Days before, he thought, only days before Eve had been found, battered and broken, in an alley.
They’d known all that, he thought, and so had the HSO.
Subject Roarke checked out of hotel at ten thirty-five the following morning. He was driven by Troy to the airport where he took a shuttle to Atlanta.
Troy returned to hotel room shared with female minor. Surveillance on Roarke passed to Operative Clark.
“Female minor,” Roarke repeated. “You bastards. You bloody bastards, you had to know.”
And with a rage so strong it sickened him, he brought up Richard Troy’s HSO file.
It wasn’t yet dawn when she stirred, and felt his arms go around her. So gently around her. Half dreaming, she turned to him, turned into him and found the warmth of his body, then the warmth of his lips on her lips.
The kiss was so tender, so fragile somehow, that she could let herself drift into it even as she floated on that twilight sleep.
In the dark, she could always find him in the dark and know he’d be there to soothe her or arouse her. Or to ask those things of her.
She threaded her fingers through his hair, cradling his head as she urged him to deepen the kiss. Deeper, a mating of lips and tongues, and still soft as a dream she was already forgetting.
For now there was only Roarke, the smooth glide of his skin over hers, the lines of him, the scent and taste. She was already filled with him as she murmured his name.
His mouth trailed over her like a benediction. Cheeks, throat, shoulders, then pressed delicately on the slope of her breast to linger where her heart beat.
“I love you.” His lips formed the words against her breast. “I’m lost in love with you.”
Not lost, she thought, and smiled in the dark even as her pulse thickened. Found. We’re both found.
He cradled his head there a moment-cheek to heart-and closed his eyes until he could be sure he had his fiercer emotions in check, until he could be sure his hands would be gentle on her.
He had a searing need to be gentle.
She sighed, soft and sleepy, and was content, he knew, to be wakened like this. No matter what had been done to her, her heart was open for him, and that open heart lifted him beyond anything he’d expected to become.
So he was gentle when he touched her, and when he roused her to peak it was lovely and sweet.
When he slipped inside her, they were one shadow moving in the dark.
She held him there, close in the big bed under the sky window where the light was going pearl-gray with dawn. She could stay like this for an hour, she thought. Stay quiet and joined and happy before it was time to face the world, the job, the blood.
“Eve.” He pressed his lips to her shoulder. “We need to talk.”
“Mmm. Don’t wanna talk. Sleeping.”
“It’s important.” He drew away, though she groaned a protest. “I’m sorry. Lights on, twenty percent.”
“Oh, man.” She clapped a hand over her eyes. “What is it? Five? Nobody has to have a conversation at five in the morning.”
“It’s nearly half-five, and you’ll have your team here at seven. We need the time for this.”
She spread her fingers, squinted through. “For what?”
“I went back last night and accessed more files.”
And through those spread fingers, he saw the annoyance. “I thought you said that was all you could do.”
“For you, it was. I did this for me. I wanted a look at my own dossier, in case… Just in case.”
She sat up quickly. “Are you in trouble? Christ, are you in trouble with the fucking HSO?”
“No.” He put his hands on her shoulders, ran them up and down her arms. And suffered, knowing she would suffer. “It’s not that. While I was at it, I had a look at my father’s files.”
“Your mother.” She reached for his hand, squeezed.
“No. It seems she didn’t earn as much as a blip on their radar. They weren’t paying much mind to him that long ago, and she didn’t matter to them, wasn’t useful or interesting, which is all to the good. But Patrick Roarke became of more interest, and they spent time tracking his moves now and again. Mostly, it appears, on the chance he’d give them something to use against Ricker.”
“I’d say he didn’t, as Ricker stayed in operation until last year.”
“He didn’t give them enough. It’s a long, convoluted file, a great many cross-references, a lot of man-hours that didn’t amount to anything that would stick.”
“Well, he’s away now. Ricker. What does that have to do with this?”
“They had my father under surveillance, believing he was working as a bagman for Ricker, and they tracked him to Dallas, in May. The year you were eight.”
She nodded, slowly, but had to swallow. “We knew he’d been in Dallas about that time, helping to set up for the Atlanta job, the sting where Skinner’s operation went to hell. It’s not important. Look, since I’m up, I’m going to get a shower.”
“Eve.” He clamped his hands on hers, felt hers jerk as she tried to escape. “He was met at the airport by a man named Richard Troy.”
Her eyes were huge now, with fear-the kind he saw when she woke from nightmares. “This has nothing to do with the case. The case is priority. I need to-”
“I’ve never looked into your past, because I knew you didn’t want it.” Her hands had gone cold in his, but he held them. He wished he could warm them. “I didn’t intend to look now, but only to assure myself that my family wasn’t being watched. The connection…” He brought her rigid hands to his lips. “Darling Eve, the connection between your father and mine is there. We can’t pretend otherwise. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t stand to hurt you.”
“You have to let me go.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. I tried to talk myself out of telling you. ‘She doesn’t need to know, doesn’t want to know.’ But I can’t hold this back from you. It would hurt you more, wouldn’t it, and insult you on top of that if I treated you like you couldn’t take it.”
“That’s tricky.” Her voice was scratchy and her eyes burned. “That’s pretty fucking tricky.”
“Maybe, but no less true for all that. I have to tell you what I’ve found, and you’ll decide how much of it you want to hear.”
“I need to think!” She yanked her hands free from his. “I need to think. Just leave me alone and let me think.” She sprang off the bed, rushed into the bathroom. Slammed the door.
He nearly went after her, but when he asked himself if doing so would be for her sake or his own, he wasn’t at all sure. So instead, he waited for her.
She took a shower, blistering hot. Halfway through her heart rate was nearly normal again. She stayed in the drying tube too long, and felt a little lightheaded afterward. She just needed coffee, that was all. Just a few hits of coffee-and she needed to put this crap out of her mind.
She had a job to do. It didn’t matter, it didn’t fucking matter about Patrick Roarke or her father, or Dallas. It didn’t apply. She couldn’t afford to crowd her head with that kind of bullshit when she had work to do.
And she looked at her face in the mirror over the sink, her pale, terrified face. She wanted to smash her fist through it. Nearly did.
But she turned away, yanked on her robe, and walked back into the bedroom.
He’d gotten up, put on a robe of his own. He said nothing as he walked over and handed her a cup of coffee.
“I don’t want to know about this. Can you understand? I don’t want to know.”
“All right, then.” He touched her cheek. “We’ll put it away.”
He wouldn’t call her a coward, she realized. He wouldn’t even think it. He would just love her.
“I don’t want to know about this,” she repeated. “But you have to tell me.” She walked to the sitting area and lowered to a chair because she was afraid her knees would shake. “His name was Troy?”