New York to Dallas (In Death #33)(122)

“Hard not to, loaded up with tranqs.” She took his hand. “I know I’m going to have to think about it, deal with it. The whole ugly mess of it. But I can, because in the end I did the job. You helped me to do it.”

“I always wondered, if such things were possible, if I’d go back, kill your father to spare you that. Then I stood in that room in Dallas and saw so clearly what happened that night, what he’d put you through, what he’d done.”

He brought her hand to his lips, the hand he’d covered with his on the knife, sharing the blood with her. “I could have taken the knife from you and put it into his heart. McQueen, your father. I could have done that.”

“You didn’t.”

“No. You loved me, and things in me that didn’t work did, and do.”

“You heard me,” she murmured. “With Mira.”

“I did. And I can say to you it was easier when they didn’t work, but it’s better, very much better, when they do.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “For two people who started out so f**ked up, we’re okay.”

Beside him, she watched out the window, ignored the pitching in her stomach on descent. The cat leaped onto her lap, circled with his questing claws, settled.

And beside Roarke, with the cat snoring, she watched New York break through the clouds.

Dallas to New York, she thought. Where she belonged.