But they would hurt her.
“I won’t. I’ll answer. I’ll answer.”
“Where is Nixie Swisher?”
“Who?”
The pain struck like a fiery ax, slicing her up the center. Her screams burst into the air, and tears of shock spilled down her cheeks. Her bowels went to water.
“Please, please.”
“Please, please.” It was a woman’s voice, a sneering mimic of her own. “Jesus, she shit herself. Pussy.”
Meredith screamed again when the icy water struck her. She began to weep now, thick, wet sobs, as she realized she was naked, wet, soiled.
“Where is Nixie Swisher?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
And sobbing, she braced for the agony that didn’t come. Her breath came in pants now, her eyes tracking back and forth, from the dark, to the sliver of light, to the dark, to the light.
“Your name is Meredith Newman.”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” Her skin was on fire, her bones were like ice. “God. God.”
“Is Nixie Swisher one of your cases, as an employee of Child Protection Services?”
“I—I—I get so many. There are so many. I can’t remember. Please don’t hurt me, please, I can’t remember.”
“Register blue,” one of them said from behind her.
“Overworked, Meredith?”
“Yes.”
“I understand that. The system sucks you up, sucks you dry. The wheel of it runs over and crushes what’s left of you. Revolution comes because of all it crushes. You’re tired of the wheel, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“But it’s not done with you yet. Tell me, Meredith, how many families have you destroyed?”
“I—” Tears spilled into her mouth. She swallowed the salt of them. “I try to help.”
Impossible, unspeakable pain seared into her. Her screams were mindless pleas for mercy.
“You’re a cog on that wheel. A cog on the wheel that crushes out the lifeblood. But now it’s turning around to crush you, isn’t it? Do you want to escape, Meredith?”
She tasted vomit on her tongue, in her throat. “Yes. No more, please, no more.”
“Nixie Swisher. Let me refresh you. A girl, a young girl who wasn’t in her bed as she was told to be. Disobedient child. Disobedient children should be punished. Isn’t that right?”
She opened her mouth, unsure. “Yes,” she said, praying it was the answer he wanted.
“Do you remember her now? Do you remember the little girl who wasn’t in her bed? Grant and Keelie Swisher, deceased. Executed for heinous acts. Their throats were slit, Meredith. Do you remember now?”
His voice had changed, just a little. There was a fervor that hadn’t been there before. Part of her brain registered the fact while the rest gibbered in fear. “Yes. Yes, I remember.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I swear I don’t know.”
“In the blue,” the other voice reported.
“Jolt.”
She screamed and screamed and screamed as the pain tore into her.
“You reported to the Swisher residence on the night they were executed.”
Her body continued to shudder. Spittle dribbled down her chin.
“Did you speak with Nixie Swisher?”
“Interview, exam. Exam, interview. Standard. No injuries, no molestation. Shocky.”
“What did she see?”
“I can’t see.”
“What did Nixie Swisher see?”
“Men. Two men. Knives, throats. Blood. We’ll hide now. Hide and be safe.”
“Losing her.”
“Stimulant.”
She wept again, wept because she was back, aware, awake, and the dregs of pain still lived in her. “No more, please. No more.”
“There was a survivor of the Swisher execution. What did she tell you?”
“She said . . .” Meredith told them everything she knew.
“That’s very good, Meredith. Very concise. Now where is Nixie Swisher?”
“They didn’t tell me. The cop took her. Against procedure, but she had weight.”
“As her caseworker, you must be informed of her location. You must supervise her.”
“Over my head. Under the table. I don’t know. Cop took her. Police protection.”
She lost track of the pain now, of the times it ripped through her like burning arrows. Lost track of the times they brought her back from the edge of oblivion, pounded her with questions.
“Very well, Meredith. I’ll need the address of every safe house you know. Every hidey-hole the system digs.”
“I can’t—I’ll try,” she screamed against the next wave of agony. “I’ll try to remember.” She blurted out addresses between sobs and whimpers. “I don’t know all of them, I don’t know all. Only what they tell me. I’m not in charge.”
“Just a cog in the wheel. Who took Nixie Swisher?”
“The cop. Homicide cop. Dallas. Lieutenant Dallas.”
“Yes, of course. Lieutenant Dallas. That’s very good, Meredith.”
“I’ve told you everything. Everything I know. Are you going to let me go?”
“Yes, we are. Very soon.”
“Water, please. Could I have some water?”
“Did Lieutenant Dallas indicate where she could take Nixie Swisher?”
“No, no. I swear, I swear. Into her custody. Not regs, but she pushed it through. I wanted to get home. It was a bad place to be. I wanted to get out. Supposed to check into the safe house with the subject, but Dallas overrode me. I let her.”
“Have you been in contact with Lieutenant Dallas since that night?”
“No. The bosses took it over. They don’t tell me. It’s high-profile. It’s sensitive. I’m just—”
“A cog on the wheel.”
“I don’t know anything. Will you let me go now?”
“Yes. You can go now.”
The knife slashed so fast, so cleanly across her throat, she never felt it.
9
EVE WALKED INTO HER OWN HOME AS IF SHE were walking into an op. “No one comes in, no one goes out,” she snapped to Summerset, “without my clearance. Savvy?”
“Certainly.”
“Where’s the kid?”
“In the game room with Officer Trueheart.” Summerset hitched back the cuff of his black jacket to reveal a wrist unit. Not a time piece, Eve noted, but a monitor. On it, she saw Trueheart and Nixie battling it out on one of Roarke’s classic pinball machines.
“I took the precaution of pinning a homer on her sweater,” he added. “If she moves from one location to another, it signals.”
Despite herself, Eve was impressed. “Sweet.”
“They will not lay a hand on that child.”
She looked at him. He’d lost a child, a daughter, not that much older, really, than this one. Whatever else she thought of him, she understood he would stand as Nixie’s shield.
“No, they won’t. Roarke?”
“He’s here. In his private office.”
“Right.” The office where he kept his unregistered—and therefore illegal—equipment. However much she trusted Peabody, there were lines. “Head up, will you,” she said to Peabody. “Give Baxter the current. I’m going to update Roarke, then we’ll conference. My office.”
As her partner started up the steps, Eve moved out of the foyer and to the elevator. There she paused. “I need them alive,” she said to Summerset. “Best-case scenario.”
“One of them alive would do.”
She turned back. “She will be protected. Extreme measures, including termination, will be employed if necessary. But consider this before you get your juices up. Two men grabbed Meredith Newman off the street—and one to drive, so that makes three. There may be more. I don’t get one healthy, that I can sweat, she may never be safe. The more of them I get healthy, the better chance I have to get them all. To get the why. Without the why, she may never
be safe. And she’ll never know. You don’t know the why, you don’t always heal.”
Though his face remained unreadable, Summerset nodded. “You’re quite right, Lieutenant.”
She stepped into the elevator, ordered Roarke’s private office.
He knew when she came through the gates, and that she’d come up before much longer. So he closed the file, went back to evaluating his security.
He didn’t think it was appropriate right at the moment to tell her one of the tasks he’d chosen for the unregisters was in-depth—and technically illegal—background checks on all of Nixie’s family connections.
The grandmother was out. She’d had a few misdemeaner illegals charges, any number of cohabs, and had a part-time licensed companion standing.
Perhaps the moral judgment was ironic as he was currently an official guardian for the child and had done worse. Considerably worse.
But he was making it nonetheless. He wouldn’t see a child turned over to a woman of that sort. She deserved better.
He’d found Grant Swisher’s biological father. It had taken a bit of time, but the moral judgment there had come swiftly.
The man was rarely employed, had done a short stint for petty theft, and another for jacking vehicles.
The step-sister looked more promising. She was married, a corporate lawyer out of Philadelphia. Childless. No criminal on record, and financially solvent. She’d been married, to another lawyer, for seven years.
The child could have a home with her, temporarily, even permanently should it become necessary. A good home, he thought, with someone who’d known her parents, who felt some connection.
He sat back, tipped back in the chair. It was none of his business. Not a bit of it.
The hell it wasn’t. He was responsible for that child now, whether he’d chosen to be or not. Whether he wanted to be or not.
He had stood outside her bedroom, had seen what had nearly been done to her.
He had stood outside her brother’s room, had seen what had been done. A young boy’s blood drying to rust on the sheets, the walls.
Why was it that seeing it made him see his own? He didn’t think of those days, or so rarely it didn’t count. He wasn’t—wouldn’t be—haunted by nightmares as Eve was. He was done with those days, and what had been.
But he thought of them now, had thought of them too many times since he’d been inside the Swisher home.
He remembered seeing his own blood. Coming to, barely. Obscene pain swimming through him as he stared at his own blood on the filthy ground of the alley after his father had beaten him half to death.
More than half, come to that.
Had he meant to kill him? Why hadn’t he ever wondered that before? He’d killed before.
Roarke looked at the photo of his mother, of himself as a baby. Such a young, pretty face she’d had, he thought. Even bruised by the bastard’s fists, she’d had a pretty face.
Until Patrick Roarke had smashed it, until he’d murdered her with his own hands and tossed her in the river like sewage. And now her son couldn’t remember her. He’d never remember her voice, or her scent. And there was nothing to be done about it.
She’d wanted him, this pretty girl with the bruised face. She’d died because she’d wanted to give her son family.
Those few years later, had Patrick Roarke, God rot him, meant to leave his own son for dead, or had he simply used his fists and feet as usual?
A lesson for you, boy-o. Life’s full of hard lessons.
Roarke dragged his hands through his hair, pressed them to his temples. Christ, he could hear the cocksucker’s voice, and that would never do. He wanted a drink, and nearly rose to pour himself a whiskey, just to take off the edge.
But that was a weakness—drinking because you wanted to blunt the edge. Hadn’t he proved every day, every bloody day of the life he’d been given that he wouldn’t be weak?
He hadn’t died in that alley, as poor young Coyle had died in his bed. He’d lived, because Summerset had found him, had cared enough to take a broken boy in—a nasty little son of a bitch, as well.
He’d taken him in, and tended him. And given him a home.
In a human world, even one of murder and blood, didn’t an innocent girl like Nixie Swisher deserve that much? Deserve more than he’d been given?
He’d help her get it, for her sake—and for his own. Before his father’s voice got too loud in his head.
He didn’t get the whiskey. Instead he pushed aside the memories, the questions, and as much of the sickness of heart as he could manage, and waited for his wife to step into the room.
The room was full of light, the wide windows uncovered. She knew no surveillance device could penetrate the privacy screens on them. Unless he’d built surveillance devices himself, she thought. Then he’d have built better screens.
At the wide black U of the control console, he sat, jacket discarded, sleeves rolled up, the silk of his hair tied back with a cord.
Work mode.
The console always looked a bit futuristic to her, just as the man who piloted it could remind her of a pirate at the helm of a spaceship.
Lights flashed on that glossy black like jewels as he worked the controls, manually, and by voice.
On the wall screens were different areas of his domain, and the various computer responses gave brisk reports.
“Lieutenant.”
“I’m sorry about this. I’m sorry about what I may be bringing here.”
He stopped what he was doing. “Pause operations. You’re upset,” he said, as coolly as he’d spoken to the equipment. “So I’ll forgive that insulting remark.”
“Roarke—”
“Eve.” He rose, crossed the wide black floor toward her. “Are we a unit, you and I?”
“Doesn’t seem to be any way around it.”
“Or through it.” He took her hands and the contact steadied him. “Or under it, over it. Don’t apologize to me for doing what you felt was right for that child.”
“I could’ve taken her to a safe house. I second-guessed myself on that half a dozen times today. If I had, Newman would know some of the locations. If they get them out of her . . . hell, not if, when. There are cops scrambling right now to move people out of what should be secure locations. Just in case.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “A minute.” He moved back, fast, to the console, switched on a ’link. “Dochas,” he snapped into it. “Code Red, immediate and until further notice.”
“Oh Christ.”
“It’s handled,” he said, turning from the ’link. “I have built-in procedures for just this sort of thing. It’s unlikely they’ll believe you would take her there—with so many others. Less likely yet they can find it. But it’s handled. Just as this is.”
He stepped back to her, nodded toward the screens. “I have every inch of the wall and gate secured.”
“A teenager once got over using a homemade jammer.”
The fact that he looked momentarily perturbed by the memory lightened her load. “Jamie is no ordinary teenager. Nor was he able to get through the secondaries. And I’ve upgraded since then. Believe me, Eve, they won’t get in.”
“I do believe you.” Still she paced to the window, to look out, to see the walls for herself. “Newman doesn’t know I brought the kid here. Went over her on it, and didn’t tell her, mostly because she irritated me. Just a little slap. My balls are bigger than your balls kind of thing. Petty.”
“Being petty—and I do love that about you—has added another layer of protection over Nixie.”
“Dumb luck. But why argue with dumb luck? I’ve had her supervisor picked up, taken into protective. Had all the paperwork buried.” She huffed out a breath. “I’ve got Mira locked down, too, just in case her involvement leaks. She’s not happy with me.”
“Her safety’s more important than her happiness.”
“Put surveillance on Peabody’s place. She’s mine, so they may go for her.”
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“She and McNab can stay here.”
“One big, happy family. No. We deviate from routine too much, they’ll know we’re waiting for them to make a move.”
“Eve. You and I both know they’re unlikely to move on this house tonight, even if they believe the child is here. They’re careful, they’re organized. They’re controlled. They would have to obtain or simulate my system. Believe me when I say that alone would take them weeks. Then they’d have to find the chinks—of which there are none—they’d have to practice. If you haven’t run a probability on that, as I have, I’d be very surprised.”
“A little over twelve percent.” She turned to him, framed now by the wide, wide glass. “But we don’t take chances.”
“And the probability they’ll try for you?” He lifted his eyebrows when she said nothing, when he saw the faint irritation on her face. “Ninety-six.”
“You’re right behind me, pal, at ninety-one.”
“Bloody annoying to have you slip by me by five percent. You were working up to asking me—and I use that verb tongue in cheek—to lock myself down in here. Are we going to argue about that so that I have to throw that five percent probability in your face?”
Thoughtfully, she rocked back and forth on her heels. “I had a pretty good argument worked out.”
“Why don’t you save it for another time?”
“I can do that.”
The in-house ’link signalled. “This is Roarke,” he said from where he stood, his attention still on Eve.
“As per her instructions, I’m informing the lieutenant that Captain Feeney and Detective McNab are requesting entrance at the gate.”
“You verify ID visually and by voice print?” she asked Summerset.
“Of course.”
“They’re cleared to come through. I want to go talk to my team,” she said to Roarke. “Okay if that includes you?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way. Give me a couple of minutes to finish in here. I’ll be along.”
She walked to the elevator, stood looking at the door when it opened at her command. “Roarke? The thing is about probabilities, they don’t always factor in every element. They can’t fully and successfully analyze every human emotion. The computer doesn’t factor in that if someone got to you, it would take me down. If they used you, bargained your life, there isn’t much I wouldn’t do to get you back. So you factor that in, and I figure you’ve cut ahead of me on the probability scale.”