Now it was hitting her in the face. Each time she looked at a victim, she saw herself.
And she hated it.
"Get past it," she ordered herself. "And find him."
She looked over as Roarke walked in, kept her eyes on him as he crossed the room. He poured two glasses of the wine she'd gotten out for Peabody, set one on her desk, then took the other with him and sat in the chair facing her.
He sipped, took out one of his increasingly rare cigarettes, lighted it. "Well," he said and left it at that.
"What the hell did you think you were doing?"
He drew in smoke, blew it out in a thin, fragrant stream. "At which point?"
"Don't get cute with me, Roarke."
"But I do it so well. Easy, Lieutenant." He lifted his glass in salute as she growled low in her throat. "I didn't infringe on your operation."
"The point is you had no business being near the scene."
"Pardon me, but Iown the scen
e." There was arrogance in his tone now, and a dare. "I often drop in on my properties. Keeps the employees on their toes."
"Roarke -- "
"Eve, this case is choking you. Do you think I can't see it?" His composure cracked just enough to have him rising to pace.
Feeney was right, she thought fleetingly, the Irish came out when he was pissed.
"It disturbs your sleep -- what little you allow yourself. It haunts your eyes. I know what you go through." He turned back, temper alive in those wonderfully blue eyes. "Christ, I admire you. But you can't expect me to stand back and pretend I don't see, don't understand, and not do whatever it is I can do to ease what's inside you."
"It isn't about me. It can't be about me. It's about three dead people."
"They haunt you, too." He crossed to the desk and sat on the edge close to her. "That's why you're the best cop I've ever run up against. They're not names and numbers to you. They're people. And you have the gift -- or curse -- of being able to imagine too well what they saw and felt and prayed for in those last minutes of life. I won't back away."
He leaned forward, a quick move that caught her unguarded, and gripped her chin. "Damn it. I won't back away from what you are or what you do. You'll take me, Eve, every bit as fully as I take you."
She sat very still, absorbing his words, searching his eyes. She could never resist the things she found in his eyes. "Last winter," she began slowly, "you pushed yourself into my life. I didn't ask for you. I didn't want you.,"
His brow cocked, an irritated challenge. "Thank God you didn't give a damn what I asked for or what I thought I wanted," she murmured and watched the dare slide into a smile.
"I didn't ask for you either.Aghra."
My love. She knew what it meant, in the tongue of his birth, and couldn't stop her heart from opening to it. To him. "Since then I've rarely had a case that hasn't tangled you into it. I didn't want it to be that way. I've used you when it was expedient. That bothers me."
"It pleases me."
"I know it." She sighed and, lifting a hand, curled her fingers briefly around his wrist. His pulse beat there, strong and steady. "You get too close to pieces of me I don't like to look at, then I don't have any choice but to look at them."
"You look at them with or without me, Eve. But maybe with me they won't hurt you so much. I look back," he said and surprised her enough to have her eyes flicking up to his, holding there. "And it's easier, those moments are easier to stand since you. You can't ask me, can't expect me not to stand with you when your moments close in."
She stood now, taking her wine and moving away from him. He was right, she thought. What she too often saw as dependence should have been accepted as unity.
And she could tell him.
"I know what they felt. I know what went through them -- the fear, the pain, the humiliation. Each one of them when they were helpless and naked and he was raping them. I know what their bodies felt, what their minds felt. I don't want to remember what it's like to be torn into that way. Ripped, invaded. But I do. Then you touch me."
She turned back, realizing she'd never really given him this. "Then you touch me, Roarke, and I don't. I don't feel that. I don't remember that. It's that simple. It's just... you."