Shadows in Death (In Death #51) - J.D. Robb Page 0,38

as I, that guardianship will stick. The deal stands. Take it or leave it.”

“I’m his father!”

“And she was his mother,” Eve shot back. “You made him a motherless child. Do you really think you’ll get daddy points?”

“She cheated, she lied.”

“And you killed her for it.” Pushing up, Eve braced her hands on the table, leaned forward. “Toss the deal. Please toss it so I can put your greedy, arrogant, murdering ass away for fucking ever. How many times have you poked into the kid’s trust fund, looked at ways to take it over once you eliminated his mother? Do you think we won’t find that, too? Do you think we won’t show he’s just another moneymaker to you?”

She saw the quick flash in his eyes before they cut away. And knew she’d hit the mark.

Gotte saw it, too, and gripped Tween’s arm. “We accept the deal, as outlined on record.”

Peabody announced herself for that record when she came in with water and tea. Tween’s hands shook as he lifted his to drink.

“Lorcan Cobbe,” Eve said and turned to Peabody. “Detective?”

“Lorcan Cobbe, age forty-two, Irish citizen, originally from Dublin. Mother, Morna Cobbe, age sixty-three. Father unknown.”

Peabody glanced up from the scroll on her PPC. “Cobbe has a history of juvenile bad acts that has continued and escalated in adulthood. He is on the lists of multiple international law enforcement agencies. Under his name and a series of aliases, he is a known contract killer operating primarily in Europe. At this time we are compiling data from those agencies. Commander Whitney and Captain Feeney of EDD investigated him for the murder of two adults and their teenage son in a home-invasion case in New York twenty-one years ago but were unable to apprehend him and close the case.”

Eve leaned back. “How’d you find him?”

“She had sex with another man.”

“Established. Known. Move on. How did you find and contact Lorcan Cobbe?”

“Bellacore. It’s Stefano’s fault! He said the name. I wouldn’t have known about Bellacore otherwise.”

“Are you naming Stefano Modesto as a coconspirator?” Eve demanded. “Did he give you the name to aid you in the murder for hire? Lie, and you do the full weight. Remember that.”

“He made a joke. He put it in my head. She was fucking that artist, and whining about going back to Tuscany. We came to New York because it was time for me to be in charge. She whines about missing her home, about wanting another kid, about going back to work part-time. Always what she wanted, and then she wants some third-rate street artist? My career, my life was on the line. I had to defend myself.”

“She ended the affair.”

“Always mooning at that damn painting, and whining, whining. She’d have gone back to him, and then where would I be? Her family would take her side. They always take her side.”

“But they’d support the grieving husband.”

Anger flashed through the fear. “She whored herself! I was the injured party, but they’d have pushed me out, all the years I worked, catering to them, to her, I’d have been out.”

“So you went to Bellacore.”

“To explore possibilities. He understood my issues. He said he could put me in touch with someone. Or rather put someone in touch with me. He told me what to do. He named a price.”

Eve nodded. “What did he tell you to do?”

“I was to acquire a clone ’link and secure it. I was to pay him, Bellacore, either in cash or through his farm. I didn’t have that kind of cash. I said I needed more information before I paid that kind of money. And he told me about Lorcan Cobbe.”

8

“He gave you Cobbe’s name, even before you paid the broker’s fee?”

“I brought him a bottle of wine, and he drank most of it. He’s old, and he likes to talk about his glory days. I listened. He told me Lorcan Cobbe was one of the best he’d ever brokered. That he had over twenty years’ experience in his profession. How he got early training from some Irish gangster in Dublin. It would be costly, a million euros plus expenses, but it would be money well spent. And there would be no trace back to me.

“Liar.” Tween tapped his fist on the table, over and over. “Liar.”

“How did Cobbe contact you?”

“I sent Bellacore the contact number on the clone. He told me to check it every day. Cobbe would contact me. If, for any reason, he turned down the job, Bellacore would provide another