Reunion in Death

She stared out the window. «No.» Then shut her eyes. «No, we'll go into Dallas.»

*** CHAPTER 13 ***

When the Dallas skyline swam into view through waves of heat, it triggered no memory inside her, but instead brought on a vague puzzlement. It had the towering buildings, the urban sprawl, the jammed spaces. But it was so different from New York.

Age, she realized, was part of it. All of this was young when compared to the east. Brasher somehow, but without the edge. Dallas was, after all, one of so many settlements that had grown into towns, then towns that had boomed into cities, long after New York, Boston, Philadelphia were established.

And the architecture lacked the fancy fuss found in the older buildings of the east that had survived the Urban Wars or been restored afterward. Here the towers were sleek and gleaming and for the most part unadorned.

Blimps and billboards announced rodeos, cattle drive tours, sales on cowboy boots and hats. And barbecue was king.

They might as well be driving on Venus.

«There's more sky,» she said absently. «More sky here, almost too much of it.»

Sun flashed blindingly off steel towers, walls of glass, the ringing people glides. She pushed her shaded glasses more securely on her nose.

«More roads,» she said, and could hear the steadiness in her own voice. «Not as much air traffic.»

«Do you want to go to the hotel?»

«No, I… maybe you could just drive around or something.»

He laid a hand over hers, then took a downtown exit.

It seemed more closed in, with the blue plate of the sky like a lid over the buildings, pressing down on the streets jammed with too many cars driving too fast in too many directions.

She felt a wave of dizziness and fought it back.

«I don't know what I'm looking for.» But it wasn't this abrupt sense of panic. «He never let me out of the goddamn room, and when I… after I got out, I was in shock. Besides it was more than twenty years ago. Cities change.»

Her hand trembled lightly under his, and his own clamped on the wheel. He stopped at a light, turned to study her face. It was pale now. «Eve, look at me.»

«I'm okay. I'm all right.» But it took a great deal of courage to turn her head, meet his eyes. «I'm okay.»

«We can drive to the hotel, and let this go for now. Forever, if that's what you want. We can drive straight to the airport and go back to New York. Or we can go to where they found you. You know where it was. It's in your file.»

«Did you read my file?»

«Yes.»

She started to pull her hand back, but his fingers closed tight. «Did you do anything else? Run any searches?» She asked.

«No. I didn't, no, because you wouldn't want it. But it can be done that way if and when you do.»

«I don't want it that way. I don't want that.» Her stomach began to hitch. «The light's turned.»

«Fuck the light.»

«No, just drive.» She took a deep breath as horns began to blast behind them. «Just drive for a minute. I need to settle down.»

She slid down a bit in the seat and fought a vicious war with her own fears. «You wouldn't think less of me if I asked you to turn around and drive out of here?»

«Of course not.»

«But I would. I'd think less of me. I need to ask you for something.»

«Anything.»

«Don't let me back out. Whatever I say later, I'm telling you now I have to see this through. Wherever it goes. If I don't, I'll hate myself. I know it's a lot to ask, but don't let me rabbit out.»

«We'll see it through then.»

He wove through traffic, turning onto roads that weren't so wide now, weren't so clean. The storefronts here, when they weren't boarded up, were dull with grime.

Then everything began to spruce up again, slowly, as if some industrious domestic droid had begun work at one end and was polishing its way down to the other.

Small, trendy shops and eateries, freshly rehabbed apartments and town homes. It spoke, clearly, of the gradual takeover of the disenfranchised area by the upwardly mobile young urbanite with money, energy, and time.

«This is wrong. It's not like this.» Staring out the window, she saw the shamble of public housing, the broken glass, the screaming lights of yesterday's slum quarter superimposed over today's brisk renewal.

Roarke pulled into a parking garage, found a slot, cut the engine. «It might be better if we walked a bit.»

Her legs were weak, but she got out of the car. «I walked then. I don't know how long. It was hot then, too. Hot like this.»

«You'll walk with me now.» He took her hand.

«It wasn't clean like this.» She clung to his hand as they walked out of the garage, onto the sidewalk. «It was getting dark. People were shouting. There was music.» She looked around, staring through the present into the past. «A strip club. I didn't know what it was, exactly, but there was music pouring out whenever someone opened the door. I looked inside, and I thought maybe I could go in because I could smell food. I was so hungry. But I could smell something else. Sex and booze. He'd smelled like that. So I ran away as fast as I could. Someone yelled after me.»