Betrayal in Death (In Death #12)(98)

"An order, Lieutenant."

"Then follow it." She marched to Roarke's door, pushed it open. Both he and Feeney were behind the console. Both looked up.

"Feeney, I've started McNab on an analysis. Will you see he gets started?"

"No problem."

She waited until the door shut after him. "I'm tired," she said, "I have a headache, and I'm pissed off at you."

"Well, that should about cover it."

"No, it doesn't. I don't have the time or the energy to waste having a sniping match with you like the one I just had the misfortune to overhear between Peabody and McNab. You were wrong to let Connelly go. But that's from where I stand. From where you stand, you did what you had to. We can't come together on that, but we need each other to finish this job. When it's finished, we'll have to deal with the fact that we're standing on opposite sides of a line. Until then, it's tabled."

She turned for the door, gave it a shove, and found it locked. "Unlock this door. Don't mess with me now."

"I'd prefer you shouted and got this done, but since it's not the anger so much that's driving you, you won't. I'll need a few moments of your time."

"I've done all the personal business I'm going to do right now."

"I hurt you. You see it as me choosing him over you. It wasn't."

"You're wrong." She turned around now, faced him across the room. "He hurt you, and you won't let me stand for you. You took it out of my hands and gave me no way to make it right."

"You'd have put him in a cage. Darling Eve, that wouldn't have made it right for me. You know some of what I was, and where I came from. But not all."

No, not all. He wasn't sure he himself knew or understood the all. But he could give her another part of it. "Your past comes to you in nightmares that try to eat you up from the inside. Mine, it lives in me. In corners of me. Do you know how many years it was before I ever went back to Ireland after I'd left? I don't. And it was some time after that before I ever stepped on a Dublin street. It wasn't until you went back with me to bury my friend that I went again to that part of Dublin that birthed me."

He looked down at his hands. "I used these, and my brain, and whatever else I could find to claw and steal and cheat my way out of that. And I left behind those who'd come through it all with me just as much as I left behind the dead bastard who'd made my life a misery. He damaged me, Eve, and might have made me what he was."

"No." She came forward then.

"Oh yes. He could have. Without the friends I made, and those pockets of escape I had with them, he would have. I was able to go my own way because there were those I could count on in the worst of times. When I took you with me to Dublin last year so I could wake and bury Jenny, I realized I'd never paid that back. I couldn't have turned him over, Eve, not even to you, and lived with it."

She hissed out a breath, swore. "I know it. I'm not calling off the all-points on him."

"I wouldn't expect it. Neither would he. I was to give you his apologies for the trouble he's caused, and his not saying his good-byes in person."

"Oh, please," she replied.

"He left something for you." He pulled a small vial out of his pocket, handed it to her.

"Dirt?"

"Soil, he claimed, dug from the Hill of Tara. That place of Irish kings long dead. Knowing Mick, it likely came out of our own gardens, but it's the thought, after all. It's for luck, he said, as you were the most regal of cops he'd ever had the pleasure of meeting."

"Regal, my ass."

"Well, as I said, it's the thought."

She jammed the vial in her pocket. "This regal cop hopes to have the pleasure of meeting him again, very soon. But meanwhile, we need our expert consultant, civilian, on this data analysis. I need to focus on Yost, and leave you compu-droids to the tech work."

"Absolutely, Lieutenant." He came around the console, took her hand. "One other thing I think you'll be in the mood for."

"I don't have time for sex."

"There's always time for sex, but that wasn't what I meant. Just now. Yost, as Roles, holds the deed to beachfront property, and the house just completed on it in the Tropics Sector of Olympus."

"Son of a bitch."

"If you don't get him here, you'll get him there. He's contracted one of our own site decorators to outfit the place, and has a consult set four days from now. He's reserved a suite at the main casino hotel in three days' time. I've a line on private craft booked into the transpo station there. There's only one scheduled in from New York. I've transferred all the information to your home unit."

"I'm on it."

They separated into two teams, with McNab working with Roarke in his office on the security analysis. Eve kept Peabody with her as she outlined the best strategy for moving in on Yost. Feeney moved between the teams.

"The timing makes it clear Yost is waiting to go off planet until after the heist. Feeney, ask Roarke if Yost would be entitled to a share of the take over and above the assassin's fee, since one hooked to the other."

If he found anything odd about her consulting Roarke on that sort of criminal ethics, he didn't mention it.