The In Death Collection Books 21-25 - J. D. Robb [696]
“No. I’ve got to get inside, got to get him to take me where she is. I know how to handle it. I know how to handle it,” she repeated, looking directly at Roarke. “If he gives me the chance. If he doesn’t, I need the two of you here, digging out the next piece that brings us to him. If we had this much nine years ago, if we believed he might move on me then, Feeney, what would you have done?”
He puffed out his cheeks. “I’d’ve sent you out.”
“Then I’d better get going.”
Roarke watched her go, and when he was back at his station, split his work screen with her camera. He could see what she saw, hear through his ear bud what she heard.
That would have to be enough.
She took the second location he’d given her first. Private home, higher probability. While his searches ran he focused all his attention on the building she approached. Urban and attractive, he decided, tucked in among other urban and attractive buildings.
When the door was opened by a woman with a dog yapping at her feet and a toddler on her hip, he relaxed. The probability had just dipped very low.
Still he kept her on split screen as she went inside, sidestepping the dog the woman shooed away.
He let bits of the conversation wind through his head as he put the bulk of his concentration on the work. Everything the woman said to Eve confirmed the official data on the property. A family home owned by a junior exec and his wife, professional mother, who lived there with their two children and a very irritable terrier.
“Nothing here,” Eve said as she moved back outside toward her vehicle. “Heading to second location. No tails spotted.”
She was cold. She was so awfully cold. It was probably shock, Ariel told herself. In vids when somebody went into shock, they put a blanket over them. Didn’t they?
Parts of her had gone numb, and she didn’t know if that was a blessing or if it meant those pieces of her had died. She knew she’d lost consciousness the second—or had it been the third?—time he’d hurt her.
But then he’d done something, something that had shot her back into the nightmare. Something that had jolted her like a hot blue electric current.
Sooner or later, he wouldn’t be able to bring her back. A part of her wanted to pray for that, so she buried that part, that weeping, yielding part.
Someone would come. She would stay alive, then someone would come.
When he came back, she wanted to scream. She wanted to scream and scream until the force of the sound shattered all those glass walls. Until it shattered him. She could imagine it, how that kind and quiet face of his would shatter into pieces like the walls of glass.
“Could I…May I please have some water?”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not allowed. You’re getting fluids through the IV.”
“But my throat’s so dry, and I was hoping we could talk some more.”
“Were you?” He wandered over to his tray. She wouldn’t let herself look, didn’t dare look at what he picked up this time.
“Yes. About music. What’s the music that’s playing now?”
“Ah, that would be Verdi. La Traviata.”
He closed his eyes a moment, and his hands began to move like a conductor’s. “Brilliant, isn’t it? Stirring and passionate.”
“Did—did your mother sing this one?”
“Yes, of course. It was a favorite of hers.”
“It must have been so hard for you when she died. I had a friend whose mother self-terminated. It was terrible for her. It’s…it’s hard to understand how anyone could be so sad or so lost that it seems to them death is the answer.”
“But of course, it is, just that. It’s the answer for all of us in the end.” He stepped closer. “It’s what we all ask for when our time comes. She did. You will.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“You will,” he said again. “Just as she did. But don’t worry, I’ll give you that answer, and that gift, just as I did for her.”
Other chatter came and went as teams reported in from their destinations. Roarke drank coffee and painstakingly scraped layers off old records, pried out ragged bits of data, and tried to sew them together into answers.
The second building had a basement.