Page 80 of Fury In Death

“And in one night he lost it all. Tragically, violently, and while he wasn’t with his family. And,” Roarke added, “you think deliberately. You think murder, mass murder.”

“I do think that, and know he does. He finds out something, objects to something. Maybe he threatens to go to the authorities, the media, or maybe he just plans to. Either way, he’d need proof. The way I see it? The big guns at the company found out what he was going to do.”

“Either he was naive enough to tell them, or someone else did.”

“The someone else who fits best? Chu. And Chu, the compromiser, the facilitator, goes to the big guns. ‘Okay, let’s find the solution.’ And their solution? Big boom. If you can pull it off as an accident, nobody’s going to look at the individuals inside the big boom. Nobody’s going to connect the accident with the company. Maybe you look deeper if someone inside was mob or gang connected, or gives a buzz in some way. Otherwise, why would you?”

“You believe someone at the top of Banner-Wyst ordered and arranged for hundreds to be killed, maimed, injured in order to dispose of one man?”

“I do. Would they?”

As he thought it through, he buttered some bread for her. “I wouldn’t have gone there, no. It sickens me to go there now. I’m no fan of theirs, but I wouldn’t have thought them capable of something like this.”

“I’m waiting for the but.”

“And here it is. But they’re not above controlling lives, and profiting by it. Still, to destroy so many for one?”

Eve bit into the bread that was, oddly, always better when he buttered it.

“Stage a break-in, burglary-homicide, we look at the victims. Kill Redman—hit-and-run, mugging, random murder—we look at the victim. Blow up a building, Redman’s one of many.”

“I see the vicious logic of it.”

“If what he knew would cost them billions, maybe the whole thing, destroy the company or severely damage it, lose them political influence, maybe include some prison time, he’d need to go, wouldn’t he? And in a way that wouldn’t make him stand out particularly, wouldn’t connect to them.”

Reaching over, he laid a hand over hers.

“I’ve spent my life in the pursuit of money, control, power. First for survival, then because I wanted—needed—my own. And because I’m good at it. Fair means or foul used, before you, and no regrets there. But I’ve never been like them. Never taken someone’s home, their land, their way of life, just to own it. Never killed for money or power.”

“I know that.”

“I’m saying, if I were like them. If someone threatened all I’d amassed and built and held. The question, Eve, isn’t what would I do to stop them. It’s what wouldn’t I do, and the answer’s nothing. To protect what I have and the more I intend to have? I’d stop at nothing.

“So, yes, I believe they could do this. I wouldn’t have wound my way there, but I see why you have. Equally important, isn’t it then, it’s what Steven Redman would believe.”

“Exactly.”

“If someone aimed for me and took you?”

“Look, flip that because I’ve gone there. Really can’t help it. Maybe I’d lose my mind, because what else would I have left, so might as well toss that out. But I’d have to trust the process, and so would you. It’s never going to happen because we’re too smart, but in the alternate universe where we’re not? Trust the process.”

“The process failed Steven Redman.”

“Not yet. And I’m going to make sure it doesn’t. But it can’t and won’t fail the two victims, either. They’ll all have to pay. I’m sorry for him. I hate what was done to him. I hate knowing I have to add to the cost for him. But I will because I don’t just trust the process, I believe in it.”

Though she’d barely touched it, Roarke added another dollop to her wineglass. “It’s hard to see when a case hurts your heart. Hard when I so clearly see your heart and your duty pull you in opposite directions.”

“I feel for him. I killed once, in fury and desperation.”

“To save your own life. A child, a brutalized child.”

“Richard Troy would’ve killed me that night. I know it now, I feared it then. Redman’s life isn’t on the line because it’s already gone. But the part of me that understands what he’s doing, why he’s doing it can’t and won’t get in the way of my duty to stop him.”

“And I know that. How can I help?”

The question, the simplicity, the enormity of it, made her eyes fill.

“Ah now,” he said, and started to rise.