The in Death Collection Books 11-15 - J. D. Robb [240]
Something crashed behind them as a table was bumped. Stowe didn’t look around, but she began to slide her drink around the table at geometric angles. “I don’t know how to explain it. She was irresistible, and everything I wasn’t. Warm, open, funny. Oh, God.”
Grief, horribly fresh still, spurted through her. Stowe closed her eyes tight, grabbed for control. She took her time now, sipped the potent liquor in her glass. “She made me her friend. I still don’t think I had a damn thing to say about it. She just . . . was. It changed me. She changed me. Opened me up to things. Fun and foolishness. I could talk to her about anything, or not talk at all. She was the turning point in my life, and so much more than that. She was my best friend.”
Finally, Stowe lifted her gaze, met Eve’s eyes. “My best friend. Do you understand what that means?”
“Yeah, I understand what it means.”
Stowe nodded, closed her eyes again, steadied herself. “After graduation, she moved to Paris to work. She wanted to make a difference, and she wanted to experience while she was at it. I visited her there a few times. She had this pretty flat in the city and knew everyone in the building. She had a little goofy-looking dog she called Jacques and a dozen men in love with her. She lived huge, and she worked hard. She loved her job, the glamour, and the politics. Whenever her work brought her to East Washington, we’d get together. We could go months without seeing each other, then when we did, it was like we’d never been apart. Just that easy. We were both doing what we wanted, both moving up in our careers. It was perfect.
“About a week before . . . before it ended, she called me. I was on a field assignment, and didn’t get the message for a few days. She didn’t say a lot, just that something was going on. Something odd, and she needed to talk to me. She looked and sounded angry, with a little worry at the edges. Told me not to contact her at work, and not on her home ’link. She gave me a portable number, a new one. I thought that was weird, but I wasn’t really concerned. It was late when I got in, so I decided to get back to her the next day, and went to bed. I just went to bed and slept like a goddamn baby. Fuck.”
She lifted her glass again, drank deeper this time. “I got an early buzz in the morning, some complication with the case I was handling. I had to go in, and I didn’t take the time to get in touch with Winnie before I left. It wasn’t until the next day I even remembered about it. I took a minute to call the number she’d given me, but I didn’t get a response. And I didn’t follow through. I was busy, so I shrugged it off and told myself I’d try later. I never got the chance.”
“She was already dead,” Eve filled in.
“Yeah. She was already dead. They found her beaten and raped and strangled and dumped on the side of a road outside the city. She died two days after I got her message. Two days when I might have helped her. I never called her back. She would have gotten back to me, no matter what. She would never have been too busy to help me.”
“So you accessed her case file and buried your connection to her.”
“The Bureau frowns on personal involvement. They’d never have put me on Yost if they’d known why I wanted him.”
“Does your partner know?”
“Jacoby’s the last person I’d tell. What are you going to do?”
Eve studied Stowe’s face. “I have a friend. Met her when I busted her for grifting. I never had a friend before her. If anyone hurt her, I’d hunt them