The world within a world the boy he’d watched become a man had created. Now that world had been shaken, and needed to be put steady again. “You’ll go back to Ireland. You’ll have to go back.” “I will.” Roarke nodded, unspeakably grateful to be understood without having said the words. “I will, yes.” “When?” “Right away. I think it’s best to go straight away.” “Have you told the lieutenant?” “I haven’t.” Unsettled again, Roarke looked down at his own hands, ran the gold band of his marriage around his finger. “She’s in the middle of a difficult investigation. This will distract her from it. I’d considered telling her I had business out of town, but I can’t lie to her. It’ll be simpler, I think, to make the arrangements, then tell her I’m going.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she? In this picture, she’s already dead.” “Probably.” Eve shifted the image aside, and read the text of the transmission.
SHE WAS THE FIRST, AND HER LIGHT WAS PURE. IT WILL SHINE ON FOREVER. IT LIVES IN ME NOW. SHE LIVES IN ME. TO RETRIEVE THE RECEPTACLE, GO TO DELANCEY AND AVENUE D. TELL THE WORLD, THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING. A BEGINNING FOR ALL.
Somebody in that club had transmitted those images to Nadine. Someone who’d walked through those lights, those shadows, had plugged that data into one of the units, coded in Nadine’s number at 75 and sent it on. While EDD went over the stations, picked their way through the drives until they found the echoes, whoever had killed Rachel Howard was preparing for the next portrait.
I am so full of energy. It can’t be an exaggeration to say I’ve been transformed. Even reborn. She is in me now, and I can feel her life inside me. The way a woman must feel with a child in her womb. And yet, more than that. More. For this is not something that needs me to live, that needs to grow and develop. She is whole and complete in me. When I move, she moves. When I breathe, she breathes. We are one now, and we are forever. I have given her immortality. Is there any greater love? How amazing it was, with her eyes locked on mine in that moment when I stopped her heart. I could see in them that all at once she knew. She understood. And how she rejoiced when I drew her essence inside me so her heart would beat again. Forever. See how she looks in the images I created of her, one after another in the gallery I’ve given her. She will never grow old now, or suffer, or know pain. She will always be a pretty young girl with a sweet smile. This is my gift to her, in exchange for hers to me. There must be more. I must feel that flood of light again, and give my gift to one who deserves it. Soon. Very soon, other images will grace my personal gallery. We will join together, Rachel and I, and the next. One day, when the time is right, I will share the whole of this journal with the world instead of short passages. Many will condemn or question, even curse me. But by then, it will be too late. I will be legion.
~~~
I don't get murder. Why kill people when you can just ignore them--first suspect...
Roarke's Eve, is a very busy Lieutenant in the local police force in the mid-years of Decade 2000--meaning that the entire setting is futuristic and you'll enjoy all of the neat advancements that are available then, such as being able, in a cop car, to zoom upward, ahead, and then back to the road to get closer to the car you're chasing... LOL That's just one of the small things I enjoy about this series, which I'm again discovering thanks to BookBub where I get most of my books these days--free...
In this book, a psyopath has kidnapped his first young student, followed his grand plan, and then disposed of her "receptacle" which was no longer of use... But nobody other then he feels that way and are now in the midst of working to identify, capture, and arrest for murder, hoping it will help the family as they grieve her loss...
As always, the case is crafted to create suspense as the police team work and Robb has successfully kept this series alive and well generation after generation... JD Robb is like a potato chip--you can't read just one...
But in this book, we get a very rare glimpse into the life of Roarke, a mega-rich man who, like Eve, grew up on the streets, having been abused and tortured through their young lives... This time, however, readers will learn, at the same time that Roarke does, that who he thought was his mother...was not...
Consider this, if his hated parents, with his mother then leaving him to live with his abusive father, had been so horrible, what would it mean to learn that the woman who had left him, was not really his mother?
Well, readers quickly see a Roarke that they've never seen before... He refused to believe the individual who was telling him "possible" lies, while, at the same time, his heart began to beat wildly... Could this be true? And what if it was? What did or could that mean to his life now?
Because he had also learned from that same informant that his father had murdered his real mother... and threw her in the water...
“A man, well, a man’s liable to need to teach his woman a lesson now and then. Paddy, he had a heavy hand, you’ve cause to know yourself. It’s not my doing.”
Realize that Roarke, a brilliant man, who had early worked to get funds to improve his life, in whatever way he needed to--most of them illegal! Then, after finding Eve and merging their lives in one of the, for readers, "happily ever after" stories we could ever have conceived, and who now owned so much he couldn't keep track of it all, both on earth and off-planet... Well, Roarke's world turned upside down and he did what I do, and maybe you, too, do, he withdrew from his present world...to think... to try to review and research whether what he was told was true or a scam...
But there were two people in his life who refused him privacy when they saw his demeanor... Eve... And...
Summerset, his present House Manager but also the only man he had ever really known as a Father... But, in this case, Summerset knew more about Roarke's early life than did Eve. So it was to Summerset Roarke turned to once he had planned what he'd have to do...
Search out the family of the woman who possibly had been his mother... He'd have to travel to Ireland! Of course, Roarke had been back to Dublin several times since he had left a good friend there... and so a phone call or two was made and Summerset arranged his travel team to get him straight into a part of Ireland he'd never been... to the County of Clare... and directly to the farmland still worked by the woman's family... There he met the twin of his supposed mother... And she looked into the same face of his father who, she believed, had murdered her sister...
And, oh yeah, her brother, Ned, had tried to find his sister and had been badly beaten for doing so, having to return home without his sister and son...
Having been told the whole story of that time, would Roarke risk going to meet that family who had been hurt so much by his murderous father???
The trauma of that time affected Roarke and those around him so much, espcially while he refused to even talk about what was bothering him, that I found that entire stroryline was the highlight of the book. You see, the Death Series is extremely character-driven given the backgrounds of the two main characters. Two individuals who were so traumatized in their early lives that it affected and brought about the two strong, special individuals who were merged in order to become a solid duo able to meet the horrors of the world that still exists in "our" future...
If you don't read any other book, I highly recommended that you select this book to see what happens when a major trauma hits Roarke's life!!!
But what I recommend if you are able, is to start from the first book and continue to read... The characters drive whatever book you are reading; the characters are a wild and wonderful set of people that add much to the books! Memorable! Unique! Great Mysteries!
GABixlerReviews
Poverty and the thieves it bred still haunted this area. Hunger and the anger it fed lived here, day by day. But it was coming back, slowly. The Irish knew all about wars, conflicts, hunger, and poverty. And they dealt with it, sang of it, wrote of it. And drank around it of an evening. So, there was the Penny Pig. It had been a neighborhood pub when he’d been a boy and most of his neighbors were villains of one sort or the other.
Death was everywhere and
cheaper in many ways than living.”
Onoir in Gaelic - Honour
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