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“Yeah.” She yawned as they rode to the bedroom. “You hold your breath on that one.”
She was in bed in five minutes, asleep in ten.
When the dream started, she didn’t know.
A white room, washed with blood. She could see herself walking through it, her boots splashed with red as she stepped in grisly puddles.
Even in sleep she could smell it.
The girl was facedown on white carpet thick with red blood. Her arm was stretched out, fingers spread as if she reached for something.
But nothing was there.
The knife was there.
In the dream she crouched down, picked up the knife by the hilt.
She felt the slick warm wetness that ran from it onto her hand.
When she looked, it wasn’t the girl now, but a baby. Hardly more than a baby. Cut to pieces, curled up tight. Her eyes were like a doll’s, staring.
She remembered. She remembered. Such a little thing. So much blood for such a little body. And the man who’d done it, the father, mad on Zeus. The baby screaming, screaming, as Eve had charged up the stairs.
Too late. She’d been too late to save the baby. Killed the father, but lost the child.
She hadn’t saved them, the baby, the girl. And their blood was on her hands.
The knife gleamed over her fingers.
The room wasn’t white any longer. It was small and dirty and cold. So cold. The red washed in from the light through the window. Over her hands. Little hands now on the hilt of a knife.
When he walked in the door, the red light bounced off his face like a shadow of the blood yet to be spilled.
“Eve.” Roarke gathered her close, holding tight when she struggled. Her skin was iced. As she wept in her sleep, it tore his heart to pieces. “Eve, wake up. Come back now. Just a dream.” He pressed his lips to her brow, her cheeks. “Just a dream.”
“Kill the father, save the child.”
“Ssh.” He ran his hands soothingly over her back, under the old white shirt she favored for sleeping. “I’m here with you. You’re safe.”
“So much blood.”
“God.” He sat up with her, held her in his lap and rocked her in the dark.
“I’m all right.” She turned her face into his shoulder. Somehow just the scent of him could center her. “Sorry. I’m okay.”
“I’m not, so you can hold on to me awhile.”
She slid her arms around his waist. “Something about Hannah Wade, the way . . . the way she died. It reminded me of this little girl. Baby really. The little girl whose father ripped her up. I got there too late.”
“Yes, I remember. It was just before we met.”
“She haunts me. I couldn’t save her, couldn’t get to her in time. And I think that maybe if you hadn’t come into my life right after, that’s the one that might’ve broken me. But she haunts me, Roarke. A little ghost to add to all the others. To add to myself.”
“You remember her, Eve.” He brushed his lips over her hair. “Perhaps you’re the only one who does.”
In the morning, she got up early enough to do a hard, sweaty workout, then took a long swim. She beat off the fatigue and the vague, nagging hangover from the nightmare.
