Chapter Sixteen #2
“Agreed. Go home. That was a very nice jacket,” he added.
“Yeah. Well.”
She went out, locked and sealed the door. As she started down the stairs, Peabody tagged her.
“I’m on my way to the lab. The mother took it hard, but she wasn’t surprised. She said he liked violent games, violent vids, violent sports.”
“Hey, so do I, but I don’t go around stabbing people in the back. He had a big drawer full of illegal weapons. He liked a variety. Whitney’s sending a team to pick them up.”
“On the vehicle? He didn’t have one, but his uncle did, and his mom said he asked his uncle if he could borrow it. How he had a job.”
“When?”
“Today, this morning. She said she thought about ten or eleven.”
“Before the media conference.”
“Affirmative. I got the make, model, license plate. And just got tagged they located it under two blocks from where we parked.”
“I missed the tail.”
“Give yourself a break on that.”
“After seeing his cache, I’m not too sorry about the way he went out, but dead means I can’t get any more out of him. I’m going home. Anything pops, I’ll let you know.”
“Have that drink.”
She went out, ignored the double takes.
And drove home.
As she went through the gates, she tried to think of something pithy to toss at Summerset. Came up blank.
She could go in another way, grab an elevator, bag up the clothes, dispose of them elsewhere in the morning.
The hell with it, she decided, and went in the front.
He waited, of course, in his stiff-necked black suit with the cat sitting at his feet.
Instead of the expected, his tone came out shocked. “You’re injured.”
“It’s not my blood. And it’s not my fault Roarke puts stuff like this in my closet.”
He held out a hand. “Give me the jacket.”
“What?”
“Give me the jacket. I’ll see what I can do. Put the rest, including the boots, in the elevator and send them down to me. I’ll deal with it.”
She stripped off the jacket, and he took it with two skinny fingers. “I’ll see what I can do,” he repeated. “Take the elevator straight to the bedroom. Roarke’s in the lab.”
“Shit! I forgot. I’m not on my game.”
“He wasn’t yet twenty when he took those emeralds. I worried then, but never thought I would worry now. As you are.”
“He covered his tracks.”
“I have no doubt. And yet. You’ll tell him about this, of course, but he doesn’t have to see you covered in blood. Take the elevator.”
The cat, scenting the blood, wound around her legs and meowed in a way that seemed both concerned and pissed off.
He went with her into the elevator, where she just leaned back against the wall. She thought she’d take Peabody’s advice on that big drink.
Then she stepped out, into the bedroom, just as Roarke came in.
“It’s not my blood. None of it’s mine. I’m not hurt.”
He was across the room before the first words came out, and his hands searched her for wounds.
“I’m not hurt. I swear. Let me clean up and I’ll—”
But he caught her against him. She felt him shudder once, then pull her closer yet.
“You’ll get it on you. Let me—”
“Shut up. Just shut up.” He took care of that by covering her mouth with his. “I need this,” he murmured. “Give me this.”
“Okay.” Running her hands over his hair, she repeated, “Okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“You’ll tell me what happened.”
“Yes. I just want to get out of these clothes, shower it all off.”
“All right.” He unhooked her weapon harness himself. “Do you need to go back out?”
“I hope to hell not.”
“Then I’ll get you a change and take your clothes down to Summerset.”
“He said to put them in the elevator, send them down.” She stripped off the shirt, saw the blood had soaked through and onto her support tank. “He didn’t want you to see before I could explain. Neither did I.”
“The sentiment’s appreciated, but I don’t need protection.”
“I wasn’t hurt.” She pulled off her boots, her belt, emptied her pockets. “I wanted you to know that first.”
When she’d stripped down, he handed her a sweater and lounge pants so light and soft they might have been woven from vapor.
“I’ll send the rest down.”
“Roarke, I’m—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry to me.” The words snapped out. Then he touched a hand to her cheek and softened the tone. “Don’t even think it.”
She just nodded, but she did think it. “Give me five minutes. Maybe you could wait in the office. I’ve got to update and write this all up after I tell you. And I could really use a drink.”
“So could I. I’ll wait for you.”
He picked up her bloody clothes, retrieved the belt that carried more blood, and sent them down. Then he thanked whatever deity might listen for bringing her home to him again, safe.
When she came into the office, he had the fire on low and a glass of wine waiting.
“Thanks.” She took one long, slow sip. Then a second. “I’m going to start about why the blood. I can backtrack after to the rest of the day. We went to see the lawyer,” she began, and took him through it, step-by-step.
When she told him about feeling the punch in the back, he turned her around, pulled up the sweater.
“You’ve the faintest of bruises, nothing more.”
“I told you I wasn’t hurt. He ran, I ran after him. I nearly had him. He kept looking behind, and he tried a jump toward the street. Lost his footing, went flying out. A cab ran over him—driver couldn’t have stopped. I couldn’t get a pulse. I knew he was gone, but I had to try.”
“And ended up with his blood all over you.”
“Yeah. Someone hired him, Roarke.”
“That’s more than possible, and probably connected to the emeralds and Barrister’s murder.”
“Not possible. It’s a fact. He borrowed a car this morning, said he had a job. He tailed me and I fucking missed the tail.” She drank again. “After, I tossed his place. He’s got a drawer—locked. I picked it—”
“Congratulations.”
“Right. It was loaded with weapons. Knives, stunners, handguns, garrotes, poisons, name it. He was a pro, maybe still a little green, but a pro. It threw him when I didn’t go down, and it scared him when he saw I was going to catch him.
But I really don’t think this was his first time out. Somebody hired him.”
“What time was your media conference? This afternoon, wasn’t it? I wasn’t able to watch.”
“After the hire, so that didn’t set this off. Unless somebody got wind. Abernathy’s talking to people. They’ve got a task force looking into the original thefts.”
“Is that so?”
“Don’t brush it off.”
But she saw, in his eyes, he did just that.
“Darling Eve, I’ve been looked at for that and more over the years. Yet here I stand with you. But this has you worried, distracted, and you missed a tail. So I’m telling you to put the worry aside. I’d be the one in the nick, after all, and I’ve no worries about it.”
“Abernathy and I had a discussion.”
Now he smiled. “Did you really?”
“They think the emerald heist was a group.”
“Correct, and they always have.”
“He thinks maybe you were involved as a kind of apprentice.”
This got a laugh, easy and delighted. “Sometimes it pays to be underestimated. And all that should reassure you.”
“It should.” Maybe it would. Eventually. “He also gave me a name, a possibility for Fancy Blonde, a thief. Jenna Lynn Delaney.”
He frowned over his wine. “The one who rang a faint and distant bell for me, in my hunt. That name wasn’t on the list he gave us.”
“No. He’s ambitious, tried to skirt around us with this task force. But he gave it to me after our discussion. She needs a deeper look, and so does Timothy Kruger. Because—”
“Whoever hired the thief hired the failed assassin. That clicks nicely.”
“I have to update, write up the attempted stabbing.”
“I’ll see if I can make that distant bell ring louder. Then we’ll have a meal.” He touched his lips to hers. “Considering the stab in the back, bloody coward, it can be pizza.”
She’d never argue with pizza.
She updated her board first, then took the rest of her wine—why the hell not—to her command center.
She wrote up the interview with the lawyer first. And just as she thought about tagging Yancy before she started the rest, he tagged her.
“Did you get me a face?”
“We got one. Sorry for the delay. First, I was delayed, then when you’ve got two people, they tend to remember things differently.
I can tell you right off, the picture you sent—Delaney—that’s a no.
Some similarities, but both wits said too young right off.
But they both also agreed on the final sketch.
Do you want me to run it through face rec for you? ”
He was walking, she noted, on a nice fall evening, and after putting in extra time for her case.
“No, I’ll do it. Send it to me, then go have a beer.”
“I hear that. I’ve got a pizza date coming up.”
“Funny, so do I. Thanks, Yancy.”
“Not every day I get to work on a case with a secret vault full of the mega-dollar fancy. I want to say, Dallas, they’re a really nice family, including the staff. Divine offered to make me dinner, and when I told her I had a date, told me to come back when I didn’t. She meant it.”
“I liked them, too. Go have that pizza and beer.”
So not Delaney, but she could have been the thief, the murderer. Just not what Eve thought might be the conduit.
So she’d look for two blondes.
She switched over from her report to take Yancy’s incoming, and waited for the face to come on-screen.
When it did, she felt the blood drain out of her own.
Coincidences, she thought. How many times had she said they were bollocks? Should she have seen this coming? Should she have put it together?
Hard to say. Really hard to say.
And hard right now, she admitted, to think.
She pushed up, walked over to her balcony doors, threw them open. And let the cool evening air wash over her.
She didn’t hear Roarke come in—he moved like the air itself—but he spoke from behind her.
“The bell rings more clearly. I’ve been out of the game awhile now, so had to refresh a bit. Jenna Lynn Delaney has a reputation in certain circles for being a clever and discerning thief. Started young—and not so successfully. But got considerably better.”
“The blonde’s not Delaney.”
“No?”
“No. Yancy sent the face.”
She turned then, and seeing her stand so pale, so stiff, he lowered the glass he’d brought to his lips.
“What is it?”
“Look for yourself. The sketch is on my desk screen.”
He went over, and when he saw the sketch, stood very still.
Regret came first so when he turned to Eve his eyes were full of apology. “Magdelana. I’m sorry, Eve.”
“I don’t need ‘I’m sorry.’ Did you tell her? Did she know you took the emeralds?”
“I don’t … I might have done.”
“Yes or no?”
“Don’t interrogate me, Lieutenant. Let me think. I might have done. It would’ve been some years after, as I hadn’t met her when I took them. But I trusted her, which was my very big mistake.”
“You told her. At some point you told her. Or enough she understood.”
“Enough,” he agreed. “I think enough. Something about traveling to London, then holding my future in my hands, and being foolish enough to say I wish I’d kept some of it, as she’d look brilliant in emeralds.”
“That would be enough for her. It’s all deliberate. You have to see that.”
“We hadn’t met when she targeted Henry Barrister. You said she was twenty.”
“Sometimes fate bites you in the ass. That’s something you’d say.”
She made herself breathe, reminded herself to think like a cop.
“She used him, then fate bit you in the ass and he gave her a direct line to you with those fucking emeralds. All this is deliberate.”
“How?”
She pulled at her hair. “How can you be so goddamn smart and still have a blind spot for her?”
“I don’t. I know what she is. I took steps to keep her out of our lives. I’m gobsmacked she had the bloody nerve to come to New York after I sent her off.”
“I’m the one who punched her in the face.”
“And me as well, as I recall very clearly. That was after I’d told her to leave New York, that she’d be hauled out if she tried to stay at any of my properties in this world or any other. I simply don’t follow you on this as deliberate.”
“For fuck’s sake. You stole the emeralds. I punched her and you gave her the boot. She finds out where they are. What better way to tie you up, to pay you back than to take them—only them—and make a splash out of it?”
She began to pace. “She’d know Interpol looks at you, probably knows about Abernathy.
She’d make it her fucking mission to know.
She waits until Henry’s dead—nobody, in her mind, can link her to the theft.
After she rakes in her share, she’ll give Abernathy or someone like him a big fat hint to the original. ”
“Why would anyone believe her?”
She spun around to him. “Why did you? Ever?”