Apprentice in Death (In Death #43)(98)

“So I concluded. Back to the kitchen, I’d say. Cleaner air, some water, a chair.”

“I can go for all three. I breathed through my toes.”

“What now?”

“Master Wu. Couldn’t see in the smoke and flash, couldn’t hear clearly with the helmet. Breathed through my toes. Became the fish. Or maybe it was the pebble.” Man, her head thumped and banged. “Had to lift the visor to do it, but—”

“Which is why you’ll have a black eye.”

“Yeah?” She lifted her hand, poked with her finger. “Ow. Anyway, it worked. Best Christmas present ever.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, taking a firmer grip when she stumbled, drunk on the smoke.

He steered her into the kitchen, where McNab was pushing water to a gray-faced Peabody.

“The stair creaked.” Peabody croaked it.

“One of those things,” Eve said.

“When the grenade hit, I couldn’t see a damn thing, and I misjudged the stairs. I went down like a brick.”

Eve angled her head as Roarke got more water. “Is that the chin bruise?”

“Hit the tread when I tripped.” Obviously disgusted, Peabody tapped the flat of her hand under the raw bruising on her chin. “The helmet rapped up. Bit my tongue, saw stars. And I didn’t have your back.”

Eve held up a finger, guzzled the water until the burning in her throat went down to raspy aching. The head banging, eye throbbing, hand stinging probably required more than water.

But God, it tasted, just then, better than real coffee.

“So you just sat on the steps crying like a baby?”

“No! I—”

“She crawled.” McNab rubbed Peabody’s shoulders.

“I couldn’t see. At first I could hear you. I could hear the banging around, and she was firing. You, too. But I didn’t want to risk a stream hitting you.”

“You called out.” Eve went back over it all in her head. “Drew her fire. You, too,” she said to Roarke. “Stupid risk, but . . . that’s backup in my book.”

“Then I couldn’t hear you,” Peabody continued. “Or see you. Feeney’s shouting you’re to my left, to my left, but it’s a wall. And Roarke’s there, pulling me up. I can hear the others coming. We finally found the door.”

“Magic coat,” McNab added, resting his cheek on Peabody’s head.

“I’d have taken one mid-body without it. You, too,” Peabody said to Roarke.

“Aren’t we the lucky ones?”

“But you shut the door.”

“And she ran right into it, knocked herself down. Then I had her.”

“But you’re bleeding.”

Eve took another blissful swallow of water. “You, too. But we got her. So let’s take a moment here.” She closed eyes that felt as if they’d been scrubbed with sand. “Then we’ll go clean it up.”





19


Eve took her time, even let the MTs clean up and slap some NuSkin over the gash on her hand.

The bruises elsewhere, and she had plenty of them, could wait.

Because she wanted privacy, and air, she stepped outside with Roarke.

They’d moved the barricades in, closing off the area directly around the building. That didn’t stop the gawkers and reporters—and really, what was the difference—from pressing against those barricades. But she could, and she did, ignore the questions spewed out, turned her back to cameras aimed in her general direction.

“You’d think people would have something better to do.”

“For most of these? Murder doesn’t come into their lives every day.”

“Then they should be grateful.” She actively wanted to kick something. And her own ass would have done the job. “I screwed up in there.”

“What? When and how?” he demanded. “And remember I was there.”

“You weren’t in here.” She tapped her temple. “Too much in here kept thinking of her as a kid. I told everybody, forget her age, it doesn’t apply. But I didn’t. She got off strikes, at you, at Peabody. Strikes that could have done serious damage, and the flash grenades on top of it, because I didn’t move faster and harder.”

“You’re going to have to review your own recorder and see for yourself how completely bollocks that is.”

“Faster and harder,” she repeated. “Even when I had her one-on-one, I . . . I think maybe I held back just a little, just enough.”

“If that’s true—and, as I’ve had a look at both of you after that one-on-one, I tend to disagree—the only one that got hurt is yourself.”

He wanted to take that wounded hand, kiss it, brush his lips over the darkening bruises on her face. But he judged, at that moment, she needed her dignity more than the distraction.

“She’s not like you, Eve. She’s never been like you, will never be like you.”

“Got that.” She blew out a breath that streamed white in the cold, vanished. “Maybe I didn’t before, but I’ve got that solid now. And I won’t be holding back when I take her in the box.”

She looked at him then, those wild blue eyes. Had it really been that same day they’d—tired, sickened, stressed—swiped at each other with Summerset between them?