Leverage in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel (In Death #47)(115)

She shrugged, sat back. “Do you want the lawyer, Silverman?”

“Didn’t I say fuck the lawyers? Did I bust your eardrums when I punched that bitch face?”

“I can hear you fine. You’re waiving your right to an attorney? You need to say it for the record.”

“I don’t need or want a goddamn shit-ass lawyer. I’m a soldier. I can take care of myself.”

“You were a soldier,” Eve corrected. “Now you’re a murderer. Is that why you went to Iler? I bet his brother talked about him—the big bro who read him stories, looked after him when they were kids. Did you figure you’d find a brother in Iler?”

“Captain Terrance Iler was the best man I know. And those sons of bitches killed him. He dragged me out. I told him to leave me, but he dragged me out, and he went back in, and they killed him.”

“Is this how you honor his sacrifice?” Trueheart asked, his voice church quiet.

“Fuck sacrifice. Fuck the Army. Those sons of bitches blew themselves up to kill us, but there’s always more. I was ready to go back, take some bastards out. They say I’m not fit to serve? They say the bombing scrambled up my brains? I ended up on the street thanks to them.”

“You used your compensation, your pension, to buy drugs, and what you had left, you gambled away,” Eve reminded him. “You refused to continue treatment at any VA facility, or utilize the assistance offered to veterans.”

“Fuck all of that.” His mouth twisted so violently into a snarl, the healing bottom lip slit open again. “Do you think I’d take their pity?”

“It’s gratitude for service,” Eve corrected. “But rather than take it, you targeted innocent people, and took lives.”

“Innocent is bullshit. Nobody’s innocent.”

“What made Paul Rogan guilty?”

“Which one is that?”

Eve’s gut clenched at the careless question. All the dead were the same to him. “The first. The man whose wife and daughter you tormented until he blew himself up, as well as others at Quantum HQ.”

“Fucking pussy is what he was. Cried. Begged, pleaded. It’s called tactics, moron. It’s called putting the pieces in play.”

“So Rogan and Denby were pieces to be put in play?”

“Worked, didn’t it?” He lifted his hands, spread them, made a boom sound. “The rest, collateral damage. You think I give a shit about any of those rich bastards in their big houses? They’re no better than me.”

A vein beat at his temple—snaking, pulsing toward his shaved skull.

“I put my life on the line for them, and it got me squat. So I took what I was owed.”

“You built the bombs, the vests that you forced Rogan and Denby to wear.”

“Nobody held a bang stick to their heads.”

“You just beat their wives, threatened to kill their children. You built the bombs, the vests,” Eve repeated.

“I got the training. Didn’t make the cut, and that was a pisser. I knew what I was doing. I trained myself more after they booted me back to the world. I could’ve taken out more than I did, but Lucius wanted to keep the casualties down. He’s got soft spots.”

“How’d you pick the targets?”

“What do you care?” He smirked. “Got blowed up, didn’t they?”

“It took some doing, some work, some smarts. Why don’t you tell us how smart you are, Sergeant?”

“Shit. Rogan was easy. That asswipe Banks fed Lucius some intel on the merger—rich bastards getting richer. We’re just sitting around one night, me and Lucius, drinking and bullshitting, and he says how we could make a windfall buying up some of the stocks. We started playing with it, then we could see how it could work.”

“And how was that. Why Paul Rogan?”

“Lucius wanted to pick a father. He’s got a hard-on for his own, right? He wanted to see, like an experiment, if a father would give his life for his kid. His brother gave his life for his men. It’s like the same, so we started working on it. Rogan fit the bill.”

“I’m going to say Lucius worked up the jammers, the way through security.”

Silverman jerked a shoulder. “He’s got a knack. Took him weeks, but he figured it out.”

“You handled the parents, he handled the kids.”

“No hurting the kids, that was his line.”

“But the women were fair game.”

“You gotta incentivize people. They don’t believe you’ll follow through, they don’t follow through.”

“Lucius set up the fake accounts, buried them, bought up stocks,” Eve prodded.

“He’s got good brains for that shit. He’s an asshole on tactics, but he knows his money shit.”

“How much did you make?”

“One-point-three.” When he grinned a little blood dribbled down his chin. He swiped it away. “More money than I’ve seen in my life, all at once.”

“And still not enough. Did you always plan to steal the Richie from Banks?”

“That jerk-off? Lucius said we’d consider that the jerk-off’s fee. We had some already, and we’d have more after we got the art guy to blow up the artist and a bunch of his faggy art shit.”