The In Death Collection Books 16-20 - J. D. Robb [417]
Then she looked at the car.
“Holy Jesus Christ.”
The front end was all but disintegrated. Metal was blackened, melted, fused to metal. Window glass had gone to powder and continued to smoke.
“It looks like . . .”
“Like it was hit with a short-range missile,” Baxter finished. “You’d be toast if it’d broadsided you instead of skimming the front end. I was heading in to Central, and saw this flash, this streak. Big boom, and a vehicle, yours, flew right over mine. Flew up, came down, flipped three times then spun around like a top. Smashed a couple of civilian vehicles, laid waste to a glide-cart, skipped the curb, skipped back, then plowed into a maxi like a torpedo.”
“Civilian casualties?”
“I don’t know.”
She could see some of the injured, and hear weeping, some screaming. Soy dogs, soft drink tubes, candy sticks were scattered over the street and sidewalk like some nasty buffet.
“Harness held, until the last minute.” She wiped absently at a trickle of blood on her temple. “It held, or God knows . . . Reinforcements in the roof kept us from being crushed like a couple of recycled milk cartons. Major damage on the passenger side from the crash. He got the worst of it.”
Baxter watched the MTs fix the unconscious man to a back-and-neck board. “Friend of yours?”
“No.”
“You piss somebody off enough to fire missiles at you or did he?”
“Good question.”
“You need to have the MTs look you over.”
“Probably.” The pain was seeping through now, making mincemeat of the adrenaline and shock. “I hate that. Really do. And you know what else? The guys in requisitions are going to slap me around for this. They’re going to slap me around, then give me some piece of shit transpo to punish me.”
She hobbled over to the curb, sat among the confusion and noise. Then sneered in warning at the MT who headed, with his kit, in her direction. “You even think about using a pressure syringe on me,” Eve told her, “and I’m taking you down.”
“You want the pain, you keep the pain.” The MT shrugged and opened his kit. “But let’s have a look.”
It took her another two hours to get home, and then she had to catch a ride with Baxter as she’d been ordered not to drive. Since she didn’t have anything to drive, it wasn’t hard to follow orders.
“I guess I’m supposed to ask you in for a drink now or some happy shit.”
“That’s right, but I’ll take a raincheck. I got a date. Scorching date, and I’m running behind.”
“Appreciate the ride.”
“That’s your best comeback? You’re in bad shape. Take a pill, Dallas,” he suggested as she eased her aching body out. “Flake out awhile.”
“I’m okay. Go bang the bimbo of the week.”
“Now that’s more like it.” He gave a cheery chuckle and drove away.
She limped into the house, but couldn’t quite limp past Summerset.
He looked down his nose, sniffed. “I see you’ve managed to destroy several more articles of clothing.”
“Yeah, I thought I’d rip and burn them while wearing them, just to see what happened.”
“I assume your vehicle suffered similarly as it’s not in evidence.”
“It’s trash. But then, it always was.” She headed for the stairs, but he blocked her path, then scooped up the cat who was trying to climb up her legs.
“For God’s sake, Lieutenant, take the elevator. And you may as well take something voluntarily for the pain before you have to be humiliated into it.”
“I’m walking it off so I don’t stiffen up and start to look like you.” She knew it was stubborn, she knew it was stupid, but she took the stairs. The worst was, if he hadn’t been there at the door, lurking, she’d have taken the damn elevator in the first place.
She was dripping with sweat by the time she made it to the bedroom, so she simply stripped off her ruined clothes, tossed her weapon and her communicator on the bed, and whimpered her way into the shower.
“Jets on half power,” she ordered. “One hundred degrees.”
The soft spray of hot water stung, then soothed. She braced her hands against the tile wall, dipped her head, and let