In Death 18 - Divided in Death

skillfully with elegance and style.
    Maybe she wasn’t meant to. Maybe if she could reach in, take hold of that knot and loosen it, he wouldn’t be the same man she loved.
    But God, my God, what would she do if he killed a man over her? How could she survive that?
    How could they?
    Could she continue to hunt killers knowing she lived with one? Because she was afraid of the answer, she didn’t look too deeply. Instead she stepped back inside, filled her cup again.
    She walked back into her office, stood in front of her board, and pushed her mind back into work. Her answer was an absent and faintly irritated “What?” when someone knocked on her door.
    “Lieutenant. I’m sorry to disturb you.”
    “Oh. Caro.” It threw her off to see Roarke’s admin in her sharp black suit at her office door. “No problem. I didn’t know you were here.”
    “I came in with Reva. I’m going into the midtown office, to work. I needed some details from Roarke on a project. Well, that doesn’t matter.” She lifted her hands in a rare flustered move, then dropped them again. “I wanted to speak to you before I left, if you have a moment.”
    “Sure. Okay. You want coffee or something?”
    “No. Nothing, thank you. I . . . I’d like to close the door.”
    “Go ahead.” She saw Caro’s gaze go to the board, the stills of the murder scenes, the garish ones of the bodies. Deliberately, Eve moved to her desk and gestured to a chair that would put the images out of Caro’s line of vision. “Have a seat.”
    “You look at this sort of thing all the time, I imagine.” Caro made herself take a long look before she ordered her legs to move, and took the chair. “Do you get used to it?”
    “Yes. And no. You look a little wobbly yet. Maybe you shouldn’t be going back to work so soon.”
    “I need to work.” Caro straightened her shoulders. “You’d understand.”
    “Yeah, I get that.”
    “As does Reva. I know getting back to what she does will help her state of mind. She’s not herself. Neither am I. We’re not sleeping well, but we pretend we are, for each other’s sake. And this isn’t at all what I came here to say. Rambling isn’t like me either.”
    “Guess not. You always struck me as being hyper-efficient. Have to be to handle Roarke’s stuff. But if something like this didn’t throw you off-stride, I’d have to figure you for a droid.”
    “Just the right note.” Caro nodded. “You know what note to take with victims and survivors, witnesses or suspects. You were brisk, even brusque with Reva. That’s the sort of tone she responds best to when she’s stressed. You’re very intuitive, Lieutenant. You’d have to be . . . to handle Roarke.”
    “You’d think.” Eve tried not to let the words that had passed between them the night before replay in her head. “What do you need, Caro?”
    “Sorry. I know I’m taking up your time. I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done, and are doing. I realize you look at variations of what’s on that board every day. That you deal with victims and survivors, listen to statements and questions, and work toward finding the answers. It’s what you do. But this is personal for me, so I wanted to tell you, to thank you, in a personal way.”
    “Then you’re welcome in a personal way. I like you, Caro. I like your daughter. But if I didn’t, I’d be doing the same thing I’m doing now.”
    “Yes, I know. But that fact doesn’t change my gratitude. When Reva’s father left us, I was devastated. My heart was broken, and my energies scattered. I was only a bit older than you,” she added, “and it seemed the end of the world. I thought, ‘What will I do? How will I get through this? How will I get my baby through it?’”
    She stopped, shook her head. “And this isn’t of any possible interest to you.”
    “No.” Eve gestured Caro back down when she started to rise. “Finish it out. I am interested.”
    Caro sat again, sighed. “I will, then, as all this keeps running through my mind. I had, at that time, very few personal resources—some secretarial skills I’d let rust as I’d wanted to be a professional mother. There were debts, and though he’d incurred most of them, he was smarter and, well, meaner than I was.”
    “Must’ve been pretty smart, then.”
    “Thank you. I wasn’t as . . . seasoned then as I am now. And he had better lawyers,” she added with a ghost of a smile. “So I was in a pit, financially,