She struggled to focus her exhausted brain. "How did you get that?"
"There are sources still available to me that aren't available to you, and due to his relationship with you, that are less forthcoming with Roarke."
"And did these sources give proof of these purported activities?"
"No, but I consider them to be very reliable. Icove was associated with Brookhollow. One of Roarke Enterprises' jet-copters logged a route to that location today, where, it seems, the president of the institution was murdered. In the same manner both Icoves were murdered."
"You're a fount of information."
"I know how to do my job. I believe you know how to do yours. People aren't commodities. To use education as a mask, to use them as such is despicable. Your pursuit of the woman who, in all likelihood, struck back at that, is wrongheaded."
"Thanks for the tip."
"You of all people should know." His words stopped her as she turned for the stairs. "You know what it is to be a child, trapped in a box, made to perform. You know what it is to be driven to strike back."
Her hand tightened on the newel post. She looked back at him. "You think that's all this is? As vicious and ugly as that is, it doesn't even scratch it. Yeah, I know how to do my job. And I know murder doesn't stop the vicious and the ugly. It just keeps re-forming, and coming back at you."
"Then what stops it? A badge?"
"The badge slows it down. Nothing stops it. Not a damn thing."
She turned away, drifted up the stairs feeling as insubstantial as a ghost.
The light in the bedroom was on dim. It was that simple thing that broke her enough to have tired tears sliding down her cheeks.
She shrugged off her weapon, took out her badge, and laid both on her dresser. Roarke had once called them her symbols. He was right, yes, he was right, but those symbols had helped save her. Helped make her real, given her purpose.
They slowed it down, she thought again. That was all that could be done. It was never quite enough.
She undressed, climbed the platform, and slid into bed beside him.
She wrapped herself around him, and because she could, with him, let the tears fall on his shoulder.
"You're so tired," he murmured. "Baby, you're so tired."
"I'm afraid to sleep. The dreams are right there."
"I'm here. I'll be right here."
"Not close enough." She lifted her head, found his mouth with hers. "I need you closer. I need to feel who I am."
"Eve." He said her name quietly, repeatedly, while he touched her in the dark.
Gentle, he thought, gentle now that she was fragile and needed him to remind her of all that she was. Needed him to show her she was loved, for all that she was.
Warm, he thought, warm because he knew how cold she could get inside. Her tears were damp on her cheeks, her eyes still gleaming with them.
He'd known she would suffer, and still her pain, wrapped so tight in courage, tore at his heart.
"I love you," he told her. "I love everything you are."
She sighed under him. Yes, this was what she needed. His weight on her, his scent, his flesh. His knowledge of her, mind and body and heart.
No one knew her as he did. No one loved her as he did. For all of her life before him, there'd been no one who could touch her, not all the way down to the tormented child who still lived in her.
When he slid inside her, all those shadows were pushed back. She had light in the dark.
When morning was blooming through the night, she could close her eyes. She could rest her mind. His arm came around her, and anchored her home.