New York to Dallas - J. D. Robb [13]
“Take more.” Steeped in her. Drowning in her. “Take more.” Yes, she thought, yes. More. Gripping the edge, she wrapped her legs around his waist. Arching up, arching back, she took until her cries echoed around the garden. Took until there was nothing left.
3
He knew if it was left up to Eve they’d have the conversation and what passed for a meal in her home office. Another case, he decided, where she needed more. As summer refused to retire for the season, he arranged for the meal on one of the terraces where the gardens burst with color and scent.
There, with the air stubbornly holding the damp from the morning’s storm, tiny lights glimmered, candles flickered against the dark.
“I’ve got a lot of research to get to,” she began.
“Undoubtedly, and we’ll take all the time you need once I understand the situation, and you’ve got some food in you. Red meat.” He lifted the cover off a plate.
Eve eyed the steak. “Playing dirty.”
“Is there another way? We’ve a barrel of salt for your fries.”
She had to laugh. “Really dirty.” She took the wine he offered. “You know my weaknesses.”
“Every one.” And he hoped the pretty table, the pretty evening would help her through what she had to tell him. “I’ll wager you missed lunch.”
She sipped, sat. “I had to hack away at paperwork all morning, and kept thinking if I just had a body, I could skate out of it. It’s that careful what you wish for bit. Sucks that it’s usually true.”
She told him about Tray and Julie, then of the prison administration dragging their feet on notification of McQueen’s escape. Bookending the worst of it, she supposed. Building up to going back.
“He wants your attention.”
“And he’s got it. He’ll keep it until he’s back in a cage. He should’ve been transferred to an off-planet facility six years ago when Omega was complete. But . . .”
She shrugged, continued to eat.
“They never charged him with the murders. His mother, the girls never recovered, the other women?”
“No. Not enough evidence, especially if you’re a PA more concerned with your conviction rate than actual justice.”
“You were disappointed,” Roarke commented.
“I was green.” She shrugged again, but with more of a jerk. “I figured we had enough solid circumstantial on the four missing girls, on the dead mother, partners. We had enough to try him on those charges, too. But that wasn’t my decision. That’s not my job.”
“You’re still disappointed.”
“Maybe, but I’m not green now, so I’m realistic. And McQueen wouldn’t break. Feeney worked him for hours, days. He let me observe. He even brought me into the box briefly, hoping seeing me would shake, or just piss off McQueen enough for him to say something, make some mistake. And I’m getting ahead of myself,” she realized. “I guess I’d better start at the beginning.”
“Twelve years,” he prompted her, wanting her to talk it out, for both of them. “You’d barely begun.”
“I’m trying to remember me, to see myself. To feel. I wanted to be a cop so bad. A good cop, solid. To work my way up to detective. I wanted Homicide, that was always the goal. Homicide detective. I didn’t really know anybody in the department, in the city for that matter. Most of the rookies who graduated with me were scattered around the boroughs. I got Manhattan, and that was big. I needed to be here.”
He topped off her wine, gave her a small opening. “I think of the photo you gave me for Christmas, of you at your desk at the Academy. Hardly more than a child, and your hair long.”
“I’d hacked it off by the time I graduated.”
“You had cop’s eyes even then.”
“I missed things. I had a lot to learn. I was working out of the Four-Six, Lower West. A little house. Central absorbed it, I guess, about eight years ago. It’s a club now. The Blue Line. Weird.”
She paused when a thought struck her. “You don’t own it, do you?”
“No.” But he filed it away, thinking she might enjoy owning her first cop shop.
She drew a breath. “Okay. So. I was only a few weeks on the job, on patrol or doing the grunt work they stick rooks with. It was hot, like this, late summer when you’re wondering