Divided in Death (In Death #18)(74)

She knew Reva Ewing and Tokimoto were in the house, and was leaving them to Feeney while she bunkered in her office, waiting for Peabody and McNab to get in.

She could focus on the work at hand for long periods, running her probabilities, then sifting through data to create other scenarios. She could study her murder board, and reconstruct the crimes, the motives, the methods from what evidence she had and begin to see a picture.

But she only had to shift that evidence to one side and a different picture formed.

And if her concentration wavered, even for an instant, there was yet another image. One of herself and Roarke on opposing sides of a bottomless chasm.

She hated that her personal life interfered with work. Hated more that she couldn't stop it from creeping into her thoughts when she needed to train them on the job.

And what was she upset about, really? she asked herself as she stalked back into the kitchen yet again for coffee. That Roarke wanted to hunt up and bloody some HSO agent she didn't even know? She was fighting with him, and just because they weren't yelling and slamming around didn't mean they weren't fighting still.

She'd figured out that much of the marriage game.

They were fighting because he had a rage like a trapped tiger about what had been done to her as a child. Layered over it, sharpening the claws and teeth of the trapped tiger was the rage over what had happened to his mother.

Brutality, violence, neglect. Christ knew they'd both lived with it and survived. Why couldn't they live with it still?

She shoved through the kitchen door to stand on the little terrace beyond, and just breathe.

And how did she live with it? The work-and, yes, sometimes she used the work until it dragged her down to exhaustion, even misery, but she needed what it gave her, through the process, through the results. Standing not just over the victim but for the victim, and working to find whatever balance the system allowed. Even hating the system from time to time when that balance didn't meet her own standards.

But you could respect something, even when you hated it.

The nightmares? Weren't they some sort of coping mechanism, an unconscious outlet for the fear, the pain, even the humiliation? Mira could probably give her a whole cargoload of fancy terms and psychiatric buzz on the subject. But at the base they were just triggers, for events she could stand to remember. Maybe a few she wasn't sure she could stand. But she coped.

God knew she coped better with Roarke there to pull her out of the sticky grip of them, to hold onto her, to remind her she was beyond them now.

But she didn't deal with what had been done to her by meeting brutality with more of the same. How could she wear her badge if she didn't believe, at the core, in the heart and soul of the law?

And he didn't.

She scooped a hand through her hair as she stared out over the riotous late-summer gardens: the full green trees, the sheen and sparkle of the world he'd built, his way. She'd known when she met him, when she'd fallen in love with him, when she married him, that he didn't, and never would, have the same in-the-bone beliefs as she had.

They were, on some elemental plane, opposite.

Two lost souls, he'd once said. So they were. But as much as they had in common, they would never meet smoothly on this one point.

Maybe it was that opposition, the pull and tug of it, that made what was between them so intense. That gave that terrible and terrifying love such power.

She could reach his heart-it was so open to her, so miraculously open. She could reach his grief, give a kind of comfort to him she hadn't known herself capable of. But she couldn't, and never would, fully reach his rage. That hard knot inside him he covered so skillfully with elegance and style.

Maybe she wasn't meant to. Maybe if she could reach in, take hold of that knot and loosen it, he wouldn't be the same man she loved.

But God, my God, what would she do if he killed a man over her? How could she survive that?

How could they?

Could she continue to hunt killers knowing she lived with one? Because she was afraid of the answer, she didn't look too deeply. Instead she stepped back inside, filled her cup again.

She walked back into her office, stood in front of her board, and pushed her mind back into work. Her answer was an absent and faintly irritated "What?" when someone knocked on her door.

"Lieutenant. I'm sorry to disturb you."

"Oh. Caro." It threw her off to see Roarke's admin in her sharp black suit at her office door. "No problem. I didn't know you were here."

"I came in with Reva. I'm going into the midtown office, to work. I needed some details from Roarke on a project. Well, that doesn't matter." She lifted her hands in a rare flustered move, then dropped them again. "I wanted to speak to you before I left, if you have a moment."

"Sure. Okay. You want coffee or something?"

"No. Nothing, thank you. I... I'd like to close the door."

"Go ahead." She saw Caro's gaze go to the board, the stills of the murder scenes, the garish ones of the bodies. Deliberately, Eve moved to her desk and gestured to a chair that would put the images out of Caro's line of vision. "Have a seat."

"You look at this sort of thing all the time, I imagine." Caro made herself take a long look before she ordered her legs to move, and took the chair. "Do you get used to it?"

"Yes. And no. You look a little wobbly yet. Maybe you shouldn't be going back to work so soon."