Page 93 of Concealed in Death

“It’s awkward. I’ll contact her, ask her to contact you. I can’t do more without betraying her.”

“She’s very likely a material witness in multiple homicides.”

“I very much doubt that, or she’d have said or done something. She loved Shelby, and Mikki. But I give you my word I’ll contact her tonight, and I’ll convince her to talk to you.”

“Your word.”

“Is good, which is why I rarely give it. How did they die? How did he—”

“I can’t tell you at this time.” She slid out of the booth again, hated that she saw genuine grief on his face. “But when I can, I will.”

“Thank you.”

“If I find out you had anything to do with it, the wrath of God has nothing on mine.”

“I hope that’s true. I hope when you find him, the wrath of a thousand gods comes down on him.”

She turned to go, scowled when Roarke held out a hand to him. “It was good to meet you.”

“And you. Both of you.”

Eve kept her silence until they were out in the cold and the wind. “You’re freaking polite.”

“No reason for me to be otherwise.”

“You liked him.”

“I didn’t dislike him,” Roarke qualified, as he grabbed her hand and walked toward the car.

“He conceals girls from the authorities, teaches them to distrust, disrespect, and break the law, cheat people, steal from people when they should be...” She waved her free hand. “In school and whatever.”

“They should be in school and whatever,” he agreed. “They shouldn’t be used as a punching bag, or worse, by a parent. They shouldn’t be neglected and left to fend for themselves or exposed to violence, illegals, indiscriminate sex, and everything else they’d be exposed to in a bloody awful home.”

He opened the car door for her. After one fulminating glare, she got inside.

“And just how many of the girls who’ve run through his system,” she began the minute Roarke slid behind the wheel, “are in a cage, or dead, or working the streets because of the lifestyle he promoted?”

“I expect some are, and likely would have been with or without him. I also know at least one who’s happy, successful, has a family, and a very fine life.”

“Just because Mavis—”

“Where do you think she’d be, given how she was, where she was, her age, if he hadn’t given her a place?”

“I think she’d have been scooped up, the cops and CPS would’ve interviewed and examined her, would’ve tossed her worthless, bat-shit mother in a padded cage, and put Mavis in foster care.”

“That’s possible,” he said as he drove. “As it’s possible someone prone to taking young girls would have raped her at the least, sold her, killed her. Many possibles, but the fact is she wouldn’t be who she is, you wouldn’t be more than sisters if not for Sebastian. Change something by a hair, darling, change it all.”

“It’s not right, what he’s doing. I let it go because I needed her to get him to talk to me. And because—”

“You gave her your word you wouldn’t arrest him.”

“It’s different now.”

“You don’t think he killed those girls.”

Damn it, no, she didn’t—and hoped to hell she wasn’t being conned. “Thinking isn’t proof, and he’s connected. Liar, thief, con man.”

“Are you speaking of him or me?”

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