After ten hard laps, she slowed and varied her strokes for another ten.
Then, breathless, muscles loose, she floated for two more precious minutes.
When she came back upstairs, the cat sprawled and slept, the lights remained at fifty.
Long meeting this morning, she thought, and topped off her swim with a hot, steamy shower. She came out to find the lights on full, breakfast already under warming domes, and the cat sprawled over Roarke’s lap.
“There she is. You’re officially displaced.” He nudged Galahad to the floor. “And you look reasonably rested as well. Come sit, eat.”
She sat, lifted a dome to a full Irish.
“That’s a way to start the day.”
“If you have another long one, you’ll need the good start. You were up a bit early,” he added as he poured her coffee.
“I had a dream that told me I’d better. Not a nightmare,” she said quickly.
“You’ll tell me about it.”
As they ate, she told him.
“It’s not really weird to have victims talking to me that way, but paintings? They were like talking paintings, not weird as much as straight-out creepy. But interesting. Like horror-vid creepy and interesting. I mean sometimes you’ll look at a painting of somebody and imagine it talking. But you don’t expect it.”
He rubbed a hand on her thigh. “Disturbing.”
“Yeah, put creepy and interesting together, you get disturbing. So was the way they bitched at each other.”
“From what you know of them, it’s unlikely they’d have been friendly in life.”
“Highly unlikely,” she agreed, and eyed Galahad as he eyed her when she ate some bacon. “They were in the same line of work, but they approached it and life in completely different ways. He had friends and family, she didn’t. And clearly, she didn’t want them. For him, it was a business, and he made deals, made contacts. For her, it was a way to beat back the competition and end up in a penthouse.
“But…”
“But.” He buttered a triangle of toast, passed it to her. “What did you learn from it you didn’t think you knew?”
“They were both for hire, and that made them easy pickings. That’s been clear. But first, they fit the costumes—or close enough. Since thecostumes are custom, have to be, he needed them to fit. It couldn’t be the other way around. I mean he didn’t pick them, then have the costumes made. For all he knew, they’d have moved on by the time the outfits were finished, or they’d turn him down. Too many variables for it to work that way, and he plans too well for all those variables.”
She bit into the toast, and wondered why it always tasted better when he buttered it up.
“Second? He took the money back. I hadn’t given that much thought before, and still don’t know if it matters. It all matters,” she corrected. “I can’t see either of them leaving their spot without a down payment. A substantial one. They’re not going to just say sure, and drive off with some john, then put a couple hours in wearing a costume unless they had the cash in hand.”
Roarke pointed a warning at the casually approaching Galahad, who sat, turned his back, and began to wash.
“And neither had that cash—or any at all?”
“None. Which tells me he kept whatever they’d earned before he hired them, too. And it’s not the money, Roarke. The costumes cost a hell of a lot more, but he left those.”
“To prove he’s—what would it be?—a master of details as well as a gifted artist.”
“Exactly. Most likely they’d have kept the money on them. They weren’t hired for sex, and they’re not going to leave their take somewhere he might try to snatch it back. But he took the time to remove it, all of it.”
“What does that tell you?”
“They get nothing from him because they are nothing to him. The money’s his. Whatever they brought with them, it’s his. I’m betting he’s the type who, as a kid, when somebody else had a toy he wanted and he couldn’t have, he busted it. Culver and Ren, just objects that suited his requirements.
“And yet.”
“He killed them with his hands.”
