The In Death Collection Books 6-10 - J. D. Robb [377]
“Do you want to go in?”
“I don’t know.” As she dragged a hand over her face, through her hair, a lanky man with icy eyes moved out of the shadows.
“Looking for action? Need a boost? You got some jingles, I got what you need. Prime Zeus, Ecstasy, Zoner. Mix or match.”
Eve flicked him a glance. “Back off, creep, or I’ll pop your eyes out of your head and make you eat them.”
“Hey, bitch, you’re on my turf, you get some manners.” He’d already tagged the car, and figured his marks as stupid, rich tourists. He flipped out his pocket blade, grinning as he tipped the killing point. “Let’s have the wallets and jewelry and all that good shit. We’ll call it even.”
She took a second to debate whether to kick his teeth in or restrain him for the beat cop. A second was all Roarke needed. With her mouth pursed, Eve watched his fist flash out, a fast flurry of movement that had the knife skittering down the sidewalk. She didn’t have time to blink before he had the dealer by the throat two inches off the ground.
“I believe you called my wife a bitch.”
The only response was a wheezing gag as the man struggled like a landed trout. Merely shaking her head, Eve strolled over, scooped up the knife, folded the blade back in place.
“Now,” Roarke continued in a mild, amazingly pleasant voice, “if I pop your eyes out, I get to eat them. If I still see you, say, five seconds after I toss your pitiful ass aside, I’m going to have a hell of an appetite.”
He bared his teeth in a grin, heaved. The dealer hit the sidewalk with a rattle of bones, scrambled up, and took off in a limping sprint.
“Now.” Fastidiously, Roarke dusted off his hands. “Where were we?”
“I liked the part about you eating his eyes. I’ll have to use that one.” She slipped the knife into her pocket, kept her hand over it. “Let’s go in.”
There was a single yellow light in the lobby, and a single burly droid behind the smeared security glass. He eyed them balefully, jerked a thumb at the rate sign.
For a dollar a minute, you got a room with a bed. For two, you got the additional amenity of a toilet.
“Third floor,” Eve said briefly. “East corner.”
“You get the room I give you.”
“Third floor,” she said again. “East corner.”
His gaze lowered to the hundred dollar credit Roarke flipped into the tray. “Don’t mean a shit to me.” He reached behind, took a key code from a rack. His fingers snagged the credit, then tossed down the key. “Fifty minutes. You go over, you pay double.”
Eve took the key for 3C, relieved to see her hand was still steady. They took the stairs.
It wasn’t familiar, yet it was painfully familiar. Narrow steps, dirty walls, thin sounds of sex and misery seeping through them. Cold, from the wind battering the brick and glass, reached down and froze the bones.
She said nothing as she slipped the key into the slot, pushed the door open.
The air was bitter and stale, with echoes of sweat and sex. The sheets on the bed shoved into the corner were stained with both and the rusty shadows of old blood.
With the breath strangling in her throat, she stepped inside. Roarke closed the door behind them, waited.
A single window, cracked. But so many were. The old floor, slanted and scarred. But she’d seen hundreds like it. Her legs trembled as she made herself walk across it, stand at that window and stare out.
How many times, she wondered, had she stood at windows in filthy little rooms and imagined herself leaping out, letting her body fall, feeling it smash and break on the street below? What had held her back, time after time, made her face the next day and the next?
How many times had she heard the door open and prayed to a God she didn’t understand to help her. To spare her. To save her.
“I don’t know if this is the room. There were so many rooms. But it was one like it. It’s not so different from the last room, in Dallas. Where I killed him. But I was younger here. That’s all I know for sure. I get a faded image of myself in my head.