After a long silence, Roarke ejected the disc, put it back in its case.
“These are the men you’d work yourself to exhaustion for? These sick, spoiled, vicious animals are who you’re standing for?”
“I don’t get to choose.” Her voice shook. She fought to steady it. “I don’t get to choose,” she repeated. “I have to do— God, I’m sick.”
She ran out, dropped to the floor in the nearest powder room. Her stomach pitched out the vile and bitter until all that remained was the raw.
“Here now.” Gently, Roarke laid a cool cloth on the back of her neck, stroked her pale, burning face with another. “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry, darling.”
She only shook her head. “No. They are animals, and the ones who live, I’ll work myself to exhaustion to put in cages. I’d bury those cages so deep if I could, they’d never, never see light again. It hurts you, to see someone treated that way, and it hurts more because it makes you think of me. What happened to me.”
He said nothing, only reached up to get the glass he’d set on the counter when he’d come in. “Sip this.”
“I can’t.”
“Trust me now. Just a sip or two. It’ll help settle you.”
“Beating them all into bloody pulps. That would settle me.”
Gently, as Dennis Mira had been gentle, Roarke cupped her cheek. “There’s my Eve. Just a sip now.”
She took one. “And you know I can’t. I can’t do that.”
“And there’s my cop. I’m madly in love with both of them. One more sip now.”
Like Dennis Mira’s brandy in her tea, whatever he’d put in the glass soothed, settled. Maybe it was love that held the magic.
“It hurts you,” she said again.
He sighed, pressed his lips to her brow. Cooler now, he thought, though not a whiff of color had come back to her cheeks. “It does, yes. And yes, it makes me think of you.”
“It hurts you,” she said for a thi
rd time, “but you’ll still help me.”
“A ghrá.” He urged another sip on her. “I’m with you.”
She pressed her face to his shoulder, let a few tears spill when he drew her to him. “Every day,” she murmured. “However we got here, however and whyever you’re with me, I’m grateful. Every day.”
She drew back, brushed her lips over his cheek. “I’m sorry we have to do this.”
“There’s no sorry, not for this, not between us. Let’s find at least one of them still breathing, so we can have the satisfaction of that cage.”
“All right.” She pushed away tears with the heels of her hands. “Let’s do that.”
He slipped an arm around her waist as they walked back to her office. “You should have something—a little soup.”
“I don’t think I could keep it down right now. Later, okay?”
“All right. You’ll watch that obscenity again.”
“Yeah, I have to. But later.” She stopped, studied the board. She’d update that, the book, her notes. She needed to check her incomings. Maybe Harvo—Queen of Hair and Fiber—had some hits. Maybe Yancy had some luck.
“I’ve got three names. There are five women, two yet unidentified. If one of the three we have has other property—I’m leaning toward private home, old building, warehouse—a place they could . . . do this work—I need to find it. And I need to find Betz’s other property. All I’ve got is what I think is the street number. And a probability that we’re looking at the Bronx.”
“He had a bank and box there.” Roarke nodded. “Why go there for that unless there was another connection. I can start on both of those, but it would go faster, this sort of wide-range search, on the unregistered. More corners can be cut without CompuGuard watching, or having to avoid that annoyance.”
By agreeing to the use of the unregistered, she’d be cutting corners.