socialized while leaving her locked away. He’d made his deals, run his cons, played his games.
As Stella had. Morphing, absorbing herself into the role she played. But there’d been chinks, other than the ones the child had seen long before the worst of the nightmare began. Weaknesses for illegals, for sex, for money, and a pure love of destroying others on the way to the goal.
Annoyed, she pushed herself up straight. Why was she thinking about them? They had nothing to do with the case, no connection or correlation to it. Yet her thoughts kept drifting back to both of them, to Dallas, to all that pain.
Push it down, push it away, she ordered herself.
Though she understood it was likely a waste of time she ran fresh probabilities, and picked three possibles at random. She did deeper runs now, shifting through layers, looking for triggers, abnormalities, odd affiliations.
To switch her focus and keep sharp, she brought up a split screen of crime scene images and the promotion image of the bar, before it was washed in blood.
She tried to imagine the killer. Had he served drinks or ordered them? Had he walked in that day with a smile on his face, alone, in company, or to take his shift?
Sat at the bar, or worked behind it?
Ventilation system was on, circulating the air. That’s what carried the substance throughout.
The bar, she thought again, or near it. The bar’s the hub. Not a big place, and everyone’s moving or talking —grabbing food, ordering drinks while they’re still on special.
Sit at the bar, your back’s to the room, she thought. But you could angle your stool, or use the mirror behind the bar to keep an eye on things.
She put her feet up again, thinking position. And tried to put herself inside that noise, that movement—the smells, the sounds.
As the long day took its toll, and she began to drift, she imagined too well.
Voices bounced off the walls, cutlery clattered at tables while people dug into the nachos, potato skins, rice balls, and drank away the dregs of the workday.
She recognized them—CiCi Way, and Macie Snyder, the boyfriend, the blind date laughing around the table.
Joe Cattery at the bar with Nancy Weaver, Lewis Callaway, Stevenson Vann, the accountant sitting alone with his work waiting for the latte he’d never drink.
The bartender, working the stick and arguing sports with a man he’d soon try to kill.
Joe Cattery turned to her first.
“I’ll be dead in a few minutes. Since you’re here, why don’t you stop it? I’d really like to see my wife and kids again.”
“Sorry. It’s already done. I’m just here to figure it out.”
“I just wanted a couple drinks. I wasn’t hurting anybody.”
“No, but you will.”
She watched Macie and CiCi get up, start toward the stairs leading down.
“We were going to have dinner,” Macie told Eve. “I have a good boyfriend, and an okay job. I’m happy. Still, I’m nobody. I’m just not that important, you know?”
“You’re important to me now.”
“But I had to die for that.”
“They all do, don’t they.” Stella swiveled on a bar stool, a drink in her hand, blood dripping from the slice in her throat. “You don’t give a shit about anybody till they’re bleeding on the ground.”
“I have a man I love. I have a partner and friends. I have a cat.”
“You’ve got nothing, because there’s nothing inside you. You’re broken in there so nothing holds long.” Lifting her glass in a toast, Stella shook back hair matted with blood. “What you are is a killer.”
“I’m not. I’m a cop.”
“The badge just gives you an excuse. It’s your free fucking pass. You killed him, didn’t you? Hey, Richie.”
Her father turned on his stool. Blood poured out of countless holes in his body. Holes she’d put there as a battered, broken child of eight.
“Hi, little girl. Drink up! It’s a family reunion.”
He’d been handsome once, she remembered, hard and handsome before too many drinks, too many cons had softened him, worn at him. They’d made an attractive couple once, she imagined. But what lived in each of them had rotted them—rotten from the inside out.
She couldn’t be theirs. She wouldn’t be theirs. “You’re not my family.”
“You wanna check that DNA again.” Her father winked at her, sipped a foamy brew. “I’m your flesh and blood. I’m in your bones, in your guts, just like Stella here. And you killed me.”
“You were raping me. Again. Beating me, again. You broke my arm. You choked me. You pushed yourself into me and tore me. I was just a child.”
“I took care of you!” He threw the brew down, but no one stopped talking, stopped laughing. “I can still take care of you. Don’t you forget it.”
“You can’t hurt me anymore.”
He smiled, with teeth gone shiny and sharp. “Wanna bet?”
“She killed me, too,” Stella reminded him. “What kind of sick bitch kills her own mother?”
“I didn’t kill you. McQueen did.”
“You drove him to it. You tricked me, you used me. You think you can come back from that? You think you can just live your life after that?”
They could hurt her, she realized. Something hurt in her now. Deep in the center of her. “I can. I will.”
“You’re broken inside, and I’m inside you just like you were inside me. Live with that, bitch.”
“Hey, Stell. Show’s starting.”
All around them people screamed, stabbed, clawed, and bit. Some fell, bleeding, to be crushed or beaten. Crazed laughter joined the screams as a woman spun by in mad pirouettes while the blood fountaining out of her throat spattered faces, walls, furniture.
“Want to play?” Richie asked Stella.
“We got twelve minutes.”
“Why wait?”
She shrugged, tossed back the rest of her drink. Together they turned to Eve.
“Time for some payback,” Stella said.
Eve pulled her weapon, stunned them, and again, but they kept coming.
“Can’t kill what’s dead. You have to live with it.” Stella, hands curled like claws, leaped first.
She fought for her life, for her sanity. Slipping on the bloody floor, kicking out, crying out when her arm twisted under her. The pain spiked. She could all but hear the bone snap as it had when she’d been a child.
Her mind screamed,
Then she heard him, calling to her. Felt him, soothing her.
And turned her face into Roarke’s chest.
“Come back now, all the way, Eve. I’ve got you. I’m here.”
“I’m okay. I’m all right.”
“You’re not, but I have you.”
She kept her eyes closed. Just to smell him instead of the blood and Stella’s heavy perfume. Clean and hers. Roarke.
“It got mixed up, that’s all. I let it get mixed up.”
The cat bumped at her hip. More comfort. She made herself breathe until breathing no longer scored her lungs. And opening her eyes realized they were on the floor of her office, with Roarke cradling her in his lap.
“God. Did I hurt you?” She shoved back, panicked as she thought of how she’d clawed at him in Dallas in the throes of a violent nightmare.
“No. Don’t worry. Here now, just rest easy a minute.”
“I let them in. I let it happen.” It infuriated her, disgusted her. Terrified her. “I shouldn’t be thinking about them.”
