“Coordinate. Find the right broker, one willing to take this on, find the right thief, the right venue for the auction, design the event. Take the lion’s share, of course. It’s most likely she had all she needed, the location of the vault, very likely the combination. Where the Suite would be taken for authentication and to whom, how it would be transported to the location of the auction, and so on. It’s delicate and complicated.
“Eat.” Reaching out, he rubbed a hand over hers.
Because he looked at her with his heart in his eyes, she picked up a slice.
When she bit in, her system thanked her. She wouldn’t cry, Eve reminded herself, and she’d eat.
“I need to write up my report. I’m not giving Interpol Magdelana yet. I will. I have to, but I want something solid down first. I need you to dig in on Delaney and Kruger’s finances. Recent payments, substantial. Would she have that kind of money?”
“Doubtful. But she’d have financing. The broker would finance the job, and they’ll take in considerably more than the, at a guess, ten totwenty million for the heist. As for Kruger, I couldn’t say the going rate for killing a cop, and I…”
He set down his own slice, stared at her. “You think she hired him to kill you?”
“Duh,” Eve said, and took another bite. “Kill me, take me out or just down so she buys time to finish up the auction. Who else?”
He had to get up, had to walk away as the fury all but burned him from the inside out.
“There’s nowhere she can hide I won’t find her.” In contrast to the burn, his voice was ice-cold. “Nothing she can do to spare herself for the payment I’ll exact for this.”
“She’s going in a cage.” Eve spoke flatly, waited for him to turn. She knew that look, that Scary Roarke look. And sent him one of her own. “In a cage, Roarke, and potentially for the rest of her life. That’s what’s going to happen, has to happen. That’s what I want, and what you’ll give me.”
“There are times you ask for the impossible.”
“No, I don’t. The hard, sure. You’re pissed.”
“That’s a small word for what’s in me.”
“I’m pissed. And I trust us both to do what’s right. What I can live with and keep my badge. Don’t let her take that from me.”
“Ah Christ, you know the buttons to push.” He turned away, turned back. “I need her to pay.”
“Let’s make sure she does. A man’s dead. Well, two men now. Whatever part she played in that? She’ll be in that cage a very long time. She won’t like it.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-five to life, depending on her involvement with the theft, which includes Barrister’s murder. Add to that, if she hired the assassin? Conspiracy to murder a police officer. Life—that’s two life sentences, most likely off-planet.”
“If you make that happen, I’ll be very grateful.”
“We’ll make it happen. Now you sit and eat.”
He came back to the table. “I never thought of her for this. I don’t think of her, so I never thought of her for this.”
“Neither did I. And when we close the door on her cage? We won’t think of her again.”
“All right, Lieutenant. How do we make this happen in a way you can live with?”
She polished off her first slice. “I’m hungry. That’s good.” So reached for another. “My part, to start, I put her in New York, with Henry Barrister. I make that connection, and find out how she traveled. My bet, one of Barrister’s private shuttles. Then I trace back where she traveled from. Maybe London, since you handed me the info she was there. I track all her aliases, including Ms. Fancy, and start digging for the broker.”
She picked up her wine, gestured. “Meanwhile, EDD finds the data on the auction.”
“It’ll be soon. If she moved on you like this, it has to be soon.”
“That’s exactly right. You get me those finances—the suspected thief’s, the dead assassin’s. We track the payments back.”
“They’ll be well covered on the other end, but aye, I’ll bloody well track them.”
“I know you will.”
