J. Robb - Survivor in Death

“I know.” He rubbed an errant tear away with his thumb. “Yes, I know. It's wearing on you, I can see that, too. There doesn't seem to be anything either of us can do about it. You won't pass the case to someone else.” He lifted her chin with his hand before she could answer. “You won't, and I wouldn't want you to. You'd never forgive yourself for stepping aside because of personal distress. And you'd never trust yourself again, not fully, not the way you need to.”

“I saw myself when I found her. Saw myself, instead of her, huddled in a ball, coated in blood. Not just thought of it, but saw it. Just a flash, just for an instant.”

“Yet you brought her here. You face it. Darling Eve.” His voice was like balm on the burn. “The child isn't the only one who shows grace in her steps.”

“Grace isn't the issue. Roarke.” She could tell him, say this to him. “On days like this, part of me wants to go back there, to that room inDallas. Just so I can stand over him again, with his blood all over me and the knife in my hand.”

She closed her fist as if she held the hilt. “Just to kill him again, but this time to know what I feel when I do, to feel it because maybe then it'll be done. Even if it doesn't, to feel that moment when I carved him up. I don't know what that makes me.”

“On days like this, all of me wants to be the one to go back to that room inDallas. To have his blood on me, and the knife in my hands. I know exactly what I would feel. And what it makes us, Eve, is who we are.”

She let out a long breath. “I don't know why that helps when it should probably scare me. She won't feel this way, because she had that base. Because she could lay her head on her mother's dead heart and cry. She'll have sorrow, and nights when she's afraid, but she'll remember why she was able to touch her father's face, her brother's hair, and cry on her mother's breast.”

“She'll remember a cop who stood with her, and held her hand when she did.”

“They're going to throw her into the system, Roarke. Sometimes it's salvation, sometimes it's good, but not for her. I don't want her to be another case file. To cycle through that like I did. I have an idea what could be done, but I wanted to run it by you.”

His face went absolutely still, absolutely blank. “What?”

“I was thinking we could approach Richard DeBlass and Elizabeth Barrister.”

“Oh.” This time it was Roarke who let out a long breath. “Of course. Richard and Beth, good thought.” He turned away, walked away from her to stare out the window.

“If it's a good idea, why are you upset?”

“I'm not.” What was he? He didn't have the name for it. “I should've thought of them myself. I should have thought more clearly.”

“You can't think of everything.”

“Apparently not.”

“Something's wrong.”

He started to deny it, push it aside. And had to accept that it would just be one more mistake. “I can't get my mind off the child. No, that's not it, not altogether. I can't get it out of my head, all of it, not since I went to that house with you. Stood looking at those rooms where those children had been sleeping.”

“It's rougher when it's kids. I should've thought of that before I asked you to do the walkthrough.”

“I'm not green.” He whirled around, his face lit with fury. “I'm not so soft in the belly I can't… Ah, fuck me.” He broke off, ran his hands through his hair.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Obviously alarmed, she crossed over quickly, rubbed his back. “What gives?”

“They were sleeping.” Christ Jesus, would that single thing always sicken him the most? “They were innocent. They had what children are supposed to have. Love and comfort and security. And I looked in those rooms, saw their blood, and it tears at me. Tears at my gut. Tears at the years between. I never think of it. Why should I, goddamn it.”

She didn't ask of what, not when she could see it on his face. Had it only been a short time ago he'd told her he hated to see her look sad? How could she tell him what it did to her guts to see him look devastated?

“Maybe we should sit down a minute.”

“Bloody hell. Bloody buggering hell.” He stalked to the door, booted it closed. “You can't forget it, but you can live with it. And I have. I do. It doesn't beat at me as it does you.”

“So maybe when it does, it's worse.”

He leaned back against the door, stared at her. “I see myself lying in a puddle of my own blood and puke and piss after he beat me unconscious. And yet here I am, aren't I? Damn good suit, big house, a wife I love more than life. He left me there, probably for dead. Didn't even bother to throw me away as he had my mother. I wasn't worth the trouble. Why should I give a damn about that now? But I wonder, what in God's name is the purpose, Eve? What is the purpose when I come to this, and those children are dead? When the one who's left has nothing and no one?”

“You don't deal the cards,” she said carefully. “You just play them. Don't do this to yourself.”

“I cheated and stole and connived my way to what I have, or to the base of it in any case. It wasn't an innocent lying in that alley.”

“Bullshit. That's just bullshit.”

“I'd have killed him.” His eyes weren't devastated now, but winter cold. “If someone hadn't done it before me, when I was older and stronger I'd have gone for him. I'd have finished him. Can't change that either. Well.” He sighed, heavily. “This is useless.”

“It's not. You don't think it's useless when I flood it on you. I like your dick, Roarke, like it fine. But it's irritating when you think with it.”

He opened his mouth, hissed out a breath just before a choked laugh. “It's irritating when you point it out. All right then, let's finish this out with me telling you I went toPhiladelphia today.”

“What the hell for?” She snapped it out. “I told you I needed to know where you were.”

“I wasn't going to mention it, and not to spare myself your wrath, Lieutenant. I wasn't going to mention it because it was a waste of time. I'd thought I could fix it-I'm good at fixing, or buying off if fixing won't work. I went to see Grant Swisher's stepsister. To talk to her about stepping in for Nixie, now that the legal guardianship's been voided. She couldn't be less interested.”

He sat now, on the arm of a chair. “I decided to make all this my concern. Magnanimous of me.”

“Shut up. Nobody rips on you but me.” She stepped to him, caught his face in her hands, kissed him. “And I'm not because-even being pissed off about you taking an unscheduled trip-I'm proud that you'd try to help. I wouldn't have thought of doing it.”

“I'd have bought her off, if that had been an option. Money fixes all sorts of problems, and why have so bloody much if you can't buy what you like? Such as a nice family for a little girl. I'd already eliminated the grandparents-found the grandfather, by the way-on my high moral grounds. But the one left, the one I hand-selected, wouldn't fall in.”

“If she doesn't want the kid, the kid's better off somewhere else.”

“I know it. I might've been disgusted with this woman's callousness, but I was furious with myself for assuming I could just snap fingers and make it all tidy. And furious that I couldn't. If it was tidy, I wouldn't feel guilty, would I?”

“About what?”

“About not considering, not being able to consider keeping her with us.”

“Us? Here? Us?”

He laughed again, but the sound was weary. “Well, we're on the same page there anyway. We can't do it. We're not the right people for it-for her. The big house, all the money, it doesn't mean a damn when we're not the right people.”

“Still on the same page.”