Portrait in Death (In Death #16)(92)

It took some doing, asking for favors, fighting the urge to triple check every detail she'd already double checked.

It took blocking every natural instinct and putting her travel arrangements into Summerset's hands.

She went home to pack a light bag, reminding herself she could be reached anywhere, at any time. That she could, if necessary, fly home as quickly as she was flying away. And that she could run an op by remote control. She had a capable team.

She wasn't the only cop on the NYPSD. But she was Roarke's only wife.

Still, she paced the plush confines of his fastest jet shuttle as it careened across the Atlantic in the dark. She reviewed her notes, reread the files and witness statements.

Everything that could be done was being done. She'd ordered round-the-clock surveillance on the garage and the van. EDD had installed a homer on the van as backup.

If he came for it, they'd move in and have him in custody before he could finish keying in the ignition code.

All the trace evidence was being matched. Within twenty-four hours, forensics would have eliminated anything from Ernestine and her church group, the garage employees, the victims. What was left would be the killer's.

They'd have DNA, and a solid case.

She had men in the data club, men at the universities, Louise on the medical front. Something would break, and soon.

She tried to sit, relax. But couldn't.

That was all cop stuff. She knew what she was doing as a cop.

But where she was headed was wife territory. She'd learned some of the ground, and considered she'd figured how to negotiate it fairly well. But this sector was uncharted.

If he didn't want her there, was she going to make things worse?

She plugged a disc into her PPC and played back the message he'd left on her home office 'link while she'd still been at Central clearing the way to leave.

"Well, I hope you're sleeping." He smiled, but he looked so tired, she thought. Worn out tired. "I should've called before. Things got... complicated. I'm about to go to bed myself. It's late here. Early, more like. I can't seem to remember the time change-imagine that. I'm sorry I haven't spoken with you today-yesterday. What the hell."

He gave a half-laugh, pinched the bridge of his nose as if to relieve some pressure. "I'm punchy, need a couple hours down, is all. I'm fine, no need to worry. Things aren't what I expected here. Can't say what I expected. I'll call you after I've slept a bit. Don't work too hard, Lieutenant. I love you."

He wasn't supposed to look so tired, she thought on a sudden spurt of anger. He wasn't supposed to look so befuddled, so damn vulnerable.

Maybe he didn't want her there, but he was just going to have to deal with it.

***

Dawn was shimmering over the hills when Roarke stepped outside. He hadn't slept long, but he'd slept well, tucked up into a pretty, slanted-ceiling bedroom on the top floor, one with old lace curtains on the windows and a lovely handmade quilt on the wide, iron bed.

They'd treated him like family. Almost like a prodigal son returned home, and they'd served roast kid and pandy as the Irish version of fatted calf.

They'd had a ceili, packed with food and music and stories. People, so many people gathering around to talk of his mother, to ask of him, to laugh. To weep.

He hadn't been quite sure what to make of it all, or them, the uncles and aunts and cousins-grandparents for God's sake-that had so suddenly come into his life.

The welcome had humbled him.

He was still unsteady. This life they lived, and the world in which they lived it, was more foreign to him than the moon. And yet he'd carried a part of it, unknowing, in his blood throughout his life.

How could he resolve, in a matter of days, something so enormous? How did he understand the truths buried more than thirty years under lies? And death?

With his hands in his pockets, he walked beyond the back gardens with their tidy rows of vegetables, their tangled cheer of flowers, and fingered the little gray button he carried.

Eve's button. One that had fallen off the jacket of a particularly unattractive suit the first time he'd seen her. One he'd carried like a talisman ever since.

He'd be steadier if she were here, he was sure. Christ, he wished she were here.

He looked across a field where a tractor hummed along. One of his uncles or cousins would be manning it, he supposed. Farmers. He sprang from farmers, and wasn't that a kick in the ass?

Simple, honest, hard-working, God-fearing-and everything the other half of him wasn't. Was it that conflict, that contradiction, that went into the making up of what he was?

It was early enough that the mists snaked up from the green, softening the air, softening the light. A snippet of Yeats ran through his head-where hill is heaped upon hill. And so it was here. He could see those hills rolling back to forever, and smell the damp of dew on grass, the loamy earth beneath it, the wild rambling roses above.

And hear the birds singing as though life was a singular joy.

All of his life-certainly all of it after he'd escaped the bastard who'd sired him-he'd done as he wanted. Pursued the goal of success and wealth and comfort. He didn't need a session with Mira to tell him he'd done so to compensate, even defeat, the years of misery, poverty, and pain. And so what?

So the f**k what?

A man who didn't do what he could to live well instead of wallowing was a fool.