Connections in Death (In Death, #48)- J. D. Robb Page 0,98
him.”
“Add Marcus Jones. I don’t think he was in on the murders, but he’s going down. That’s it for now. I’m going home.”
“Good. Put some ice on that face.”
“People keep telling me that.”
She clicked off, sat back. She should go up to EDD, see what they’d pulled out for herself. But she’d just run out, run down, been run through.
So she got her things, texted Roarke she’d meet him in the garage.
She got there ahead of him, took the passenger seat, put her head back, closed her eyes. If she could have, she’d have willed herself to sleep, into oblivion for a few hours. Then she could wake up and do what needed to be done without having her mind crowded with it all.
Because the fatigue she felt wasn’t physical.
She kept her eyes closed when she heard Roarke open the driver’s-side door. “Awake,” she said. “Did you get anything I can use?”
He studied her a moment, and from what he saw—clearly—she hadn’t used the ice patches. Well, he’d deal with that once they got home, but for now.
He took out his case. “Take a blocker now. Don’t argue about it.”
She considered it, just for spite, then realized how stupid that would be. She took the blocker, swallowed it. “What did you get?”
“All manner of data—and I have no doubt the FBI will want in on it. There’s more to find, but we were just calling it for the night when you texted. Feeney and the rest will get back to it in the morning.”
He glanced at her again as he drove. “It wasn’t even a challenge, none of it. Some rudimentary IT knowledge and not much skill to marry with it. Like the false walls and keypads, child’s play. The fact is, most children are better at such things.”
He laid a hand over hers. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
She just shook her head. “Did you get more data from Jones’s unit?”
“As you already believed, he had his records on the one hidden in his room. His profits and expenses with his Cohen partnership. How much he skimmed, Cohen’s percentage of it. And he kept records on the gang’s business as well. Illegals deals, their protection racket, who handled break-ins, burnings, beatings. All of it, Eve. And it looks like he was planning to relocate. To Aruba. He had searches on property there.”
“So he’s cheating his own gang with the goal of getting enough together to buy himself a place in the tropics. Fucking hypocrite.”
“Well, yes, but I think hypocrisy is the least of his sins.”
“Is it? Is it really? Isn’t it all part of it? All fucking part of it?
She shifted, so much anger rising up. “You ran with a gang in Dublin.”
“I wouldn’t say we thought of ourselves as a gang, but all right, loosely, yes.”
“Would you have betrayed them for money, cheated any one of them for profit?”
“No, nor they me. But that may be a difference between a gang and mates.”
“They pledge loyalty.”
“And friends don’t need a pledge, do they?”
She shook her head, sat back again. “What Jones was doing under it all laid the groundwork for all of this. His leadership sucked—and maybe we should be grateful for that because they weren’t as powerful as they once were. He’s skimming, so there’s not as much for the whole to split. He’s avoiding confrontation with rival gangs, isn’t pushing for more territory, which is how they gain power and reputation. He’s not because he’s more interested in banking profits and dreaming of freaking Aruba.”
“And so someone with more interest in power and rep plots ways to depose him and take over.”
“Pickering. Someone who goes back with Jones. Someone who once pledged loyalty and now turned his back. Maybe his CI status leaked, I can’t be sure. But . . . I think killing and humiliating Pickering to strike at Jones wouldn’t have been enough if that got out.”
“You think Lyle Pickering’s murder was a personal hit at Jones?”
“I think that was part of it, yeah. And punishment for turning his back on the gang. Maybe even assurance that he couldn’t change his mind, come back.”
“Ah.” Roarke followed her perfectly. “And compete for the leadership role.”
“Yeah. It’s Duff. It’s Duff, how she was killed, where she was killed. It’s Duff’s murder they used to try to light the fuse for a gang war. Then Aimes.”
Considering anger better than misery, he kept her talking. “You think he—Jorgenson—planned to kill Duff all along, even before he coerced, convinced, bribed her to