other times he tried to get to you, or as you went about making your living after Patrick Roarke was dead, tried to screw your plans. He couldn’t get to you, but—”
“Marlena.”
Eve set her coffee down, took Roarke’s face in her hands. She felt the anguish. “Don’t go there. You can’t know, you’d never know for sure. Don’t take Summerset there. Don’t.”
He met her eyes. “I’ll say nothing to him. Be sure of it.”
“Stay with me here. It’s his pattern, with you. Only with you. It was pattern when he saw you in that bar in France. Just like the first night, he couldn’t stop himself from making a move. And you put him down. And humiliated him. Whatever he might have tried between then and now, he failed. But this is now, and the pattern holds. Showing himself to you in the park. He’s skilled enough to have stayed out of sight, to have watched, waited. He couldn’t, because it’s you. With you, he’s sloppy.”
“Clearly, you and your board have the right of it. You’d never have looked for the hotel and found it. If Interpol made the connection, and they likely would have, he’d have been gone, not right here as he is.”
“He doesn’t care if they make the connection. Doesn’t care about anything but this time, this place, and finally taking you out. I’m going to bet he already has credentials—has had for years—in the name of Lorcan Roarke.”
“Why in flaming hell he’d want such a father I’ll never understand.”
“I do. He is Patrick Roarke’s true son. Not his bio son, but you and I know it’s not blood that makes a father.”
“Dennis said that tonight,” Roarke murmured. “He said just that.”
“We know that, we’re proof. Summerset’s yours. How else could I tolerate having that bony corpse under the same roof?”
Because that made him smile a little, she picked up her coffee again. “He doesn’t get—Cobbe doesn’t get that he already has what he wants. The rest is just a name, and even then—”
“Summerset told me to make it mine. To make it worth something, and make it mine.”
“So you did. But you could’ve changed it to Hickenlooperstein, and Cobbe would still want you dead.”
“Hickenlooperstein?”
She shrugged. “It’s probably somebody’s name.”
“You’re right on all of this—maybe not Hickenlooperstein—but the rest. It’s been harder for me to get through the fog of it, but you’ve managed to clear it away, and I can see you’re right on all of it.”
Her comm signaled an incoming.
“That’s the feed.”
“Let’s have a look.”
Roarke ordered it on the wall screen, cued it up to where Baxter noted on the attachment.
The door cam picked up Cobbe exiting a black limo. The driver—female, about forty, mixed race, gray uniform—opened the passenger door. Assisted Cobbe—black pants, black leather jacket, light blue T-shirt, black sunshades—with his luggage.
A black midsize rolly, a black messenger-style briefcase, and a second case, metal. His sharps, she thought.
“Those, in the metal case, tools of his trade. He had to fly private to get them through. That’s good to know.
“Not getting the plates on the limo, but we can track it. Find where he came in. Yeah, sloppy.”
He walked into a lobby that could’ve been some historic mansion’s elegant and generous foyer.
The marble floors, white streaked with gray, shined under the light dripping from a trio of chandeliers. Flowers speared out of clear tubes from pale gray walls. High-backed chairs in velvety fabric offered splashes of red.
A woman—blond hair sleeked back—wore pale pink as she sat at a long, polished table with curved legs. She rose, smiled a greeting, offered a hand.
After gesturing him to one of the facing chairs, she took her seat to check him in.
“He used a Brit passport,” Eve told Roarke. “A One Universe credit account. Name Reginald J. Patrick. I bet the J’s for Jabber. The nickname Patrick Roarke gave him. It’s in Mira’s report.”
“Just can’t let the old man go,” Roarke murmured.
A man came out—dark skin, black suit—exchanged handshakes before taking the suitcase, the messenger bag, while Cobbe refused help with the metal case.
“Definitely his sharps in there,” Eve said as the man in the suit gestured to the elevators.
Chatting, Eve noticed, as they walked. The usual blah blah, she imagined as the elevator cam followed them up to the penthouse floor.
Steel-gray carpet here, cream walls, more flowers, some art, doors to match the carpet. Full security on every one.
Double door, corner suite.
The man unlocked the door before offering Cobbe the swipe, then they both went inside.
“The room’s