The knife had stopped him.
She could go now, away from the cold, away from this room, away from him.
“You never get away, and you know it.”
She looked up. There was a mirror over the sink. She could see her face in it—thin, white, eyes dark with shock and pain—and the face behind it.
So beautiful, with those magic blue eyes, the silky black hair, that full mouth. Like a picture in a book.
Roarke. She knew him. She loved him. He’d come with her to Dallas, and now he’d take her away. When she turned to him she wasn’t a child anymore, but a woman. And still, the man who’d been her father lay bloody between them.
“I don’t want to stay here. I need to go home now. I’m so glad you’re here to take me home.”
“You’ve done Richie in, haven’t you?”
“He hurt me. He wouldn’t stop hurting me.”
“Well now, a father has to hurt the child now and again to teach them some respect.” He crouched, and taking a grip on her father’s hair, lifted the head to examine it. “I knew him, you know. Wheeled some deals. We’re two of a kind.”
“No, you’re nothing like him. You
never met him.”
Those blue eyes sparked with something that made her stomach clutch like a fist. “I don’t like being called a liar by a woman.”
“Roarke—”
He picked up the knife, rose slowly. “You’ve got the wrong Roarke. I’m Patrick Roarke.” Smiling, smiling, he turned the knife in his hand as he stepped toward her. “And I think it’s time you learned a little respect for fatherhood.”
She woke with the scream trapped in her throat, and sweat pouring off her like blood.
By the time her team arrived, she was steady. Bad dreams, worries about Roarke, even the conversation she knew she needed to have with Summerset were all locked away.
“We’re looking for this Luis Javert, listed as Hastings’s assistant during the period in January the photographs of Rachel Howard were taken at a wedding. Going off profile, we’re going to assume he’s between twenty-five and sixty years of age. Highly functional, artistic, intelligent. Odds are he lives alone and owns or has access to imaging equipment. I’m saying owns. These are his tools, his work, his art.
“Feeney, I want you to work Browning on this angle. The name doesn’t appear on her list of students sent to Hastings, but he might have changed it. I’m banking that he studied under her, and that she covered Javert in some of the classwork at one time or another. She’s tired of looking at me at this point, and maybe a fresh face will jog something loose.”
“First time I’ve been called a fresh face in two decades.” Feeney munched on a danish.
“McNab, I want you at Columbia. Work on students, play up the Javert angle. Who’s interested in that kind of work.”
“Cops are.” His mouth was full of scrambled eggs. “Homicide cops are always photographing the dead.”
“They don’t generally take pictures of them before they’re dead.”
“How about doctors?” He scooped up bacon. “They take imaging records of patients, right? Then there’s the before and after records. Mostly it’s to cover their asses in case somebody decides to sue, but—”
“You may not be as stupid as you look.” Eve snitched one of his slices of bacon. “Hard to believe, but you may not be. Light. Energy, health, vitality. I was playing with it last night, and got distracted. Maybe our boy’s sick. What if he’s convinced himself that by absorbing vital life through photography, he can be cured?”
“It’s out there.”
“Yeah, well, so is he. Peabody and I will follow this up. Baxter and Trueheart stick with the clubs.”
“It’s a tough job.” Baxter drained his coffee. “Hanging out in clubs, watching all the nubile young bodies.” He winked at Trueheart. “Right, kid.”
Trueheart’s blush turned his young, smooth face rosy pink. “There’s a lot going on there. The dancing, the music, the bar scene, the data flood.”
“He got hit on three times,” Baxter added. “Two were girls.”