The kiss was so tender, so fragile somehow, that she could let herself drift into it even as she floated on that twilight sleep.
In the dark, she could always find him in the dark and know he'd be there to soothe her or arouse her. Or to ask those things of her.
She threaded her fingers through his hair, cradling his head as she urged him to deepen the kiss. Deeper, a mating of lips and tongues, and still soft as a dream she was already forgetting.
For now there was only Roarke, the smooth glide of his skin over hers, the lines of him, the scent and taste. She was already filled with him as she murmured his name.
His mouth trailed over her like a benediction. Cheeks, throat, shoulders, then pressed delicately on the slope of her breast to linger where her heart beat.
"I love you." His lips formed the words against her breast. "I'm lost in love with you."
Not lost, she thought, and smiled in the dark even as her pulse thickened. Found. We're both found.
He cradled his head there a moment-cheek to heart-and closed his eyes until he could be sure he had his fiercer emotions in check, until he could be sure his hands would be gentle on her.
He had a searing need to be gentle.
She sighed, soft and sleepy, and was content, he knew, to be wakened like this. No matter what had been done to her, her heart was open for him, and that open heart lifted him beyond anything he'd expected to become.
So he was gentle when he touched her, and when he roused her to peak it was lovely and sweet.
When he slipped inside her, they were one shadow moving in the dark.
She held him there, close in the big bed under the sky window where the light was going pearl gray with dawn. She could stay like this for an hour, she thought. Stay quiet and joined and happy before it was time to face the world, the job, the blood.
"Eve." He pressed his lips to her shoulder. "We need to talk."
"Mmm. Don't wanna talk. Sleeping."
"It's important." He drew away, though she groaned a protest. "I'm sorry. Lights on, twenty percent."
"Oh, man." She clapped a hand over her eyes. "What is it? Five? Nobody has to have a conversation at five in the morning."
"It's nearly half-five, and you'll have your team here at seven. We need the time for this."
She spread her fingers, squinted through. "For what?"
"I went back last night and accessed more files."
And through those spread fingers, he saw the annoyance. "I thought you said that was all you could do."
"For you, it was. I did this for me. I wanted a look at my own dossier, in case... Just in case."
She sat up quickly. "Are you in trouble? Christ, are you in trouble with the fucking HSO?"
"No." He put his hands on her shoulders, ran them up and down her arms. And suffered, knowing she would suffer. "It's not that. While I was at it, I had a look at my father's files."
"Your mother." She reached for his hand, squeezed.
"No. It seems she didn't earn as much as a blip on their radar. They weren't paying much mind to him that long ago, and she didn't matter to them, wasn't useful or interesting, which is all to the good. But Patrick Roarke became of more interest, and they spent time tracking his moves now and again. Mostly, it appears, on the chance he'd give them something to use against Ricker."
"I'd say he didn't, as Ricker stayed in operation until last year."
"He didn't give them enough. It's a long, convoluted file, a great many cross-references, a lot of man-hours that didn't amount to anything that would stick."
"Well, he's away now. Ricker. What does that have to do with this?"
"They had my father under surveillance, believing he was working as a bagman for Ricker, and they tracked him to Dallas, in May. The year you were eight."
She nodded, slowly, but had to swallow. "We knew he'd been in Dallas about that time, helping to set up for the Atlanta job, the sting where Skinner's operation went to hell. It's not important. Look, since I'm up, I'm going to get a shower."
"Eve." He clamped his hands on hers, felt hers jerk as she tried to escape. "He was met at the airport by a man named Richard Troy."
Her eyes were huge now, with fear-the kind he saw when she woke from nightmares. "This has nothing to do with the case. The case is priority. I need to-"
"I've never looked into your past, because I knew you didn't want it." Her hands had gone cold in his, but he held them. He wished he could warm them. "I didn't intend to look now, but only to assure myself that my family wasn't being watched. The connection..." He brought her rigid hands to his lips. "Darling Eve, the connection between your father and mine is there. We can't pretend otherwise. I don't want to hurt you. I can't stand to hurt you."
"You have to let me go."
"I can't. I'm sorry. I tried to talk myself out of telling you. 'She doesn't need to know, doesn't want to know.' But I can't hold this back from you. It would hurt you more, wouldn't it, and insult you on top of that if I treated you like you couldn't take it."
"That's tricky." Her voice was scratchy and her eyes burned. "That's pretty fucking tricky."
"Maybe, but no less true for all that. I have to tell you what I've found, and you'll decide how much of it you want to hear."
"I need to think!" She yanked her hands free from his. "I need to think. Just leave me alone and let me think." She sprang off the bed, rushed into the bathroom. Slammed the door.
He nearly went after her, but when he asked himself if doing so would be for her sake or his own, he wasn't at all sure. So instead, he waited for her.
She took a shower, blistering hot. Halfway through her heart rate was nearly normal again. She stayed in the drying tube too long, and felt a little light-headed afterward. She just needed coffee, that was all. Just a few hits of coffee-and she needed to put this crap out of her mind.
She had a job to do. It didn't matter, it didn't fucking matter about Patrick Roarke or her father, or Dallas. It didn't apply. She couldn't afford to crowd her head with that kind of bullshit when she had work to do.
And she looked at her face in the mirror over the sink, her pale, terrified face. She wanted to smash her fist through it. Nearly did.
But she turned away, yanked on her robe, and walked back into the bedroom.
He'd gotten up, put on a robe of his own. He said nothing as he walked over and handed her a cup of coffee.
"I don't want to know about this. Can you understand? I don't want to know."
"All right, then." He touched her cheek. "We'll put it away."
He wouldn't call her a coward, she realized. He wouldn't even think it. He would just love her.
"I don't want to know about this," she repeated. "But you have to tell me." She walked to the sitting area and lowered to a chair because she was afraid her knees would shake. "His name was Troy?"
He sat across from her, keeping the low table between them because he sensed she wanted the distance. "He had a number of aliases, but that was his legal name, so it seems. Richard Troy. There's a file on him. I didn't read the whole of it, but just the... just the business in Dallas. But copied it for you in case you wanted to."
She didn't know what she wanted. "They met in Dallas."
"They did. Yours picked mine up at the airport, brought him to the hotel where you... where you were. He registered. They went out later that night and got piss-faced. There's a transcript of their conversation, such as it was, and the same over the three days they were there together. A lot of posturing and bragging, and some speculation on the operation in Atlanta."
"Ricker's gun-running operation."
"Yes. My father was to go on to Atlanta, which he did the following day. There is speculation that he took payoff money from the cops who were using him as an inside man in Ricker's organization. He took that, and Ricker's money, and-double-crossing both sides-went back to Dublin."
"That confirms what we theorized when we dealt with Skinner. Sloppy job by the spooks if they didn't cop to what your father had in mind, and warn the locals. Puts HSO on the trigger for the thirteen cops who died in that botched raid as much as Ricker, as much as anyone."
"I'd say HSO didn't give a damn about the cops."
"Okay." She could focus on that, pinpoint some of the rage on that. "They'd consider Ricker the prime directive. The Atlanta operation was major, but it wasn't the whole ball. Maybe they were too focused on bringing down Ricker, crushing his network and doing the victory dance that they didn't figure a small cog like Patrick Roarke was going to screw all sides. But it's unconscionable they'd let cops die that way."
"They knew about you."
"What?"
"They knew there was a child in that bloody room with him. Female, minor child. The bastards knew."
When her eyes went glassy, he cursed. Shoving the table away, he pushed her head between her knees. "Take it slow, breathe slow. Christ, Christ, I'm sorry."
His voice was a buzz in her ears. His beautiful voice, murmuring in Gaelic now as his control wavered. She could hear it wavering, feel it in the quiver of his hand on the back of her head. He was kneeling beside her, she realized. Suffering as much, if not more, than she was herself.
Wasn't that strange? Wasn't that miraculous?
"I'm okay."
"Just give it a minute more. You're trembling yet. I want them dead. Those who knew you were trapped with him and did nothing. I want their blood in my throat."
She shifted enough to rest her cheek on her knee and look at him. At the moment, he looked every bit like a man who could rip out another's throat. "I'm okay," she said again. "It's not going to matter, Roarke. It's not, because I survived, and he didn't. I need to read the file."
He nodded, then just laid his head on hers.
"If you'd blocked this from me"-her voice was thick but she didn't try to clear it-"it would've set me back. It would've set us back. I know this isn't easy for you either, but telling me... Trusting us to get through it, that's going to make it better. I need to look at some of this data."
"I'll get it for you."
"No, I'll go with you. We'll look at it together."
They went back in his private room, and read what he brought up on screen together.
She didn't sit. She wasn't going to let her legs go weak on her again. Not even when she read the field operative's report.
Sexual and physical abuse involving minor female purported to be subject's daughter. No recorded data on minor, no birth mother or surrogate registered. Intervention is not recommended at this time. If subject becomes aware he is being observed, or if any social or law enforcement agency is informed of the situation with minor female, subject's value would be compromised.
Recommend nonaction re minor female.
"They let it go." Roarke spoke softly, too softly. "I hate fucking cops. Saving your presence," he added after a moment.
"They're not cops. They don't give a rat's ass about the law, much less about justice. They sure as hell don't give a damn about an individual. It's all big picture to them, always was, from the moment they formed at the dawn of the Urban Wars, it was big picture and fuck the people in it."
She packed away her rage, her horror, and continued to read. It wasn't until she came to the end that she had to reach out, lay her hand on the console for balance.
"They knew what happened. They knew I killed him. My God, they knew, and they cleaned up after me."
"For security, my ass. To cover their own culpability."
"It says... it says the listening devices planted were defective and shut down that night. What are the chances?" she drew a deep breath and read the section again.
Surveillance returned at seven hundred and sixteen hours. No sound or movement recorded on premises for six hours. Assumption that subject had moved on during dark period caused field agent to risk a personal check of room. Upon entering, agent observed subject DOS. Cause of death determined to be multiple stab wounds inflicted with small kitchen knife. Female minor child could not be located on premises.
No data on premises pertaining to Ricker or Roarke. On orders from Home, area was cleaned. Body disposal team notified.
Minor child, female, believed to be subject's daughter, located under medical observation. Severe physical and emotional trauma. Local authorities investigating. Minor has no identification and will be assigned a social caseworker.
Subsequently local authorities unable to identify minor child, female. Minor subject unable to remember and/or relate name or circumstances. No connection to Troy or this agency can be made. Minor subject has been absorbed by the National Agency for Minors and has been given the name Dallas, Eve.
