“No. Please. I didn’t mean it. I’ll clean it up. Please, don’t. Please.”
“I’ve been looking for you, little girl,” her father said.
He struck her first, one quick, hard blow that sent her sprawling to the floor. Then he fell on her.
She fought, she begged, she screamed when the bone in her arm snapped like a pencil. While Rayleen stood, idly sipping from her cup.
“Only one way to stop it,” Rayleen said as he began to push and shove himself inside Eve, to tear her. “Killing takes care of everything. So kill him. Kill him. Kill him.”
Rayleen chanted it, her voice rising with excitement.
“Kill him!”
Finding the knife in her hand, Eve did.
Ssh, ssh. Stop now, Eve. Just a dream. Nothing but a dream. You need to wake up for me. Come back to me now. I have you.”
“It was blood. Pink and white and red. All the blood.”
“It’s done now. You’re awake now, with me now.” They tore at him, these nightmares, even as they tore at her. He held her, and rocked her, pressing his lips to her hair, her temples, even when she’d stopped shaking.
When she turned her face against his throat, he felt the tears.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, baby. Don’t.”
“Am I projecting, Roarke? Is that all it is? Do I look at that kid and see all I never had, never felt, never knew? Is it some sort of jealousy? Is it all just some sort of twisted envy? With Magdelana, too?”
Now he drew her back, ordered the lights on at ten percent so she could see his face, see his eyes. “It’s not, no. It could never be. You don’t have it in you for that. If I planted that there with Magdelana, the flaw was mine. You look straight, darling Eve. You see what is, even when you’d rather not. And you look at things others turn from.”
“They’d have locked me away for what I did to him.”
“You’re wrong. And if they had, even for an hour, for the smallest part of an hour, even God would have had no pity on them for it.” He stroked the tears away with his thumbs. “The cop in you knows that perfectly well.”
“Maybe. Yes. Most of the time.” Sighing, she let her head rest on his shoulder. “Thanks.”
“Part of the service. Can you sleep now?”
“Yeah.”
He lay down with her, kept his arms wrapped around her, and dimmed the lights again.
It left her draggy in the morning, as nightmares often did. But she put it away. By eight she was dressed, fueled, and ready to deal with what needed to be done.
“How are you going to approach this?” Roarke asked her.
“I expect both Mira and Whitney to contact me after they’ve read the report I sent them last night. Meanwhile, I’m hitting the best pal first. If I get lucky, there’s a diary and best pal has it for safekeeping.”
She sat on the arm of the sofa in the bedroom sitting area and drank her second cup of coffee. “Then I try for Allika. Straffo has a golf date this morning—nine-thirty tee time, then lunch at his club. The kid has a nine-o’clock deal at something called Brain Teasers, followed by a museum trip. Allika’s supposed to meet the kid and au pair at one, take over as the au pair has the rest of the day off. There’s lunch at a place called Zoology, followed by mother-daughter salon treatments this afternoon.”
“Full day.”
“Yeah, they fill ’em. I’m banking on catching Allika alone at the penthouse this morning. Depending on the results, I’ll either pick up the kid or have a sit-down with Mira and/or Whitney first. Interviewing the kid’s the tough part. Her father’s going to block me, Child Protection’s going to weigh in. I need more than theory and more than circumstantial to break it down.”
“Full day for you, too.”
“I can still manage sex and dinner.”