Let it go now.”
“I’m cold. I’m so cold.”
He rubbed his hands over her back, her arms, too afraid to leave her even for the time it would take to get up for a blanket. “Hold on to me.”
He lifted her into his lap, rocking her as he would a child. And the shudders that racked her gradually eased. Her breathing steadied.
“I’m okay.” She let her head fall limply on his shoulder. “Sorry.” But when he didn’t loosen his hold, when he continued to rock, she closed her eyes, tried to drift into the comfort he needed as much as she.
Still, she saw what she’d been, what she’d done. What she’d become in that horrible room in Dallas. Roarke could see it. He lived it with her through her nightmares.
Burrowing against him, she stared off into the dark again and wondered if she could bear the shame if anyone else caught a glimpse of how Eve Dallas had come to be.
Peabody loved briefings at Eve’s home office. However serious the business, there was always an informal atmosphere when you added food. And a breakfast meeting not only meant real coffee, but real eggs, real meat and all manner of sticky, sugary pastries.
And she could justify the extra calories because it was work-related fuel. There was, in her opinion, no downside to the current situation.
They were all loaded in—Feeney, McNab, Trueheart, Baxter, Dallas, even Roarke. And boy, oh boy, a look at Roarke in the morning was as delicious a jolt to the system as the strong black coffee sweetened with honest-to-God