Page 45 of Bonded in Death

“He’s not.”

She shrugged and ate another salt-drenched fry. “I’ll run the security feed from the terminal for you. He’s a smug bastard. Not Rossi’s generation. Maybe twenty years younger, so that’s a puzzle. Maybe an enemy’s son. Maybe just a pro hire.”

“Covert ops, my literal cop. There are ways to make one appear younger, different, to disguise age, race, even gender.”

She paused with another bite of steak halfway to her mouth.

“Well, fuck me.”

“I’d be delighted to later.”

“But it’s so much goddamn trouble.”

“No trouble at all.”

“Not that.” But she laughed. “If that’s it, he went to all that trouble to look a couple decades younger. I couldn’t, and so far EDD hasn’t, matched him on face rec. But he leaves a copy of my card, and a message? What’s the point?”

She held up a hand.

“To keep me spinning my wheels awhile. To give him time to plan out his next kill. It has to be in New York or I’m out. But maybe he’s picked investigators wherever his kills are.”

“Not impossible, but why just the one for you? No, Lieutenant, I believe he wants you. You may be right, it’s the notoriety from Nadine’s books, from the vid. Arrogance wants the best. Wants the shine.”

“So New York. But could the rest be here? It’s not probable, just not logical. He had to pull Rossi here. Is he—or had he already—done the same with the others?”

Sitting back, Roarke sipped his wine. “I’d want them one at a time. Draw out the pleasure of it, the satisfaction. And the challenge. And yet, do these other seven not know? Don’t they keep any sort of watch?”

“And know Rossi’s dead in New York? Or know when it gets out here? By tomorrow, I’d think, to anyone paying attention. That’s a good thought. That’s good.”

“So your talk with Summerset, to get a feel.”

“Yeah.” He’d been, essentially, raised by the man, she thought. And had ways of finding out whatever he wanted or needed to know.

“How much do you know?”

“Not a great deal. I know he served as a medic, and I know—though he’s been cagey, and I didn’t push—he did more.”

“Why didn’t you push? Or just look?”

Lifting his wine, he looked at her over the rim. “If he’d wanted me to know, he’d have told me. And to push, or look on my own? Why would I disrespect him just to satisfy my curiosity?”

“Okay. You only know what he’s told you, which is?”

“I know he worked as a medic during the Urbans, and met his wife. I know his wife was killed when Marlena was only a baby. I don’t know how, and there, again, I didn’t push. It’s painful for him.”

“Ivanna worked covert. Even after the Urbans.”

“True enough, but the details are sketchy. Before I was born, or when I was just a lad. Before Summerset took me in.”

Watching him, she tapped her fork in the air. “You could’ve found out more there, too.”

“I could have, yes. I didn’t. It’s, again, disrespectful. Ivanna is his friend, important to him. Summerset saved my life. He gave me a life, and he didn’t have to.”

Roarke handed her some bread.

“I never pried into his personal life. And accepted what he told me. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t want to pry, either. I don’t need details, just a big picture. And Ivanna may have more. If he’d been home, I’d have this over with.”

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