“Holy shit! Best I ever had.”
“Move your ass, Fred.” Wymann shoved him aside. “My turn.”
“It’s enough,” Roarke said and turned to the machine.
“No, it’s not. All of it.”
It made her sick, it made her sweat, but she watched it all. Watched as they went back for more, one by one, and again, even after the girl had passed out.
“She’s done, man.” Easterday sprawled beside her. She lay facedown now, limp. “No fun when she just lies there like a corpse.”
“Let’s clean her up and out. Douche the douche.” Betz cackled at his sick joke.
“She won’t remember anything?” Edward Mira demanded.
“Who’re you talking to?” Betz snorted. “She’ll remember the party—vaguely, but nothing after the first roofie we got in her. We clean her good—no DNA in her when we’re done. We get her dressed, and we dump her back on the campus. Just like we planned. Maybe she cries rape, because that bitch is going to be sore every fucking where, but they can’t put it on us. We’re our own alibis.”
“The Brotherhood,” Wymann said.
“Bet your ass, bro.”
He turned back to the camera, grinned. “And that concludes the First Annual Brotherhood Fuckfest. Thank you and good night!”
The screen went back to blue.
After a long silence, Roarke ejected the disc, put it back in its case.
“These are the men you’d work yourself to exhaustion for? These sick, spoiled, vicious animals are who you’re standing for?”
“I don’t get to choose.” Her voice shook. She fought to steady it. “I don’t get to choose,” she repeated. “I have to do— God, I’m sick.”
She ran out, dropped to the floor in the nearest powder room. Her stomach pitched out the vile and bitter until all that remained was the raw.
“Here now.” Gently, Roarke laid a cool cloth on the back of her neck, stroked her pale, burning face with another. “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry, darling.”
She only shook her head. “No. They are animals, and the ones who live, I’ll work myself to exhaustion to put in cages. I’d bury those cages so deep if I could, they’d never, never see light again. It hurts you, to see someone treated that way, and it hurts more because it makes you think of me. What happened to me.”
He said nothing, only reached up to get the glass he’d set on the counter when he’d come in. “Sip this.”
“I can’t.”
“Trust me now. Just a sip or two. It’ll help settle you.”
“Beating them all into bloody pulps. That would settle me.”
Gently, as Dennis Mira had been gentle, Roarke cupped her cheek. “There’s my Eve. Just a sip now.”
She took one. “And you know I can’t. I can’t do that.”
“And there’s my cop. I’m madly in love with both of them. One more sip now.”
Like Dennis Mira’s brandy in her tea, whatever he’d put in the glass soothed, settled. Maybe it was love that held the magic.
“It hurts you,” she said again.
He sighed, pressed his lips to her brow. Cooler now, he thought, though not a whiff of color had come back to her cheeks. “It does, yes. And yes, it makes me think of you.”
“It hurts you,” she said for a third time, “but you’ll still help me.”
“A ghrá.” He urged another sip on her. “I’m with you.”
She pressed her face to his shoulder, let a few tears spill when he drew her to him. “Every day,” she murmured. “However we got here, however and whyever you’re with me, I’m grateful. Every day.”
She drew back, brushed her lips over his cheek. “I’m sorry we have to do this.”
“There’s no sorry, not for this, not between us. Let’s find at least one of them still breathing, so we can have the satisfaction of that cage.”
“All right.” She pushed away tears with the heels of her hands. “Let’s do that.”
He slipped an arm around her waist as they walked back to her office. “You should have something—a little soup.”
“I don’t think I could keep it down right now. Later, okay?”
“All right. You’ll watch that obscenity again.”
“Yeah, I have to. But later.” She stopped, studied the board. She’d update that, the book, her notes. She needed to check her incomings. Maybe Harvo—Queen of Hair and Fiber—had some hits. Maybe Yancy had some luck.
“I’ve got three names. There are five women, two yet unidentified. If one of the three we have has other property—I’m leaning toward private home, old building, warehouse—a place they could . . . do this work—I need to find it. And I need to find Betz’s other property. All I’ve got is what I think is the street number. And a probability that we’re looking at the Bronx.”
“He had a bank and box there.” Roarke nodded. “Why go there for that unless there was another connection. I can start on both of those, but it would go faster, this sort of wide-range search, on the unregistered. More corners can be cut without CompuGuard watching, or having to avoid that annoyance.”
By agreeing to the use of the unregistered, she’d be cutting corners.
She thought of the girl gang-raped in a basement, and the forty-eight who’d come after her. Sometimes, she thought, corners needing cutting.
“Okay. If you could get started on that, I’ve got some things here I need to do. Then I’ll come work in there with you.”
“Fair enough.” He ran a fingertip down the dent in her chin. “No coffee.”
“What?” She hadn’t thought anything more could appall her that day. “Did you lose your mind between here and the bathroom?”
“You lost your lunch—or whatever passed for nutrition,” he reminded her. “If you need the caffeine, go with a Pepsi. Ginger ale would be better, but I suspect you won’t settle for it.”
“My brain can’t function on the ale of ginger. I don’t even know what it is!”
“Pepsi then—as if you know what the hell’s in that. And a bit of broth to start when you feel more ready for it.”
“Yes, Mom.”
So he kissed her forehead, as a mother might. “Be a good girl, and there may be candy later. I’ll get started.”
“I can copy you a disc with all relevant data.”
He gave her a pitying glance. “Please. As if I can’t hack it out of your comp in less time.”
When he strolled off, she had to admit he was probably right. Then she pressed a hand to her belly. Her brain said: Coffee, please. But he was right again—damn it—her system said: Do that, and I boot.
So she got herself a tube of Pepsi, cracking it as she sat to check her incomings.
She hissed at the number of them, opening one from Yancy first.
Dallas, we hit two high probables on the younger subject. I’m sending you both, but want to add I lean toward hit number two. Elsi Lee Adderman, age twenty—at TOD. Self-termination last year on September nine. Details in attached article. Primary on the investigation was your own Detective Reineke, with Jenkinson on board, so you can get their report, and their take. She went to Yale. Other hit did not.
Still working on the other subject. I’m going to take my pad on this date thing, see if there are any more details to work in and refine the search.
Yancy
“Good work. Damn good.” She ordered the ID photo he’d attached on screen.
Young, she thought, and very, very pretty with wide green eyes and long, wavy brown hair.
Quickly, she scanned the data. Born in Crawford, Ohio, both parents living, and still married—to each other. Two younger siblings, one of each. Exemplary student, entered Yale on partial scholarship. Taking the track toward medicine—course work, extracurricular. And moving right along the track through her first year and nearly through the second.
All more than good until the previous spring, when grades took a dive.
“Like MacKensie,” Eve murmured.
Dropped out, moved to Manhattan, worked as an aide at New York Hospital.
“Never reported a rape, but . . .”
Eve yanked out her communicator, tagged Reineke.
“Yo, boss.”