“Mick would not have had a part in that arrangement.”
She threw up her hands, kicked the bed hard enough to make Summerset leap forward to check for damage. “What is wrong with you people? Connelly is involved up to his teeth. You had no business, Roarke had no damn right, to let him walk out of this house.”
“What choice did he have?” Satisfied the antique footboard had sustained no damage, he turned to study her. “Do you understand him so little, after all?”
“Does he understand me so little,” she shot back. “After all.”
Summerset laid the now-wrinkled duvet on the bed. He owed her something, he thought, for the morning. “You feel he betrayed you by standing for his friend.”
“A friend doesn’t plot to steal from a friend.”
Summerset smiled. “Mick wouldn’t have thought of it that way. Neither, at the bottom of it, would Roarke. You do. You’re angry, and you have a right to your anger. But it will burn off. Roarke suffers, and that will fester. Is that what you want for him?”
He stepped out of the room.
Tired, frustrated, Eve sat on the bed. The cat padded in, leaped up. He turned three tight circles, kneaded the silk and lace duvet with some enthusiasm, then curled up and stared directly into her face.
“Don’t you start on me. You slept with the guy, for God’s sake. What does that make you?”
She put out an all-points on Michael Connelly, though she expected he would be well into the wind. Her only hope was that word didn’t spread from Mick to Naples to Yost before she closed in.
But even if the heist was aborted, she believed Yost would stick. He’d contracted for Summerset, and he wasn’t the type to leave a job unfinished. It would give her time.
And if she was lucky, very lucky, she could use Yost to hook Naples. Her case would not be closed in her mind until she had them both.
“We proceed on the assumption that the hotel will be the target,” she told her team. “Everything is set for it. Even if Connelly has bolted, Naples can still implement. He has all the data, and has gone to considerable expense. He’ll want to make good on his investment.”
“If Connelly goes to him,” Feeney put in, “they may still try for it, but they’ll shift strategy. They may hit sooner, or wait, come at it from another angle.”
“Agreed. We put our counter-plan into place expecting adjustments, and expecting them to hit at any time.”
“We’ll need Roarke and his top security team,” McNab commented.
“I’m aware of that. Feeney, would you discuss that level with Roarke?” She gestured to the adjoining door.
He got up, knocked, and passed through.
“Study the Connelly data until you know it backwards,” Eve ordered, then went into the kitchen for coffee, and a moment alone.
Peabody slid her eyes toward McNab, away, then back again. She was getting damn sick of the silent treatment. She hadn’t done anything. He was the one who had jumped right on some redhead. Oh yeah, she’d gotten the word on that minor orgy through the grapevine. Little prick.
“Have a good time on your date?”
“Oh yeah. It rocked.”
“You bite.”
“Is that an invitation?
She sniffed. “I don’t go around with jerks who bounce on bimbos.”
“I don’t go around with jerkettes who bounce on LCs,” he tossed back.
“At least an LC knows how to treat a woman.”
“Sure, if you pay him enough.” He crossed his legs, examined the toes of his new Airstream boots. “What’s the matter, Peabody, Charles’s calendar too full? You sound like a woman who isn’t getting any.”
“Screw you.”