Connections in Death (In Death #48)(60)

Harder to see that, harder to see the strategy in the location of the kill, but it could play.

It just didn’t sit easy in her gut.

“If not you, who?” she wondered. And trained her eyes, her thoughts on Kenneth “Bolt” Jorgenson.

That one, she thought, just sat easy.

A violent criminal since childhood, with a father who goes to prison for nonviolent crimes—and erases the family stability.

One minute, Eve thought as she paced, you’re a rich kid with all the perks. Nice digs, nice threads. You hook school when you feel like it, bully whoever you want to bully.

Then bam, your father’s in a cage, your mother’s looking for work. No more rich kid because your family sucks.

Eve circled back to Jorgenson’s photo, and found, yeah, he just sat right in her gut.

He finds a new family, one more to his taste, with the Bangers. Gets into trouble, some real trouble—but he likes it. Likes trouble.

Then he physically attacks his own mother only to get his ass kicked by his sister. That had to sting.

He worked his way to lieutenant under Jones, she mused. But he wants more. Maybe—Mira territory—he was still looking for that status his father lost.

And—a kicker for her—he’d been trading a space in his flop with Duff for sex.

Roarke walked back in. “I sent the data to Reo, so my work is done. Though if you’re going in to Central to box Cohen, I’d very much like to watch.”

“I want to, but it’s smarter to let him sweat out the night. By the time the warrant comes through and I have him picked up, taken in, booked and all that, it’ll be too late for a bail hearing. So instead of watching porn and raiding the hotel AC, feeling sorry for himself, he’ll sit in a holding cage feeling sorry for himself and trying to figure how much I know.”

“He has just under four million in his accounts. That’s not including the equity amassed in the real estate.”

Eve shook her head.”No good to him. Ill-gotten gains. He won’t be able to pull from that for a lawyer or for bail. Or it’ll take time to sort out what’s legit and what isn’t, so he’s stuck.

“I don’t think it’s Jones,” she continued.”He just doesn’t fit. I’m liking Jorgenson more because he does. But if not Jones, how does Cohen play in? Because he damn well knew something about something.”

He could all but see her brain circling. “Let’s have a walk.”

“A what?”

“A walk, one not requiring papers. It’s cooler, but still a lovely evening.”

Frowning, she glanced toward the window. “It’s dark.”

“That’s why we have lights. A walk will clear your head.”

“I’m waiting for the warrant to—”

“Take your comm. Let’s walk out, see what they’ve done on the pond.”

She already had her comm—and her ’link, her badge, her weapon—but that didn’t explain going outside to walk around in the dark. “You want to walk outside, in the dark, to look at a hole in the ground?”

“I do, yes.” To get her away from the board and her thoughts for a few minutes, Roarke took her hand. “After all, it’s our hole in the ground.”

Because she had been, mostly, thinking in circles, she let him pull her out of the office and downstairs.

He got her coat out of the closet.

“Why does he hang this up when he’s just going to put it back where I left it for the morning?”

“He has a tidy soul.”

“Summerset has a soul?”

Roarke flicked a finger down the dent in her chin, then got his own coat. “We’ll go out the side.”

The house had a zillion rooms and easily three zillion doors. She let him navigate back toward the kitchen, then a left through what she knew he called the morning room with its glass wall and cushy sofas and little indoor garden.

She stopped, pointed. “Are those limes?”

“I believe they’re lemons, with some ripening to do yet.”

“You have lemons growing on a tree in the house.”

“I doubt they’d take well to New York winters.”

He opened the glass door in the glass wall where outside the grounds were already lit in all their glory.

“You can probably see this place from Mars.”

He just took her hand again. “I’d hoped to check it out before dinner, but there will be criminals.”

Okay, it wasn’t bad. Cool, but not cold, and the lights beaming through all the still-bare trees threw everything into a kind of fascinating relief. Overhead thin clouds whisked over the half slice of moon, and the sounds of the city, just a murmur really, assured her she wasn’t walking in some weird-ass country woods.

“What was the first place you bought? Real estate.”

“A small, seedy hotel in Dublin. A rattrap, really, and one my mates said I’d be better burning to the ground. But I wanted it. I could see the bones of it,” he added as they walked. “And what it might be with some care and thought, and considerable investment.”

“How’d you afford it?”

“Well now.” He kissed her hair. “I stole a pearl necklace—three strands with a small ruby clasp. Then I took the ferry to Liverpool, to someone I knew, and hocked them. It was enough for the buy, but not for the rehab.”