Kindred In Death

She’d been propped up on the pillows so that she reclined, half-sitting, facing the camera. Probably her own PPC or ’link, Eve thought. Her eyes were dull, ravaged, defeated. Her voice, when she spoke, slurred with exhaustion and shock.

“Please. Please don’t make me.”

The image faded, then bloomed again.

“Okay. Okay. Dad, this is your fault. Everything is your fault. And, and, oh God. Oh God. Okay. I will never forgive you. And I hate you. Dad. Daddy. Please. Okay. You’ll never know why. You won’t know, and I won’t. But-but I have to pay for what you did. Daddy, help me. Why doesn’t somebody help me?”

The image faded again, and the music changed. Eve heard the cliché of the funeral dirge as the camera came back, pa

It held on the face as text began to scroll.

It may take you a while to find this, play this. Your dead daughter sure liked her music! I played it for her while I raped the shit out of her. Oh, btw, she was an idiot, but a decent piece of ass. I hope our little video causes you to stick your weapon in your mouth and blow your brains out.

She didn’t deliver her lines very well, but that doesn’t diminish the truth. Your fault, asshole. If it wasn’t for you, your deeply stupid daughter would still be alive.

How long can you live with that?

Payback is rocking-A!

For the crescendo, the audio blasted with Deena’s screams.

“Computer, replay, same segment.”

“Christ Jesus, Eve.”

“I need to see it again,” she snapped. “I need it analyzed. Maybe he said something that we can pick up, maybe there’s something that picks up his reflection.” She moved closer to the screen as it began its replay.

Roarke crossed over to open the wall panel. He pulled out a bottle of wine, uncorked it.

“There’s no mirror, no reflective surface. Her eyes? The way he’s got her sitting, maybe he can get a reflection off her eyes.”

“Alive or dead? I’m sorry,” Roarke said immediately. “I’m sorry for that. Truly.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. She’s so young, and so afraid, so helpless.”

“She’s not me.”

“No. Not you, nor Marlena. But…” He handed her a glass of wine, then took a long drink from his own. “I’ll see if I can get something off it. I’d have a better chance with the original than a copy.”

“I need to log that in, in Central, run it through Feeney.” Time, she thought, it all took time, but… “No shortcuts on this.”

“All right then.” Roarke gestured to the screen. “You won’t show this to the father.”

“No.” She drank because her throat was dry. “He doesn’t need to see this.”

Because he needed to, needed the contact, Roarke took her hand in his as they studied the screen together. “It seems revenge, your payback, holds as motive.”

“It had to. I couldn’t see it any other way.” Again, and again, she read the final text, that ugly message from the killer.

“It’s boasting,” she said quietly. “He couldn’t resist digging in the knife. Leaving the music disc wasn’t the mistake. But adding this, that’s a big one. He doesn’t care about that, but it’s a mistake.”

“It wasn’t enough even to torture that child, to force her to say those words-her last-to her father. He had to add his own.”

“Exactly right. That’s a crack in control, in logic, even in patience.”

“The kill,” Roarke suggested. “For some it’s a spike, a rush.”

“That’s right. He was so damn pleased with himself. All those weeks, those months of preparation coming to a head here, in what he sees as his victory. So he has to do his little dance. It’s a mistake, a weakness,” she said with a nod. “He put too much of himself in there, couldn’t resist claiming that much responsibility for her. It’s the kind of thing that gives us a handle.”

Personal, she thought. Deeply personal. “He needed MacMasters to know, and to suffer for the knowing. It gives us a focus. We concentrate on MacMasters, his case files, his career. Who has he taken down, what cops has he kicked over the years. Everything he did up to that was cold, controlled. This part? It’s cocky, and even while it’s smug, it’s really pissed off. It helps.”

Because he’d had enough, maybe too much, Roarke turned away from the screen. “I hope to God it does.”

“We’ll take a break.”

“Which you’re doing now for me.”

“About half.” She ordered the screen off, ordered a copy of the disc. “You’re right, it hits really close to home. I need it out of my head for a little while.”

He went back to her wondering why he hadn’t seen how pale she’d gone, how dark her eyes. “We’ll have a meal. Not in here. We’ll step away from this. We’ll have a meal outside, in the air.”

“Okay. Yeah.” She let out a breath that eased some of the constriction in her chest. “That’d be good. I need to inform Whitney, and the team. I have to do that now.”

“Do that, and I’ll take care of the meal.”

When she came down, stepped out on the terrace, he stood with his glass of wine on the border between stone and lawn. He’d switched on lights that illuminated the trees, the shrubs, the gardens so they glimmered under the moon. The table was set-he had a way-with flickering candles and dishes under silver covers.

Two worlds, she supposed. What they’d closed away inside for a while, and what was here, sparkling in the night.

“When I built this house, this place,” he began, still looking out into the shimmering dark, “I wanted a home, and I wanted important. Secure, of course. But I think it wasn’t until you I put secure in the same bed as safe. Safe wasn’t a particular priority. I liked the edge. When you love, safe becomes paramount. And still with what we are, what we do, there’s the edge. We know it. Maybe we need it.”

He turned to her now, and he was both shadow and light.

“Earlier I said I didn’t know how you could bear doing what you do, seeing what you see. I expect I’ll wonder that a thousand times in a thousand ways through our life together. But tonight, I know. I don’t have the words, no clever phrases or lofty philosophy. I simply know.”

“When it’s too much, bringing it home, you have to tell me.”

“Darling Eve.” He stepped to her, danced his fingertips over her messy cap of hair. “I wanted a home, and I wanted important. I managed the shell of it, didn’t I? An impressive shell for all that. But you? What you are, what you bring into it-even this, maybe due to this, you make it important. And for me, for what I might add to it? Well, it might balance the scales a bit.”

“Are you looking for balance?”

“I might be,” he murmured. “So.” He leaned down to brush a kiss over her brow. “Let’s have our meal.”

She lifted one of the silver tops and studied the plate below. A chunk of lightly grilled fish topped a colorful mix of vegetables with a spray of pretty pasta curls.

“It looks… healthy.”

He laughed, kissed her again. “I wager it’ll go down easy enough. Then you can wipe the healthy out with too much coffee and some of the cookies you’ve stashed in your office.”

She gave him a bland look as she sat down. “Stashed indicates concealed. They’re just put away in such a ma

“As an alternative to pizza.”

“There is no alternative to pizza. It stands alone.”

“Do you remember your first slice?”

“I remember my first New York pizza-the real deal. Out of school, of age. Shook myself out of the system and hit New York, applied to the Academy. I had a couple weeks, and I was walking the city, getting my bearings. I went into this little place downtown, West Side-Polumbi’s. I ordered a slice. They had a counter that ran along the front window, and I got a seat there. I bit in, and it was like, I don’t know, my own little miracle. I thought, I’m free, finally. And I’m here, where I want to be, and I’m eating this goddamn pizza and watching New York. It was the best day of my life.”