“You hid in the backseat?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I ought to pound every square inch of you. I won't because my arm still hurts, and because-maybe-by being a stupid ass you helped. I could've taken the three of them.” She pressed a hand to the throb of her shoulder. “But it was handy having Roarke pull down the third.”
“I wanted to go home.”
Eve laid her head back on the seat. Taking down three armed and dangerous was easier than picking through the minefield of a child's emotions.
“You did. What did you find there? It sucks wide, the widest, but that's not home anymore.”
“I wanted to see it again.”
“I get that. It's just a house, building materials. It's what you had there before the bad stuff happened that counts. That's how I see it.”
“You're going to send me away.”
“I'm going to give you a chance, the best I've got to offer.” She lifted her head, shifted in the seat. “You got kicked hard. You can get up, or you can stay down. I'm saying you're going to get up. Elizabeth and Richard are good people. They know about getting kicked hard. They want to give you a place, give you a family. It's never going to be what it was, but it can be something else. You can make it something else and never forget what it was like in that house there, before the bad stuff happened.”
“I'm afraid.”
“Then you're not as stupid an ass as I thought. Another thing you're not is a coward. You've got to give this a chance, see how it goes.”
“Is Virginia really far away?”
“Not all that much.”
“Can I see you and Roarke and Summerset sometimes?”
“Yeah, I guess. If you actually want to see Summerset's ugly face again.”
“If you promise, I know you mean it. You said you'd find them, and you did. You keep promises.”
“I promise, then. I have to go, finish this.”
Nixie knelt on the seat, leaned over, and kissed Eve's cheek. Then she laid her head on Eve's good shoulder, sighed once. “I'm sorry you got hurt helping me.”
“No big.” She found her hand lifting to stroke over the soft, pale hair. “Just part of the job.”
She sat where she was when Nixie got out. Sat and watched the little girl walk to Roarke, and him bend down as they spoke. The way he gave the child a hug when she kissed him.
Summerset put her in the car, secured her himself, brushed those bony fingers gently over her cheek. As they drove away, Roarke got in beside Eve.
“All right?”
She shook her head. “Need another minute.”
“Take all you need.”
“She'll be okay. She's got guts, and heart. Scared ten years off me when she came running in, but she's got guts.”
“She loves you.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“You found her, you protected her, you saved her. She'll love you more for it as her life heals. You were right to let her see his face.”
“I hope, because I wasn't thinking clear yet. The fall down the stairs-” She broke off, hissed. “Not just the fall. The blood, the knife, the pain. I heard her neck snap, and it was like an echo in my head. When I came out and saw you, there was this dull relief. Distant, in another part of me.”
She drew a long breath. “You'd have let me do it. You'd have stood back and let me put that knife in him.”
“Yes. I'd have stood back and let you do what you needed to do.”
“Even cold-blooded murder.”
“Nothing cold-blooded about it, Eve.” He touched her face, turned it to his. His eyes weren't wild and blue now, she thought, but calm and deep and sure. “You couldn't have done it.”
“I nearly did, I could feel the way it punched through his body.”
“Nearly did. And if something had snapped that clean inside of you, we'd have dealt with it. But what's inside of you, what you are down to the bone, wouldn't have allowed it. You needed to kneel there with that knife in your hand, and to know that.”
“Guess I did.”
“Tomorrow, you'll face him, both of them, in Interview. What you do will be worse to him than a knife in the heart. You beat him, you stopped him, you caged him.”
“Cage him, and another crawls out from under the next rock.” She pressed her shoulder, gave her arm a testing turn. “So I guess I'd better get back in shape, so I can go after the next one.”
“I love you, madly.”
“Yeah, you do.” She smiled and, praying nobody was watching, touched her lips to his burned shoulder. “Let's go clean up, and get back to work.”
She flicked a glance in the rearview as they drove away. Just a house, she thought. They'd clean up the blood, sweep out the death. Another family would move in.
She hoped they had a nice life.
