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.”
“The job.” She sobbed in a breath. “It hurts. It hurts.”
“I’ll fix it.” Slowly, watching her eyes, he knelt on the other side of the unconscious McQueen. “I love you, Eve. Trust me now. Give me the knife.” Gently, he closed his hand over hers on the bloody hilt.
“Roarke.”
“Yes. Give me the knife now, Eve.”
“Take it. Please take it. I can’t let it go.”
He pried it out of her trembling fingers, tossed it aside.
As he reached out, lifted her into his arms, his security team rushed in. He started to snap out orders, and realized the ones that came first to mind were the wrong ones—restrain McQueen, an ambulance for his wife. The wrong ones for her.
“Doctor Charlotte Mira, room fifty-seven-oh-eight. One of you go, tell her Lieutenant Dallas needs her, and her medical bag. Now. The rest of you go down, wait for the police.”
He carried her to the sleep chair, where the cat immediately leaped to crawl into her lap.
“No,” she said when Roarke started to nudge him aside. “He saved me. He saved me. You saved me.”