“Hoarding?” Roarke suggested.
“Yeah, maybe.” But she wasn’t so sure of that now. “He has to leave a lot behind because it’s too annoying and time-consuming to repack food. He can get more. Check gourmet food shops, that should be on the list. And clubs, the trendy ones. If we can find out where he went the nights he abducted Melinda, then Darlie, we’d know what he’s looking for in late-night entertainment.”
“He wouldn’t go back. He’d look for fresh,” Roarke said when she turned and frowned at him. “And wouldn’t go back on the off chance whoever he played as a mark came in as well.”
“You’re probably right. Good thought. So if we can find, we eliminate. But we’d have a style.”
She walked to the window, looked out, looked down.
Dallas at our feet, she thought again.
“He talked about staying in a hotel penthouse. High life. Upper floors, higher price, higher life. If he changed his MO with this second location, we’re looking for a top level, good view. Big windows, maybe a terrace. Lots of open. More, I think, in the center of things. The rest applies. At least two bedrooms, on-site garage.”
She shut her eyes, trying to think. “One of those corporate apartments, maybe, or a long-lease rental? Or—”
“You’re clutching now because you’re tired. You’re tired, Eve, and trying not to think you’re standing a foot away from where your mother bled out hours ago. But you are thinking it. This isn’t the place for you to think clearly or well, and you need to accept it.”
“I think,” she said slowly, deliberately, “he left food, wine, clothes, equipment behind. But he took some of everything with him. I think he carefully selected the best of each category. I think he did that because he was moving to a better location. And, I think, if we focus on high floors—even top floors of more upscale buildings, more urban center areas, more luxury accommodations, we’ll find him.”
“Then you should pass that on to your associates here so they can begin to do that.”
“I am. I will.”
“Good. You do that while I contact Mira. She can join us for a drink back at the hotel.”
“I don’t want—”
“It’s past that. You need to do this for yourself. If you won’t, then do it for me. I’m asking you, please, do this for me.”
She pulled out her ’link, but she didn’t look at him, or at the blood. She contacted Ricchio as she walked away from the crime scene.
19
Roarke understood her silence. It didn’t matter that she’d agreed to talk with Mira, even acknowledged she needed to. He’d forced her hand—made her stop her forward motion and her focus on the crimes, the perpetrator, the victims, the questions and answers. Stopping the forward motion meant facing the past—her past.
Dealing with her feelings about her mother’s life, and her mother’s murder.
He could accept her need, and her ability, to turn her reluctance into resentment aimed at him. In her place he’d likely have done the same.
What a pair they were.
He expected, and accepted, her reaction when the elevator opened. And Mira turned from her place by the windows. The single glance Eve spared him, one ripe with the shock of betrayal stabbed him right through the heart.
“I’ve been admiring your view,” Mira said.
“It’s good to see you.” Roarke walked over to greet her. “How was the flight?”
“Very smooth.”
“And your room here?”
“It’s lovely.”
Behind them, Eve’s silence was a roar of fury.
“Why don’t we have some wine?” Roarke began.
“You two go ahead with your social hour,” Eve interrupted in a tone like cracked ice. “I need a shower.”
She stormed upstairs, had nearly slammed the bedroom door. Then she saw the cat sitting on the bed, blinking at her with bicolored eyes.
Pressure thudded into her chest, burned in her throat, behind her eyes as she rushed forward, dropped to her knees by the bed.
“Galahad.”
He bumped his head against hers, purred like a cargo jet.
“He had her bring you.” She rubbed her face against his fur. “He had her bring you for me. God, God, I’m a mess.”
She sat on the floor, braced her back against the bed. Comfort flooded her when the cat jumped off the bed, padded into her lap. And circled there, digging thin claws into her thighs.
“Okay. Okay,” she murmured, giving him a long stroke down the back. She closed her eyes, and holding the fat, purring cat, tried to find her center again.
“I’m sorry,” Roarke said downstairs. “I didn’t tell her you’d be waiting for us. I knew she’d stall otherwise, and we’d end up . . . I thought it would be harder. I’m going to get us that wine.”
He chose a bottle at random from the rack in the bar area. While he uncorked it, Mira walked over.
“You look very tired. You rarely do.”
“I’m not particularly. Frustrated, I suppose. This should breathe a bit, but bugger that.” He poured two glasses.
“Frustrated with Eve?”
“No. Yes.” He swallowed wine. “No. Not really. She has enough to deal with, more than anyone should. With myself. I don’t know what to do for her, what to say to her. I dislike not knowing what to do for or say to the person who means everything to me.
“I’m sorry, please, sit down. Have some wine.”
“Thank you.” She sat, and in her quiet way sipped and waited while he roamed the room as a wolf might a cage.
“What do you think you should do, or say?” she asked him.
“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I don’t bloody know. Does she need me to just let her work herself into exhaustion? That can’t be right. Yet I know very well she needs the work, the routine of it, the structure to get through the rest.”
He shoved a hand in his pocket, found the gray button, turned it over and over in his fingers. “But it’s not routine this time, is it? It’s not simply another case, another investigation.”
“It’s difficult, coming here. Being here.”
“Bad enough if it were only that, with all the memories it shoves down her throat. The nightmares, they’d eased off, until we came here. Now she’s had one worse than anything I know of since we’ve been together. She’s made of courage, you know? And for her to be so terrified, so absolutely defenseless . . .”
“Makes you feel the same.”
He stopped, and the anguish lived in his eyes, on his face, in the set of his body. “I couldn’t get her back. For . . . it seemed forever, I couldn’t pull her out. And this was before her mother. This was just being here, being here, tracking a man who makes her think of her father.”
“You understood it would be difficult for her, physically, emotionally. Did you try to stop her from coming?”
“As if I could.”
“Roarke.” She waited until he again stopped his restless movements, looked at her. “You know you could have. You’re the only one who could have stopped her from coming to Dallas. Why didn’t you?”
He stood for a moment, and when the storm in his eyes faded, sat across from her. “How could I? If she hadn’t come, hadn’t done whatever she could and McQueen had hurt, worse, killed Melinda Jones, Eve would never have forgiven herself. It would have cut something out of her. Neither of us could have lived with that.”
“Now Melinda and the girl McQueen abducted are safe.”
“But it’s not done, and not just because he’s still out there. She stood over her mother’s body today. God.” He rubbed at his temple. “Could it only be today? There’s been no time, you see, to deal with it, to understand it. To cope. She won’t take it. Do I force her to? Pour a tranq into her so she gets some rest? Let her run until she drops? Do I just watch her suffer, and continue to do nothing?”
“You feel you’ve done nothing?”
“Tracking financials and making her eat a goddamn sandwich?” The brittle, brutal frustration snapped out of him. “Anyone could do the same, so it’s next to nothing. She needs more from me than that, and I don’t know what it is.”