“Where?”
“Ah…” He pressed fingers to his temple. “London? Yes, London. A favorite hotel of hers, it seems—which I was unaware of when I took it over.”
“When?”
“I can’t say precisely, sometime last fall, I think, or late summer.”
“She’d have come to New York, to Barrister House not long after.”
He turned, slowly. “Well now, of course.”
“You didn’t let it go. You embarrassed her, took a place she wanted away from her. She thinks she found a way to pull in a few hundred million and pay you back at the same time.”
“All right.” Calmer now, or stonier, he nodded. “I see how it could be.”
“She’d have contacts. Brokers, thieves, whatever she’d need.”
“She would, and if she didn’t, she’d make them. She’s good at it. We’ll talk this out. We’ll sit down, eat, and talk this out.”
“I don’t want food, I want—”
“Eve, you need food. You’re still pale. Can I tell you how it twists in me to see you pale, and know, somehow, I’m the cause of it?”
“It’s not you.”
“However unwilling, unknowingly, I brought her into our lives. At eighteen I took what has now cost a man his life. She’s a part of that, so we need to sit, eat, talk, and bloody well think. Please.”
“All right. Fine.”
“Close the doors, will you? It’s too cool now.”
But she took another moment in that cool air while he went to program the pizza.
She heard him talking to the cat, and had to blink the sting of tears from her eyes. She would not cry. Would not give that conniving bitch a single tear.
“You’re still angry,” he said when he came back. “So am I. The anger may grow in different directions, but it comes from the same root.”
She sat and didn’t object when he topped off her wine.
“Who would she work with?”
“It’s difficult to say. I think it’s unlikely she’d work with people I’d know or have had dealings with back in my time. It’s less likely I’d pin that down straight off, you see.”
“Yes, I see. What about this Delaney?”
“She’s good, good and careful, and keeps a low profile. From what I can gather, so far, she doesn’t take just any job, and if working solo, is discerning there as well. I’ll need to dig more. I could see her takingsuch a basic job—the break-in—due to the emeralds. Her fee would be substantial. And it’s the thrill of it that’s worth as much to such as we.”
“A man’s dead.”
“And there I lean against her—again from what I have so far. Careful, I said. Young, but experienced. The kill? Sloppy, and you risk an off-planet cage for decades and more. The window right there, and out you go, empty-handed or not, but you go if you want to live to steal another day.”
“Would Magdelana try it herself? The theft?”
He took a moment to think it through.
“Not impossible, but unlikely. Climbing in windows, not her style. And I can’t see her taking only the Suite. The temptation for more would have been too much to resist.”
“Best guess on her part in it.”
