New York to Dallas (45 page)

“Hello, kitty.” He smiled, reached for the knife.

The idea of carving up her cat filled him with delight. When it bolted, he pursued, charging up the stairs to the third level.

“Here, kitty, kitty!”

Laughing now, he walked into Eve’s office.

And forgot about the cat.

The case board fascinated him, brought him a quick, warm rush of pride.

His girls, all his bad girls. And him, so much of him. Just look at how he’d become the center of her world. It was delicious. She’d spent hours—hours and hours and hours—thinking of him, trying so hard to outwit him.

But who was standing right here, right now, just waiting for her? Who had outwitted whom, again and again? She’d had her way for twelve long years. But now, he would have his.

“I was wrong,” he murmured, eyes sparkling on the board, “and I so rarely am. Killing you is enough. Is exactly enough. And right here, right in front of all your hard work. Right in front of all the bad girls. It’s perfect.”

“Heading out now,”
Eve told Roarke via ’link. “I’ve done all I can do here. I want to sift through it all, then have Mira take another pass.”

“I’ll be close behind you. We’ve made some progress on the electronics, but it’s slow going. I may do better on my own, with my own. How are you getting back to the hotel?”

Worry, worry, she thought. “I’m about to get into an official vehicle with two strapping uniforms. We found the car he stole, and ditched, damn near halfway to Fort Worth. They’re running any reports of stolen vehicles as he likely boosted another. Might’ve jacked one though, and kept heading west. They’re covering the highways and byways and cow paths.”

She nodded to the uniforms, slid into the backseat. “They’re pumping out the media alerts. They’re already flooded with reports of sightings, and they’ll follow up on all of them. But the downside of that angle is it brings out the crazies and the easily spooked.”

“Why don’t you have your escort bring you here? We’ll go back together.”

“Roarke, I’ll be in the hotel and in the room in ten, drinking a decent cup of coffee and putting my notes together. You know what we found in his dresser? A photo album. Pictures of his mother, then of the partners we knew about—and more we didn’t. Numbered, just like the girls. Mira’s going to love that.”

“He’d started to research shopping centers, vid complexes, arcades, youth clubs, in central London.”

“Well, he won’t be having—what is it—bangers and mash for breakfast anytime soon. I don’t know why anybody’d want to, but I like knowing he won’t. I need to go over the timing again, but I don’t think he had a big enough window to get gone—and I don’t think he’s in the frame of mind to get gone if he had. He’s pissed and panicked.

“We’re pulling in to the hotel. I’ll see you when you get here.”

“I’m leaving now. You might have the cops go up with you.”

“I
am
a cop,” she reminded him. “Thanks,” she said to the uniforms as she hopped out. “And I’m now walking into the hotel. See you in a few.”

Wound up, she thought. McQueen, the almost-got-hims, her personal bullshit—it had them both too wound up. Time to unwind it, wrap it, and get the hell back to New York. Not that people wouldn’t try to kill her there, too, but at least that was
normal
.

Nothing about this felt normal.

She scanned the lobby, the lobby bar, the shops as she passed through, alert for signs, for tingles. He couldn’t know where she and Roarke were staying, but she supposed he could make an educated guess.

She walked to the elevator by the security post, nodded to the man on duty as she accessed it.

“Good evening, Lieutenant. I’ll clear you up.”

“Thanks.”

She stepped in, leaned back against the wall. Coffee, she thought, and a couple minutes to let it settle in, loosen up. She got off on the bedroom level. What she craved was a long, hot shower to wash away the hours spent at McQueen’s, the faint scent of chemicals clinging to her clothes from the sweepers’ tools. She settled on pulling off her jacket, and after removing her weapon harness, changed to a fresh shirt.

Better, she decided, and got the coffee from the bedroom AutoChef. She drank the first sip where she stood, then decided, since he hadn’t come to greet her, to hunt up the cat. Coffee and Galahad, her case board—almost like home.

She’d put her feet up on her desk, grab some thinking time before Roarke got in, then dive in. Since he wasn’t sprawled on the bed, she expected she’d find Galahad on the sleep chair in her office—and expected he’d act as if he’d been starved as they’d left him alone all day.

She turned into her office, surprised not to see the cat. Probably sulking. She shrugged, started toward her board. Nearly smiled when Galahad poked his head out from under the chair. Would’ve smiled, ragged on him, but he bared his teeth in a hiss.

For the second time in their acquaintance, Galahad saved her life.

She spun around, led with a stiffened forearm. The knife bit a shallow stream down her arm, but missed carving into her back. She followed the block with a punch, and as McQueen dodged, she reached for her weapon.

Remembered tossing it and her jacket on the bed.

He came at her again, the knife arcing through the air. She leaped back, managed to kick his knife arm, but without enough juice to dislodge the weapon.

Clutch piece, she thought as she dodged another swipe. She still had her clutch piece on her ankle. But didn’t have the room to get it.

Devolving, she thought. So push.

“You’re losing it, Isaac.” She crouched, fighting stance. “You’ll never get out of here.”

“I got in, didn’t I? Luck’s on my side this time around. It’s just too bad Roarke’s not with you. But I can wait. Maybe I won’t kill you—yet. I’ll let you watch me slice him, piece by piece, first.”

“He’ll take you apart. You have no idea.” She dodged the knife again, spun around, got a boot in his gut. The blade grazed her hip on the follow-through.

“I’m going to put so many holes in you.”

She shoved a chair at him, and the action, the reaction took her back to the room where they’d fought before. But she wasn’t a rookie now. She was smarter, stronger. She only had to hold him off, get to her weapon.

“You’re the one with holes where your control, your brains used to be. You should be gone, in the wind, living it rich on all that money you stashed by. But we’ve got it all now. You’re going back in a cage, and this time there won’t be any accounts to tap. You’re just fucking
stupid
.”

Fury stained his face dull red as he charged. She leaped over the sleep chair, and the knife sliced down, leaving a vicious gash down the back of the chair. Momentum carrying her, she reached down for her clutch piece, tried to gain her feet, her balance as she swung back.

Both weapons clattered to the floor when he hit her like a battering ram. His weight bore her down, with her arm twisted under her. Something popped, but she registered the sound, the screaming pain as a snap.

And she was back in a room washed in dirty red light.

 

 

Roarke used the time sitting in traffic
to run through some logistics. They’d broken through most of McQueen’s filters—he hadn’t been quite as obsessive about blocks and fail-safes on what he’d installed in the second location.

Felt safe, Roarke thought. Untouchable.

He’d learned differently.

Still, nothing they’d recovered thus far proved particularly helpful in finding him now. But the extensive data files McQueen had amassed on Eve had given Roarke some very bad moments. That kind of obsession wouldn’t fade or be turned aside. That obsession was exactly why McQueen had changed pattern, pushed the boundaries of all sense, tumbled into a crazed sort of labyrinth of plot and plan.

He wouldn’t give up, very likely couldn’t give up.

The contacts he’d made with her, even the memo cube—so personal, so unnecessary. Somewhat like a spurned lover, Roarke concluded as bored, annoyed with the stall, he began to weave through traffic.

And the last communication, he mused as he finally turned to the hotel. That last furious com, with cops only blocks away, when McQueen should have been thinking of nothing but escape. That was completely dead stupid, over-the-edge. Survival always came first, and didn’t he know it. If you want to taunt—though he’d never seen the point of it himself—taunt from cover. But to risk the communication from only blocks away when McQueen had to know they were linked up, had to know they’d initiated a track and trace? That was . . .

It struck him, a hammer to the heart. Linked—then, linked when Eve had talked to him earlier from the hotel office.

Track and trace.

He jumped out of the car before he reached the hotel door. Dragged out his ’link. He tried her first, on the run, got her voice directing him to leave a message.

“Sir!” the doorman called after him as he bolted toward the doors. “Your vehicle—”

“Contact the police,” Roarke ordered when he’d reached the security station at the elevator. “Lieutenant Ricchio. Now! And send a team, armed, to my rooms. Now, goddamn it.” He flew into the elevator, drew the weapon from the holster at the small of his back.

He might’ve prayed, but only a single word sounded over and over in his head.

Eve.

She screamed.
The pain was so huge, filled everything. He struck her, again and again, and pressed against her. Hard against where she knew he would push into her, tear her, hurt her. Again.

And this time he’d kill her. She saw it on his face.

Her father’s face.

“That’s right, scream. Nobody can hear you. You’re going to scream when I fuck you. That’s right, that’s right.” He tore at her clothes. “I’m going to fuck you, then I’m going to kill you. Who’s lucky now, bitch? Who’s lucky now?”

“Please, don’t! It hurts.”

“Beg some more.” He panted it out, thrilled. “Cry like a little girl. A bad girl.”

“I’ll be good! Don’t, please, don’t.”

When he struck her again, her vision doubled. She tried to claw at him, wild with pain and terror. He howled when she raked her nails down his face. Howled, reared back.

In her mind she felt him shove himself inside her. In reality his hands closed around her throat, shutting off her air.

Her free hand flailed out—helpless, hopeless—and closed over the knife.

She brought it down, felt the warm blood run. Coughing, choking, gagging, she brought it down again.

Then she was free, somehow free, kneeling beside him, her injured arm hanging uselessly, and the knife clutched in her hand. The knife poised over him.

“Eve!”

Roarke’s heart stopped. Later he would think that for an instant his heart simply stopped beating in the violent collision of relief—she was alive—and the horror of what he saw in that room.

“Eve!”

Her head whipped toward his, her face bruised, bloody, and the eyes he knew so well feral. Once again the cat, loyal to the last, stood beside her butting his head to her bloody hip. When Roarke stepped forward, she bared her teeth, made a sound like a snarl.

“I know who you are. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.” He prayed now, prayed he wouldn’t have to stun her to save her. “Look at me. See me. He can’t hurt you now, Eve. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. That’s who you are. That’s who you made yourself. Eve. My Eve.”

“He comes back.”

“Not this time.”

“He hurts me.”

“I know. Not anymore. Eve. I’m what’s real. We’re what’s real.”

If she brought that knife down, put it in him, she’d never be able to live with it, never come back from it. They’d have beaten her—her father, her mother, the excuse for a man bleeding on the floor.

“He’s Isaac McQueen. He’s not your father. You’re not a child. You’re Lieutenant Eve Dallas, NYPSD. You need to take charge of your prisoner, Lieutenant. You need to do the job.”