“Thanks.” She gathered her file bag. “I'll contact McNab, have him meet me there.”

“I want to know when you arrive, when you leave, and when you get back,” Eve told her.

“Yes, sir.”

“Safe trip,” Roarke said, then turned to Eve whenPeabody headed out. “I've got some bits and pieces, but I'm going to need the unregistered to pull them together.”

“Show me what you've got.”

“Let's take it in there.” He ran a hand down her arm as they walked. “You're tired, Lieutenant.”

“Some.”

“It's been a stressful, emotional day.”

She jerked a shoulder when he unlocked his private office with palm and voice ID.

“And Nixie?”

“Mira came by on her way out. She said the kid was doing a little better. That the trip to the morgue… Jesus.” She covered her face with her hands. “God, I didn't think I was going to be able to hold it together in there.”

“I know.”

She shook her head, struggling even now to maintain. “The way she looked at her father, touched him. What was in her eyes when she did. Sorrow, something beyond sorrow. And you knew, seeing that, how much she loved him. That she was never afraid of him, never had to worry if he'd hurt her. We don't know what that's like. We can't. I can find the man who did this, but I can't understand what she feels. And if I can't understand, how can I make it right?”

“Not true.” He brushed her face with his fingers, took away tears. “Who are you weeping for, if not for her?”

“I don't know. I don't know. She doesn't know what I do, but she's living through it. I can't know what she knows. That kind of bond? It's different than what we've got. It's got to be. Child to parent, parent to child. That was taken from her.”

She reached up with her own hands, wiped the tears away. “I stood over my father, with his blood all over me. I can't really remember what I felt. Relief, pleasure, terror-all of it, none of it. He comes back, in my head, in my dreams, and he tells me it's not over. He's right. It's not over. It's never going to be. She makes me see it.”

“I know.” He rubbed an errant tear away with his thumb. “Yes, I know. It's wearing on you, I can see that, too. There doesn't seem to be anything either of us can do about it. You won't pass the case to someone else.” He lifted her chin with his hand before she could answer. “You won't, and I wouldn't want you to. You'd never forgive yourself for stepping aside because of personal distress. And you'd never trust yourself again, not fully, not the way you need to.”

“I saw myself when I found her. Saw myself, instead of her, huddled in a ball, coated in blood. Not just thought of it, but saw it. Just a flash, just for an instant.”

“Yet you brought her here. You face it. Darling Eve.” His voice was like balm on the burn. “The child isn't the only one who shows grace in her steps.”

“Grace isn't the issue. Roarke.” She could tell him, say this to him. “On days like this, part of me wants to go back there, to that room inDallas. Just so I can stand over him again, with his blood all over me and the knife in my hand.”

She closed her fist as if she held the hilt. “Just to kill him again, but this time to know what I feel when I do, to feel it because maybe then it'll be done. Even if it doesn't, to feel that moment when I carved him up. I don't know what that makes me.”

“On days like this, all of me wants to be the one to go back to that room inDallas. To have his blood on me, and the knife in my hands. I know exactly what I would feel. And what it makes us, Eve, is who we are.”

She let out a long breath. “I don't know why that helps when it should probably scare me. She won't feel this way, because she had that base. Because she could lay her head on her mother's dead heart and cry. She'll have sorrow, and nights when she's afraid, but she'll remember why she was able to touch her father's face, her brother's hair, and cry on her mother's breast.”

“She'll remember a cop who stood with her, and held her hand when she did.”

“They're going to throw her into the system, Roarke. Sometimes it's salvation, sometimes it's good, but not for her. I don't want her to be another case file. To cycle through that like I did. I have an idea what could be done, but I wanted to run it by you.”

His face went absolutely still, absolutely blank. “What?”

“I was thinking we could approach Richard DeBlass and Elizabeth Barrister.”

“Oh.” This time it was Roarke who let out a long breath. “Of course. Richard and Beth, good thought.” He turned away, walked away from her to stare out the window.

“If it's a good idea, why are you upset?”

“I'm not.” What was he? He didn't have the name for it. “I should've thought of them myself. I should have thought more clearly.”

“You can't think of everything.”

“Apparently not.”

“Something's wrong.”

He started to deny it, push it aside. And had to accept that it would just be one more mistake. “I can't get my mind off the child. No, that's not it, not altogether. I can't get it out of my head, all of it, not since I went to that house with you. Stood looking at those rooms where those children had been sleeping.”

“It's rougher when it's kids. I should've thought of that before I asked you to do the walkthrough.”

“I'm not green.” He whirled around, his face lit with fury. “I'm not so soft in the belly I can't… Ah, fuck me.” He broke off, ran his hands through his hair.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Obviously alarmed, she crossed over quickly, rubbed his back. “What gives?”

“They were sleeping.” Christ Jesus, would that single thing always sicken him the most? “They were innocent. They had what children are supposed to have. Love and comfort and security. And I looked in those rooms, saw their blood, and it tears at me. Tears at my gut. Tears at the years between. I never think of it. Why should I, goddamn it.”

She didn't ask of what, not when she could see it on his face. Had it only been a short time ago he'd told her he hated to see her look sad? How could she tell him what it did to her guts to see him look devastated?

“Maybe we should sit down a minute.”

“Bloody hell. Bloody buggering hell.” He stalked to the door, booted it closed. “You can't forget it, but you can live with it. And I have. I do. It doesn't beat at me as it does you.”

“So maybe when it does, it's worse.”

He leaned back against the door, stared at her. “I see myself lying in a puddle of my own blood and puke and piss after he beat me unconscious. And yet here I am, aren't I? Damn good suit, big house, a wife I love more than life. He left me there, probably for dead. Didn't even bother to throw me away as he had my mother. I wasn't worth the trouble. Why should I give a damn about that now? But I wonder, what in God's name is the purpose, Eve? What is the purpose when I come to this, and those children are dead? When the one who's left has nothing and no one?”

“You don't deal the cards,” she said carefully. “You just play them. Don't do this to yourself.”

“I cheated and stole and connived my way to what I have, or to the base of it in any case. It wasn't an innocent lying in that alley.”

“Bullshit. That's just bullshit.”

“I'd have killed him.” His eyes weren't devastated now, but winter cold. “If someone hadn't done it before me, when I was older and stronger I'd have gone for him. I'd have finished him. Can't change that either. Well.” He sighed, heavily. “This is useless.”

“It's not. You don't think it's useless when I flood it on you. I like your dick, Roarke, like it fine. But it's irritating when you think with it.”

He opened his mouth, hissed out a breath just before a choked laugh. “It's irritating when you point it out. All right then, let's finish this out with me telling you I went toPhiladelphia today.”

“What the hell for?” She snapped it out. “I told you I needed to know where you were.”