Echoes in Death(37)

Then he stretched out beside Eve, and slept.

* * *

Dreams broke down defenses. For hours she’d blocked out the echoes, the murmurs, the emotions. But sleep undermined boundaries.

She was a child, lost and frightened, bloody and broken. Though she kept it cradled against her body, the arm her father had snapped before she’d killed him jarred with every step, wept with pain. It burned where he’d raped her; her face throbbed where he’d struck her.

Yet it seemed she floated, like a ghost. Like the dead.

She feared the dark. Terrible things hid in the dark, waited there, watched from there.

Would they swallow her whole, would she fall into the bottomless pit where the rats and spiders would eat her as her father had said?

Everything around her looked like something she’d seen through a dirty window, all smudged and blurry. And all the sounds came from far, far away.

Was he coming after her? Would he find her and drag her back to that cold, cold room with the flashing red light?

He would hurt her, he would hurt her, he would hurt her. Kill her. Kill.

She wanted to hide, wanted to sleep.

She tried. But they found her. She couldn’t fight, even when they made everything inside her scream at the pain, shriek with the terror.

Then the lights were too bright, burning her eyes, and the voices were too loud, banging in her head. Someone told her she was going to be all right, that she was safe. But she knew about lies.

Someone asked her for her name, but she had none to give.

There were hands on her, everywhere, and she smelled her own blood. Even as she screamed again, the dark came and took her in.

“Dreaming, just dreaming. You’re home, you’re safe. I’m here.”

Roarke gathered her close, and his voice, his scent, broke the hold of the past.

“I’m all right.”

He brushed his lips to her brow. “I wondered how long it would take. You held it back all day.”

“I could see it in her face, in her eyes.” Because she could, Eve burrowed into him while the cat bumped his head against her shoulder. “I know what she felt, I know what it is to be trapped in that kind of shock, to run with that kind of fear. It echoed inside me, all day, but I couldn’t do the job if I listened.”

“I know it.” He held her close, held her tight. “I know it.”

“You heard them, too. I can’t let it break me.”

“You haven’t, and you won’t.” He tipped her face to his, met her eyes. “You won’t. But it had to be acknowledged.”

“It took me years to remember, and there are still blank spots. She’s not a child, Roarke, but there’s something defenseless about her. I don’t know how much she’ll remember, if she’ll be able to give us details we can use.”

“She’s alive.”

“Yeah, she’s alive. Mira’s already seen her, and Daphne seems okay with that. She trusts Nobel, that’s clear, and seems all right talking to me. It helped her, I think, when I could tell her the man who did this wasn’t a devil. It was makeup, a disguise. A false face.”

“She’ll know, as well as you and I, there was a monster under the false face.”

“Yeah. Yeah, but she knows he’s real. Flesh and blood.” Steadier now, she reached back to scratch the loyal Galahad between the ears. “Did you get any sleep?”

“I’d say we both got a bit more than an hour. Or rather the three of us did.”

“That’s good. And it’s one checked off.”

“Checked off?”

“We slept in the fancy new bed.”

“On more like, but check.”

She brushed back his hair. “How about we check off number two?”

He smiled at her. “I’m always in favor of finishing off a checklist.”

He continued to smile when she pressed her lips to his, as he stroked a hand over her. “You’re still armed, Lieutenant.”

She slid her own hand down, found him. “You, too.”

He laughed as she rolled over, straddled him. Studying his face, she pulled off her jacket, hit the release on her weapon harness. “You know, the first time I walked in here and saw the bed—the other one—it was: Wow. This one’s an even bigger wow,” she continued as she tossed the jacket aside, draped the harness over the footboard. “But I liked that bed.”

“It’s still in the house.”

“Is it?”

“In one of the guest rooms. I have very fond memories of that bed as well,” he reminded her. “We can visit it whenever you like.”

“Huh.” Considering, she pulled off her sweater, tossed it after the jacket. “You know how they have those pub crawls?”