Immortal in Death

The scream ripped from her throat and she came to, swinging blindly. In wild panic she scrambled up, her own legs tangling and taking her to the floor in a heap.

"Lieutenant."

She reared away from the hand that touched her shoulder, huddled back as sobs and screams knotted in her throat.

"You were dreaming." Summerset spoke carefully, his face impassive. She might have seen the realization in his eyes if her own hadn't been clouded with memory. "You were dreaming," he repeated, approaching her as he would a trapped wolf. "You had a nightmare."

"Stay away from me. Go away. Stay away."

"Lieutenant. Do you know where you are?"

"I know where I am." She got the words out between quick gulps of air. She was freezing, boiling, and couldn't stop the tremors. "Go away. Just go away." She made it as far as her knees, then covered her mouth and rocked. "Get the hell out of here."

"Let me help you to the chair." His hands were gentle, but firm enough to keep hold when she tried to shove him away.

"I don't need help."

"I'm going to help you to your chair." As far as he was concerned, she was a child now, a wounded one who needed care. As his Marlena had been. He tried not to think if his child had begged as Eve had begged. After he put her in the chair, he went to a chest, drew out a blanket. Her teeth were chattering and her eyes were wide with shock.

"Be still." The order was brisk as she began to push up. "Stay where I've put you and be quiet."

He turned on his heel, striding into the kitchen alcove and the AutoChef. There was sweat on his brow and he dabbed at it with a handkerchief as he ordered a soother. His hand was shaking. It didn't surprise him. Her screams had chilled him to the bone and brought him to her suite at a dead run.

They'd been a child's screams.

Steadying himself, he carried the glass to her. "Drink it."

"I don't want – "

"Drink it, or I'll pour it down your throat, with pleasure."

She considered knocking it out of his hand, then embarrassed them both by curling into a ball and whimpering. Giving up, Summerset set the drink aside, tucked the blanket more securely around her, and went out with the object of contacting Roarke's personal physician.

But it was Roarke himself he met on the landing.

"Summerset, don't you ever sleep?"

"It's Lieutenant Dallas. She's – "

Roarke dropped his briefcase, grabbed Summerset by the lapels. "Has she been hurt? Where is she?"

"A nightmare. She was screaming." Summerset lost his usual composure and dragged a hand over his hair. "She won't cooperate. I was about to call your doctor. I left her in her private suite."

As Roarke pushed him aside, Summerset grabbed his arm. "Roarke, you should have told me what had been done to her."

Roarke merely shook his head and kept going. "I'll take care of her."

He found her curled up tight, trembling. Emotions warred through him, anger, relief, sorrow, and guilt. He battled them back and lifted her gently. "It's all right now, Eve."

"Roarke." She shuddered once convulsively, then curved into him as he settled back in the chair with her on his lap. "The dreams."

"I know." He pressed a kiss to her damp temple. "I'm sorry."

"They come all the time now, all the time. Nothing stops them."

"Eve, why didn't you tell me?" He tipped her head back to look at her face. "You don't have to go through this alone."

"Nothing stops them," she repeated. "I couldn't not remember anymore. And now I remember all of it." She rubbed the heels of her hands over her face. "I killed him, Roarke. I killed my father."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He looked into her eyes, felt the tremors that still shook her. "Darling, you had a nightmare."

"I had a flashback."

She had to be calm, had to be to get it all out. To be calm and rational, she had to think like a cop, not like a woman. Not like a terrorized child.

"It was so clear, Roarke, that I can still feel it on me. Still feel him on me. The room in Dallas where he'd lock me. He'd always lock me in wherever he took me. Once I tried to get away, to run away, and he caught me. After that, he always got rooms high up, and locked the door from the outside. I never got to go out. I don't think anyone even knew I was there." She tried to clear her raw throat. "I need some water."

"Here. Drink this." He picked up the glass Summerset had left beside the chair.

"No, it's a tranq. I don't want a tranq." She let air in and out of her lungs. "I don't need one."

"All right. No, I'll get it." He shifted her, rose, caught the doubt in her eyes. "Just water, Eve. I promise."

Accepting his word, she took the glass he brought back and drank gratefully. When he sat on the arm of the chair, she stared straight ahead and continued.

"I remember the room. I've been having part of this dream for the past couple of weeks. Details were begi

"All right." He tried to accept that. "But you're going to tell me now."

"I have to tell you now." She took a breath, brought it all into her mind as she would any crime scene. "I was awake in that room, hoping he'd be too drunk to touch me when he came back. It was late."

She didn't have to close her eyes to see it: the filthy room, the blink of the red light through the dirty windows.

"Cold," she murmured. "He'd broken the temperature control, and it was cold. I could see my breath." She shivered in reaction. "But I was hungry, too. I got something to eat. He never kept much around. I was hungry all the time. I was cutting the mold off some cheese when he came in."

The door opening, the fear, the clatter of the knife. She wanted to get up, pace off the nerves, but wasn't sure her legs were ready to support her.

"I could see right away that he wasn't drunk enough. I could see. I remember what he looked like now. He had dark brown hair and a face gone soft from drinking. He might have been handsome once, but that was gone. Broken capillaries in his face, in his eyes. He had big hands. Maybe it was just because I was small, but they seemed awfully big."

Roarke lifted his hands to her shoulders, began to massage the tension. "They can't hurt you now. Can't touch you now."

"No." Except in the dreams, she thought. There was pain in dreams. "He got mad because I'd been eating. I wasn't supposed to take anything without asking."

"Christ." He tucked the blanket more securely around her because she was still shivering. And found he wanted to feed her, anything, everything, so she would never think about hunger again.

"He started hitting me, and hitting me." She heard her voice hitch, made the effort to level it. It's just a report now, she told herself. Nothing more. "Knocked me down and hit me. My face, my body. I was crying and screaming, begging him to stop. He tore my clothes and rammed his fingers in me. It hurt, horribly, because he'd raped me the night before and I was still hurting from that. Then he was raping me again. Panting in my face, telling me to be a good girl and raping me. It felt like everything inside me was tearing. The pain was so bad I couldn't take it anymore. I clawed at him. I must have drawn blood. That's when he broke my arm."

Roarke stood abruptly, paced away, jabbed the mechanism to open the windows. He needed air.

"I don't know if I blacked out, maybe for a minute, I think. But I couldn't get past the pain. Sometimes you can."

"Yes," he said dully. "I know."

"But it was so enormous. Black, greasy waves of pain. And he wouldn't stop. The knife was in my hand. It was just there, in my hand. I stabbed him with it." She let out a shuddering breath as Roarke turned to her. "I stabbed him, and kept stabbing him. Blood was everywhere. The raw, sweet smell of it. I crawled out from under him. He might have been dead already, but I kept stabbing him. Roarke, I can see myself, kneeling, the hilt in my hand, blood past my wrists, splattered on my face. And the pain, the rage pounding at me. I just couldn't stop."