Leverage in Death (In Death 47)

“That was a good scary Roarke,” she commented on the way to the elevator.

“I’ll add, you did a good scary cop as well.” He took her hand, kissed her fingers. “Teamwork.”

“He’ll think. He won’t be able to stop thinking. Maybe it’ll lead somewhere, because he damn well talked plenty about the merger. Puffing himself up with inside intel. It’s all the fuck over him.”

She took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders. “Let’s go home, eat, keep up the teamwork. You can start the last part by finding out who the wanker’s financial advisers are—and maybe how much he’s invested in Quantum and/or Econo.”

“Delighted.”

She let Roarke drive so she could send a quick roundup of the interview to her team.

“I don’t get why Karson, who comes off smart and steady would hook up with a useless user like Banks. Sure, he looks good, but if that’s a thing, just bang and move on.”

“The heart wants what it wants, sees what it needs to see.”

“The heart’s just a pulsing muscle without the head.” She angled to study him. “You look good.” Major understatement, she thought. “And that’s a th

ing. I might’ve banged you if you’d been a useless user, but I’d have moved on.”

“I believe I was still on your murder board as a suspect when we first banged each other.”

“Technically,” she allowed. “But I didn’t figure you for it. If I’d been wrong, I’d have taken you down, slick. Maybe I’d have banged you one last time first, but I’d’ve taken you down.”

“Darling, that’s so sweet—and oddly arousing.”

“The point is she strikes as too smart and centered to fall for his bullshit.”

“He knows how to charm—and lays it on when he has a goal. He has intellect and can talk a good game.” Roarke shrugged. “He’s, at the core, a grifter with some skill. The smart and steady can fall for a well-oiled grift, especially those who play to the heart. One thinks: Oh, but it’s different with me, or I can change him.”

She frowned as they drove through the gates, and home rose up into the deepening sky with all its wonders and welcomes.

“I was going to say polka dots don’t change their spots, but sometimes they can. They do. You’re married to a cop, and I’m living in an urban castle.”

He stopped the car, leaned over to kiss her. “Polka dots are spots.”

“Until they get smeared and blend together. Then they’re splotches.”

“That’s both true and confusing,” he decided. “So we’ve smeared our spots into splotches for each other.”

“Right, but Banks? His type’s always going to be a polka dot.”

“I’m not completely sure how, but I’m forced to agree. And I suspect Willimina came to the same conclusion, and ended the relationship.”

“But not before she talked to him about the merger, about the negotiations. Not before he . . . leveraged that to sound important, or even more. It just fits.”

They got out of the car, circled around to the door together.

“You do know it’s leopards that don’t change their spots, not polka dots?”

“A leopard’s born, lives, and dies a leopard, so that’s that.”

“That’s rather the point of the adage.”

“Why need an adage on something that’s just that? It’s a waste of words. If people didn’t have stupid sayings about the obvious, they wouldn’t waste so many words and talk so damn much.”

She stepped inside the great foyer of her personal urban castle. There, the black-clad Summerset, back from his winter break, loomed with the fat cat at his feet.

Bony and cadaverous as ever, she thought, but he’d picked up some color in the tropics, and that threw her off. It just threw her off.