Vengeance in Death (In Death #6)(26)

“They’re the same, you see.” Summerset’s voice trembled with emotion as he lowered himself into a chair. “With their badges and their bullying and their empty hearts. Cops are all the same.”

“We’ll have to see,” Roarke said, watching his wife. “Lieutenant, I’d like to speak with you, off the record, and without your aide.”

“I won’t have it,” Summerset fired up.

“It’s my choice. If you’d excuse us, Peabody.” Roarke smiled politely, gestured toward the door.

Eve stood where she was, kept her eyes on Roarke’s. “Wait outside, Peabody. Secure the door.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Engage soundproofing.” When she was alone with Roarke and Summerset, Eve kept her balled hands in her pockets. “You’ve decided to tell me,” she said coldly. “Did you think I didn’t realize you knew more than you were saying? Do you think I’m a f**king idiot?”

Roarke read the hurt behind the temper and bit back a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“You would apologize to her?” Summerset snapped. “After what she — “

“Just shut the hell up,” Eve ordered, turning on him with teeth bared. “How do I know I didn’t have it just right? The equipment to jam transmissions, to bypass CompuGuard, is right there in the house. Who knows about it but the three of us? The first victim was an old personal friend of Roarke’s, the second another old friend who was killed in one of Roarke’s properties. You know everything he owns, everything he does and how he does it. It’s been almost twenty years, but that isn’t so long for you to wait for payback, to avenge your daughter. How do I know you’re not willing to sacrifice everything to destroy him?”

“Because he’s what I have left. Because he loved her. Because he’s mine.” This time when Summerset picked up his glass, water sloshed to the rim and over onto the table.

“Eve.” Roarke spoke softly even as he felt his heart, and his loyalties, dragged in opposite directions by angry hands. “Please sit down, and listen.”

“I can listen fine standing.”

“Suit yourself.” Wearily Roarke pressed his fingers to his eyes. The woman fate had handed his heart to was rarely easy. “I told you about Marlena. She was like a sister to me after Summerset took me in. But I wasn’t a child,” he continued, eyeing Summerset with amused affection. “Or innocent.”

“Beaten half to death,” Summerset muttered.

“I’d been careless.” Roarke shrugged. “In any case, I stayed with them, worked with them.”

“Running grifts,” she said tightly. “Picking pockets.”

“Surviving.” Roarke nearly smiled again. “I won’t apologize for that. I told you that Marlena… she was still a child, really, but she had feelings for me I’d been unaware of. And she came to my room one night, full of love and generosity. I was cruel to her. I didn’t know how to handle the situation so I was clumsy and cruel. I thought I was doing the right thing, the decent thing. I couldn’t touch her in the way she thought she wanted. She was so innocent and so… sweet. I hurt her, and instead of going back to her own room and hating me for a while as I’d hoped — as I’d thought she would — she went out. Men who were looking for me, men I was arrogant enough to believe I could deal with on my own ground, found her, took her.”

Because a part of him still mourned, and always would, he paused a moment. When he continued his voice was quieter, his eyes darker. “I would have traded my life for hers. I would have done anything they asked to spare her one moment’s fear or pain. But there was nothing to be done. Nothing I was allowed to do. They tossed her on the doorstep after they’d done with her.”

“She was so small.” Summerset’s voice was barely a whisper. “She looked like a doll, all broken and torn. They killed my baby. Butchered her.” Now his eyes, bright and bitter, met Eve’s. “The cops did nothing. They turned their backs. Marlena was the daughter of an undesirable. There were no witnesses, they said, no evidence. They knew who had done it, because the word was everywhere on the street. But they did nothing.”

“The men who had killed her were powerful,” Roarke continued. “In that area of Dublin, cops turned a blind eye and deaf ear to certain activities. It took me a great deal of time to gain enough power and enough skill to go up against them. It took me more time to track down the six men who had had a part in Marlena’s death.”

“But you did track them down, and you killed them. I know that.” And she’d found it possible to live with that. “What does this have to do with Brennen and Conroy?” Her heart stuttered a moment. “They were involved? They were involved with Marlena’s death?”

“No. But each of them fed me information at different times. Information that helped me find a certain man in a certain place. And when I found the men, two of the men who had raped and tortured and murdered Marlena, I killed them. Slowly. Painfully. The first,” he said with his eyes locked on Eve’s, “I gutted.”

The color drained out of her face. “You disemboweled him.”

“It seemed fitting. It took a gutless bastard to do what was done to a young helpless girl. I found the second man through some data I bought from Shawn. When I had him I opened him up, one vein at a time, and let him bleed to death.”