Salvation in death

“Giving him props for doing the right thing for a child isn’t excusing the rest, Eve.”

Calmer, she picked up her wine again. “It got a hook in me,” she repeated. “Later, the priest came back to see me. The real one. López. There’s something about him.”

“Suspicious?”

“No, no. Interesting. King of… compelling. He…” It struck her, shot out of far left and beaned her with insight. “He reminds me of you.”

If she’d fielded the ball and winged it straight into his face, he’d have been no less shocked. “Me?”

“He knows exactly who and what he is, and accepts it. He’s tough and he gets your measure pretty damn quick. Lino slipped by him, and that’s in his craw. He takes responsibility, and he blurred the lines to do what he saw was right.”

“All that?” Roarke asked.

“Yeah. He brought me information I needed, even though his superiors wanted to debate and stall on it. He went around them, followed his own code. Then I asked him-it didn’t apply, I don’t know why I asked him-what he did before he became a priest.”

She sat now, had to sit now, and told him about López and A

“You thought of yourself again, of being trapped and defenseless all those years when your father beat you, raped you. And more, you thought of Marlena,” Roarke added, speaking of Summerset’s daughter.

“God.” Her eye swam with the memories, the nightmares. “When he was telling me, I could see it. And I could see myself, that last time, in the room when he broke my arm, and was raping me, when I went crazy and killed him. I could see Marlena, and how it must have been when those men took her to get at you, when they tortured and raped and killed her.”

She rubbed away tears, but couldn’t stop them. “And he’s talking about visitations and miracles, and I’m thinking: But what about before? What about the terror and the pain and the horrible helplessness? What about that? Because I’m not dead, and I can still feel it. Do you have to be dead not to feel it anymore?”

Her voice broke. Roarke felt the crack in his own heart.

“And he asks me if I’ve killed, and he knows the answer is yes because he asked me before. But then, he asks if I got pleasure from it. I said no, automatically. I’ve never taken a life in the line, I’ve never used my weapon as a cop for pleasure. But I wondered, for a minute, I had to wonder, did I feel it that night? That night when I was eight and I put the knife in him, when I kept putting it in him, did I get pleasure from that?”

“No.” He sat beside her now, took her face in his hands. “You know better. You killed to live. No more, no less.” He touched his lips to her forehead. “You know better. What you’re wondering, what you need to know, is did I find pleasure in killing the men who murdered Marlena.”

“There’d have been no justice for her. They killed her-brutalized and killed her to strike at you-and they were powerful men in a corrupt time. No one stood for her. No one but you.”

“That’s not the point.”

She laid her hands over his, joined them. “The cop can’t condone vigilantism, can’t condone going outside the law to hunt down and execute murderers. But the victim inside the cop, the person inside the cop understands, and more, believes it was the only justice an i

“And still you won’t ask what you need to know. Are you afraid you won’t be able to stand the answer, and would rather not see? Rather not know?”

Her breath shuddered out. “Nothing you could say will change the way I feel about you. Nothing. So okay, I’m asking. Did you get pleasure from killing them?”

His eyes stayed level on hers, so clear, so desperately blue. “I wanted to feel it, more than anything, I wanted to revel in it. I wanted to fucking celebrate their deaths-their pain, their end. For every second of pain and fear she’d had. For every second of life they’d taken from her, I wanted it. And I didn’t. It was duty, when it came to it. Not revenge, but duty, if you can understand that.”

“I guess I can.”

“I felt the anger, the rage, and maybe at the end of it, that lessened a bit. I can kill with less pain than you-for you feel it, even for the worst of them. We don’t stand in the same precise spot on moral ground, on everything. And because I don’t believe we must to be what we are to each other, I wouldn’t lie to spare your feelings. So if I’d felt pleasure from it, I’d say it. Neither did I feel, nor do I now feel, a single drop of regret.”

She closed her eyes, resting her brow to his as another tear slid down her cheek. “Okay. All right.”

He stroked her hair as they sat, as she calmed. As she came back. “I don’t know why I let myself get twisted up this way.”

“It’s what makes you who you are. A good cop, a complicated woman, and a pain in the ass.”

She managed a laugh. “I guess that’s about right. Oh, and about what you said before? I love you, too.”

“Then you’ll take a blocker for the headache, and have a decent meal.”

“How about I have a decent meal first, and see if that takes care of the headache, which isn’t so bad anymore, anyway?”

“Fair enough.”

They ate where they’d shared breakfast, in the bedroom sitting area. Because she’d dumped on him, Eve thought it only fair to bring him up to date on the case. For a civilian, he had a sharp interest-and sharp sense-of cop work.

Besides, she knew he’d programmed cheeseburgers for the same reason some people offered an unhappy kid a cookie. To comfort her.

“Don’t Irish gangs go for tats?” she asked.

“Sure. At least back when I was ru

She cocked her head. “I know your skin intimately. No tats on you.”

“No, indeed. Then again, I wouldn’t consider my old street mates and associates a gang. Too many rules and regs with gangs, to my way of thinking, and that constant cry to defend the home turf as if it’s holy ground. They could’ve taken my square of Dublin back then and burned it to ashes for all I cared. And tattoos-as you’ve so recently proven-are an identifying mark, even when removed. And the last thing a young, enterprising businessman, with brains, wants is an identifying mark.”

“You got that, which is why Lino had it taken off. The marks it leaves are so faint, it’s not going to pop to the naked eye so much-and not at all to the casual glance. Even if it’s noticed, it can be explained away-and was-as a youthful folly.”

“But it gives you another point of reference toward his identity.” He took a thoughtful bite of his burger. “What sort of burke marks himself with an X to a

She gestured with a fry. “That’s gang mentality. But still, can’t take an X to court. What I need to know is why he left his beloved turf-for how long-and why he needed to assume another identity to come back. It tells me he did something-and something major-after the Clemency Order was revoked, or after he reached legal age.”

“You believe he killed Flores.”

“Had to be before that. As far as we can track, Flores was out West. Why was Lino out West? And since I’m not going to buy Lino decided to spend the rest of his life pretending to be a priest, there’s a reason he came back under that cover, and an endgame. Patience.”

“I’d say there’s a score involved.”

She nodded. “Money, jewels, illegals-which translate back to money. Enough so this gangbanger from Spanish Harlem could afford expensive face work, top-grade ID. Enough that he’s got to go under for a solid stretch of time, either because it’s too hot, or because he’s going to take that stretch of time to get the whole pie.” She narrowed her eyes. “I need to do a search for major heists, robberies, burglaries, illegal deals between six and eight years ago. Maybe six and nine, but that’s the cap. And run the baptism records. Then I need to find a cop who worked that sector back when Lino would have been an active member of the Soldados. Somebody who’d remember him, give me a picture.”