“I remember it. And that a few years later Logan was found floating in the Liffey missing all his digits, including the extra one.”

“Ah well.”

?

?Mick, what are you thinking of, fucking Vince Lane’s woman?”

Mick acted shocked. “What are you talking about? Why I barely know . . .” He trailed off, shook his head, and laughed. “Christ, trying to lie to you’s a waste of energy. You never bought a con in your bloody life. How’d you figure it?”

“She gave me a lovely little leg massage on her way to you. She has good feet, but poor aim.”

“Women, not a discretionary bone in their beautiful little bodies. Well now, the fact of it is, I bumped into her today in your palatial hotel when I went to see the display. One thing led to another, and the another eventually led up to her suite. What’s a man to do, after all?”

“You’re poaching.”

Mick only grinned. “And your point would be, lad?”

“Try to keep it inbounds until my business with them is finished.”

“First time I’ve ever heard you make a fuss about a little side of sex. But I’ll do that for you, for old time’s sake.”

“I’m grateful.”

“It’s not so much of a thing. A woman’s just a woman, after all. Surprises me you haven’t taken a nibble of Liza yourself. She’s a tasty one.”

“I have a woman. A wife.”

Mick gave a careless burst of laughter. “Well, when has that ever stopped a man from taking a sample here and there. Hurts no one, does it?”

Roarke watched the gates of his home open, a graceful, silent motion. “Once, I recall the lot of us, you and Bri and Jack, Tommy, and Shawn as well—got half-pissed on home brew. And as we sat around the question came up as to what the one thing in the world would be we’d want and need most. The one thing we would give up anything else to keep. Do you remember that, Mick?”

“Aye. The brew put us in a philosophical state of mind on that occasion. I said I’d be more than satisfied by a great sea of money. For then I could buy all the rest, couldn’t I? It seems to me Shawn, being Shawn, wanted a dick big as an elephant’s, but he was more pissed than the rest of us, and wasn’t considering the logistics of it.”

He turned his head, studied his friend. “Now that I’m thinking of it, I don’t recall you said anything, made that selection of the one thing.”

“I didn’t, no. Because I couldn’t see what it might be. Freedom, money, power, going one bloody week without having the old man pound on me. I couldn’t decide, so I didn’t say. But I know it now. Eve. She’s my one thing.”

chapter seventeen

Since Eve arrived home first, she made up what she could of lost time by heading straight to her office and sending the transmission to Mavis.

Her incoming data light was on. She booted it up, and began to scan the files, standing behind her desk with her palms pressed on its top.

Stowe matched her profile, Eve mused. The woman was thorough and she was efficient. The official data was less than she’d hoped for, but the agent’s side notations were illuminating.

Been copying the files for personal use all along, haven’t you? Eve decided. I’d have done the same.

It appeared that Stowe had begun to take Feeney’s tact of cross-referencing the victims by friends, family, business associates. All of those individuals had been questioned, a select few had been taken into an official interview as suspects.

Nobody played out.

Eve shifted documents, read on, then smiled thinly. It looked as though the FBI had run into some of the same tangled tape with Interpol as she had with the Bureau. Nobody wanted to share.

“One of the many reasons he keeps sliding through.”

She sat back, considered. He knows something about law enforcement, she thought. Knows about the bumps and the ruts and the paperwork, the politics and the grandstanding.

He counted on it.

Tags: J.D. Robb In Death Mystery
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