Naked in Death (In Death #1)(33)

“I will seduce you,” he returned. “Unfortunately, not tonight. Beyond that, I want to find out what it is that makes you what you are. And I want to help you get what you need. Right now, what you need is a murderer. You blame yourself,” he added. “That’s foolish and annoying.”

“I don’t blame myself.”

“Look in the mirror,” Roarke said quietly.

“There was nothing I could do,” Eve exploded. “Nothing I could do to stop it. Any of it.”

“Are you supposed to be able to stop it, any of it? All of it?”

“That’s exactly what I’m supposed to do.”

He tilted his head. “How?”

She pushed away from the table. “By being smart. By being in time. By doing my job.”

Something more here, he mused. Something deeper. He folded his hands on the table. “Isn’t that what you’re doing now?”

The images flooded back into her brain. All the death. All the blood. All the waste. “Now they’re dead.” And the taste of it was bitter in her mouth. “There should have been something I could have done to stop it.”

“To stop a murder before it happens, you’d have to be inside the head of a killer,” he said quietly. “Who could live with that?”

“I can live with that.” She hurled it back at him. And it was pure truth. She could live with anything but failure. “Serve and protect — it’s not just a phrase, it’s a promise. If I can’t keep my word, I’m nothing. And I didn’t protect them, any of them. I can only serve them after they’re dead. Goddamn it, she was hardly more than a baby. Just a baby, and he cut her into pieces. I wasn’t in time. I wasn’t in time, and I should have been.”

Her breath caught on a sob, shocking her. Pressing a hand to her mouth, she lowered herself onto the sofa. “God,” was all she could say. “God. God.”

He came to her. Instinct had him taking her arms firmly rather than gathering her close. “If you can’t or won’t talk to me, you have to talk to someone. You know that.”

“I can handle it. I — ” But the rest of the words slid down her throat when he shook her.

“What’s it costing you?” he demanded. “And how much would it matter to anyone if you let it go? For one minute just let it go.”

“I don’t know.” And maybe that was the fear, she realized. She wasn’t sure if she could pick up her badge, or her weapon, or her life, if she let herself think too deeply, or feel too much. “I see her,” Eve said on a deep breath. “I see her whenever I close my eyes or stop concentrating on what needs to be done.”

“Tell me.”

She rose, retrieved her wine and his, and then returned to the sofa. The long drink eased her dry throat and settled the worst of the nerves. It was fatigue, she warned herself, that weakened her enough that she couldn’t hold it in.

“The call came through when I was a half block away. I’d just closed another case, finished the data load. Dispatch called for the closest unit. Domestic violence — it’s always messy, but I was practically on the doorstep. So I took it. Some of the neighbors were outside, they were all talking at once.”

The scene came back to her, perfectly, like a video exactly cued. “A woman was in her nightgown, and she was crying. Her face was battered, and one of the neighbors was trying to bind up a gash on her arm. She was bleeding badly, so I told them to call the MTs. She kept saying, ‘He’s got her. He’s got my baby.’”

Eve took another drink. “She grabbed me, bleeding on me, screaming and crying and telling me I had to stop him, I had to save her baby. I should have called for backup, but I didn’t think I could wait. I took the stairs, and I could hear him before I got to the third floor where he was locked in. He was raging. I think I heard the little girl screaming, but I’m not sure.”

She closed her eyes then, praying she’d been wrong. She wanted to believe that the child had already been dead, already beyond pain. To have been that close, only steps away… No, she couldn’t live with that.

“When I got to the door, I used the standard. I’d gotten his name from one of the neighbors. I used his name, and the child’s name. It’s supposed to make it more personal, more real if you use names. I identified myself and said I was coming in. But he just kept raging. I could hear things breaking. I couldn’t hear the child now. I think I knew. Before I broke down the door, I knew. He’d used the kitchen knife to slice her to pieces.”

Her hand shook as she raised the glass again. “There was so much blood. She was so small, but there was so much blood. On the floor, on the wall, all over him. I could see it was still dripping off the knife. Her face was turned toward me. Her little face, with big blue eyes. Like a doll’s.”

She was silent for a moment, then set her glass aside. “He was too wired up to be stunned. He kept coming. There was blood dripping off the knife, and splattered all over him, and he kept coming. So I looked in his eyes, right in his eyes. And I killed him.”

“And the next day,” Roarke said quietly, “you dived straight into a murder investigation.”

“Testing’s postponed. I’ll get to it in another day or two.” She moved her shoulders. “The shrinks, they’ll think it’s the termination. I can make them think that if I have to. But it’s not. I had to kill him. I can accept that.” She looked straight into Roarke’s eyes and knew she could tell him what she hadn’t been able to say to herself. “I wanted to kill him. Maybe even needed to. When I watched him die, I thought, He’ll never do that to another child. And I was glad that I’d been the one to stop him.”