Conspiracy in Death (In Death #8)(69)

"I'll take you, Dallas. Let me take you."

She looked at Peabody, shook her head. "No. You're with Feeney now. I can't -- stay here."

She bolted.

"Feeney, Jesus." Eyes swimming, Peabody turned to him. "What do we do?"

"We fix it, goddamn it, son of a bitch, we fix it. Call Roarke," he ordered and relieved some fury by kicking viciously at the desk. "Make sure he's there when she gets home."

Now she pays. Stupid bitch. Now she pays a price she'd consider higher than her own life. What will you do now, Dallas? Now that the system you've spent your life fighting for has betrayed you?

Now will you see, now that you're shivering outside, that the very system you've sweated for is meaningless? That what matters is power?

You were nothing more than a drone in a hive that collapses constantly in upon itself. Now you're less than that.

Because the power is mine, and it is legion.

Sacrifices were made, it's true. Deviations from the plan were taken. Had to be taken. Risks were weighed, and with them, perhaps a few small mistakes. Any worthy experiment accepts those minor missteps.

Because the results justify all.

I am so close, so very close. Now the focus has switched, the tide turned. The hunter is now the prey of her own kind. They will rip her to pieces as mindlessly as wolves.

It was all so simple to accomplish. A few words in a few ears, debts called in. A flawed and jealous mind used, and yes, sacrificed. And no one will mourn the detestable Bowers any more than the dregs I removed from society will be mourned.

Oh, but they will cry for justice. They will demand payment.

And Eve Dallas will pay.

She's no longer even the minor irritant she proved herself to be. With her removed, all my skills and energies can go back into my work. My work is imperative, and the glory that will spew from it, my right.

When it's done, they'll whisper my name with awe. And weep with gratitude.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Roarke stood in the cold, helpless, and waited for Eve to come home. Word had come through in the middle of his delicate negotiations with a pharmaceutical company on Tarus II. He intended to buy them out, revamp their organization, and link it with his own company based on Tarus I.

He had cut them off without hesitation the instant he'd received the transmission from Peabody. The tearful explanation from the habitually stalwart cop had shaken him. There had been only one thought: to get home, to be there.

And now to wait.

When he saw the Rapid Cab coming up the drive, he felt a hot bolt of fury lance through him.

They'd taken her vehicle. Bastards.

He wanted to race down the steps, rip open the door, to bundle her out and up and carry her away somewhere, somewhere she wouldn't hurt as he could only imagine she hurt.

But it wasn't his anger she needed now.

He came down the steps as she got out of the cab. And she stood pale as death in the hard winter light, her eyes dark, glazed, and, he thought, impossibly young. The strength, the tough edge she wore as naturally as her weapon, was gone.

She wasn't sure she could speak, that the words would push through her throat, it burned so. And the rest of her was numb. Dead.

"They took my badge." Suddenly it was real, the brutal reality of it punched like a fist. And grief gushed up, hot, bitter, to spill out of her eyes. "Roarke."

"I know." He was there, his arms hard around her, holding tight as she began to shake. "I'm sorry, Eve. I'm so sorry."

"What will I do? What will I do?" She clung, weeping, not even aware that he picked her up, carried her inside, into the warmth and up the stairs. "Oh God, God, God, they took my badge."

"We'll straighten it out. You'll get it back. I promise you." She was shaking so violently, it seemed her bones would crash together and shatter. He sat, tightened his grip. "Just hold onto me."

"Don't go away."

"No, baby, I'll stay right here."

She wept until he feared she'd be ill; then the sobs faded away, and she was limp in his arms. Like a broken doll, he thought. He ordered a soother and took her to bed. She, who would fight taking a painkiller if she were bleeding from a dozen wounds, sipped the sedative he brought to her lips without protest.

He undressed her as he would an exhausted child.

"They made me nothing again."

He looked down at her face, into eyes, hollow and heavy. "No, Eve."

"Nothing." She turned her head away, closed her eyes, and escaped.

She'd been nothing. A vessel, a victim, a child. One more statistic sucked into an overburdened, understaffed system. She'd tried to sleep then, too, in the narrow bed in the hospital ward that smelled of sickness and approaching death. Moans, weeping, the monotonous beep, beep, beep of machines, and the quiet slap of rubber soles on worn linoleum.

Pain, riding just under the surface of the drugs that dripped into her bloodstream. Like a cloud full of thunder that threatened from a distance but never quite split and spilled.

She was eight, or so they'd told her. And she was broken.

Questions, so many questions from the cops and social workers she'd been taught to fear.

"They'll throw you into a hole, little girl. A deep, dark hole."

She would wake from the twilight sleep of drugs to his voice, sly and drunk, in her ear. And she would bite back screams.