In Death 18 - Divided in Death

emotionally, even physically as I let myself become ill with the stress and grief. I was very, very frightened. But it was nothing—no more than a bump that leaves you momentarily off-balance—compared to this. Reva might’ve been killed.”
    Caro pressed a hand to her lips, visibly fought for control. “No one’s said that, but it’s there, the possibility of what might have been. Whoever did this thing might have killed her instead of using her to cover the tracks.”
    “She wasn’t. Might-have-beens shouldn’t scare you.”
    “You don’t have children,” Caro said with another, stronger smile, but her eyes were beginning to shine with the tears she was fighting off. “Might-have-beens are the monster in the closet for parents. She might have been killed, or she might be in prison waiting for trial if you weren’t so very good at what you do. If you and Roarke hadn’t been willing to help. I owe him a great deal. Now I owe him, and you, a great deal more.”
    “You figure he wants payback for pitching in for you and Reva?”
    “No. He never does.” She opened her purse, took out a tissue and dabbed at her cheeks. Every movement was economical. “It annoys him. And you, I imagine. You’re so well-suited.”
    Eve felt her throat close, and only managed a shrug.
    “I wondered if you would be. When you first came to the office, so fierce and tough. And cold. At least that’s how I saw you. Then I saw him, after you’d gone. He was baffled and dazzled and frustrated. A rarity for Roarke.”
    “Really? Well, that made two of us.”
    “It’s been an education watching the two of you find each other.” She replaced the tissue, closed her neat black handbag. “He’s an important part of my life. It’s good to see him happy.”
    She didn’t know what to say to that, so asked a question that was circling in her brain. “How did you come to work for him?”
    “I took a secretarial position, entry level, and did drone work at an advertising agency here in New York. My skills weren’t as rusty as I’d thought, and I’d scraped together the money for some classes to reacquaint myself with them. For the most part I was a gofer in one of the legal departments for a time. Then I was a revolving clerk, moving from department to department, filling in where and how I was needed.”
    “Getting a little bit of everything.”
    “Yes. It pleased me, and I thought of it as training. It was good work, and paid well. At a point, I suppose it’s been about a dozen years ago now, Roarke took over the company where I worked, and the company—along with several others—moved into the midtown building.”
    Her voice was stronger now as she took herself back. Took some distance from the present. “Shortly after, I was promoted to an assistant to an assistant in one of the project development arms of the company. A year or so into that, I was asked to sit in on a meeting—just to keep notes, fetch coffee, and look presentable as Roarke himself would be attending. The New York branch was quite young then. There was such energy, and most of it came from him.”
    “He’s got more than his share,” Eve added.
    “He certainly does. During the meeting, one of the execs snapped at me when I didn’t move fast enough to suit him, and I responded with something about his manners being as unattractive as his suit, or some such thing.”
    “So Reva gets her temper from you.”
    Caro let out a half-laugh. “I suppose she does. Roarke ignored the little altercation—or so I thought—and continued with the meeting. At some point he asked me to run the holo of the building he was designing, and later to bring up the data on something else. He had me hopping around, doing tasks that weren’t in any particular domain, but those years of revolving had paid off. Still, once my annoyance with the exec was cleared, I was terrified I was going to be fired. The meeting lasted more than two hours, and it seemed like years. When it was over, all I wanted to do was find a corner and collapse. But he gestured to me. ‘It’s Caro, isn’t it,’ he said in that wonderful voice of his. ‘Bring those files and come with me, would you?’”
    “Now I knew I was going to be fired, and I was frantic thinking of how I’d find another job, keep Reva in college, make the payments on the condo I’d bought three years before. He took me in his private elevator, and I was shaking inside, but I wasn’t going to let him see it.