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“Bring her over here.”
“I don’t think—”
“I’m not asking you to think.” Eve crossed over herself, and when she wiggled down, took one of Nixie’s hands in her bloody one. “The woman’s dead,” she said flatly. “Neck snapped when we took that header down the steps.”
Not my arm, Eve thought, though it ached like a rotten tooth.
“There’s another upstairs.”
“He’s unconscious, unarmed, and restrained,” Summerset said.
“This one’s hurt bad,” Eve went on. “But he’ll live. He’ll live a long time—the longer the better—because he’ll never be free again. He’ll eat and piss and sleep where and when he’s told. Where he’s going . . . you getting this, Kirkendall?” she demanded. “Where he’s going, it’s like death. Only you live through it, day after day after day.”
Nixie looked down, and her fingers tightened on Eve’s. “She’s going to put you in a goddamn cage,” she said, clearly now. “Then, when you die, you’re going to hell.”
“That’s quite right.” Summerset went to Nixie again, picked her up. “Now let’s go outside and let the lieutenant do her job.”
Peabody rushed in, a few strides ahead of an army of cops. “Jesus loving Christ.”
“Baxter’s down. Out in the back most likely. See if he’s alive.” She turned to a uniform as Peabody raced out. “One suspect down on the second floor, unconscious and restrained. A second in that room over there, dead. This one makes three. I want MTs, CSU, the ME, sweepers, and Captain Feeney from EDD.”
“Sir, you don’t look so good yourself.”
“Get that going, I’ll worry about how I look.” She started to go out to check on Baxter herself, and saw him being helped toward the house by Peabody.
Her knees trembled in relief. “Should’ve known the sick bastard wouldn’t be dead. Where the hell was my backup, Baxter?”
“Got me dead in the shield. Must’ve.” He pressed a hand to the back of his head, showed the smear of blood. “Gave me a whale of a kick. Cracked my head on the frigging patio. Got the mother of all headaches.”
“Concussion,” Peabody said. “Needs a health center.”
“See he’s transported.”
“What the hell happened here? Anybody dead?”
“One of them,” Eve told him.
“Okay then. Tell me later. Peabody, my beauty, get me drugs.”
Roarke touched her lightly on the back. “Let’s have a look at that arm then, and the rest of you.”
“Got a couple of jabs in past my guard. I got a couple of sticks into her. Tit for fricking tat.”
“Your nose is bleeding.”
Eve swiped at it. “I broke hers. See who’s the pussy now. Kicked her ass right through the door, but she was just quick enough to take me on a ride down that flight of stairs with her. Fall—I think it was the fall—snapped her neck. She was dead when we landed.”
She wrapped a hand around her bloody shoulder, turned toward him. And really saw him for the first time. “You’re hit. How bad?”
“He got a couple of streams past my guard,” he said, and smiled. “Hurts like a bitch, too.”
She touched his cheek with her bloody fingers. “Got a black eye coming on.”
“He got worse. Why don’t we—oh, well now, that’s extreme,” he said when she ripped away the tattered sleeve of his shirt.
“It was trashed anyway.” She poked and prodded at his wound and made him curse in two languages. “Shoulder’s nasty.”
“As is yours.” He lifted his brows as two MTs came through. “Ladies first.”
