Conspiracy in Death

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Roarke stood in the cold, helpless, and waited for Eve to come home. Word had come through in the middle of his delicate negotiations with a pharmaceutical company on Tarus II. He intended to buy them out, revamp their organization, and link it with his own company based on Tarus I.

He had cut them off without hesitation the instant he'd received the transmission from Peabody. The tearful explanation from the habitually stalwart cop had shaken him. There had been only one thought: to get home, to be there.

And now to wait.

When he saw the Rapid Cab coming up the drive, he felt a hot bolt of fury lance through him.

They'd taken her vehicle. Bastards.

He wanted to race down the steps, rip open the door, to bundle her out and up and carry her away somewhere, somewhere she wouldn't hurt as he could only imagine she hurt.

But it wasn't his anger she needed now.

He came down the steps as she got out of the cab. And she stood pale as death in the hard winter light, her eyes dark, glazed, and, he thought, impossibly young. The strength, the tough edge she wore as naturally as her weapon, was gone.

She wasn't sure she could speak, that the words would push through her throat, it burned so. And the rest of her was numb. Dead.

"They took my badge." Suddenly it was real, the brutal reality of it punched like a fist. And grief gushed up, hot, bitter, to spill out of her eyes. "Roarke."

"I know." He was there, his arms hard around her, holding tight as she began to shake. "I'm sorry, Eve. I'm so sorry."

"What will I do? What will I do?" She clung, weeping, not even aware that he picked her up, carried her inside, into the warmth and up the stairs. "Oh God, God, God, they took my badge."

"We'll straighten it out. You'll get it back. I promise you." She was shaking so violently, it seemed her bones would crash together and shatter. He sat, tightened his grip. "Just hold onto me."

"Don't go away."

"No, baby, I'll stay right here."

She wept until he feared she'd be ill; then the sobs faded away, and she was limp in his arms. Like a broken doll, he thought. He ordered a soother and took her to bed. She, who would fight taking a painkiller if she were bleeding from a dozen wounds, sipped the sedative he brought to her lips without protest.

He undressed her as he would an exhausted child.

"They made me nothing again."

He looked down at her face, into eyes, hollow and heavy. "No, Eve."

"Nothing." She turned her head away, closed her eyes, and escaped.

She'd been nothing. A vessel, a victim, a child. One more statistic sucked into an overburdened, understaffed system. She'd tried to sleep then, too, in the narrow bed in the hospital ward that smelled of sickness and approaching death. Moans, weeping, the monotonous beep, beep, beep of machines, and the quiet slap of rubber soles on worn linoleum.

Pain, riding just under the surface of the drugs that dripped into her bloodstream. Like a cloud full of thunder that threatened from a distance but never quite split and spilled.

She was eight, or so they'd told her. And she was broken.

Questions, so many questions from the cops and social workers she'd been taught to fear.

"They'll throw you into a hole, little girl. A deep, dark hole."

She would wake from the twilight sleep of drugs to his voice, sly and drunk, in her ear. And she would bite back screams.

The doctor would come with his grave eyes and rough hands. He was busy, busy, busy. She could see it in his eyes, in the sharp sound of his voice when he spoke to the nurses.

He didn't have time to waste on the wards, on the poor and the pathetic who crowded them.

A pin… was there a gold pin on his lapel that winked in the lights? Snakes, coiled up and facing each other.

She dreamed within the dream that the snakes turned on her, leaped on her, hissing with fangs that dug into flesh and drew fresh blood.

The doctor hurt her, often, through simple hurry and carelessness. But she didn't complain. They hurt you more, she knew, if you complained.

And his eyes looked like the snakes' eyes. Hard and cruel.

"Where are your parents?"

The cops would ask her. Would sit by the bed, more patient than the doctor. They snuck her candy now and then because she was a child with lost eyes who rarely spoke and never smiled. One brought her a little stuffed dog for company. Someone stole it the same day, but she remembered the soft feel of its fur and the kind pity in the cop's eyes.

"Where is your mother?"

She would only shake her head, close her eyes.

She didn't know. Did she have a mother? There was no memory, nothing but that sly whisper in her ear that had fear jittering through her. She learned to block it out, to block it all out. Until there was no one and nothing before the narrow bed in the hospital ward.

The social worker with her bright, practiced smile that looked false and tired around the edges. "We'll call you Eve Dallas."

That's not who I am, she thought, but she only stared. I'm nothing. I'm no one.

But they called her Eve in the group homes, in the foster homes, and she learned to be Eve. She learned to fight when pushed, to stand on the line she'd drawn, to become what she needed to become. First to survive. Then with purpose. Since middle childhood, the purpose had been to earn a badge, to make a difference, to stand for those who were no one.

One day when she stood in her stiff, formal uniform, her life had been put in her hands. Her life was a shield.

"Congratulations, Dallas, Officer Eve. The New York Police and Security Department is proud to have you."

In that moment, the thrill and the duty had burned through her like light in a strong, fierce blaze that had seared away all the shadows. And finally, she'd become someone.

I have to ask for your badge and your weapon."

She whimpered in sleep. Going to her, Roarke stroked her hair, took her hand, until she settled again.

Moving quietly, he walked to the 'link in the sitting area and called Peabody.

"Tell me what's going on here."

"She's home? She's all right?"

"She's home, and no, she's far from all right. What the hell have they done to her?"

"I'm at the Drake. Feeney's ru

"What kind of insanity is that?"

"It's bogus – everybody knows it – but it's procedure."

"Fuck procedure."

"Yeah." The image of his face on her screen, the cold, predatory look in those amazing eyes, had her fighting back a shudder. "Look, I don't have a lot of details. They're keeping the lid on Baxter – he's primary – but I got that Bowers had all this stuff about Dallas written down. Weird stuff. Sex and corruption, bribery, false reports."

He glanced back at Eve when she stirred restlessly. "Is no one considering the source?"

"The source is a dead cop." She ran a hand over her face. "We'll do whatever it takes to get her back and get her back fast. Feeney's going to do a deep-level search on Bowers," she said, lowering her voice.

"Tell him that won't be necessary. He can contact me. I already have that data."

"But how – "

"Tell him to contact me, Peabody. What's Baxter's full name and rank?"

"Baxter? Detective, David. He won't talk to you, Roarke. He can't."

"I'm not interested in talking to him. Where's McNab?"

"He's back at Central, ru

"I'll be in touch."

"Roarke wait. Tell Dallas… tell her whatever you think she needs to hear."