“Brilliant,” Roarke murmured.
“Yes, and satisfying. Best, I can do it again, any time I like. Murder by proxy. No one’s safe, certainly not you. Transfer the money, and until the wind changes, I’ll protect you. And your wife.”
“That was twenty million?”
“For the moment.”
“A bargain,” Roarke said quietly, brought the hand he’d slipped under the table, under his jacket back into view. And the gun with it. “But I find the idea of doing business with you turns my stomach. Oh, tell your man to hold, or it’ll give me great pleasure to use this. Recognize it, Ricker? It’s one of the banned weapons you trafficked in, years back. I have quite a collection of twentieth-century handguns—and a collector’s license. They leave a horrible nasty hole in a man. This one’s a nine-millimeter Glock and will blow your face right off the skull.”
The shock of having a weapon aimed at him robbed Ricker of speech. It had been years, a lifetime, since anyone had dared. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“No, indeed. Mine’s sound enough.” He slapped a hand on Ricker’s wrist, twisted viciously until the laser scalpel fit into his own palm. “You always had a weakness for sharp things.”
“You’ll die painfully for this. Painfully. Do you think you’ll walk out of this place breathing?”
“Certainly. Ah, there’s my wife now. Lovely, isn’t she? And by the sound of things through the scanner your inferior sweepers missed, it appears your team of fools is even now being rounded up and moved along.”
He waited while Ricker focused beyond him, through the dome, and saw for himself.
“One of us has lost his touch, Ricker, and it appears to be you. I set you up, and it was child’s play.”
“For a cop.” Eyes wild, Ricker leaped to his feet. “You rolled on me for a cop.”
“I’d have done it for a mongrel dog, given half the chance. Ah, please, try for it,” Roarke murmured. “And make my life worth living.”
“Enough. Roarke, back off.” Eve opened the door to the booth, slid her police issue into Ricker’s ribs.
“You’re dead. You’re both dead.” He whirled, backhanded Eve as he leaped. She took the blow and dropped him.
“Tell me you had it on full.”
“He’s stunned, that’s all.” She wiped the blood from her mouth with her sleeve and ignored the scramble of people who rushed away from the trouble. Onstage, the strippers continued to dance.
Roarke handed her a handkerchief, then reached down, lifting Ricker’s head off the floor by his throat.
“Don’t—”
“Keep back,” he snapped as Eve crouched to hold him off. “You’ll bloody well keep back till I’ve finished this.”
“If you kill him, it’s been for nothing.”
He stared at her face, and all the strength, the purpose, all the danger he hadn’t shown to Ricker leaped out of them. “It would be for everything, but I don’t mean to kill him.” To prove it, he handed her the Glock.
But he kept the scalpel and, holding its keen point to the pulse in Ricker’s throat, imagined. “You can hear me, can’t you, Ricker? You can hear me well enough. I’m the one who took you down, and you’ll remember it while you’re pacing the box they’ll put you in. You’ll think of it every day with what’s left of your mind.”
“Kill you,” Ricker choked out, but he couldn’t so much as lift his hand.
“Well, you haven’t managed that as yet, have you? But you’re welcome to try again. Listen to me now, and carefully. Touch her, put your hand on what’s mine again, and I’ll follow you to hell and peel the skin from your bones. I’ll feed you your own eyes. I take an oath on it. Remember what I was, and you’ll know I’ll do it. And worse.”
He straightened again, his body rigid. “Get someone to drag him out of here. This is my place.”
chapter twenty-three
She didn’t sleep long, but she slept deeply, knowing Ricker was in a cage. He’d screamed for his lawyer, quite literally, once the effects of the stun had worn off.
Since she’d whipped right around and dumped Canarde in a cage as well, Ricker’s lawyer was going to be a very busy boy for awhile.
She’d made two copies of every record disc of the operation in Purgatory. She sealed all of them, and secured one copy in her home office.