Memory in Death (In Death 22)

“Wife thinks he slipped.”

“Yeah, yeah, maybe. What are the odds? They’re working on him. Arm’s broken, that’s for certain. Maybe the hip, too. Head took a hard crack. I couldn’t tell how bad, and the MTs wouldn’t say.”

Eve rubbed her hands over her face. “You get any sense somebody helped him in front of that cab?”

“Second-guessing myself now. We had a good tail on them, good observation. But it’s insane out there, Dallas. You know how it is this time of year. Sidewalk is a sea of people, and everybody’s either in an all-fired hurry, or they’re gawking and taking vids. You got street thieves making more this holiday week than they do in six regular months. If I had to swear nobody got by us, I couldn’t. The thing is…”

“What?”

“Just before, she spilled coffee on herself. Said she got bumped. And I got this little tingle, started moving in a little. Then our guy’s airborne.”

“Fuck.”

* * *

Chapter 15

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EVE SENT BAXTER BACK TO STAND WITH Trueheart, then paced in front of the treatment room doors as the sharp scents a

nd harried sounds washed over her.

She hated hospitals, health centers, emergency treatment centers. Places, she thought, full of sickness and pain. Of death and misery.

Of waiting.

Had she put Bobby here? Had her need to push things forward put him in harm’s way? A personal need, she thought now. She wanted to slam the door on this part of her past, lock it away again. Not only for her own peace of mind, she admitted, but to prove she could. Because of that, she’d taken a risk—a calculated one, but a risk nonetheless.

And Bobby Lombard was paying the price.

Or was it just some ridiculous accident? Slippery, crowded streets, people in a hurry, bumping, pushing. Accidents happened every day. Hell, every hour. It could be just that simple.

But she couldn’t buy it. If she ran it through a probability program and it came up one hundred percent, she still wouldn’t buy it.

He was unconscious, broken and bloody, and she’d sent him out so she could sniff the air for a killer.

It could be him, even now, it could be Bobby who’d done murder. People killed their mothers. A lifetime of tension, irritation, or worse, and something snapped inside them. Like a bone, she thought, and they killed.

She’d killed. It hadn’t been only the bone in her arm that had snapped in that awful room in Dallas. Her mind had snapped, too, and the knife had gone into him. Over and over again. She could remember that now, remember the blood, the smell of it—harsh and raw— the feel of it wet and warm on her hands, her face.

She remembered the pain of that broken bone, even now through the mists of time. And the howling—his and hers—as she killed him.

People said that sound was inhuman, but they were wrong. It was essentially human. Elementally human.

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.

God, she hated hospitals. Hated remembering waking in one, with so much of herself—such as it was—gone. Evaporated.

The smell of her own fear. Strangers hovering over her. What’s your name? What happened to you? Where do you live?

How could she know? And if she’d remembered, if her mind hadn’t closed up and hidden away, how could she have told them?

They’d hurt her to heal her. She remembered that, too. Setting the bone, repairing the tears and scars inside her from the repeated rapes. But they’d never found those secrets behind the wall her mind had built.

They’d never known that the child in the hospital bed had killed like a mad thing. And howled like a human.

“Dallas.”