Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(110)

“But when you’re out of it and you look back, it’s still hard. When you look at somebody else, somebody going through some of the same . . .”

“Who’s powerless, particularly. What Dennis said about evil is absolute truth to my mind. We’ve both seen plenty of it, but when it’s a child, it’s magnified. If you have the power to stop it for some, if you have the means, it makes a difference.”

“I think Jones stopped it, without knowing how far it had already gone. I don’t think he could’ve lived with it if he’d known. Not even for his brother.”

“You see him as a good man.”

She shook her head. “I see him as a man, and one who’s worked to try to make a difference. I’ll give him that. But if this went down the way I see it, or along the lines? It’s not right. All these years parents, siblings, they’ve had that hole in their lives. That not-knowing. And okay, maybe, probably, he didn’t know. But I see it more as he didn’t let himself know. How could he assume Lonna was the first, the only?”

“I’d think,” Roarke considered as he tore a piece of bread to share with her, “it could be inconceivable. Your brother—and younger at that. Inconceivable to believe he’d killed, that what you found and stopped wasn’t the first time.”

“Maybe so.” Eve bit into the bread. “Maybe, but that’s just shutting your eyes. And more—even giving him that, how could he let the kid live with that nightmare, that not-knowing, or the not being able to face?”

“There we walk the same line.” He touched her hand, just a graze. “Homeland did that, and worse, to you. Knowing what Troy did to you, even hearing it, and putting their mission, we’ll say, above your welfare. Even your life.”

He’d never forget, she thought, or forgive. That was fair, she decided. Neither would she.

“And Jones put his brother’s welfare—maybe his mission—ahead of the needs and welfare of the child. The kid should’ve gotten help. She should’ve gotten justice fifteen years ago.”

“I can’t argue with you as I agree. But I can see the how and the why of what he did. So can you.”

She shook her head again. “That doesn’t make it right. He made a martyr out of a murderer, and left a lot of people hurting for a long time.”

“Blood’s thicker, they say.”

“Yeah, I said the same to Peabody before. If that holds true, then he’ll do what Mira thinks he will. He’ll come back. I have to be ready for him.”

• • •

In her home office she scraped at every detail she could find on Nashville Jones. Financials—and she sent an e-mail to her go-to ADA to see if she had enough for a warrant to freeze those financials—his medicals, his education, his travel.

Nearly all travel, right back to his childhood, was primarily what she thought of as work related. Retreats, conferences, missions. Spreading the word or gathering more words to spread and different methods of spreading them.

And they called her work-obsessed? As far as she could tell he had very little life outside the work.

She’d been there once, understood the territory.

She ran searches for anything written about him or either house he’d founded.

When she found them, she read carefully, looking for any direction he might have taken.

No favorite places she could see, no haunts, no little cabin in the woods.

Still she culled out anything she found remotely interesting, filed it, then did exactly the same on the brother she believed had died right here in New York, and not thousands of miles away in some lion-eating jungle.

“He never traveled alone,” she said, jabbing a finger in the air when Roarke joined her. “Not one time I can find here. Not even to see big sis—and the locals checked her out. Jones didn’t take his passport, so he’s not hiding on a sheep ranch in Australia, but she let him—even insisted—they check all her communications, so we’d know he hasn’t contacted her.”

“Some are what they seem,” he commented. “Law-abiding.”

“Some. When little brother went anywhere, he was either with big brother, big sister, the parents. The father acted as chaperone or whatever they’d call it the single time he went on a mission—a youth group deal. Everything I find has one of them with corresponding travel. So I call a big pile of bullshit on him sailing off to Africa, for Christ’s sake, to break his cherry.”

“One way to put it. You’d already concluded the younger brother didn’t go to Africa.”

“Conclusions aren’t proof, and neither is this. But it adds weight. I travel,” she said. “Now. I travel now. We go places where there aren’t dead bodies.”

“We do, on occasion. And as you’ve mentioned it, I thought we might do just that for a few days after the holidays. Go somewhere without corpses.”

“Oh.”

He flicked a finger down the dent in her chin. “Your usual enthusiastic reaction. I’m thinking warm, blue skies, blue water, white beaches, and foolish drinks with umbrellas stuck in them.”

“Oh,” she said in an entirely different tone.

“I know your weakness, yes.” Now he kissed her lightly. “I thought the island, unless you have some secret desire to see another tropical locale.”