Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42)(56)

He struck the desk again, and on the explosion of sound they stood in the room in Dallas with the ugly red light flashing.

“No. No.” She backed away as panic coiled up, struck like a snake. “I’m done with this. I don’t come here anymore. It’s finished for me.”

“It’s never finished.” The senator sat, wearing his black robes, at his raised judge’s platform. “Murderer!”

At the next bang of his gavel she saw herself, the terrified girl she’d been, struggling with, pleading with Richard Troy. With her father as he raped her.

She heard her own high-pitched scream, felt the pain in her own arm as the bone snapped when he broke her arm.

Felt the horror and the hope when those small fingers closed around the little knife.

“Guilty!” the senator shouted when the desperate girl plunged the knife into flesh. “Guilty, guilty, guilty.”

Stabbing, over and over and over. The inhuman sounds growling in her throat, and the blood, all the blood washing warm over her hands.

“Blood on your hands. Guilty. Murderer. Just like them.”

“Kill the bitch.” Richard Troy stared at her with glassy eyes as blood bubbled from his lips. “Give her what she deserves.”

With the next strike of the gavel she was back at the crime scene, the noose around her neck. She dragged at the rope with her blood-smeared hands, but it only tightened, tightened as the mechanism hummed the chandelier higher.

“Now,” the senator said, “justice is served.”

“Wake up! Eve, you bloody well wake up and fucking breathe.”

Roarke’s words, his rough shakes finally got through. She sucked in air, still dragging at the dream noose around her throat.

“It’s a dream. A dream. Do you hear me? Come back now.”

“I’m all right. I’m all right.”

“You’re not, but you will be. Look at me.”

She couldn’t stop the shaking, but made herself look into his eyes. Anger, yes, some anger in there, and the kind of desperation she understood too well.

“I’m okay. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. It’ll piss me off.” He grabbed the throw from the foot of the bed, wrapped it around her, rubbed her back, her arms while the cat bumped his head against her hip. “You’re cold.”

Then he wrapped his arms around her and rocked. “I swear, you stopped breathing for a moment. Just stopped. You’ll have a soother.”

“I—”

“Don’t argue about it, you’re having one. I’m having a bloody soother myself.”

She said nothing when he got out of bed, but sat, shivering under the cashmere throw, stroking the cat. They’d have tried to wake her, she thought, her husband and her cat, but she’d been in too deep.

Roarke lit the fire first to add more light and warmth to the room, then moved to the AutoChef.

“You need the soother,” he said more calmly. “You haven’t had a nightmare that . . . intense in some time.”

“Soothers all around.” She fought to make her voice sound normal. “Maybe the cat needs one.”

“He’s his own soother.” Roarke brought two glasses back to the bed, handed her one, gave the loyal Galahad a rub. “He’s fine now, though I’ll say he was nearly as shaken as I. Drink that now.”

She gulped some down, sighed. “It’s chocolate.”

“I know my cop.”

That brought the tears up, had her pressing her face to his shoulder. “I couldn’t get out of it. I knew what it was, but I couldn’t get out.”

“You’re safe now.” He kissed the top of her head, dug in for tenderness. “Drink the rest, darling. Drink it up, and tell me.”

She did what he asked, and when she was finished, when he’d set the empty glasses aside, he gathered her close.

“I know it’s not true, what he said—what my subconscious went into. But—”

“There’s no but in this. You were an innocent child defending her life against a monster. These are grown women who killed with calculation.”

Yes, yes, that was the logic. That was reason. But . . . “The motives align. If I’m right, I will smear his reputation.”

“If you’re right, his reputation is a lie. It’s truth you’re after, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. If I’m right . . . you’d come down on their side of it.”

He kissed her cheek, then the other before drawing her down so she could curl into him, find the warmth.

“We have different views on some matters, but as you’re fond of telling me, you’re the one with the badge. You’ll do your job, Lieutenant, as you must. And I’ll help you as I can to find the truth. After that, it’s not in my hands or yours, is it?”

“No.”

The cat curled against the small of her back, sandwiching her in the safe. Tears stung her eyes again, so she closed them. And as the soother did its work, she drifted back to sleep.

Holding her close, Roarke lay awake, listening to her breathe.





11


Eve’s communicator buzzed, a rude, insistent sound that woke her in the dark.

Roarke said, “Bloody, buggering hell,” and called for lights on at ten percent as she crawled out of bed.