J. Robb - Delusion in Death

“Not as bad,” Eve insisted. “And I know I’m dreaming. I’m in it, but I know it’s not real. They’re nothing as bad as the one I had when I couldn’t get out, and I hurt Roarke. I won’t ever let that happen again.”

She couldn’t sit. How did people talk about internal horrors sitting down? Pushing up, she let herself move. “Maybe last night was a little more intense, but I’d had a damn vicious day. It’s not surprising I mixed it all together.”

“Mixed what together?”

“The bar, the victims, the whole mess of it.”

She told herself to stay calm, just report. Ordered herself to stay fucking calm.

“I can put myself in a scene. It’s part of being a cop. Seeing what happened, how, and maybe that takes you to why and who. I can see it, smell it, almost touch it. And Jesus, it was on my mind, wasn’t it?”

She heard it, that pissy bite in her tone, worked to smooth it out again. “So I went back to the bar, in my head, in the dream. But they were there, too. Stella, sitting at the bar. Her throat’s open, the way it was when McQueen finished her. When I found her on the floor of his place. She comes back first when I dream now, sometimes without him. She blames me, always blames me, just like she always did.”

“Do you?”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“He’d have killed her eventually. That was pattern for McQueen. Maybe I speeded it up.”

“How?”

“How?” Eve stopped, confused. “I caught her, arrested her. Hell, I put her in the hospital where I put the fear of God in her trying to get her to flip on McQueen.”

“Let me qualify.” With her elegant cup of fragrant tea perfectly balanced, Mira studied Eve. “You caught her and arrested her. Doing so, as she ran, involved a vehicular chase during which she wrecked the van—the van she and McQueen had used in their abduction of Melinda Jones and thirteen-year-old Darlie Morgansten. She put herself in the hospital, where you did your job—again—pressuring her to tell you where McQueen was holding the woman and the child. Is that accurate?”

“Yes.”

“Did you aid in her escape from the hospital? Help her kill the guard, injure the nurse? Did you help her steal a car so she could run to McQueen to warn him you were closing in?”

“Of course not, but—”

“Then how did you speed her death?”

Eve sat again. “It feels like I did. Maybe it’s not accurate. It just feels that way.”

“Do you feel that way, here and now?”

“You mean do I feel guilty or responsible? Not guilty,” Eve said. “Not when I look at it, step by step. Responsible, yeah, to an extent. The same as I’d be if she’d been anyone. I was in charge. I took her in, and I pushed her hard. But she was what she was, did what she did. I’m not responsible for that.”

“She’s not anyone. She was your biological mother.”

“I’m not responsible for that, either.”

“No.” Mira smiled, gently, and for the first time. “You’re not.”

“She didn’t know who I was. In reality. When she was alive and looking right at me, she didn’t know who I was. I was just a fucking cop who’d screwed things up for her. But in the dreams, she knows.”

“Did you want her to recognize you, before she died?”

“No.”

“So sure?”

“Absolutely.” Saying it, knowing it was true, settled her a little. “I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it while it happened. Everything moved so fast, and it rocked me, I admit, when I saw her face-to-face. And I knew. If she’d known me, somehow, it would have been a living nightmare. She could, and I know would, have done everything to ruin me, to ruin Roarke. To try to extort money. My life would have been hell if she’d known me, and lived.”

She took a breath, a long one, as she understood more fully what traveled in her own head. “But there’s the fact she didn’t. She carried me inside her. Maybe she hated me for it, but she made me inside her, and at least for a few years, she lived with me. She must’ve fed me and changed me, at least sometimes. And she didn’t know me. I don’t know why she would, after so long, and I thank God she didn’t, even for a minute. So, I’m glad she didn’t, but I think she should have. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Of course it makes sense. You have her recognize you, in the dreams, and deal with her blame, her anger, her vitriol.”

“Why? She’s gone. She’s done. She can’t do anything to me now.”

“She abandoned you. You never had the chance to confront her, as the child she abused and left with another abuser. Nor, on that personal level, as the woman who survived it. What would you do, what would you say to her, if you could?”

“I’d want to know where she came from, what made her what she was. Is it just in the blood, or was she made—the way they wanted to make me—into something miserable. I’d want to know how she could feel so much contempt for the child she made, something innocent and defenseless. Her answers don’t matter,” Eve added.

“No?” Mira arched her eyebrows. “Why not?”

“Because everything about her was a lie. Everything about her was self-serving so no matter what I asked, her answers would be shaded with that. Why would I believe her?”

“And still?”

“Okay, and still part of me—maybe a lot of me is sorry I didn’t get a chance to look her in the face, to ask those questions even if the answers didn’t matter. Then to tell her she’s nothing. She’s nothing .”

The hell with calm , she decided on a rise of fury. The hell with all of it .

“They tried to make me nothing—no name, no home, no comfort or companions. All fear and pain. All cold and dark. I want to look her in the face and tell her no matter what she did, no matter how she hurt me, how she degraded me, she couldn’t make me nothing. She couldn’t make me her.”

Her breath came out in a shudder, and she felt tears on her cheeks. “Shit.” Impatient, she swiped them away. “It’s stupid. It hurts to think about it. Why think about it?”

“Because when you try to block it out, it comes at you in your dreams where you’re vulnerable.”

She rose again, still restless. “I can live with the nightmares. I can beat them. I did it before, and they were worse. But Roarke … I don’t know why, but I think it’s harder on him now. Harder to deal with them, with me.”

“He couldn’t confront her either. And he lived through this experience in Dallas with you. He loves, Eve, and those who love suffer when who they love suffers.”

“I know it. I see it. I’m here because I know it, I see it. And it pisses me off she’s causing me more trouble dead than she did alive. I have faces of so many dead in my head. I can live with them. I did my best by every one of them when they came to me. I can live with her, too. But I don’t want her to have this power, to make me weak.”

And there, Mira thought. “Do you think having nightmares makes you weak?”

“It does. You said it yourself.”

“I said vulnerable. There’s a difference, a considerable difference. Without vulnerabilities, you’d be brittle, inflexible, cold. You’re not. You’re human.”

“I don’t want to be vulnerable to her.”

“She’s dead, Eve.”

“God.” A little sick, she pressed her hands to her face. “I know it. I know it. I stood over her body. I examined it, determined cause and time of death. I worked it. And yes, she’s still …” She searched for the term. “… viable. Enough so when I dream about her, I’m afraid, and angry. She looks at me, she knows me, and something clutches in my gut.