Promises in Death (In Death #28)(53)

“I expect to die?”

“Sitting on a slab, aren’t you? Just like me. But expect’s the wrong word. You’re prepared.” As if pleased, she nodded. “Yes, that’s better. You’re prepared to die, for the badge. I wasn’t. I was prepared to do the work until it was time to step away from it and get married, start a family. You’re still surprised you’ve managed to be a cop and a wife. You can’t figure how it’s possible to be one and have a family, so you don’t think about it.”

“Kids are scary. They’re foreign and—”

“What you were when he hurt you. When he beat you and terrorized you and raped you. How can you have a child until you fully understand, accept, forgive the child you were?”

“Did getting murdered give you a license to shrink?”

“It’s your subconscious, Lieutenant. I’m just one of your dead now.” She looked over to the wall, and all those cold, steel drawers. “One of the many. You and Morris, both so oddly comfortable here. Did you really never think about tapping that?”

Even in the dream, Eve felt heat rise into her face. “Jesus, this is not my subconscious.”

“It sure as hell isn’t mine.” With a laugh, Coltraine shook back her hair. “But loving someone without the sex, even the sexual buzz? That’s special. I’m glad he has you now, glad he has that with you. It was different for him and me. That sexual buzz?” She snapped her fingers. “Almost that quick. And from there, a lot more. He was the one, I think he would’ve been the one to be with, to believe in, have a family with.”

“What about Alex Ricker? Sexual buzz?”

“And then some. You know that. You know exactly the kind of sexual buzz a man like that throws off.”

“He’s not like Roarke.”

“Not that different, not all that different.” Coltraine pointed at Eve, smiled easily. “That bothers you. We’re not that different either. We fell for it, we wanted it. We just handled it differently. Would you, could you, have walked away from him if he hadn’t shed the shady?”

“I don’t know. Can’t be sure. But I know if he had asked me to be with him, to make a life with him and to look the other way while he broke the law, he wouldn’t be Roarke. Roarke’s who I stayed with.”

Now Coltraine wagged that finger back and forth. “But he does break the law.”

“Hard to explain, even to me. He doesn’t break it for his own profit, for his own gain. Not now, not anymore. If he does, it’s because he believes in right, in justice. Not always the same right, the same justice as I do. But he believes. Ricker didn’t shed for you. I got that much, too.”

“They come from harsh fathers and dead mothers, these men. Isn’t that part of what makes them, and part of our attraction to them? They’re dangerous and compelling. They want us, and want to give us things.”

“I don’t care about the things. But you did. You did or you wouldn’t have given them back. Huh. Subconscious scores. You gave them back because they did matter, and because they mattered you couldn’t keep them. It wouldn’t have been a break then, not a clean one. You wore the ring your parents gave you instead, a reminder of who and where you’d come from. Solid middle-class family.”

“Maybe you are listening.”

“Maybe you looked the other way when you were with him. Maybe you even told him things you shouldn’t have—because the badge was just a job, and secondary. But you weren’t dirty. You weren’t on the take. That’s not what you wanted from him, and not what you’d have given him. If it was, you’d have given the badge back, too. You could lie to yourself when you were with him that it was nobody’s business what you did on your own time, nobody’s business who you loved.”

Coltraine’s smile warmed and spread. “Now who’s the shrink?”

Ignoring the comment, Eve went on. “But even when the job’s secondary, it gets in the way. It got in the way, and he wasn’t going to change. You couldn’t keep loving him when he couldn’t love you enough to see that. So you gave back the things, and you walked away. But you kept the badge.”

Coltraine studied it again. “A lot of good it did me.” She looked up at Eve then, and her eyes, so bold and green, filled with sorrow. “I don’t want to stay here.”

“They’re going to let you go soon.”

“Do you think any of us go anywhere until we have the truth? Do you think there’s peace without justice?”

“No, I don’t,” Eve admitted, knowing it would always drive her. Would always make her push. “You won’t stay here. You’ve got my word. I promise you, you won’t stay here.”

Could you make a promise to a dead woman in a dream? Eve wondered. And what did it mean that she had, that she’d needed to?

As she dressed, she glanced over at Roarke, who sat with his coffee, his stock reports, his cat. Didn’t look so dangerous now, she mused. Not such a bad boy. Just an absurdly handsome man starting the daily routine.

Except, of course, he’d probably started the routine a good hour or two before, with some international ’link transmission or holo-meeting. But still, didn’t look so dangerous.

Which, she supposed, was only one of the reasons he was. Very.