They’re taking her remains back to Italy—to Tuscany. The housekeeper and nanny will go with them, remain with them.”
Roarke took her hand, squeezed. “Good work.”
“Not done yet, but you helped that outcome. He—Tween—well, he wasn’t much of a challenge. He’d have been more of one without the data you dug up.”
She cut into the medallions. Lamb.
“Cobbe’s not as much of a challenge as he thinks.”
“Far be it from me to insult you, Lieutenant.”
Eve ate some lamb, gave Summerset a sardonic stare. “Really?”
“In this case,” he amended. “But he’s challenged global law enforcement for two decades.”
“I’d say he had some luck early on. But by and large, he’s good at what he does—the work. This isn’t work, it’s personal, and he’s already screwing it up. Showing himself to Roarke at the crime scene? Impulse, ego. Staying in New York? Pride, anger. The cat? Arrogance and just plain stupid.
“This isn’t just slit a throat, collect a fee, move on. It’s hate, it’s ego, and it’s a need to taunt an old rival. More, a—what do you call that thing—usurper.”
Out of habit, Roarke buttered a roll, broke it, handed her half. “All that, yes, more than I realized until speaking with Mira and Dennis.”
He looked around, the lights, the flowers, the roll of lawn. At the world he’d built for himself. For Summerset. For Eve, he thought, though he hadn’t known it at the time.
For family, which included a fat cat.
“I remembered things I hadn’t, either because they’d blurred with time or I’d shoved them aside, or simply hadn’t considered them before. She has a way of listening, and of asking somehow the right question, the right way to open things.”
He looked at Eve. “As you know.”
“Yeah, she has a way.”
“As does Dennis. And so what I thought of, really, as a duty to you, Lieutenant, became little revelations. The first time I saw Cobbe,” he began, and told them.
“He tried to kill you pretty much off the bat,” Eve observed. “He won’t have forgotten that, or that he failed.”
“He won’t, no. What was, to me, just another bastard, was more to him. And I didn’t care if he was the old man’s—in fact, I likely hoped he was, until I saw his mother, and even then knew how implausible.”
“Because?” Eve asked.
“Other than hair color, and build, I have to assume he took after—physically—his bio father. The darker complexion, the features, eye color. There’s no resemblance to the old man, at all.
“But it mattered to him,” Roarke added.
“More than mattered,” Summerset commented.
“True enough. Looking back, it’s as Dennis said. When the old man cuffed him or booted him, it was attention. He craved that. Even the night the old man beat him bloody.”
Listening, Eve juggled the profile herself.
“And that would be a reason he didn’t go after you directly, not for years,” she concluded. “If he did, he wouldn’t take your place, he’d lose his. He hated you more after that.”
“No question, though at the time, I saw no difference. He was one of the old man’s enforcers, and nothing more to me. I stayed clear, as he had a viciousness, and I had enough of that to deal with already. I remembered more, but can’t say it applies to Cobbe.”
“What did Mira think?”
“I couldn’t say. It was when he beat me near to death, when Summerset found me. I never remembered exactly, still don’t, but there’s more.”
Lifting his wine, he frowned into it. “I thought more on it on the way home, and I wonder now just how the old man found me in the alley with the book.”
“The book?” Summerset repeated.
“I always assumed I’d left it back, hidden in my room. But I remembered I’d tucked myself up to read the Yeats, to practice, instead of working. I’m thinking it might be Cobbe spotted me, and somehow told the old man. Even if ratting on me earned him a fist, it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?
“I fought for the book. He could’ve had anything else I’d squirreled away, but not that. I hit him, and he beat me into the ground. I never remembered precisely why until today.”
He looked over at Summerset. “And you found me. Do you know, when I finally woke—what did you tell me—after a full day—and I saw you and Marlena. I thought you were the two faeries come to take me hand in hand. I only remembered that today.
“I said terrible things to you, to her, those first days.”
“Stop.” Summerset reached over to grip Roarke’s