Divided in Death (In Death #18)(75)

"I need to work." Caro straightened her shoulders. "You'd understand."

"Yeah, I get that."

"As does Reva. I know getting back to what she does will help her state of mind. She's not herself. Neither am I. We're not sleeping well, but we pretend we are, for each other's sake. And this isn't at all what I came here to say. Rambling isn't like me either."

"Guess not. You always struck me as being hyperefficient. Have to be to handle Roarke's stuff. But if something like this didn't throw you off stride, I'd have to figure you for a droid."

"Just the right note." Caro nodded. "You know what note to take with victims and survivors, witnesses or suspects. You were brisk, even brusque with Reva. That's the sort of tone she responds best to when she's stressed. You're very intuitive, Lieutenant. You'd have to be... to handle Roarke."

"You'd think." Eve tried not to let the words that had passed between them the night before replay in her head. "What do you need, Caro?"

"Sorry. I know I'm taking up your time. I wanted to thank you for everything you've done, and are doing. I realize you look at variations of what's on that board every day. That you deal with victims and survivors, listen to statements and questions, and work toward finding the answers. It's what you do. But this is personal for me, so I wanted to tell you, to thank you, in a personal way."

"Then you're welcome in a personal way. I like you, Caro. I like your daughter. But if I didn't, I'd be doing the same thing I'm doing now."

"Yes, I know. But that fact doesn't change my gratitude. When Reva's father left us, I was devastated. My heart was broken, and my energies scattered. I was only a bit older than you," she added, "and it seemed the end of the world. I thought, 'What will I do? How will I get through this? How will I get my baby through it?'"

She stopped, shook her head. "And this isn't of any possible interest to you."

"No." Eve gestured Caro back down when she started to rise. "Finish it out. I am interested."

Caro sat again, sighed. "I will, then, as all this keeps running through my mind. I had, at that time, very few personal resources-some secretarial skills I'd let rust as I'd wanted to be a professional mother. There were debts, and though he'd incurred most of them, he was smarter and, well, meaner than I was."

"Must've been pretty smart, then."

"Thank you. I wasn't as... seasoned then as I am now. And he had better lawyers," she added with a ghost of a smile. "So I was in a pit, financially, emotionally, even physically as I let myself become ill with the stress and grief. I was very, very frightened. But it was nothing-no more than a bump that leaves you momentarily off-balance-compared to this. Reva might've been killed."

Caro pressed a hand to her lips, visibly fought for control. "No one's said that, but it's there, the possibility of what might have been. Whoever did this thing might have killed her instead of using her to cover the tracks."

"She wasn't. Might-have-beens shouldn't scare you."

"You don't have children," Caro said with another, stronger smile, but her eyes were beginning to shine with the tears she was fighting off. "Might-have-beens are the monster in the closet for parents. She might have been killed, or she might be in prison waiting for trial if you weren't so very good at what you do. If you and Roarke hadn't been willing to help. I owe him a great deal. Now I owe him, and you, a great deal more."

"You figure he wants payback for pitching in for you and Reva?"

"No. He never does." She opened her purse, took out a tissue and dabbed at her cheeks. Every movement was economical. "It annoys him. And you, I imagine. You're so well-suited."

Eve felt her throat close, and only managed a shrug.

"I wondered if you would be. When you first came to the office, so fierce and tough. And cold. At least that's how I saw you. Then I saw him, after you'd gone. He was baffled and dazzled and frustrated. A rarity for Roarke."

"Really? Well, that made two of us."

"It's been an education watching the two of you find each other." She replaced the tissue, closed her neat black handbag. "He's an important part of my life. It's good to see him happy."

She didn't know what to say to that, so asked a question that was circling in her brain. "How did you come to work for him?"

"I took a secretarial position, entry level, and did drone work at an advertising agency here in New York. My skills weren't as rusty as I'd thought, and I'd scraped together the money for some classes to reacquaint myself with them. For the most part I was a gofer in one of the legal departments for a time. Then I was a revolving clerk, moving from department to department, filling in where and how I was needed."

"Getting a little bit of everything."

"Yes. It pleased me, and I thought of it as training. It was good work, and paid well. At a point, I suppose it's been about a dozen years ago now, Roarke took over the company where I worked, and the company-along with several others-moved into the midtown building."

Her voice was stronger now as she took herself back. Took some distance from the present.

"Shortly after, I was promoted to an assistant to an assistant in one of the project development arms of the company. A year or so into that, I was asked to sit in on a meeting-just to keep notes, fetch coffee, and look presentable as Roarke himself would be attending. The New York branch was quite young then. There was such energy, and most of it came from him."