Leverage in Death (In Death 47)

“I was going to, but the goddamn Candy Thief found my stash.”

“Only in your world does candy qualify as actual food.”

“You eat it. It tastes good.”

They passed through the bullpen and into her office, where Roarke went to her AutoChef programmed two coffees, and a cup of chicken soup.

“When did chicken soup get in there?”

“When someone who loves his cop decided she might eat actual food if it was handy. You might check your own AC menu occasionally.”

“I programmed the candy as an alfalfa smoothie, but it didn’t work.”

“No one who knows you would fall for an alfalfa smoothie.”

He had her there, so she dropped into her desk chair, ate the soup while she gave him the high and low points of the investigation.

“So he killed himself and eleven others to save his family. How did they know he would?”

Good question, Eve thought, but she expected no less from Roarke. “I want to talk to Mira, but I believe they’d taken the time to tar

get him specifically. There had to be other contenders, almost had to be. Then they took the time to torment him and his family, to keep giving him the choice, to keep asking the question: What would he do to save his wife and child? They broke him.”

“I’d like to go over the security system, particularly as it’s one of mine. And the same with Callendar’s analysis. From what you’ve told me, neither of them had the skills, or the access to someone with the skills to circumvent the security without considerable time and effort, but they got through nonetheless.”

“Over two months of eroding it,” Eve pointed out. “So they focused on Rogan back in December, or before. I have the beneficiaries, but from what I can tell, the merger would be a good thing, financially, from their standpoint.”

“It should be, yes.”

“Why didn’t you go after a merger with Econo?”

He took a seat, carefully, in Eve’s ass-biting visitors’ chair. “I already have an arm that competes with Econo. Buying them outright, might have been interesting, but it would also have, almost certainly, tangled us up in regulations against monopolies.”

“Were they for sale?”

“Not currently.” With a shrug, he sipped at his coffee. “Down the road a bit, that might have changed. They’ve had some cash flow issues the last year or so, possibly due to their COO retiring and a few other factors. The merger would have shored those up, I’d think.”

“So the merger is/was more beneficial for Econo than Quantum?”

“Initially, but Quantum would expand into areas where Econo’s very solid and they’re not.” Again, carefully, Roarke settled back. “Quantum’s exclusivity is part of its appeal to those who want and can afford to have five-star transportation. It’s also their weakness, as the average person may want but can’t afford.”

“Who benefits from it all going south?”

“Well now, I will—in the short term at least. And other competitors.”

“Why ‘short term’?”

“Because despite today’s tragedy, the merger will almost certainly go through. It’s a deal nearly a year in the making.”

“How do you know?”

He gave her a mild look. “It’s my business to know. There have been murmurs about it since last winter, and paperwork dealing with the regulations of such things were filed several months ago as bureaucracy takes its time, and everyone else’s.”

“Did you know it was going down this morning? The merger?”

“I did, yes.”

“How—and don’t say it’s your business to know.”