Visions in Death (In Death #19)(91)

His eyes went flat again, and cold. "Yeah, they made him pretty damn good. Big, beefy guy, bald, sunshades. They saw him kick her, f**king stomp on her. They saw her lying on the ground and the bastard kicking her. Then he hauled her up, like maybe he was going to heave her into the back of the van. But the woman started screaming, and the guys shouted and started running. He threw her down. They said he threw her down and jumped into the van. But she got a shot off. That's what they told me. She got a shot off when he was throwing her down. Maybe it hit him. Maybe he staggered. They weren't sure, and I had to go, go with her, so I couldn't follow up."

"You did good. You did great."

"Dallas."

And now she saw he was struggling against tears. If he broke, she'd break. "Take it easy."

"They said—the medicals—they said it was bad. We were riding in, they were working on her. They told me it was bad."

"I'm going to tell you what you already know. She's no pushover. She's a tough cop, and she'll come through."

He nodded, swallowed hard. "She had her weapon in her hand. She kept her weapon."

"She's got spine. Roarke?"

He nodded, and, walking out to gather information, left her and McNab waiting alone.

Chapter Nineteen

He paced and prowled and keened like an animal. And wept like a child as he crossed back and forth, back and forth in front of the staring eyes. The bitch had hurt him.

It wasn't allowed. Those days were over, and he wasn't supposed to be hurt anymore. Ever. Look at him. He swung around toward the wall of mirrors to reassure himself. Look at his body.

He'd grown tall, taller than anyone he knew.

Do you know how much clothes cost, you damn freak? You better start pulling your weight around here, or you're gonna go around naked as far as I'm concerned. I'm not going to keep popping for them.

"I'm sorry, Mother. I can't help it."

No, no! He wasn't sorry. He was glad he was tall. He wasn't a freak.

And he'd made himself strong. He'd worked, he'd strained, he'd sweated, until he'd created a strong body. A body to be proud of, a body people respected. Women feared.

You're puny, you're weak, you're nothing.

"Not anymore, Mother." Grinning fiercely, he flexed the biceps of his uninjured arm. "Not anymore."

But even as he looked, as he preened in front of the glass to admire the brawny form he'd spent years building, he saw himself shrink, whittling down until it was a gangly boy with pinched cheeks and haunted eyes staring back at him.

The boy's chest was crisscrossed with welts from a beating, his genitals were raw from the vicious scrubbing she'd given them. His hair hung dank and dirty to his shoulders the way she made him keep it.

"She'll punish us again," the little boy told him. "She'll put us back in the dark."

"No! She won't." He swung away from the mirror. "She won't. I know what I'm doing." Cradling his injured arm, he tried to pace off the pain. "She'll be punished this time. You can bet your bottom dollar. Took care of the cop bitch, didn't I? Didn't I?"

He'd killed her. He was damn sure he'd broken her into a few nasty pieces, oh yeah. But his arm! It was hot and numb—the kind of numb that came with prickling needles—from shoulder to fingertip.

He cradled it against his body, moaning, as he was caught between boy and man.

Mommy would kiss it and make it all better.

Mommy would slap him silly and lock him in the dark.

"We haven't finished."

He heard the little boy, the sad, desperate little boy.

No, he hadn't finished. He'd be punished unless he could finish it. Put in the dark, blind in the dark. Burned and whipped, with her voice pounding in his head like spikes.

He shouldn't have left the cop behind, but it had happened so fast. The screaming, the people running toward him, the shocking pain in his arm.

He'd had to run. The little boy had said: Run! What choice had he had?

"I had to." He dropped to his knees, pleading with the eyes that floated in silence, that stared without pity. "I'll do better next time. Just wait. I'll do better."

In the bright lights that were never turned off, he knelt and rocked and wept.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

Eve couldn't sit. She wandered to the vending area, ordered up more coffee. She carried the thin, bitter brew to the window. Stared out as McNab had done. She ran over in her mind what she'd done, what was left to be done, but she couldn't keep her thoughts from stealing into surgery where she envisioned Peabody's lifeless body on an operating table, and faceless doctors with blood on their hands to their wrists.

Peabody's blood.

She spun around as she heard footsteps approaching. But it wasn't Roarke or one of those faceless doctors. Feeney hurried in, his stylish shirt rumpled from the long day, a flush of anxiety riding on his cheeks.

He shot her a look, and when she only shook her head, he went straight to McNab, and sat—as Roarke had—on the table.

They spoke in murmurs, Feeney's low and steady, McNab's thin and disjointed.