The In Death Collection Books 21-25 - J. D. Robb [370]
Two hours, she thought, three tops. And she glanced back at Tandy’s picture on her board as she walked out with Roarke.
“It’s harder than homicides,” she stated.
“Is it?”
“They’re already gone. You’re there to find who took their life, to find out why if you can, to build a case that will give the dead justice. But this, you just don’t know. Is she alive, dead, hurt, trapped, or did she just say screw it and walk? If she’s alive and in trouble, you can’t know how much time you have to find her. And if you don’t, not in time, she may end up being yours again, as a homicide.”
“We’re going to find her.”
Eve glanced at the bedroom clock. Seventy-one hours missing, she thought.
15
EVE CAME OUT OF THE BLANK BLACK OF EXHAUSTED sleep into a bright flash of white. There were babies crying, women screaming, and though they seemed to be all around her, she was alone in the white box. She pushed at the walls, but they were strong as steel, and all she managed was to smear bloody handprints against the white.
Looking down, she saw that her hands were covered with fresh blood.
Whose blood? she wondered, and reached for her weapon. But in her harness was only a small knife, already gorey. She recognized it—of course she did. She’d used that very knife to hack her father to death once upon a time.
If it was good enough for him, it would be good enough now.
Shifting it to a combat grip, she began to walk along the white wall.
Did they ever stop crying? she wondered. She supposed she couldn’t blame them. Babies were squeezed and pushed out of the nice, warm dark and dumped into the cold hard light of reality. With pain, she thought, and with blood. With their mothers screaming through it.
It was a tough start.
The wall angled, and she followed it as the box narrowed into a tunnel. Not unlike the morgue, she noted. Birth and death, the beginning and the end of the human journey.
Angling again, she saw Mavis stretched out on the floor.
“Hey! Hey!” But as she rushed forward, Mavis smiled, waved at her.
“I’m good, I’m fine. Next to magolicious. Just cooking the bun ’till it’s done. You better go help the others.”
“What others? Where are they?”
“That’s the big problem, right? You gotta fix it so you can get back before I pop. You remember all the stuff from the class?”
“I got an A.”
“Knew I could count on you. B-day’s coming, Dallas. Don’t be late. Tandy’s counting on you, too.”
A white stork flew overhead, a white sack swinging from its beak. Eve ducked and cursed.
“There goes another one!” Mavis laughed. “Maybe it’s Tandy’s. Better go after it, better hurry. Could be a COD!”
Eve started off at a jog, glanced back. Mavis was standing on her head, her feet propped on the white wall. “I’m keeping it in the oven until you finish.”
“That can’t be right,” Eve muttered, but chased after the stork.
In a cube built into the wall, Natalie Copperfield was tied to a desk. Her eyes were blackened and bloody and running with tears. There was a blue robe belt wrapped tight around her throat.
“It won’t add up,” she sobbed. “It won’t come out right. I have to make it right. That’s my job. They killed me for it,” she said to Eve, “but it still has to add up.”
“You have to give me more than that.”
“It’s all right there, all right there in the numbers that won’t add up. Haven’t you found her yet? Haven’t you found her?”
There was a door. Eve yanked at it, then kicked it in when it refused to give way. Inside was a white room, and Tandy, strapped to a labor/ delivery chair like the one used as a demo in the birthing class.
Blood stained the sheets, her face was shiny with sweat. Her engorged belly rippled obscenely.
“The baby’s coming,” she panted out. “I can’t stop it.”
“Where’s the doctor? Where’s the midwife?”
“I can’t stop it,” she repeated. “Hurry, hurry.”
Even as Eve ran forward, Tandy vanished.
The floor opened under her feet. As she fell, the babies were crying, the women screaming.
She landed hard, heard and felt the bone snap in her arm. The room was cold, so cold, and washed with a dirty red light.