Leverage in Death (In Death 47)

“That right. You’re dead,” Eve said. “Both of you. A long time dead.”

“But there are so many more like us,” Troy reminded her. “We just keep coming, little girl. Beat yourself against the wall of that, and we still keep coming.”

“There are always more like me.”

“Look around you. Can’t keep the dead from piling up, can you now?” Patrick Roarke laughed, then as the shadows shifted, poured whiskey from a bottle into two glasses.

As they clinked glasses, drank, she saw they stood in a room with a bed, and on the bed a figure struggled. She couldn’t see through the shadows, but saw the movements, heard the screams muffled by a gag.

“And more to come.” Troy lifted his glass in toast to another wall.

It cleared to show the people behind it. And her heart began to pound in her chest.

Peabody, Mavis, oh God, the baby, Feeney.

She rushed, beat against the wall.

Nadine, Baxter, Leonardo, McNab. More. Everyone, everyone who mattered. Summerset, Whitney, Trueheart, Charles, Louise, Crack. Her whole squad, Reo, everyone milling around the room as if at some goddamn party.

Mira, Dennis Mira, Morris.

Every time she blinked, more appeared in the room.

Though she beat on that wall, shouted, no one heard, no one saw.

Everyone, everyone who mattered to her. But the one who mattered most.

“Where’s Roarke? Goddamn you, where’s Roarke?”

She rushed back—the figure on the bed. God, oh God.

The two men sat at a table, counting money with a mountain of it at their backs.

“You can never have too much of it, can you, Paddy?”

“No indeed, Richie, no indeed. And the getting more’s the fun of it.”

Shifting shadows. She started to call to Roarke, to swear to him she’d find a way to get to him. But when the shadows cleared, she didn’t see him. She saw herself, bound to the bed, struggling, terrified.

The red light blinked on and off, on and off as it had a lifetime before in a horrible room in Dallas.

“More fun this way.” Troy wagged a thumb to the next wall. “Look who’s joining the party.”

The moan rolled out of her soul. Roarke stepped in—everyone, everyone, everyone who mattered—with the suicide vest locked around him.

On a scream, she launched herself against the wall. She felt her arm break—the snap of a twig—and threw herself against the wall again.

“Roarke! Don’t, don’t, don’t. It’s a lie. Look at me. Roarke!”

Spiderweb cracks sizzled over the wall. As he reached for the button, she screamed again, reared back to charge through the cracks.

“Stop it now. You stop it. You need to wake up. Christ Jesus, Eve, you bloody well will wake up!”

She snapped back, saw his eyes. Just his eyes. On a choked sob she grabbed at him, pressed to him. “You can’t. You won’t. Swear you won’t. You have to swear to me.”

“Stop now, stop. It’s

a dream, just a dream.”