Desperation in Death (In Death #55)(84)

“Oh now, that’s not necessary.” And she laughed. “But I’ll take it! While I’ve got you, I’ll tell you the preliminary marketing and plans for the auction are going exceptionally well. I expect us to see a major profit with this event. Enough we may want to discuss, more seriously, opening an academy in England.”

“Great minds. I’ve been toying with a manor house in the Lake District. It would need some work, of course, a considerable investment, but if you don’t grow, you stand still.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“We’ll take a closer look after the auction. Let’s be sure to replenish our supplies.”

“Not to worry. We acquired a new trainee tonight—or will have acquired when she arrives. A Pretty One. Supply and demand, Jonah, we meet both.”

“It’s a fine life we have, isn’t it, Iris?”

“Couldn’t be better. Enjoy your evening, and Luna.”

“Believe me, I will. Good night.”

He sat back with his brandy, gently swirling while he reflected on just how perfect his world was.

His parents, of course, would have been appalled. But then their world, their vision, had been so narrow, so staid. They’d never known the thrill of taking whatever you wanted, doing whatever you wanted, indulging every whim.

Then they’d died. He shook his head, sipped brandy.

They’d died never having stepped out of that narrow world, and left him—their only child—all the money, the properties, the business, the power.

He’d done as he’d wanted with it all, and now look at him. He had so much more.

In his world, his wide-open world, he was a god.

He lifted the snifter in a toast to self. In his world, he ruled, and no one could stop him.



* * *



Eve continued updating her board when Roarke walked back in.

“Anything?” she asked him.

“We’ll talk about it over dinner.” He moved straight through to the kitchen.

Sneaky way to get her to eat, she thought. Still, they’d had a kind of deal, so she stepped away from the board when he came back carrying two domed plates with a basket of bread balanced on top of one.

“I considered various ways to persuade you to take a soother.” He set the plates down at the table by the open balcony windows before backtracking to the wine rack behind a panel. “So let’s skip all the debate and arguing and compromise on half a glass of wine.”

“I’m okay.”

“Good.” He chose a bottle. “Let’s keep it that way. Food, a little wine.” After opening the wine, he brought it and two glasses to the table.

She’d sat on the damn floor and cried, Eve reminded herself. If she couldn’t admit to having a bad moment, she’d just end up having another.

So she walked to the table, took a seat, then looked down at the plate he uncovered. “Pretty clever to pick one of my weaknesses.” She picked up a fork, then it hit her. “Summerset did that. Jesus, how bad did I look?”

“If you can’t drop the stoic cop face inside your own home, then where?”

“That bad.” Accepting it—what choice did she have?—she wound the first bite of pasta around the fork. “I’m over it—enough,” she qualified, and ate. “So tell me what you got.”

“Not much to work with. It’s a high-security-level swipe, something you might use in a prison or highly sensitive facility. Not a standard level as you’d have in, say, a hotel, a residence, or an office building.”

“It is a prison,” Eve said, and stabbed a fat meatball.

“Agreed. We have approximately twenty percent of the swipe, the lower right corner. The data’s secured under several layers and encoded.”

“You can’t get anything off what we’ve got?”

He gave her a gimlet eye as he wound pasta. “I can tell you, first, a swipe like this would be programmed and developed in a handful of places—if we stick to the U.S. Since most of those would be government contractors, those are most likely low probability.”

“Not out of the question,” Eve considered, “but lower than a private contractor.”

“One of those private contractors would be Roarke Industries, so I’ve started a search there on clients.”

“What kind of clients?”

“Asks the cop.” Roarke broke a hunk of bread in two, handed her half. “Financial institutions, private labs, high-end resorts, security-minded individuals and businesses with deep pockets. And no, we wouldn’t vet a client for this. Why would we? But I’ll be doing that now, and it’ll take a bit of time.”

“Okay. That’s all you got off the piece of swipe?”

He gave her that gimlet eye again. “I’ve got partial codes, which I’m now running on auto through a series of decoding programs. Once I see how far down those can take it, I’ll dig down on that.”

“Wouldn’t you be able to tell if it’s one of yours?”

He picked up his wine, took a long, slow sip. “Eve, we make millions of swipes at this level, design, encode, personalize, after which, any client may add their own layer of programming, and then layer on the data for the individual who’d hold the swipe.