Revenant in Death
Chapter 02
by Technomad
Eve Dallas had thought, when they medically retired her, that her life was over. She had thought that an endless abyss of boredom stretched out in front of her. These days, she laughed at the naïve ideas she had once had.
She had been in pursuit of the culprits in the case of the Libertine Librarian murders, when she had taken a wrong turn in an abandoned building and fallen four stories down an elevator shaft. By the grace of immense good luck, she'd not suffered any spinal injuries, but her pelvis and leg bones were all but shattered. Peabody had gone ahead and nabbed the culprits, then showed up at the hospital with her face streaked with tears, begging Eve to forgive her for leaving her behind to make the pinch.
"You did just right, Peabody," Eve had reassured her. The haze of drugs she was speaking through made everybody and everything fuzzy, but she knew good police work when she saw it. "I guess I taught you well." Peabody had broken down in a puddle of tears at that, and McNab had had to gently lead her to where she could sit down and let the storm pass.
Roarke, of course, had been at the hospital the second he'd heard; he'd broken off a crucial conference with some of his few equals and come as fast as he could. Much to his surprise, his competitors had been right behind him.
"In business, we may be cutthroat rivals," one of them had explained to a dumfounded Roarke, "but outside of it, we're human beings! And we know how much you love and care for your wife. If you need anything, anything at all, at this time, just call on us!" Where he'd dealt with her injuries with stoic cheerfulness, that had got to Roarke, and he'd had to turn away for a few minutes to regain his composure. Watching, Eve began to wonder if people were really as bad as she had thought.
The police department had been incredibly supportive. They had flooded her room with "Get Well!" cards, so many flowers that she thought it looked like a funeral, and enough goodies and edibles to stock a store. She'd ended up distributing the flowers, and most of the food, around other patients on her ward, making sure, at Roarke's suggestion, to particularly favor people who didn't seem to have family or friends. Of course, the donors' names had been recorded, and Eve and Roarke made sure that all were properly thanked.
When she had left the hospital, she was in the wheelchair she'd need for the rest of her life. Oh, she could stand, and walk, but not for long, and it was incredibly tiring. She loved swimming even more now, because in the water, her weak, damaged legs and hips could not betray her. Peabody, McNab and the rest of the gang from the police station had been there to welcome her as she was wheeled out into Roarke's luxurious limousine.
Her mandatory retirement, full pension or no, had not been unexpected, but it had felt like an amputation nonetheless. So much of her identity and self-image had been wrapped up in "Lieutenant Eve Dallas" that it was hard to find who she was when the badge was gone. She'd thrown herself into the therapies that had been prescribed for her, but it had taken Mira to point her in the direction she needed to go.
"Just because you can't be on the streets any more doesn't mean you can't fight crime, Eve," she had pointed out. "They could use you at the academy, just for starters. I saw how you molded Peabody into a fine detective. Imagine doing that with a whole generation of up-and-coming policemen and –women!" Eve had perked right up at the suggestion, and when she had inquired, the academy had been eager to have her. She now worked several days a week as a lecturer at the academy, helping future police learn the lessons that would let them solve crimes, and stay alive. She was especially emphatic about hot-dogging.
"Look at me," she would tell her pupils, gesturing to her customized wheelchair. "I'm in this chair because I got impulsive and overconfident. If I had been a little more cautious, I wouldn't be here, but still behind the badge, bringing in murderers. The city has invested thousands in your training, not to mention the way you overeat. Add in the two cents apiece that you might actually be worth, and you've got a pretty nice chunk of change. So don't let your impulses rule your brain! Wait for your partner and don't go charging straight ahead into any trap the other side may see fit to set! That way the city may get its money's worth out of you, and I won't feel like I wasted my breath and time talking to you!"
Forced retirement, and teaching, had mellowed her more than she had realized at first. When the news came through that she was pregnant, she had been shocked, terrified, and excited, but had not even considered ending the pregnancy. Much to her shock, she had found that she was, after all, ready for a child of her own.
Roarke had been utterly overjoyed, and when she'd been notified, Peabody had appeared at her side so fast that Eve suspected her of having mastered teleportation. Mavis and Peabody had appointed themselves her minders, and with their emotional support, Eve had had a surprisingly easy pregnancy, finally giving birth to Sean Roarke in the birthing room that Roarke, of course, had had set up. When they had wiped him off and set him in her arms, Eve had looked down at him, noticing how much he looked like his daddy even at that inchoate age, for only a second before her eyes welled with tears. She had taken a while to fall in love with Roarke, but one look at her son and she had felt herself falling in love all over again.
Sean had grown strong and straight as perfect children do, and had soon made friends with Mavis' Bella, who appointed herself his big sister and tutor in mischief. Eve had foreseen chaos when he became old enough to toddle, but much to her surprise, he'd been easily managed.
Summerset had raised a slightly disdainful eyebrow. "Have you forgotten that I have some considerable experience with children?" he asked, when Eve commented on how easily Roarke's majordomo dealt with Sean and Bella's monkeyshines. Eve remembered Summerset's own daughter, dead and gone but never forgotten, and had been startled at the lump that rose in her throat. The thought of losing her own little Sean was unthinkable! She now thought she understood Summerset better, and while they'd long since matured into a relationship of mutual respect, she knew she would not want to be in his shoes.
Now he was in college, majoring in computer science and finance, in preparation for taking over for his father one day. Roarke had laughed when Eve had suggested sarcastically that they also make sure their son knew all the criminal tricks his father knew.
"No, Eve," he'd said, "you don't get it, do you, darling? I've known many successful criminals, and one and all, they didn't want their children anywhere near The Life. They all took the attitude of 'Here's all this money I had to make the hard way; go take it and do something wonderful with it.' That goes back a long ways, dear. As far back as the mid-twentieth century, Meyer Lansky, who was the 'brains' of the Syndicate, moved heaven and earth to get his son an appointment to West Point."
"Did he graduate?" Eve had asked, intrigued at this thought.
"He did, and served in the Vietnam War, if memory serves me," Roarke had answered. "I want Sean to be able to handle my empire, not to have to build one up from scratch the way I did."
Accordingly, they had made sure that Sean got experience working in quite a few levels of Roarke's businesses, learning things from the ground up. He was not coddled when he made mistakes, but he made very few, and those were mainly due to inexperience. By the time he was eighteen, he could have substituted for Roarke in many capacities.
Of course, Eve had also made very sure that her boy could handle himself. From an early age, he'd trained with some of the best teachers of armed and unarmed combat that Roarke's money could buy, and he now could compete with the best. Between the threat (remote but real) of kidnapping, and the normal hazards of life in the 21st century, both Eve and Roarke wanted their boy prepared to handle them.
She smiled, remembering his last call home. He'd been hugely excited at being chosen for an honors study program on an off-planet station, and had extended greetings to everybody he knew who was still in New York. "And make sure to say hi to Aunt Delia, and tell her daughter Eve that I want to meet this boy she was burbling about in her last message. Got to run the ruler over him and make sure he's suitable for my honorary little sister!" When Peabody had begun having babies, Sean had been fascinated, and had appointed himself the next generation of McNabs' honorary big brother, protector, and mentor. Peabody had complained, laughing, that her children often confided in Sean before they did in her or McNab. With Bella, Mavis' daughter, as the "big sister" to all of them, they formed an improvised family, laughing, playing and working together smoothly.
A soft throat-clearing by her side recalled her to the present, and she turned. "Oh, sorry, Nixie. I didn't mean to ignore you. I was just thinking about my son."
Nixie Swisher, or Nixie Sullivan to give her her married name, smiled at her. "Not a bad thing to be thinking about, but you know that the Swisher Foundation's big 'do' is next month. What do you think of this guest list?" She slid a piece of paper onto the table in front of Eve.
Eve scanned the list. It contained the names of many of New York's main movers-and-shakers, people whose combined wealth could buy half the Solar System. "Looks fine to me, Nixie. You'll be there, of course?"
"Naturally! You know I never miss these!" The Nixie Swisher Foundation existed to extend aid to the victims of crime. Its reach was everywhere, from the lowliest street people on up to the top of New York society. Eve and Roarke had started it shortly after Eve's retirement, and these days, it consumed a lot of her energy. They had named it after the bereft nine-year-old girl they had taken in and sheltered after a horrific attack took out her entire family, sparing her only because she'd gotten up to go get an orange fizzy. Nixie, herself, had been delighted to lend her name and image, and she routinely did advertisements asking for donations. Her story was now well-known, and she had been cited by the government as the face and voice of crime victims across the nation.
"Good. I'll see you tomorrow. Give my best to your husband." Once Nixie had gone off, Eve looked after her with a rueful chuckle, before heading toward the pool. Her powered wheelchair hummed as she guided it into the elevator, and pushed the button for the floor where the pool awaited.
Once she was by the poolside, she stood up, shaking with the effort and cursing her traitorious body. Stripping down, she looked down, shaking her head at the scars her injuries and the surgeries had left. She couldn't believe that Roarke still reacted to the sight of her with the same ardor that he had shown when they had first got together.
Staggering slightly, she dived into the clear blue water, naked. Only here did she allow herself to be seen uncovered. Only Roarke and Sean ever came here, and she had no secrets from either of them when it came to her weaknesses. And in the water, they didn't matter. She set out across the pool, her stroke as strong and sure as ever. Her doctors had been delighted to find how much she loved swimming, and they had strongly encouraged her to swim as much as she wanted, saying that it would strengthen her body and get her as close to her old condition as she could ever get. These days, her wind was as strong as it had been when she'd joined the force, and she thought that she could arm-wrestle the Eve Dallas that had joined the force and make her younger self cry "Uncle!"
A graceful form dove into the water beside her, and she paused, giving her husband the special smile she reserved only for him. "Roarke! It's so good to see you! Did you see the latest from that son of ours?"
Roarke, as naked as his wife, trod water beside her, his smile giving her all sorts of naughty ideas about how much easier some things were in the pool. "I've just got in from Seattle, darling. What has our Sean done now?"
"Oh, he's been selected for a program off-planet." She gave Roarke a suspicious look. "Did you have a hand in his selection?" Roarke wasn't a bit above using his influence to help their son along, although he drew the line at pushing his professors to improve the young man's grades.
Roarke shook his head. "Not me, darling. Not this time. If he got this, he got it entirely on his own merits." Then he gave her a huge grin. "And I couldn't be prouder of him! He gets that from his lovely mother!"
"No, dear, I think he takes more after his handsome father. And he says he wants to talk to Little Eve about some boy she told him about." She brushed wet hair out of her face. "I notice that he's notably reticent about his own love life. Want to bet that there aren't a whole bunch of girls planning to get their hooks into him, one way or another?" She knew young girls, and knew they hadn't changed.
Roarke shook his head. "Not a chance, darling. I never take sucker bets." He grinned. "That's why I am where I am today." He tilted his head toward the side of the pool. "Wanna race?" Eve nodded, and they swam over to the side of the pool, side-by-side. Once they were there, they launched themselves off, their butterfly strokes roiling the pool's water as they sped toward the other side. Roarke was ahead at first, but Eve got a great deal of exercise in her arms with her wheelchair and having to use crutches, and they were soon neck-and-neck, which was how the race ended up. "I win! I win!" Eve chanted. She honestly thought she'd touched the far side of the pool a second or two before Roarke did.
"And what does the winner get?" asked Roarke, swimming up close, his eyes alight with devilment.
"A great big kiss!" She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply, feeling his body respond the way it always did. She sometimes couldn't believe her luck in having a man who was just as ardent for her after so long as he'd been the day they were married, but she was fully ready to take advantage of it. Pleasure coursed through her body, and she arched her back, her eyes fluttering shut as she wrapped her legs around his waist, urging him on.
After they finished making love, they got out and lay on the deck beside the pool, basking in the rays of the sun lamps. Finally, they reluctantly got dressed, and headed back to deal with the business of the day.
