In Death 12 - Betrayal in Death

already gone from white to gray. "Am I forgiven then, Eve darling?"
    "Stay quiet." She crouched down to check his pulse. "Help's on the way."
    "I owed him that, you know." Mick shifted his eyes to Roarke. "I owed you that, though I didn't expect to pay so dear. Christ, doesn't anybody have any fucking drugs for a man?" He fumbled out, gripped Roarke's hand desperately. "Hold onto me, won't you? There's a lad."
    "You'll be all right." Roarke squeezed as if he could make it so by will alone. "You'll come round."
    "You know I'm done." A trickle of blood bubbled through his lips. "You got my signals, didn't you?"
    "Yes, I got them."
    "Just like old times. Do you remember..." He moaned, had to fight for a breath. "When we took the mayor's house in London, cleaning out his parlor while he was upstairs ramming it to his mistress while his wife was visiting her sister in Bath?"
    He couldn't stop the blood. Couldn't hold back the stream of it. He could smell death creeping close, and could only pray Mick could not. "I remember you snuck up the stairs and took videos of it with his own bloody camera. And later we sold them back to him, and fenced the camera as well."
    "Aye, aye, those were good times. Happiest of my life. Jesus, what a flaming shame it is that my mother, bless her black heart, should be right after all. At least I got the knife in my belly in a fine hotel and not a second-rate pub."
    "Quiet, Mick, the MTs are coming."
    "Oh, screw 'em." He sighed hugely, and for one moment his eyes were clear as crystal. "Will you light a candle for me in St. Pat's?"
    Roarke's throat wanted to close, his mind to reject. But he nodded. "Aye."
    "That's something then. Roarke, you were ever a true friend to me. It's happy I am for you that you found that one thing. See that you keep hold of it. Slan."
    And turning his face to the side, he was gone.
    "Ah, God." Helpless sorrow flooded over him, into him. He could do nothing but rock, his bloody hand clinging to Mick's while the sorrow drowned him. His eyes were stark, naked with it when they lifted to Eve's.
    While the business of law went on around them, she rose, signaled her men and the MTs who rushed into the room back. And went to her husband. Kneeling with him, she put her arms around him, drew him in.
    Roarke laid his head on his wife's breast, and grieved.
    He was alone with his thoughts when dawn broke. From the window of his bedroom, he watched day tremble into life and whisk away the dark, layer by thin layer.
    He'd hoped for rage, had searched for it. But he hadn't found it.
    He didn't turn when Eve came in, but the worst of the ache eased because she was home.
    "You've put in a long day, Lieutenant."
    "So have you." She'd worried, all through the hours she'd had to leave him to himself. She opened her mouth, shut it again. No, she couldn't offer the empty, standard line and tell him she was sorry for his loss. Not to Roarke, not for this.
    "Michel Gerade has been charged with murder, first degree. He can scream diplomatic immunity until he chokes. It won't save him."
    When Roarke didn't respond, she dragged a hand through her hair, tugged at her borrowed shirt. "I can break him," she continued. "He'll roll on the Napleses. He'd roll on his first-born if he thought it would help him."
    "Naples is under, and he'll go deep and stay there." He turned now. "Did you think I wouldn't have checked already for myself? We've lost him. This time, at least, we've lost him and his bastard of a son. They're as out of reach as Yost is -- burning in hell."
    She lifted her hands. "I'm sorry."
    "For what?" He crossed to her now and, in the soft half-light, cupped her face in his hands. "For what?" he repeated, kissing her cheeks, her brow. "For doing everything that could be done, and more than that? For, at the last, giving my friend, who was none of yours, the very shirt off your back? For being there for me when I needed you most?"
    "You're wrong. Anyone who saves your life is a friend of mine. He helped us so that we went into that op fully prepared. And when we get Naples and his bastard of a son, he'll have had a part in that, too. You were right about him. There was no taste for bloodshed in him. And in the end, he stood up for you."
    "He'd have said that wasn't so much of a thing altogether. I'll want to take him back to Ireland, and bury him among friends."
    "Then we will. He was a hero, and the NYPSD is issuing him a posthumous citation that says so."
    Roarke stared at her,