She held up her hands. It was a waste of time to argue, since it was already done. And a waste of energy not to believe he’d been, as he claimed, well secured. “What did he want?”
Roarke handed her a disc. “You can listen to it while I drive. You’ll be working, you see, and we’ll visit this charming shop I know. They gift wrap.”
Eve frowned at the disc. “You got a recorder past him?”
Roarke only smiled.
14
EVE LISTENED TO THE RECORDING STRAIGHT through, let it stew in her mind, then replayed it. She sat back, considered—and noticed vaguely that Roarke was having a fine time weaving through uptown traffic like a snake through high grass.
“You believe him? You believe he’s telling it straight about his feelings and loyalty—or lack thereof—to his father?”
Roarke cut east, went vertical over a double-parked delivery truck, then waited sedately at the light. “I do, yes. I should have tried out the video element, then you’d have a better sense. It was in his eyes. I recognize that in-the-bone hate, as I have it myself for my own.”
“For the same reason,” Eve pointed out. “Maybe he knows. Maybe he played that card because he knows you’d relate.”
“It’s not impossible, but it would be smart work on his part as I only found out myself last year. Do you think he’s lying about his mother?”
“When I read the file, my first thought was Ricker did her. First thoughts aren’t always the right ones. But my second thought, and my third thought came back to that. No, I don’t think he’s lying about Ricker tossing his mother out the window. I’m working on whether it matters to him.”
“You’re trying out the mirror again, to see if it reflects. He and I—both with violent fathers—murderous bastards both. If mine didn’t beat the hell out of me by sundown, well now, that was a lost day for him. His, or so he claims, embraced him one moment and cuffed him the next. If true, he had the worst deal to my thinking. At least I always expected the boot.”
“He had a mother—he indicates—loved him for the first years of his life.”
“And I didn’t. I think he got the short end there as well. I never knew what I missed. He says he grew up trying to please his father. I never gave a damn about pleasing mine, except to avoid that boot. I hated him from my first memory, so it becomes just the way of it. I’d think coming to that hate later in life boils it hotter, so to speak.
“You’ll want to run it by Mira, I expect,” Roarke added as he cruised up Madison. “But he wasn’t lying.”
“Okay.” If she couldn’t take Roarke’s word on that, Eve thought, then whose? “Okay, it fits. One visit from him to Omega, then nothing. No contact. And if you angle it toward his relationship with Coltraine, the timing . . .”
“You take Max down, and some of that splashes on Alex. He spins, restructures, reevaluates. And his lady realizes he’s not going to take this chance to step away, to become fully legitimate. He’s never going to do that.”
“She makes her decision, breaks it off. He makes his. He gives her up rather than give up the shady. He’s not a mirror of you,” Eve stated.
Roarke glanced at her. “And he got the short end of the deal again, didn’t he? For here I am with my wife, about to shop for lingerie. And he has no one.”
“He came here hoping to change that. That’s the trigger. That’s why Ricker pushed the button. To give his son the boot.”
“I’m sure you’re right. That’s at least part of it.”
“So he knows what his son’s up to,” Eve calculated. “Which means someone in Alex’s organization is feeding Ricker. Someone close enough to know Alex intended to contact Coltraine, what he hoped. And when. I vote for—”
“Rod Sandy.”
“I was voting,” Eve complained. “Damn it.”
“There now.” Roarke patted her hand, shifted to her. “Alex’s PA, his friend—longtime friend. Certainly a confidant. He’d know, as you’ve concluded, that Coltraine was never on the take. That she wouldn’t turn that way. He’d have known when they met here in New York how it went between them.”
“And the next day, she’s dead. Sandy didn’t call her. She went armed, and that still says one of her squad to me. But he might have been on the stairs. If he managed to doctor the security, or find another way out—knowing Alex was out of the place, then—”
“An interesting theory. Hold that thought. Or rather, put it on hold and think lingerie.”
“Why would I—oh.” She focused on her surroundings and noted they were parked. How the man managed to find a street-level spot in midtown on a Friday evening baffled her. “Where is this place?”
“Just around the corner, on Madison.” He joined her on the sidewalk, took her hand. “We should take advantage of luck—with the parking and the evening, and polish off the shopping with dinner. There’s a nice place just
across the street. We can sit outside, share a bottle of wine and a meal.”