He sat with her. “And what’s first on your agenda today?”
“Briefing. I’m going in early to set that up, and to work out the interview assignments.” She drowned her waffles in butter and syrup. “With two teams, we should be able to knock a good chunk off that list. Or pin somebody to the freaking wall.”
“I’ll hope for the latter. What would you like me to do for you today?”
“Just focus on world domination.”
“I always do, as I find it entertaining and profitable. But multitasking, I’d enjoy an assignment.”
“Follow the money. Yeah, yeah, you always do that, too.” She ate waffles. “Every day would dawn brighter with waffles.”
“We haven’t quite hit dawn yet.”
“When we do, it’ll be brighter. Anything you can scrape up on the stocks, the art. If we don’t make real progress today . . .” She stabbed another bite of waffle. “Eightteen dead. When I weigh that against the line crossed by using the unregistered, the dead win.”
“It’s likely I’d find more without being hampered by CompuGuard.”
“Yeah, and it wouldn’t be the first time. I need to push the interviews first. If I thought they were done, if I didn’t feel dead certain they’ve got another scheme in the works—”
“You could push through it your way. And you’d find them, I’ve no doubt of it, sooner or later.”
“It’s the later that’s burning my gut. Contingencies. They had to have them, at least one contingency. One more they could work either to replace one that went south, or for the triple play.”
“You think they’d always planned for three, even four,” Roarke concluded.
“They had to rush the timing of the first two when the merger meeting scheduled on top of the art opening. They probably planned to hit both, but with a little more time between. And then a third. They’re gamblers. Three’s a lucky number, right?”
“All number’s are lucky when you hit them. But,” he added. “The gamblers I’ve known—the professional, the passionate, the addicted, they’re a superstitious lot. Added to it, they’d believe in the streak.”
“These two are on one. Another stock or art deal? Those are most logical. But I can’t find anything that fits, not in New York. How many major mergers, how many artists on the brink? Not that many right in New York City, not on top of each other.”
“You’d have to consider international,” he pointed out. “Even off-planet. The world’s full of mergers and emerging artists.”
“Yeah, and I can’t eliminate that altogether. But they have to stalk the target, his family. They have to watch and research. They have to be as certain as possible he’ll push that button. Now, maybe one of them goes off to wherever to do the legwork, then the other comes in to double team the family. But that splits them up, and I think they’re too dependent on each other.”
She polished off the waffles, opted for another hit of coffee.
“One of them’s softer. He doesn’t wrap the first kid up tight before they leave, and he reads stories to the second kid. How does the dominant one trust the softer one not to fold unless he’s there, propping him up, keeping the buzz going?”
“And how,” Roarke considered, “does the softer one make sure the more violent doesn’t cross the line if he’s not there to keep him steady?”
“Exactly.” Shaking her head, she rose. “So no, bad risk to separate. And why extend the target area, adding expense with travel, rooms? If they have jobs, how do you get that kind of time off? And this is New York. Anything you need to find, you can find it here.”
She picked up the jacket—black, leather flaps on the pockets, thin leather cuffs on the sleeves—pulled it on over the weapon harness. “The work’s figuring out what or who needs to be destroyed so they can make a profit, and how to connect a devoted family man to that what or who. Eliminate the stock market, the art world, and calculate where they’d try next.”
She studied him as she filled her pockets. “You’re not their kind of gambler,” she considered. “When you gamble in business, you know the odds, the ups, downs, ins and outs. You know the players and the house. You usually are the house. When you gamble for play it’s just that. Play. But still, you gamble. That place you bought in Nebraska, for instance, because we sort of made a bet.”
“No ‘sort of’ about it, and it’s coming along quite nicely.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Real estate’s a gamble.”
“Ah.” He sat back, intrigued. “Interesting. And yes, it certainly is.”
The idea had a little buzz going in the back of her brain. “Blowing up that wrecked farm out in Nowhereville—what would that get you?”
“If I’d insured it well, there’d be that, but you’d only go there if, for a variety of reasons, getting rid of it gets you out of debt or a deal.”
“Okay, shift to a building here in New York.”
“Do I own it?”
“You? Probably. Them, less certain. What would they gain by blowing up a building—or a person or persons involved in that building?”
“Well now, it’s a puzzle you’ve given me without many of the pieces.”
“Quick profit. Nothing long term.”
“Insurance again, but it takes more than a man in a suicide vest to destroy a building. Damage it, yes. Enough its value goes down. You could pick it up cheaply, but that’s a long-term investment, and that piece doesn’t fit. Kill the people who own the building? What does that get you? An interesting puzzle.”
“You own a lot of buildings, and you have a lot of people working for you.”
Now he rose, walked to her, ran his hands down her arms. “And I have security, the sort they’d never get through.”
“You don’t have security on every place you go—a lunch meeting at a restaurant, a meeting at another building.”
“Few have access to my schedule on any given day,” he reminded her. “Summerset, Caro.”
“The people on the other end of the meeting,” she countered. “I don’t see the finished puzzle, either, but say, maybe, we have a few of the pieces here, you could do me a big favor.”
“What would it be?”
“Mix things up today. Change the schedule around. And check on your people, especially any who have access to your HQ, your office. And since you’re you, you can run a check on people on the other side of the meetings you’ve got on your plate. Anybody who hasn’t come into work today, or for a couple days.”
“I can do that, especially if it stops you from worrying. And I’ll play with this puzzle. Real estate’s a world I know.”
“Good. I’m going to head in, get a jump start.” She leaned in to kiss him. “Take care of my business god. Please.”
“Done. Take care of my cop.”
When she left, he checked the time. Far too early to disturb Caro and begin the shuffling of the day’s schedule. In any case, he had another meeting. As he headed to his office, he decided after that and before the post-dawn day began, he’d work a bit on the puzzle.
18
For the second time since the investigation started, Eve drove to Central before sunrise. She wondered if she could train her body and brain to subsist on four or five hours of sleep most nights, like Roarke. Then she could make the commute before the streets clogged with traffic, the skies filled with noisy ad blimps.
Still, she’d rather not finish off the four or five hours with a nightmare.
He’d be careful, she assured herself. It wasn’t as if her dreams were prophetic. Her subconscious ruled there, and sometimes it pushed the worst of her thoughts and fears to the surface.
Love pushed the button, she thought. In her dreams, in reality. Who else who loved so deeply had these murderers-by-proxy targeted?
Most likely a male, a father of at least one young child. No, she considered, almost certainly only one young child. More than one complicated it, made it more difficult to restrain and control.