“You could take him in now, same results.” Roarke handed her the weapon. “You don’t want a deal.”
“You’re damn right I don’t. I want all of them, all the way—and maybe I’ll have enough for that by tomorrow.” She flexed her fingers, shrugged at the scraped knuckles. “But punching him in the face a couple times didn’t suck.”
Roarke tipped her face up, dabbed gently at her lip with a fingertip. “Your lip’s bleeding.”
She disengaged her recorder. “I let him get one in. The fucker can have the rep of all reps, but that recording, showing him hitting me, drawing first blood, moving in to draw more? Rat in a trap, and no way out of it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t so often use your face as an investigative tool. I’m very fond of it.”
She grinned, then winced as it smarted. “You ought to be used to it. Anyway, thanks for riding to the rescue. You need a white hat. Good guys wear white, right?”
“I look better in black.”
“Let’s go on in. I have to report a rogue cop—and what I’m going to bet is his unregistered weapon.”
“It’s turning into quite a day,” Roarke commented.
It wasn’t over for anyone.
The last thing Renee Oberman needed after suffering through an endless meal that included a lecture from her father was to find Bill Garnet pacing outside her apartment.
One look at his face told her he’d looked for trouble and found it, and he’d brought it to her door.
“Go home, Bill, and put an ice pack on your face.”
He grabbed her arm as she shot her key card in the slot. She’d expected it, but it didn’t make her yank away any less testy.
“I’m not in the mood for this.”
“I don’t give a shit what you’re in the mood for.” He shoved the door open, pushed her inside.
She whirled around, outraged, shocked. “Don’t you ever put your hands on me again.”
“I’ll put more than my hands on you. I’m done, Renee, done doing this your way. Your way got me suspended.”
“You got yourself suspended. You’re out of control, and the way you’re behaving right now only proves it. I told you I’d deal with the rip.”
“Then fucking deal with it.” Under the bruising his face burned, red and livid.
Not just off the leash, Renee realized. He’d snapped it. She tried for a combination of understanding and weariness. “I’m doing everything I can. For Christ’s sake, I went to the bitch personally to plead your case. And I had to humble myself tonight and ask my father to intervene.”
“And will he?”
“He’ll talk to Whitney tomorrow.” But wouldn’t, she knew, interfere with command’s decision. Saint Oberman had made that crystal.
She turned away, crossing over to her kitchen. She pulled a bottle of whiskey from a cupboard, two short glasses from another—and poured two fingers in each.
Her father wouldn’t back her up, and she wondered why she continued to let herself think he would. Not perfect Commander Oberman, oh no. Not by-the-fucking-book Oberman.
But she put a cool look on her face as she turned with the glasses. No point in letting Garnet know the score while he was on a rampage.
“Have a drink and calm the hell down.”
“I’m not swallowing a suspension, and I’m not getting cut out of the Giraldi deal. I’ll fuck you up, Renee.”
“Understood. So ... who punched you?”
He tossed back whiskey. “Fucking bitch.”
She lowered her glass, had to set it down because the hand holding it shook with rage. “Are you telling me you got into it with Dallas? Are you telling me, goddamn it, Garnet, that you hunted her up and got physical? Again?”
“She earned it. IAB sniffing around me—I got word on it. That whore set them on me, and she’ll get more than what I gave her tonight before I’m done with her.”
IAB—it was a slap in her face, and a singular threat to her business.
Goddamn Garnet. Goddamn Dallas.
“In the fucking name of God! I’m surrounded by idiots. I put Freeman and Manford on a standard tail, and she goes out, and they lose her in five damn minutes. Then you go after her? How the hell did you ...” Fury wanted to choke her. “Freeman told you. You got Freeman to tell you she went out. What the hell did you do, Bill? Don’t tell me, fucking Christ, you went to her house?”
“The house everybody knows she whored herself into.” His knuckles went white on the glass as he gulped down the rest of the whiskey. “So what? Her word against mine, and Freeman will back me. He’ll swear I was with him tonight, and nowhere near that cunt.”
It was falling apart around her, she thought. Men. Goddamn men. She’d be damned if she’d let any of them screw her out of what was hers, what she’d worked for. What she’d built.
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 fucking 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 asshole!”
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?”
Fifteen
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.”