Leverage in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel (In Death #47)(83)

One wall, blinding white, held all the names of the dead beneath the spatter.

Eighteen, and room for more.

Two men stood in the room, men dressed in black with white masks. They spoke in whispers, words she couldn’t quite hear. She reached for her weapon, but it wasn’t there. Not her sidearm, not her clutch piece. Prepared to take them on unarmed, she charged.

But what she’d seen as shadows stood as a wall. Impenetrable.

Desperate, she searched for a door, an opening, found none. She moved back through the dead to give herself room, ran full out, throwing her body up at the last minute to strike the wall with a violent kick.

It repelled her like a hand swatting at a fly. She tried again, again, slamming the wall with kicks and punches until her fists left smears of blood.

The men simply watched her from behind their masks.

One laughed, then slapped the second on the shoulder in a gesture of shared humor.

“Well now, how long you figure she’ll keep up with all that?”

She heard Ireland—thicker, deeper than Roarke’s. It made her stomach flutter in a kind of sick dread.

“That one? Always was a stubborn little bitch.”

Now her stomach twisted as dread dropped to fear and resignation. The men pulled off the masks—no need for them, after all.

She stood facing Richard Troy and Patrick Roarke with a shadowy wall between.

“The boy always was a fuckup,” Patrick Roarke claimed. “But still he’s got my looks, so you’d think he could do better than that one. And a cop for all of that as well.”

“She’s a killer.” Troy smiled wide and bright. “I’m dead proof of it.”

“That right. You’re dead,” Eve said. “Both of you. A long time dead.”

“But there are so many more like us,” Troy reminded her. “We just keep coming, little girl. Beat yourself against the wall of that, and we still keep coming.”

“There are always more like me.”

“Look around you. Can’t keep the dead from piling up, can you now?” Patrick Roarke laughed, then as the shadows shifted, poured whiskey from a bottle into two glasses.

As they clinked glasses, drank, she saw they stood in a room with a bed, and on the bed a figure struggled. She couldn’t see through the shadows, but saw the movements, heard the screams muffled by a gag.

“And more to come.” Troy lifted his glass in toast to another wall.

It cleared to show the people behind it. And her heart began to pound in her chest.

Peabody, Mavis, oh God, the baby, Feeney.

She rushed, beat against the wall.

Nadine, Baxter, Leonardo, McNab. More. Everyone, everyone who mattered. Summerset, Whitney, Trueheart, Charles, Louise, Crack. Her whole squad, Reo, everyone milling around the room as if at some goddamn party.

Mira, Dennis Mira, Morris.

Every time she blinked, more appeared in the room.

Though she beat on that wall, shouted, no one heard, no one saw.

Everyone, everyone who mattered to her. But the one who mattered most.

“Where’s Roarke? Goddamn you, where’s Roarke?”

She rushed back—the figure on the bed. God, oh God.

The two men sat at a table, counting money with a mountain of it at their backs.

“You can never have too much of it, can you, Paddy?”

“No indeed, Richie, no indeed. And the getting more’s the fun of it.”

Shifting shadows. She started to call to Roarke, to swear to him she’d find a way to get to him. But when the shadows cleared, she didn’t see him. She saw herself, bound to the bed, struggling, terrified.

The red light blinked on and off, on and off as it had a lifetime before in a horrible room in Dallas.

“More fun this way.” Troy wagged a thumb to the next wall. “Look who’s joining the party.”

The moan rolled out of her soul. Roarke stepped in—everyone, everyone, everyone who mattered—with the suicide vest locked around him.

On a scream, she launched herself against the wall. She felt her arm break—the snap of a twig—and threw herself against the wall again.

“Roarke! Don’t, don’t, don’t. It’s a lie. Look at me. Roarke!”

Spiderweb cracks sizzled over the wall. As he reached for the button, she screamed again, reared back to charge through the cracks.

“Stop it now. You stop it. You need to wake up. Christ Jesus, Eve, you bloody well will wake up!”

She snapped back, saw his eyes. Just his eyes. On a choked sob she grabbed at him, pressed to him. “You can’t. You won’t. Swear you won’t. You have to swear to me.”

“Stop now, stop. It’s a dream, just a dream.”

“You can’t—You’re wet. Is that blood?” She shoved back, ran her hands over him.

“Of course it’s not blood. It’s only water. I was having a shower,” he said, calm and gentle as he stroked her back. “I heard you screaming. And now I’m dripping all over you. Let me get that throw over you.”

“Just hold on.” Shaking, she wrapped her arms around him again. “Just hold on.” The cat bumped his head against her so she reached down to try to soothe. But her hand shook violently.

“You need to slow down your breathing. Slow breaths, baby. A bad dream, nothing more. I’m right here. I’m just getting the throw. You’re freezing.”