New York to Dallas (In Death #33)(120)

“Beg some more.” He panted it out, thrilled. “Cry like a little girl. A bad girl.”

“I’ll be good! Don’t, please, don’t.”

When he struck her again, her vision doubled. She tried to claw at him, wild with pain and terror. He howled when she raked her nails down his face. Howled, reared back.

In her mind she felt him shove himself inside her. In reality his hands closed around her throat, shutting off her air.

Her free hand flailed out—helpless, hopeless—and closed over the knife.

She brought it down, felt the warm blood run. Coughing, choking, gagging, she brought it down again.

Then she was free, somehow free, kneeling beside him, her injured arm hanging uselessly, and the knife clutched in her hand. The knife poised over him.

“Eve!”

Roarke’s heart stopped. Later he would think that for an instant his heart simply stopped beating in the violent collision of relief—she was alive—and the horror of what he saw in that room.

“Eve!”

Her head whipped toward his, her face bruised, bloody, and the eyes he knew so well feral. Once again the cat, loyal to the last, stood beside her butting his head to her bloody hip. When Roarke stepped forward, she bared her teeth, made a sound like a snarl.

“I know who you are. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.” He prayed now, prayed he wouldn’t have to stun her to save her. “Look at me. See me. He can’t hurt you now, Eve. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. That’s who you are. That’s who you made yourself. Eve. My Eve.”

“He comes back.”

“Not this time.”

“He hurts me.”

“I know. Not anymore. Eve. I’m what’s real. We’re what’s real.”

If she brought that knife down, put it in him, she’d never be able to live with it, never come back from it. They’d have beaten her—her father, her mother, the excuse for a man bleeding on the floor.

“He’s Isaac McQueen. He’s not your father. You’re not a child. You’re Lieutenant Eve Dallas, NYPSD. You need to take charge of your prisoner, Lieutenant. You need to do the job.”

“The job.” She sobbed in a breath. “It hurts. It hurts.”

“I’ll fix it.” Slowly, watching her eyes, he knelt on the other side of the unconscious McQueen. “I love you, Eve. Trust me now. Give me the knife.” Gently, he closed his hand over hers on the bloody hilt.

“Roarke.”

“Yes. Give me the knife now, Eve.”

“Take it. Please take it. I can’t let it go.”

He pried it out of her trembling fingers, tossed it aside.

As he reached out, lifted her into his arms, his security team rushed in. He started to snap out orders, and realized the ones that came first to mind were the wrong ones—restrain McQueen, an ambulance for his wife. The wrong ones for her.

“Doctor Charlotte Mira, room fifty-seven-oh-eight. One of you go, tell her Lieutenant Dallas needs her, and her medical bag. Now. The rest of you go down, wait for the police.”

He carried her to the sleep chair, where the cat immediately leaped to crawl into her lap.

“No,” she said when Roarke started to nudge him aside. “He saved me. He saved me. You saved me.”

“You saved yourself, but we had a part in it. Let me look at your arm.”

“Is it broken?”

“No, baby, not broken. It’s dislocated. I know it hurts.”

“Not broken.” She closed her eyes, shuddered out another breath. “Not this time.”

She took his hand with her good one. “I wanted to kill him. But I couldn’t. I need you to know.” She hissed between her teeth, struggling to think, to speak through the pain. “I need you to know.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He laid his fingertips over the purpling bruise on her cheek. “Let’s wait for Mira.”

“It matters. I couldn’t do it. There was something inside me—I was inside me, I guess. Just a child, and she was screaming. But I was there, too. Me. It was like being frozen between. I don’t know how to explain it. I couldn’t do it, but I couldn’t let go, not until you came. Until you touched me. I couldn’t do it, Roarke, but I couldn’t move, and finish it the way I need to finish it, until you came.”

“Can you finish it now?”

“I have to. I think, if I don’t . . . I have to.”

“Let me have your restraints. I’ll do that part.”

While she cradled her injured arm, he took the cuffs off her belt, and rising, shoved McQueen over, knelt, and snapped them on. Mira ran in as Roarke dragged McQueen faceup again.

“Oh, dear God.”

“She’ll keep.” Roarke got to his feet, moved to block Mira’s dash toward Eve. “Give him something to bring him around.”

“She needs—”

“She needs to read her prisoner his rights. She needs to know he sees her, hears her while she does.”

With one long look at Eve, Mira nodded. Roarke turned to the door as the room filled with cops, security, feds. “This is for her to do. This is Lieutenant Dallas’s job.”

He wanted to give her his hand, but she shook her head, got shakily to her feet as Mira brought McQueen around.