“It may be,” she said to Mira. “I’ll keep you informed. Thank you for your input.”
She turned to her cops. “Let’s go get this asshole.”
She started out, headed for the glides.
Chapter Nineteen
As they started down the glides, Roarke touched her arm.
“What worries you?”
“Plenty. That he has an escape route we can’t see or anticipate. I don’t see how, but I’m not going to eliminate it as impossible. If he gets out and runs, he’s got access to the kind of money that can zip him off where we can’t get him back. I worry that he’ll find a way to use or harm the civilian, and if so, that’s on me. I decided to wait, seal it up by catching him with his next target.”
She hissed out a breath. “I know we’ve got him, got him cold on the evidence, but catching him with his next target puts a lid on it. It goes back to the goddamn money again. I know they’ll bring in a team of lawyers who’ll push hard, and with skill. They’ll delay, pick apart every piece of evidence.”
“You have a great deal of that evidence.”
“Yeah, but. I need a confession, and it won’t be straightforward. He doesn’t take blame. I have to hit him over the art, and he’ll have that team of lawyers shutting me down as much as possible.
“He could make bail. He shouldn’t, but even with the lid on it, he could make bail unless they convince a judge he’s a runner. And he fucking is. If they set bail, his family will pay it, whatever it is.”
“And he’ll run.”
“He’ll not only run, they’ll help him.”
It gnawed at her, and grated against every molecule of her sense of justice.
“They’ll help him get out of the country and live his life in luxury somewhere he won’t have to worry about extradition. And when they do, he’ll kill again. He’ll kill again,” she repeated, “because he sure as hell has a taste for it now.”
She shrugged it off her shoulders. “I have to put all that away. First, we take him down. Then I’ll worry about the rest.”
Step-by-step, she told herself.
“You go in the front with me and Peabody. We head straight for the studio. You get that safe room shut down.”
“Don’t worry there.”
She briefed him on the rest as they worked their way to the garage and the vans.
She’d intended to make the arrest with a team of six. Now she had nearly double that and thought, considering the size of the building, the security features—including a panic room—she could use them all.
Better this way, she thought as she climbed in the van. And better, too, the show of force. Shake him up some, she decided. Let him see he had nowhere to run.
And after?
Step-by-step, she thought again.
“Out of cam range, Feeney.”
“I got the memo, kid.”
When Feeney pulled the van over, Eve shifted aside so he could climb into the back and work with Roarke.
She set the timer on her wrist unit to twenty minutes.
“Just across the street,” McNab said in her ear. “I’m about to start coordinating with the cap and Roarke.”
“Copy that.”
