Treachery in Death (In Death #32)(75)

What she owned.

She turned away again, struggled for control. And picking up her glass again, her brain went ice cold.

“All right. We’ll deal with it. We’ll deal with her. She’s gotten in the way once too often.”

“About f**king time.”

“I need to set it up. Go hook up with Freeman, make sure you’re seen. Then go home, wait. I might be able to work something tonight to get her off our backs. All the way.”

“I want to do it. I want to do her.”

“Fine, but it’s going to take me awhile to work it. A couple hours, maybe three. Go hook up with Freeman, have a couple of drinks, make it public. Then go home, Bill, and wait.”

“If we don’t clean this up tonight, I’m taking care of it myself. My way.”

“It won’t be necessary.” She took his glass. “Get out.”

“You’re going to give me one too many orders, Renee, and regret it.”

But he got out.

She took the glass into the kitchen, deliberately and viciously smashed it in the sink. “Fucking ass**le!”

Everything that had gone wrong in the last few days had started with him. Keener slipping his collar, with the 10K? Direct line to Garnet’s screwup. If not for that she wouldn’t have Dallas on her back, in her face, in her squad. Wouldn’t have had to swallow the commander’s refusal to push the bitch out. Wouldn’t have had to humiliate herself to her stiff-necked, unbending father.

He’d become a liability. Calmer, she poured herself another short whiskey. Liabilities needed to be corrected, and if correction proved impossible, eliminated.

Thinking, she circled the living area of the apartment she’d furnished with care, with some style, and within a strict budget.

She wasn’t a fool like so many who worked for her.

Her home in Sardinia, now, that was a different matter. There she could indulge herself in the lush. She could buy art, jewelry, clothes—everything and anything she wanted. And keep the highest of high-end droids on staff to maintain the house and grounds immaculately.

Nobody was taking that from her, much less an ex-lover who’d lost his edge, and all his appeal.

Time to fix it, once and for all.

She opened her purse, took out her disposable mini-’link, and contacted Bix on his.

“Are you alone?” she asked him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Bix, I’m afraid I have a serious problem, and you’re the only one who can handle it as it needs to be handled.”

He said nothing for a moment, just looked into her eyes. “What do you need me to do, Lieutenant?”

15

WHEN EVE FINISHED HER ORAL REPORT WITH Whitney on the incident with Garnet, she settled down to write it up, with the attached record.

“Perhaps when you’ve finished that you’d be interested in hearing what I accomplished while you were out getting in fistfights.”

“He was waiting for me when ...” She pushed up, jabbed a finger at Roarke. “You got her.”

“Not quite, but I’m closing in there. I’ll want a bit more time to tie that knot. But I have Garnet and can serve him to you—or IAB, I suppose—on a platter.”

She sat down, grinned—and made her lip throb again. “I love you.”

“Excellent news. You can prove it with lots of sex.”

“We had sex a few hours ago.”

“No, we made love a few hours ago—angels surely wept. I want sex for this job, as it’s given me a buggering headache trying to straddle your far-famed line. I want mad sex, with costumes—maybe props—and an intriguing story line.”

“Milking it, pal.”

“Until it runs dead dry.” He tossed her a disc. “He owns property in the Canary Islands under the name Garnet Jacoby—Jacoby being his maternal grandmother’s maiden name. Amateur.”

“What kind of property?”

“A house to start, with two acres. It’s appraised at five and a half million, and some change. Jacoby paid cash. His ID has him as an entrepreneur, with Brit citizenship. He also owns two vehicles kept there, and a boat. A yacht, you could say. Jacoby is a few years younger than Garnet, has green eyes rather than brown, and lost his first and only wife in a tragic climbing accident.”

“That’s very sad.”

“He has a healthy account in that name, and another, smaller—I’d say backup money—in another under Jacoby Lucerne—the street where he lived as a child. Lucerne is Australian. Between the three—Garnet, Jacoby, Lucerne—they’re worth in the neighborhood of sixty million. Not bad on a cop’s pay.”

“And he called me a whore,” she murmured.

Roarke eased onto her desk. “I’d be very sorry if that hurt you.”

“It doesn’t hurt me. It’s a pisser of biblical proportions to be called a whore by that motherf*cker.”

“All right then.”

“Renee?”

“A bit more time there. She’s smarter, and a great deal more clever than Garnet. I think I have her, but I want to finish verifying and gathering it up. You’re not going to ask how I came by the data on that disc?”

“No. You told me you straddled the line, so you straddled it. Sorry about the headache.”