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It hurt, she realized, now that she let it, everything hurt. Her head, her gut, her chest. Raw, wet wounds that throbbed with every heartbeat.
“I don’t know if I did the right thing, talking to her. I don’t know if I did it for me or the vics.”
“You never forget the victims, Eve.”
“She wouldn’t flip. And she won’t. She knows me—not the connection to her, but to McQueen. She knows he hates me, needs to teach me a lesson. So that’s what she wants, even more than any sort of deal we’d offer. It’s what she does, I think. Becomes addicted to a certain type of man, then puts him in control. Until she finishes, for whatever reason. She had a child she didn’t want because Richard Troy wanted the investment. Now she’s doing what McQueen wants. There have probably been others between.
“Doesn’t matter,” she added, “except as a pattern. But she’s a dead end. If there’s any chance I’m wrong and she can be flipped, it can’t be me. I’m the mark, that’s how she sees it. The mark, and worse, a cop. I’m the enemy and the mark. Or we are. It’s for money. Still looking to make money off me. It’s ironic, I guess.”
“Ransom?”
“Yeah. That’s what he’s told her. They get me—and he gets to punish me, play with me, and extort big piles of money from you. There may even be some truth in it, though he doesn’t intend to share any of the take with her. It’s a job for her. A labor of love. Melinda and Darlie, they’re just incidental.”
“The withdrawal means he’s on the clock.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She rubbed her hands over her face, shoved them back into her hair. “He hopes to have me within a couple of days. Sooner if he can. He’d need her for that. A decoy, a lure. So we’ve fucked that up for him.”
She drew a breath, turned to study him. “I’d be really pissed off if he’d made this work and you’d paid.”
“Would you now?”
“Flushing money away. He’d kill me anyway.”
“Aren’t we matter-of-fact,” he said, very quietly.
“Just the way it is.”
“And this is your way of telling me, should he get lucky, I should sit on my big piles of money and simply consider my wife’s fate sealed. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.”
She knew that tone of voice, so cool, so pleasant. And dangerous as a snake. At the moment, she simply couldn’t care.
“Not exactly. More or less. It’s nothing to get steamed over since it’s not going to happen.”
“But I should take note for the future. Your point of view is so noted. Now let me tell you just the way it is. If McQueen, or anyone, got lucky, I’d pay whatever I had to pay to get you back. And while I paid, I’d hunt him down. And I’d find him. When I did, he’d come to wish I ended him.”
He glanced at her. “What would you do in my place?”
She looked away again, shrugged. “It’s your money. No skin off mine to flush it. It’s stupid to talk about, anyway. He doesn’t have me. He has Melinda and Darlie, and within a few hours he’s going to realize something’s wrong. He’ll go under. He may leave them alive when he does, or he may not.”
“And you’ll still have a target on your back.”
“Right now, that target is keeping those two people alive. The minute he has to change angles, all bets are off.”
At the hotel, she got out of the car, started inside. “I wanted to come back here primarily because you’ll work better. No cops to bitch about, including me as I’ll stay out of your way. You stay out of mine. He’ll contact me and soon. I need to be ready for it. I need to write things out, sift through them—in the quiet. When I’m done I can have Ricchio send someone to pick me up so you can keep at it here.”
Rather than respond, Roarke rode up with her in silence. Bubbling silence, he thought. Right at the boil.
They got off on the office level, but before she could reach hers, Roarke took a good grip on her arm.
“As you’re spoiling for a fight, I’ll oblige you. But you’ll take a blocker for the headache first.”
“I don’t have time for a fight.”
“Then you shouldn’t take a swing at someone ready to take one back.” He pulled a small case out of his pocket, opened it.
She scowled at the little blue pills.
“Simpler for you to take it,” he said all too easily, “than for me to stuff it down your gullet.”
