Leverage in Death (In Death 47)

“Is he now? He always did have a hand for mechanics as I recall. I’d heard he’d retired from those other enterprises. Or for the most part.”

“Decent enough at B and E to get through security at Rogan’s, at Denby’s? A one-eyed moron could get through the security at Richie’s building.”

“He’d have improved considerably to have gotten through my system at the Rogan’s house, but it’s not impossible he did. What is? He’d never be a part of murder. In tormenting women and children. It’s not Liam, not at all.”

“People change.”

“So they do, as you and I illustrate very well. But the core rarely does. It’s not Liam, Eve. He had a mother and three sisters he adored. I’d wager he still does. The only time I ever saw him

use violence was when a . . . compatriot slapped a bar girl. Liam stood, lifted his chair, and slammed it into the idiot’s face. Broke several teeth, as I recall. Then he hauled the man up, ordered him to apologize. No one strikes a woman when Liam Donnelly’s about, he said. He never carried a weapon other than a pocket knife.”

“I need him in the box.”

Roarke sighed. “Give me his contact information to speed it up, and let me speak with him.”

“So he can rabbit before—”

“Bloody hell.”

She saw the flash of hot temper before he turned, paced away. And her own rose to meet it.

“Eighteen dead. Your old pal’s a suspect. I’ll have him in the box.”

“You know, sometimes the fucking cop is a keen pain in the arse.”

“I’m always the fucking cop.”

The flash of heat had cooled, she noted, and gone brutally cold when he turned back to her.

“And that I know very bloody well. Do you think a man I haven’t seen in a fecking decade matters more to me than the eighteen blown to bits? Is that what you think? How do you live with a man such as me?”

“I think old ties can squeeze tight.”

“So tight I’d betray you?”

“Don’t put that on me.” The insult boiled under her skin. “I didn’t say anything about betraying.”

“But that’s what it would be. If you don’t trust me to stand with you for those eighteen, then what the bloody hell are we doing?”

“Back on me,” she said, bitterly.

“And if you put him in the box, a man with a past and false papers, what will happen to him? If he’s innocent of the rest, as I know he is, what will happen? Deportation at best, prison at worst, because you won’t trust me to hold up my end.”

“If he rabbits?”

“He may have already, but it won’t be because he had any part in this. I’ll talk to him, and while I do, you run Liam Donnelly. See if you find anything more than I’ve told you. See if you find a man who’d beat women, frighten children, or drive a father to kill and die.”

“If you’re wrong.”

“I’ll use every resource I have, and I’ve more than he, believe me, to hunt him down and put him in your bleeding box with my own hands.”

“Make it fast,” she snapped and, still fuming, went to her command center to do the run.

She had to use Feeney’s baby, the IRCCA, as she needed the international run. She found Donnelly easily enough, and his spotty juvenile record. Petty theft, some car boosts. Then it appeared he’d gotten better at his work. Only suspicions of burglary or theft, and always in empty houses or businesses. No muggings, no person-to-person crimes. One arrest tossed for lack of evidence. And one conviction in his late twenties.

He did three years for that one, and then poofed.

But she found not a single citing of violence, of weapon possession.