Divided in Death

“Before I get to that, I’d like to express the hope that you remain barefoot as much as possible the next several days. And moving on,” he said with a laugh when she sent him a steely stare. “Feeney and I both agree we need more jocks in the lab. With just the two of us this restoration may take weeks at best.”

“McNab will be back tomorrow.”

“So that’s three of us, except when at least one of us is pulled off for something else. If you want answers, Eve, you have to give us the tools to get them.”

“Why isn’t Feeney, as head of EDD, requesting this?”

“Because I lost the bloody flip, which wouldn’t have happened if I’d gotten my hands on the coin long enough to switch it for one of my own. But he said-I believe this is a direct quote-‘you don’t get bit by the same dog twice.’ Which is his colorful way of saying he’s aware I’ve rigged a coin toss on him before.”

“He’s no easy mark.”

“He’s not, no. And neither of us is green when it comes to electronics, nor are we slackers. As much as it pains both of us to admit it, we need help. I’ve some in mind who-”

“If you’re thinking Jamie Lingstrom, forget it. I’m not dragging a kid into an unstable situation like this.”

“I wasn’t. Jamie’s in classes, and I’m set on his remaining there. I want Reva. She’s already aware of the situation,” he continued before Eve could speak. “She’s one of the best, her clearance is top level, and she already knows what’s going on.”

“Because she’s one of the elements. It’s a tricky business to bring in one of the prime elements. To bring in another civilian.”

“She won’t have to be brought up to speed, which saves us all time. She has a personal investment so she’ll work harder than anyone. She’s not a suspect, Eve, but another kind of victim.” He paused, and his tone was cooler when he continued. “Shouldn’t a victim have a right to stand for herself, as much as to have someone stand for her, if the opportunity’s there?”

“Maybe.” They were veering toward it, toward that gulf with the jagged edges. She wanted to step back from it, and worse, pretend it wasn’t there. But the gap was building even as she stood with her body still warm from him.

“Did you run this by Feeney?”

“I did. And circled the same ground you and I are dancing on now. Then I showed him her qualifications. He’s anxious to work with her.”

“You seduced him.”

That made him smile, just a little. “That’s a bit of an uncomfortable image for me. I prefer that I convinced him. Regarding Reva, and Tokimoto.”

“Another of yours. Another civilian?”

“Yes, and there are several reasons for the choice. First, civilians with as high a security rating as these two are less likely to leak something to the media. Don’t blow,” he said, mildly, when she showed her teeth. “These choices would be less likely to leak than any others. Reva for obvious reasons, and Tokimoto because he’s in love with her.”

“Well, fucking A.”

“She doesn’t know it,” Roarke continued without missing a beat. “And he may never move in that direction, but the facts are the facts. Due to his feelings for her, and his natural interest in the work, he’ll put more energy and effort into it than most. Love does that sort of thing to you.”

When she didn’t respond to that, he turned to open a panel, and the minifridgie behind it. He took out a bottle of water. Opened it, sipped.

It wet his throat, but didn’t cool the anger that was starting to build. “Aside from that, if you bring in cops, you have to do the paperwork, deal with the budget, clear them for this level of operation, and so on. I have a bigger budget than the NYPSD.”

“You have a bigger budget than Greenland.”

“Perhaps, but the point is I have a vested interest in solving this problem, and protecting my Code Red contract. I’ve quite a bit to lose if we don’t find the answers with some expediency. Because of that, because of what was done to a friend of mine, because I know what the bloody hell I’m about in this area, I’m recommending we bring in the best people for the job.”

“You don’t have to get pissy about it.”

“I feel pissy about it. About the whole shagging thing. I don’t sit easy when people I care about are in this kind of turmoil, and it’s fucking frustrating to be picking my way through the holy mess of those units working toward retrieval, and to be doing that, spending my time there instead of spending it finding out exactly who was responsible for what happened in Dallas.”

A small, hard ball of ice dropped in her belly. And there it was, the big, glowing elephant in the room she’d hoped to ignore, and it was trumpeting. “That’s what’s under it, isn’t it? All of it.”

“Aye, that’s under it and over it, it’s around it and through it.”

“I want you to put it away.” Her voice stayed calm even as her belly clenched. “I want you to put it aside before you cross a line I can’t ignore.”

“I have my own lines, Lieutenant.”

“That’s right, that’s right. Lieutenant.” She picked up her badge that lay on the dresser, and slapped it down again. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, NYPSD. You can’t stand there and talk about doing murder to a murder cop and expect me to ignore it and pretend it’s nothing.”

“I’m talking to my wife.” He slammed the bottle down so water sloshed out and onto the glossy surface of the table. “A woman I vowed to cherish. There’s no cherishing, there’s no living with myself if I stand back and do bloody nothing. If I fold my hands while those responsible for what happened to you go on with their lives as if that was nothing.”

“Their lives don’t matter to me. Their deaths, at your hands, do.”

“Goddamn it, Eve.” He spun away from her and dragged on his shirt. “Don’t ask me to be what I’m not. Don’t ask it of me. I never ask it of you.”

“No.” She steadied herself. “No, you don’t. You don’t,” she repeated, very quietly as that one point struck her as truth, inarguable truth. “So I can’t talk about this. I can’t think about it or fight about something we’ll never come close to agreeing on. But you’d better think about it. And when you’re thinking, you should remember I’m not a child like Marlena. And I’m not your mother.”

He turned slowly, and his face was cold, and set. “I never mistake who you are, or who you’re not.”

“I don’t need your kind of justice because I survived what happened to me, and made my own.”

“And you cry in your sleep, and shake from the nightmares.”

She was close to shaking now, but she wouldn’t cry. Tears wouldn’t help either of them. “What you’re thinking about won’t change that. Bring in whoever Feeney agrees to. I have to work.”

“Wait.” He walked to his own dresser, opened a drawer. He was angry, as she was, and wished he knew how they’d so seamlessly turned from intimacy to temper. He took out the small, framed photograph he’d placed there, then walked over to hand it to Eve.

She saw a pretty young woman with red hair and green eyes, healing bruises on her face, and a splint on the finger of a hand she held against the boy.

The gorgeous little boy with the Celtic blue eyes who had his cheek pressed against the woman’s. Against his mother’s.

Roarke and his mother.

“There was nothing I could do for her. If I’d known… I didn’t, so that’s that. She was dead before I was old enough to fix her face in my memory. I couldn’t even give her that much.”

“I know it hurts you.”

“It isn’t about that. They knew about him. The HSO, Interpol, all the global intel organizations. They knew about Patrick Roarke long before he traveled to Dallas to meet with Richard Troy. But she, the woman who birthed me, the woman he murdered and tossed away didn’t even merit a footnote in their files. She was nothing to them, as a small, helpless child in Dallas was nothing to them.”

She hurt for him, for herself, and for a woman she’d never met. “You couldn’t save her, and I’m sorry. You couldn’t save me, and I’m not. I’m good at saving myself. I’m not going to argue with you about this because it doesn’t fix anything. We’ve both got a lot of work to do.”