Somebody in that club had transmitted those images to Nadine. Someone who’d walked through those lights, those shadows, had plugged that data into one of the units, coded in Nadine’s number at 75 and sent it on.
While EDD went over the stations, picked their way through the drives until they found the echoes, whoever had killed Rachel Howard was preparing for the next portrait.
I am so full of energy. It can’t be an exaggeration to say I’ve been transformed. Even reborn. She is in me now, and I can feel her life inside me. The way a woman must feel with a child in her womb. And yet, more than that. More. For this is not something that needs me to live, that needs to grow and develop. She is whole and complete in me.
When I move, she moves. When I breathe, she breathes. We are one now, and we are forever.
I have given her immortality. Is there any greater love?
How amazing it was, with her eyes locked on mine in that moment when I stopped her heart. I could see in them that all at once she knew. She understood. And how she rejoiced when I drew her essence inside me so her heart would beat again.
Forever.
See how she looks in the images I created of her, one after another in the gallery I’ve given her. She will never grow old now, or suffer, or know pain. She will always be a pretty young girl with a sweet smile. This is my gift to her, in exchange for hers to me.
There must be more. I must feel that flood of light again, and give my gift to one who deserves it.
Soon. Very soon, other images will grace my personal gallery. We will join together, Rachel and I, and the next.
One day, when the time is right, I will share the whole of this journal with the world instead of short passages. Many will condemn or question, even curse me. But by then, it will be too late.
I will be legion.
Chapter 5
Eve woke from a dream of being pinned under a train wreck to find the cat sitting on her chest. Purring ferociously, he stared. When she only stared back, he shifted his considerable weight and bumped his head against hers.
“Feeling pretty lousy, huh?” She lifted a hand to scratch under his chin where he liked it best. “You didn’t mean to do it, and he’ll be home today. Then you can sit on him.”
Still stroking the cat, she sat up. She and Galahad were alone in bed. It was still shy of seven, she noted, and Roarke was already up. He’d still been working when she’d climbed into bed at one.
“Man or machine?” she asked the cat. “You be the judge. But either way, he’s mine.”
She frowned at the sitting area. He was often awake before her, and the first thing she’d see in the morning was Roarke having coffee and checking the stock reports on-screen, with the sound muted. It was a kind of routine she’d become accustomed to.
But not today.
Hefting Galahad, she rolled out of bed and headed to Roarke’s office.
She could hear his voice, cool and Irish, before she reached the doorway. The content was another matter, and seemed to have something to do with cost analysis, projections, and outlay. She peeked in and saw him standing in front of his desk, already dressed for business in a dark suit. Three of his wall screens were running, filled with numbers, schematics, diagrams. God knew.
There were holo-images of two men and a woman seated in chairs, and another, just off to the side, of Roarke’s admin, Caro.
Curious, Eve stifled a yawn, and leaned against the doorjamb with the cat in her arms. She didn’t often see him in full Roarke the Magnate mode. If she was following the topic—and some of it was in, she thought, German—they were discussing the design and manufacture of some sort of all-surface vehicle.
He was using a human translator rather than a program. More personal, she imagined. And he was very much in charge.
The discussion moved into the nitty-gritty of thrusters and aerodynamics, hydroponics, so she tuned it out.
How the hell did he keep it all straight? she wondered. When she’d glanced in before she’d gone to bed, he’d been hip deep in some high-end resort complex he was opening in Tahiti. Or maybe Fiji. Now it was road to air to water vehicles for the sports enthusiast.
And before oh seven hundred.
She clicked back in as he wound the meeting to a close. “I’ll need reports from each department by Thursday noon. I expect to start production within the month. Thank you.”
The holograms winked away, but for Caro.
“Leave a disc of this business on my desk,” he told her. “And I’ll need you to handle the Tibbons’s matter.”