New York to Dallas (In Death 33)

“I’ll fix it.” Slowly, watching her eyes, he knelt on the other side of the unconscious McQueen. “I love you, Eve. Trust me now. Give me the knife.” Gently, he closed his hand over hers on the bloody hilt.

“Roarke.”

“Yes. Give me the knife now, Eve.”

“Take it. Please take it. I can’t let it go.”

He pried it out of her trembling fingers, tossed it aside.

As he reached out, lifted her into his arms, his security team rushed in. He started to snap out orders, and realized the ones that came first to mind were the wrong ones—restrain McQueen, an ambulance for his wife. The wrong ones for her.

“Doctor Charlotte Mira, room fifty-seven-oh-eight. One of you go, tell her Lieutenant Dallas needs her, and her medical bag. Now. The rest of you go down, wait for the police.”

He carried her to the sleep chair, where the cat immediately leaped to crawl into her lap.

“No,” she said when Roarke started to nudge him aside. “He saved me. He saved me. You saved me.”

“You saved yourself, but we had a part in it. Let me look at your arm.”

“Is it broken?”

“No, baby, not broken. It’s dislocated. I know it hurts.”

“Not broken.” She closed her eyes, shuddered out another breath. “Not this time.”

She took his hand with her good one. “I wanted to kill him. But I couldn’t. I need you to know.” She hissed between her teeth, struggling to think, to speak through the pain. “I need you to know.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He laid his fingertips over the purpling bruise on her cheek. “Let’s wait for Mira.”

“It matters. I couldn’t do it. There was something inside me—I was inside me, I guess. Just a child, and she was screaming. But I was there, too. Me. It was like being frozen between. I don’t know how to explain it. I couldn’t do it, but I couldn’t let go, not until you came. Until yo

u touched me. I couldn’t do it, Roarke, but I couldn’t move, and finish it the way I need to finish it, until you came.”

“Can you finish it now?”

“I have to. I think, if I don’t . . . I have to.”

“Let me have your restraints. I’ll do that part.”

While she cradled her injured arm, he took the cuffs off her belt, and rising, shoved McQueen over, knelt, and snapped them on. Mira ran in as Roarke dragged McQueen faceup again.

“Oh, dear God.”

“She’ll keep.” Roarke got to his feet, moved to block Mira’s dash toward Eve. “Give him something to bring him around.”

“She needs—”

“She needs to read her prisoner his rights. She needs to know he sees her, hears her while she does.”

With one long look at Eve, Mira nodded. Roarke turned to the door as the room filled with cops, security, feds. “This is for her to do. This is Lieutenant Dallas’s job.”

He wanted to give her his hand, but she shook her head, got shakily to her feet as Mira brought McQueen around.

“Can you hear me?” she demanded.

“You’re bleeding.” He spoke through gritted teeth while Mira put pressure on the gash in his side.

“You, too. Isaac McQueen, you’re under arrest for the murder of Nathan Rigby, for the murder of the unidentified subject known as Sylvia Prentiss, for the kidnapping and forced imprisonment of Melinda Jones. For the kidnapping, rape, and forced imprisonment of Darlie Morgansten. For the assault with a deadly on a police officer. For the attempted murder of a police officer. And for other charges yet to be determined.”