She drew a breath, let it out. “No, worse, they were just a means to an end, just levels to get through to the win. It made me think about what’s involved in friendships and partnerships. Relationships. I could try to be a better friend, a better partner, but I’ll probably forget.”
“From where I sit you do quite well enough, but I’m happy to remind you if you like.”
“Roarke.” She reached over the table, took his hands. “I thought I understood, when Coltraine went down, I thought I understood what you deal with because of what I do. What I am. But I was wrong. And tonight . . . It was so fast. Blasting that damn room to pieces trying to find the controls. And I did. I did, but seconds too late. In seconds I saw that knife go into you, and the world just stopped. It just ended.”
“But it didn’t.” He squeezed her hands. “And here we are.”
“I did okay before you—without you. I was doing just fine. Christ knows you were doing just fine before me.”
“I don’t want just fine. Do you?”
She shook her head. “I mean, it was okay. When you don’t know what you can have, you do okay with what you’ve got. But now I know, and I don’t think I can get through without you. I wouldn’t be just fine, or okay, or anywhere close to it. I don’t know how people get through. All the people left behind, the ones I have to look in the eye and say he’s gone or she’s gone. I don’t know how they take the next breath.”
“Isn’t that why, in a very real sense, you do what you do? You are what you are?”
“Maybe. You can’t think about it or it makes you crazy. Or sad and tired.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to look straight into his. “When we were in there, and it looked like we wouldn’t walk out again, I could deal with it. Because . . . I know it’s stupid.”
“We’d die together,” he finished.
She let out a half-laugh at the beauty, and the oddity, of being understood so well. “Which is probably sick and selfish, and a bunch of other neurotic shit Mira could pick at. But, yeah. Going down together’s one thing. Taking the next breath without you? That’s not possible. But you have that . . . possibility to cope with every day. Roarke, I wish—”
“Don’t.” His fingers tightened on hers, and his tone sharpened. “Don’t sit there and tell me you wish it could be different. That you could be. I don’t want different. I fell for a cop, didn’t I? I married a cop, though she discouraged me. We’re not easy people, either of us.”
“Really not.”
His arched his eyebrow. “Do you want easy?”
“No. Hell, no. I want you.”
“Well, aren’t we the lucky ones to have exactly what we want?”
“Yeah. We should go home.” She let out a long breath. “Get a little sleep,” she added as she rose. She saw Roarke’s body stiffen, saw the wince as he got to his feet. “After Summerset takes a look at your side.”
“I don’t need him fussing over me. It’ll do.”
It might be small, it might be petty, she thought, but it was both a relief and just a little satisfying to reverse their usual routine.
“The MTs said you could use a follow-up at the hospital,” she reminded him. “So it’s that or Summerset.”
“It’s literally a flesh wound as the knife didn’t get anything but meat.”
“It’s your meat, pal, which makes it mine. In this case, I’ll go with Summerset, a soother, and some sleep. And before you argue, think back to the number of times you’ve hauled my ass to a hospital when I didn’t want to go, or poured a tranq down my throat. Being you’re just a consultant, I outrank you. You were injured on my watch.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Maybe a little. Probably more when we get home and Summerset gives you grief. But for right now?” She looked up at him as she guided his arm around her waist. “Lean on me. I know it hurts.”
“It bloody well does,” he admitted, and leaned on her, a little, as they walked out together.
Epilogue
Eve looked through the glass where Benny sat at Cill’s bed side, his hand over her still one. She could see his lips move, and imagined he read her something as his gaze tracked from his handheld to her face.
Her eyes remained closed, as they had since the attack. “Word is he’s here every day all day,” she told Roarke. “Most of the night—all if he can talk the medical staff into it.”
“Still no change.”
“No. No change.” She walked in. Benny stopped in midsentence. “We’re reading the latest issue of Whirlwind.” But he set the hand-held aside. “Got company, Cill.”
“We can sit with her awhile if you’d like to get some air,” Roarke said.
“No, but thanks.”
“I wanted to let you know,” Eve began, “Var’s lawyers and the PA’s office have reached a plea agreement. I can break it all down for you if you want, but the short version is he’ll do fifty years, hard time, off-planet.”
“It doesn’t matter. What happens to him doesn’t matter. She’s all that matters. Three days now. The doctors, they say that every day she . . . that every day’s good. That she could wake up in five minutes. Or five years. Or never.”
“You believe she’ll wake up.” Roarke laid a hand on Benny’s shoulder.
“And I think when she does, it’ll matter to her that Var pays. For what he did to her, to Bart, to all of you,” Eve added.
“We thought he was one of us, but he wasn’t. Four square—but it was all a lie. I don’t understand it. I can’t. We were together all these years, every day. We worked together, studied, played, ate, laughed, cried. I don’t know how he could do what he did. I’ll never understand it, so he doesn’t matter to me. He won’t ever matter to me again.”
But he drew in a ragged breath. “Why didn’t he go for me instead of her? Why?”
“Do you want the truth or do you want it easy?”
He looked at Eve. “The truth.”
“You were more useful, and she more dangerous. In his mind, in his plan. She’s more of a leader, and you prefer the solo, the research. He could use you, and when he’d used you enough, or when he just couldn’t resist, he’d have set you up, too.”
“If I’d gone in with her. If I’d just—”
“She’d be dead without you,” Roarke said. “He meant to kill her, Benny, and if you hadn’t been there, if you hadn’t stayed with her every second when you found her, he’d have finished her. You saved her life.”
Roarke pulled a chair over, sat beside Benny. “What will you do now, with U-Play?”
“I don’t care about that.”
“She will. She helped build it as you did, as Bart did.”
“If we hadn’t, Bart would be alive. She wouldn’t be here.”
“No. Var’s responsible,” Eve corrected. “Not a company, not a game, not technology. A man. He put her here.”
“I know that.” His tone weary, Benny rubbed his hands over his eyes. “I know it, but . . . You could buy it,” he said to Roarke. “We have good people, and—”
“I could, but I won’t. Bart wouldn’t want that, and neither would she.”
“She’d hate it. But she’s hurt so bad. Even if . . . when, even when she comes out of it, she’ll have so much to go through.”
“But not alone,” Roarke murmured.
“No, not alone.” With his eyes on Cill’s face again, Benny stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “I keep sitting here, thinking about all the times I had a chance to tell her I love her. I’ve loved her since we were kids, but I never have the guts to tell her or show her. I was afraid I’d screw up what we had. And now—”
“You’ll stop wasting time,” Roarke finished.
“You don’t understand.”
“Don’t I?” Roarke looked at Eve. “I know love, and what it does to you, for you. I know that it can bloom out of friendship, or that friendship can open out of love. Both are precious. And when you have both, there’s little th
at can’t be done.”
“You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Eve told him. “And start doing what can be done.”
Anger flashed over Benny’s face, then died. “You’re right. I’m not helping her by thinking about what I can’t do, what I don’t want. Fuck Var. We’re not going to let him win. Dammit, Cill, we can’t let him win. Fifty years? Think of all we can do in fifty years. We’ve barely started.”
He started to bring her hand to his cheek, stopped. “Her fingers moved.” His voice trembled as he squeezed her hand tighter. “Her fingers moved.” He shoved out of his chair to touch her face. “Cill. Cill. Come on, Cilly, please.”
“Keep talking to her,” Eve ordered when Cill’s lashes fluttered.
“Wake up. Please, Cilly, wake up and look at me. Can’t you just look at me? I need you to wake up. I need you so much, Cill.” He touched his lips to her cheek, then gently, gently brushed them over her lips. “Wake up, Cill.”
“Benny.” The word was raw and weak, her eyes dull and unfocused—but open. “Benny.”
Roarke rose, nodded at Eve. “I’ll have them page the doctor.”
“Hey, Cill.” Benny’s tears dripped onto her face. “Hey.”
“Benny. I had a terrible dream. Can you stay with me?”
“Right here.” He shoved down the bed guard, sat beside her. “Right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Eve backed out of the room, stepped aside as one of the nurses hurried in. She walked to Roarke. “We’ll give them some time. Peabody and I will come back tomorrow and get her statement.” She glanced back. “She’s in for a long, painful haul.”
“She’ll make it. They will.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Friendship to love—maybe it would work for them.
Then there was the other choice. Love to friendship, she thought as they took the elevator down. She supposed she and Roarke had taken that route.
It seemed to be working out just fine.
J. D. Robb, Fantasy in Death
(Series: In Death # 30)
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