“I’ll take it easy when I know what the hell’s going on.” She stepped into waiting, and stopped.
He was alone. She hadn’t expected him to be alone. Such places were usually filled with people agonizing. But there was only McNab standing at one of the windows, staring out.
“Detective.”
He spun around—and the grief and hope on his face shuddered into only grief. “Lieutenant. They took her. They took her into . . . They said . . . I don’t know.”
“Ian.” Roarke crossed to him, laid an arm around McNab’s shoulders and drew him toward a chair. “You’ll sit a minute now. I’ll get you something to drink, and you’ll sit a minute. They’re taking care of her now. And in a bit, I’ll go and see what I can find out.”
“You have to t
ell me what happened.” Eve sat beside McNab. He had a ring on each thumb, she noticed. And blood on his hands. Peabody’s.
“I was in the apartment. All packed up. I’d just talked to her. She’d tagged me to tell me she was a couple blocks away. She was only . . . I should’ve gone out and met her. That’s what I should’ve done. Gone out, and then she wouldn’t be walking alone. I had music on. Fucking music on, and I was in the kitchen. I didn’t hear anything until the screams. Wasn’t her. She didn’t have a chance to scream.”
“McNab.”
Roarke turned from the vending AutoChef at the tone of her voice. He was about to step in, draw her away, when he saw the change.
She reached out, took one of his blood-smeared hands in hers, held it. “Ian,” she said. “I need you to give me a report. I know it’s hard, but you have to tell me everything you know. I didn’t get any details.”
“I . . . give me a minute. Okay? Give me a minute.”
“Sure. Here drink . . . whatever he’s got here.”
“Tea.” Roarke sat on the table in front of them, faced McNab. “Have a bit of tea now, Ian, and catch your breath. Look here a minute.”
He laid a hand on McNab’s knee until McNab lifted his head, met his eyes. “I know what it is to have the one you love, the only one, hurt. There’s a war in your belly, and your heart’s so heavy it doesn’t seem as if your body can hold it. This kind of fear doesn’t have a name. You can only wait with it. And let us help.”
“I was in the kitchen.” He pressed the heels of his hands, hard, against his eyes. Then he took the tea. “Hadn’t been more than two, three minutes since she told me she was a couple blocks away. Probably just got off the subway. I heard a woman scream, and shouts. I ran to the window, and I saw . . .”
He used both hands to lift the tea, then drank it like medicine. “I saw her lying, facedown. Head and shoulders on the sidewalk, the rest in the street. Two males and a female were running toward her from the northwest. And I saw—caught a glimpse of a vehicle heading south at high speed.”
He stopped to clear his throat. “I ran down. I had my weapon and communicator. I don’t know how, I don’t remember. I called for assistance, and when I got to her, she was unconscious, and bleeding from the face and head. Her clothes were bloody, torn some.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “She was bleeding, and I checked her pulse. She was alive. She had her weapon out and in her right hand. He didn’t get her piece. The son of a bitch didn’t get her piece.”
“You didn’t see him.”
“I didn’t see him. I got names and partial statements from the three witnesses, but then the MTs got there. I had to go with her, Dallas. I left the witnesses to the uniforms who responded. I had to go with her.”
“Of course you did. You get a make on the vehicle? Plates?”
“Dark van. Couldn’t tell the color, just dark. But I think black or dark blue. Couldn’t see the plates, light was out on them. Witnesses didn’t make it either. One of the guys—Jacobs—he said it looked new, really clean. Maybe it was a Sidewinder or a Slipstream.”
“Did they see her assailant?”
His eyes went flat again, and cold. “Yeah, they made him pretty damn good. Big, beefy guy, bald, sunshades. They saw him kick her, fucking stomp on her. They saw her lying on the ground and the bastard kicking her. Then he hauled her up, like maybe he was going to heave her into the back of the van. But the woman started screaming, and the guys shouted and started running. He threw her down. They said he threw her down and jumped into the van. But she got a shot off. That’s what they told me. She got a shot off when he was throwing her down. Maybe it hit him. Maybe he staggered. They weren’t sure, and I had to go, go with her, so I couldn’t follow up.”
“You did good. You did great.”
“Dallas.”
And now she saw he was struggling against tears. If he broke, she’d break. “Take it easy.”
“They said—the medicals—they said it was bad. We were riding in, they were working on her. They told me it was bad.”
“I’m going to tell you what you already know. She’s no pushover. She’s a tough cop, and she’ll come through.”