seeing as love had sucker punched her and dumped her right into Roarke’s lap. And didn’t she slick herself up from time to time, fiddling with enhancements and hair, draping on fancy duds, because he liked it?
Yeah, love could easily make you go against type.
But what about the killer? No reason for him to go against type. He wasn’t in love. He hadn’t been in lust, either. And his type liked to impress, show off. He liked to be comfortable and in charge. He liked to plan things out with an eye toward his own goals, his own ego, his self-preservation.
A rehab with some fancy touches. A place he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. Where he wouldn’t be questioned if caught on the premises. Where he could, again, deal with any security features.
She sent the data to her home unit, printed out her lists, then went into the bull pen to get Peabody. “With me.”
“I’m running down the sealant.”
“Run it down in transit.”
“Where are we going?” Peabody demanded as she scrambled to gather her work disk, files, jacket.
“To look at buildings. To talk to guys with power tools.”
“Hot damn!”
The first stop was a small theater originally constructed in the early twentieth century. Her badge got them through to the foreman. Though he bitched about workload and schedule, he took them through. The lobby floors were the original marble, and apparently a point of pride for the foreman. The theater section was bare particleboard on the floor and as yet unsealed. The walls were old plaster.
Still, she went through the entire building, using her scope to look for blood traces.
They suffered through late-afternoon traffic en route to the next stop.
“The sealant, professional-grade, can be purchased wholesale or retail in five-, ten- and twenty-five-gallon tubs.” Peabody read the data off her PPC. “Or you can, with a contractor’s license, purchase it in powder form and mix it yourself. Residential-grade comes in one- or five-gallon tubs. No powder available. I’ve got the suppliers.”
“You’ll need to hit those. We’ll want a list of individuals and companies who’ve bought the sealant so we can cross-check them with the construction crews on these sites.”
“Going to take a while.”
“He’s not going anywhere. He’s right here.” She scanned the street. “Thinking of his next move.”
He let himself into his apartment and immediately ordered the house droid to bring him a gin and tonic. It was so annoying to have to spend half the damn day in an office doing absolutely nothing that could possibly interest him.
But the old man was tying up the purse strings, demanding he show more interest in the company.
Your legacy, son. What bullshit! His legacy was several million in Russian whites.
He couldn’t care less about the company. As soon as he was able, as soon as he had what was his, by right, he’d tell the old man to fuck himself.
It would be a fine day.
But meanwhile he had to placate and coddle and pretend to be the good son.
He stripped down, letting his clothes fall as he went, and lowered himself into the one-man lap pool built into the penthouse’s recreation area.
The fact that the company he despised and deplored paid for the penthouse, the clothes, the droid, never made a scratch on the surface of his ego.
He reached up a hand for the g and t, then simply sprawled in the cool water.
He had to get to Gannon now. He’d considered and rejected the idea of going to Maryland and just beating the information he needed out of the old couple. It could come back on him in too many ways.
As it stood now, they could have no clue. He could be an obsessed fan, or a lover of the maid’s who’d been in league with her to burgle the Gannon residence. He could be anyone at all.
But if he went to Maryland he might be seen, or traced. He would hardly blend well in some silly small town. If he killed Samantha Gannon’s grandparents, even the most dim-witted of cops might work their way back to the diamonds as the cause.
If he could get to Gannon herself . . . It was so damn frustrating to discover she’d vanished. None of the careful probes he’d sent out had netted him a single clue to her whereabouts.
But she had to surface sometime. She had to come home sooner or later.
If he had all the time in the world, he could wait her out. But he couldn’t tolerate dragging himself into that stupid