Chapter Seventeen
Even understanding her anger, he felt his own rise.
“Bugger it, Eve, I was besotted. That was the beginning and end of it. She wasn’t just another beautiful woman I could enjoy, but someone I could work with, talk to about the work because she wanted what I did.”
“Which was?”
“More.” He threw up his hands. “I trusted her, and she betrayed me for that more. For whatever good it did her. It was a period of my life that’s over and done.
We didn’t come to each other as children.
I can’t tell you she meant nothing to me, because she did.
But I can tell you that whatever she meant is less than nothing compared to you. ”
“I don’t need your reassurance.”
“Don’t you?”
“No.” She struggled for calm, then repeated, “No. I’ve never understood why you wanted me, why you love me.
But I know you do. I don’t need you to tell me what we have is more important, more real, more everything than whatever you had with her.
Because I know it is. She’s also everything I’m not, and that can be a hard swallow. ”
“She’s cold, careless with people, incapable of putting anyone above herself, without a single ounce of loyalty. Yes, everything you’re not.”
It struck him, amazed him. “Here you are, such a sharp cop, with instincts and insights that often seem preternatural. And you think she wanted to hurt you because you were less than she is? Christ Jesus, Eve, she wanted to hurt you because she knew you’re so much more.”
“I don’t care about any of that.”
“You do. Yes, of course you do.”
“It can’t be top of the list right now. She played you back then. She played you when she came to New York, and played me, too. Don’t let her play you now.”
“I won’t. She hurt you, deliberately, cruelly, and I don’t forgive it.
” The rage bubbled up again, so this time, he walked to the open doors.
“The bloody, buggering nerve of her to come back here. She’s been careful to avoid what’s mine.
Only last year she mistakenly booked a room in one of my hotels—I’d only recently acquired it, so it’s doubtful she knew. And was escorted out by security.”
“Where?”
“Ah…” He pressed fingers to his temple. “London? Yes, London. A favorite hotel of hers, it seems—which I was unaware of when I took it over.”
“When?”
“I can’t say precisely, sometime last fall, I think, or late summer.”
“She’d have come to New York, to Barrister House not long after.”
He turned, slowly. “Well now, of course.”
“You didn’t let it go. You embarrassed her, took a place she wanted away from her. She thinks she found a way to pull in a few hundred million and pay you back at the same time.”
“All right.” Calmer now, or stonier, he nodded. “I see how it could be.”
“She’d have contacts. Brokers, thieves, whatever she’d need.”
“She would, and if she didn’t, she’d make them. She’s good at it. We’ll talk this out. We’ll sit down, eat, and talk this out.”
“I don’t want food, I want—”
“Eve, you need food. You’re still pale. Can I tell you how it twists in me to see you pale, and know, somehow, I’m the cause of it?”
“It’s not you.”
“However unwilling, unknowingly, I brought her into our lives. At eighteen I took what has now cost a man his life. She’s a part of that, so we need to sit, eat, talk, and bloody well think. Please.”
“All right. Fine.”
“Close the doors, will you? It’s too cool now.”
But she took another moment in that cool air while he went to program the pizza.
She heard him talking to the cat, and had to blink the sting of tears from her eyes. She would not cry. Would not give that conniving bitch a single tear.
“You’re still angry,” he said when he came back. “So am I. The anger may grow in different directions, but it comes from the same root.”
She sat and didn’t object when he topped off her wine.
“Who would she work with?”
“It’s difficult to say. I think it’s unlikely she’d work with people I’d know or have had dealings with back in my time. It’s less likely I’d pin that down straight off, you see.”
“Yes, I see. What about this Delaney?”
“She’s good, good and careful, and keeps a low profile.
From what I can gather, so far, she doesn’t take just any job, and if working solo, is discerning there as well.
I’ll need to dig more. I could see her taking such a basic job—the break-in—due to the emeralds.
Her fee would be substantial. And it’s the thrill of it that’s worth as much to such as we. ”
“A man’s dead.”
“And there I lean against her—again from what I have so far. Careful, I said. Young, but experienced. The kill? Sloppy, and you risk an off-planet cage for decades and more. The window right there, and out you go, empty-handed or not, but you go if you want to live to steal another day.”
“Would Magdelana try it herself? The theft?”
He took a moment to think it through.
“Not impossible, but unlikely. Climbing in windows, not her style. And I can’t see her taking only the Suite. The temptation for more would have been too much to resist.”
“Best guess on her part in it.”
“Coordinate. Find the right broker, one willing to take this on, find the right thief, the right venue for the auction, design the event. Take the lion’s share, of course.
It’s most likely she had all she needed, the location of the vault, very likely the combination.
Where the Suite would be taken for authentication and to whom, how it would be transported to the location of the auction, and so on. It’s delicate and complicated.
“Eat.” Reaching out, he rubbed a hand over hers.
Because he looked at her with his heart in his eyes, she picked up a slice.
When she bit in, her system thanked her. She wouldn’t cry, Eve reminded herself, and she’d eat.
“I need to write up my report. I’m not giving Interpol Magdelana yet. I will. I have to, but I want something solid down first. I need you to dig in on Delaney and Kruger’s finances. Recent payments, substantial. Would she have that kind of money?”
“Doubtful. But she’d have financing. The broker would finance the job, and they’ll take in considerably more than the, at a guess, ten to twenty million for the heist. As for Kruger, I couldn’t say the going rate for killing a cop, and I…”
He set down his own slice, stared at her. “You think she hired him to kill you?”
“Duh,” Eve said, and took another bite. “Kill me, take me out or just down so she buys time to finish up the auction. Who else?”
He had to get up, had to walk away as the fury all but burned him from the inside out.
“There’s nowhere she can hide I won’t find her.” In contrast to the burn, his voice was ice-cold. “Nothing she can do to spare herself for the payment I’ll exact for this.”
“She’s going in a cage.” Eve spoke flatly, waited for him to turn. She knew that look, that Scary Roarke look. And sent him one of her own. “In a cage, Roarke, and potentially for the rest of her life. That’s what’s going to happen, has to happen. That’s what I want, and what you’ll give me.”
“There are times you ask for the impossible.”
“No, I don’t. The hard, sure. You’re pissed.”
“That’s a small word for what’s in me.”
“I’m pissed. And I trust us both to do what’s right. What I can live with and keep my badge. Don’t let her take that from me.”
“Ah Christ, you know the buttons to push.” He turned away, turned back. “I need her to pay.”
“Let’s make sure she does. A man’s dead. Well, two men now. Whatever part she played in that? She’ll be in that cage a very long time. She won’t like it.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-five to life, depending on her involvement with the theft, which includes Barrister’s murder. Add to that, if she hired the assassin? Conspiracy to murder a police officer. Life—that’s two life sentences, most likely off-planet.”
“If you make that happen, I’ll be very grateful.”
“We’ll make it happen. Now you sit and eat.”
He came back to the table. “I never thought of her for this. I don’t think of her, so I never thought of her for this.”
“Neither did I. And when we close the door on her cage? We won’t think of her again.”
“All right, Lieutenant. How do we make this happen in a way you can live with?”
She polished off her first slice. “I’m hungry.
That’s good.” So reached for another. “My part, to start, I put her in New York, with Henry Barrister. I make that connection, and find out how she traveled. My bet, one of Barrister’s private shuttles.
Then I trace back where she traveled from.
Maybe London, since you handed me the info she was there.
I track all her aliases, including Ms. Fancy, and start digging for the broker. ”
She picked up her wine, gestured. “Meanwhile, EDD finds the data on the auction.”
“It’ll be soon. If she moved on you like this, it has to be soon.”
“That’s exactly right. You get me those finances—the suspected thief’s, the dead assassin’s. We track the payments back.”
“They’ll be well covered on the other end, but aye, I’ll bloody well track them.”
“I know you will.”
“You’ve still a worry in there.”
“A couple.” But she ate. Not just because she was hungry, but because she needed and wanted the fuel. “She wants to break you. She wants the big pile of money, yeah, but she really wants to hurt you along with it. How much does she know about your … former profession?”
“Well, she certainly knows details about any jobs we pulled while together. But together puts her in a very bad light as well. In any case, I don’t leave a trail. Add she tried that once, and it didn’t work for her.”
“Can she put you at Filthy Rich Estate when oops, the Duchess of Filthy Rich’s solid gold underwear goes missing?”
“First, the market’s too narrow to steal gold underwear, but had I done so, she might try to claim I was there. But again, had I done so, I would have already put myself, and solidly, elsewhere.”
He reached over for her hand. “Put that worry away. She was good. I was better.”
Not away, Eve thought, but she could—for now—put it aside.