In Death 08 - Conspiracy in Death

you got the additional amenity of a toilet.
    "Third floor," Eve said briefly. "East corner."
    "You get the room I give you."
    "Third floor," she said again. "East corner."
    His gaze lowered to the hundred dollar credit Roarke flipped into the tray. "Don't mean a shit to me." He reached behind, took a key code from a rack. His fingers snagged the credit, then tossed down the key. "Fifty minutes. You go over, you pay double."
    Eve took the key for 3C, relieved to see her hand was still steady. They took the stairs.
    It wasn't familiar, yet it was painfully familiar. Narrow steps, dirty walls, thin sounds of sex and misery seeping through them. Cold, from the wind battering the brick and glass, reached down and froze the bones.
    She said nothing as she slipped the key into the slot, pushed the door open.
    The air was bitter and stale, with echoes of sweat and sex. The sheets on the bed shoved into the corner were stained with both and the rusty shadows of old blood.
    With the breath strangling in her throat, she stepped inside. Roarke closed the door behind them, waited.
    A single window, cracked. But so many were. The old floor, slanted and scarred. But she'd seen hundreds like it. Her legs trembled as she made herself walk across it, stand at that window and stare out.
    How many times, she wondered, had she stood at windows in filthy little rooms and imagined herself leaping out, letting her body fall, feeling it smash and break on the street below? What had held her back, time after time, made her face the next day and the next?
    How many times had she heard the door open and prayed to a God she didn't understand to help her. To spare her. To save her.
    "I don't know if this is the room. There were so many rooms. But it was one like it. It's not so different from the last room, in Dallas. Where I killed him. But I was younger here. That's all I know for sure. I get a faded image of myself in my head. And of him. His hands around my throat."
    Absently, she reached up, soothed the memory of the ache. "Over my mouth. The shock of him pushing himself inside me. Not knowing, not knowing at first, what that meant. Except pain. Then you know what it means. You know you can't stop it. And as much as it hurts when he beats you, you hope when you hear the door open that's all he'll do. Sometimes it is."
    Eyes closed now, she rested her brow on the cracked glass. "I thought maybe I'd remember something from before. Before it all started. I had to come from somewhere. Some woman had to carry me inside her the way Karen's carrying her goddamn miracle. For God's sake, how could she leave me with him?"
    He turned her, wrapped his arms around her, drew her in. "She might not have had a choice."
    Eve swallowed back the grief and the rage, and finally the questions. "You always have a choice." She stepped back, but kept her hands on his shoulders. "None of this matters now. Let's go home."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    There wasn't any point in pretending to unwind. Nor was there any point in thinking about what she had to face the next day. Work was the answer. Before she could tell Roarke her intentions, he was making arrangements to have a meal sent up to his private office.
    "It makes more sense to use that equipment," he said simply. "It's faster, more efficient, and more thoroughly cloaked." He arched a brow. "That's what you want, isn't it?"
    "Yeah. I want to tag Feeney first," she began as they started upstairs. "Fill him in on my conversation with McRae."
    "I'll input the disc he gave you while you're doing that, do a quick cross-reference."
    "You're almost as good as Peabody."
    He stopped at the door, grabbed her up in a steaming kiss. "You can't get that from Peabody."
    "I could if I wanted." But it made her grin as he uncoded the locks. "But I like you better for sex."
    "I'm relieved to hear it. Use the minilink. It's fully jammed and untraceable."
    "What's one more com-tech violation?" she muttered.
    "That's what I always say." He sat behind the console, slid into the U, and got to work.
    "Feeney, Dallas. I'm back from Chicago."
    "I was just about to tag you. We got a hit on the lapel pin."
    "When?"
    "Just came in. Gold caduceus purchased less than one hour ago at Tiffany's, charged to the account of Dr. Tia Wo. I'm picking Peabody up for a little overtime. We're going to go have a chat with the doctor."
    "Good. Great." Everything inside her yearned to be there at the sticking point. "You track Vanderhaven?"
    "He's skipping around