Secrets in Death (In Death #45)(85)

Summerset continued to knead. “Early tomorrow. I’m entertaining myself by baking and cooking. You and the lieutenant won’t starve while I’m gone. Do you want coffee?”

Shaking his head, Roarke continued to wander, restless. “You and I, we’ve evaded with each other now and again over the years. That’s natural enough, isn’t it?”

Summerset turned the dough into a bowl, covered it with a cloth before walking to the sink to wash his hands. “What’s on your mind, boy?”

“I don’t recall either of us lying outright to the other. Well, not since my beginnings with you when lying was my default. And you saw through that, more than I thought then. Though I may have slipped a few by you.”

“I doubt it.”

Roarke smiled, leaning on the counter as Summerset dried his hands. “Those were the days. And still, after those raw beginnings, after trust and respect and affection, I don’t see either of us lying to the other if a question was asked straight and direct.”

“What’s your question?”

“Did you kill Patrick Roarke?”

Summerset laid the dish towel aside, and simply said, “Yes.”

“Ah, well.” On a nod, Roarke kept his eyes on Summerset. “All this time, you never said a word.”

“For what purpose?”

“You couldn’t think I would have cared? That I would have turned even an inch away from you for it.”

“No, not that.” Summerset walked over to the breakfast area, sat, waiting for Roarke to join him. “You were just a boy, beaten down and barely beginning to believe you could have a life without the fist. Why burden you? As time passed, again, what purpose would there have been to tell you? I wondered when she would. The lieutenant’s scale weighs different than mine. No less right or wrong, just different measures.”

“She didn’t tell me. Why did you tell her? And when?”

Obviously surprised, Summerset sat back. “I may never get a true handle on your wife, boy. Not one that holds firm. I didn’t tell her, not in so many words. She has a way of finding out, of … interpreting and intuiting. I didn’t confirm or deny, but she knew. It was when I fell down the stairs, when I was healing from breaking my own careless leg. I suppose I was a bit less guarded.”

Roarke looked back to the accident, the aftermath, and wondered how he hadn’t seen. “A considerable time for her as well, to keep that secret from me.”

Summerset’s narrow shoulders stiffened. “You won’t blame her for that or you’ll disappoint me.”

How they protect each other, Roarke thought, though both would be appalled to have it pointed out.

“I won’t blame her for that, no, nor you. But neither of you needed to carry this for my sake. Will you tell me why you decided to end him?”

Summerset sighed. “I want coffee.”

“I’ll get it.”

“Sit. I know my way around here better than you, more’s the pity.”

Rising, Summerset walked to one of the three AutoChefs, programmed coffee for both of them. “He had contacts, as you know, and some of them had badges. I won’t call them cops as I did then. I’ve come to understand and admire the difference between having a badge and honoring it.”

He brought the coffee back—a dollop of cream in his own—and sat again. “He knew where you were, bided his time it seems. If you’d died after that last beating, he’d have been fine with that, but you hadn’t. So he wanted his property back, as he put it. He had uses for you. He knew talent when he saw it, I can give him that. You were, even then, skilled and clever.”

Summerset sipped his coffee, looked back. “We had a decent place.”

“It seemed a palace to me,” Roarke replied.

“His view wasn’t palace, but he assumed there’d be money, so he was agreeable to a deal. I could buy you.”

Unsurprised, unmoved, Roarke nodded. “How much was I worth?”

“To me? A great deal more than the price he set. It wouldn’t have ended there, and we both knew that. He’d come for more.”

“A leech,” Roarke said, thinking of Missy Lee’s word for Mars, “never tires of sucking blood.”

“So paying wouldn’t have solved the matter. I thought about taking you and Marlena and leaving. Though Patrick Roarke had those contacts beyond Dublin, so did I. And better ones, so I considered that.”

Summerset paused, sipping at his coffee. “So did he. He had those badges, and he’d use them, he told me. They’d come knocking before I could pack the first bag, and I’d be charged with abusing you, and my girl. Sexually.”

“Christ Jesus.” Surprised now, sickened now, Roarke shoved his coffee aside.

His voice calm, matter-of-fact, Summerset continued on, “And of selling you to others for that purpose. There’d be proof of it, he guaranteed me, and I believed him. I had not a doubt he’d have seen both of you raped and beaten and traumatized. The money might have put that off for a time, and maybe I could have gotten you safe. But I chose to end it before it could begin. I wouldn’t risk either of you.”

The man who sat across from him had had a life before he’d brought a beaten street rat into it. He’d had a child of his own.