“I guess that’s fair.”

“We’ll have it up in the conservatory.” To avoid protest, he simply took her arm and led her to the elevator. “It’ll clear your head.”

He was probably right, and in Roarke’s world it was a simple matter to order real meat and all the trimmings, have a meal with wine, even candles, in a lush setting where the lights of the city twinkled and gleamed beyond black glass, and a cheerful fire crackled away.

There were times she wondered that she didn’t get whiplash from the culture shock.

“Nice,” she said and tried to adjust her mind, her mood.

“Tell me about the victim.”

“Victims. It can wait.”

“They’re in your head. We’ll both do better if you talk it through.”

“So, you don’t want to chat about politics, the weather, the latest celebrity gossip over dinner?”

He smiled, sat back, gestured with his glass.

She told him, going step by step through both murders, the timing, the method, the background.

“Listening to them talk to each other? It just hit. They had something. It went beyond the surface, you get me? Beyond that gooey first stage of attraction.”

“The potential they had…It’s not just one or even two people being snuffed out, but the potential of what they might have made together.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it.” She stared through that black glass to the lights of a city that offered the very best, and the very worst. “Pisses me off.”

“You’re rarely anything but pissed at murderers.”

“That’s a given. I mean they piss me off, the vics. What the hell were they thinking?” Frustration rippled through her, into her eyes, her voice. “Why didn’t they go to the cops? They’re dead not only because somebody wanted them dead, but because they were playing at something they couldn’t possibly win.”

“Many of us don’t automatically run to the police.”

“Some of you run from them,” she said dryly. “She had that new lock installed just two days before. Tells me she’s got some concerns. She takes a knife into the bedroom with her – or I have to assume she did from my read of the scene. Tells me she was scared. But…” She stabbed viciously at a bite of steak. “At the same time she says nothing to her defenseless sister who’s coming to spend the night. She doesn’t, at the very least, hole up with her boyfriend.”

And you’re suffering some, Roarke thought, because it could have been prevented if she’d come to someone like you. “She had a sense of independence, then, and an underlying certainty she was handling and could handle the situation.”

Eve shook her head. “It’s that ‘It can’t really happen to me’ attitude. The same one that gets people to stroll around in bad neighborhoods or flip off the expense of decent security. Violence happens to the other guy. And you know what else?” she added, waving her fork. “They were into it. Wow, look what we’ve uncovered. We’re going to blow it open – and do interviews, be important.”

“Ordinary people, ordinary lives, and then something that pulls them out of that. The accounting firm has an excellent reputation.”

“But you don’t use them. I checked. Mostly because I thought what a big, complicated mess if you did.”

“I considered them once upon a time. I found Sloan too stuffy and rigid.”

“Isn’t that the definition of accountants?”

“Shame on you,” he said with a laugh. “Such a cliché. There are people, darling Eve, who enjoy and are skilled with numbers and finance who are neither stuffy nor rigid.”

“And here I figured you were the exception to the rule. No, I’m just being pissy,” she admitted. “Feel pissy. The firm’s had their lawyers tangling up the warrant all damn day. They’ve got two employees murdered and they’re blocking me from doing my job.”

“By doing theirs,” he pointed out. “Sorry, Lieutenant, but if they didn’t use their muscle, and the law, to do whatever possible to protect their clients’ privacy, they wouldn’t have the reputation they hold.”

“Somebody in there knows what Copperfield and Byson knew. They were cogs, moving into the center of the wheel, but still cogs. Somebody closer in knows.”

He cut another slice of steak. “It wouldn’t be impossible for someone with superior hacking skills to access the files on Copperfield’s office unit.”

She said nothing for a moment because she’d thought the same. She’d considered this streamlined approach. “Can’t do it.”

“Didn’t think you could. And the why is the same as why the firm is paying their lawyers to paper the PA. It’s the job. At this point, you aren’t aware of other lives on the line. You can’t justify the shortcut.”

“No, I can’t.”

“You would be, I imagine, working your way into the wheel. Copperfield’s immediate supervisor.”

“Interviewed her, ran her. I’m not crossing her off, but if she wasn’t genuinely shocked and distressed about Copperfield’s death she’s missed her calling. Doesn’t mean she isn’t aware of, potentially, part of what Copperfield discovered. Why wouldn’t Copperfield go to her supervisor, with whom she had – allegedly – a friendly relationship? Had to assume Greene, the supervisor, knew the secret. Or was afraid of that.”

“You’re so sure it was something discovered at the firm?”

“It all points there. Money laundering, tax evasion, fraud, skimming? Some legit front for something not legit.” She shrugged. “Could be all manner of things. You probably know people who use the firm.”

“I’m sure I do.”

“Something for the back pocket,” she added. “Not just a little skimming or whatever,” she continued. “Not with the level of nerves and excitement it generated, not with the violence of the murders. A big deal. Something that drew an offer of a bribe, and ended with two deaths.”

He considered topping off their wine, but it would be wasted. His dedicated cop wouldn’t indulge herself in a second glass if she was going back to work. “Are you looking at professional hits?”

“Doesn’t feel like it, doesn’t look like it. And why cover that up, if so, and not go further? Make it look like burglary. Rape, personal vendetta. But it wasn’t sloppy either. When I get him, I’m going to be surprised if these were his first kills.”

Down in her office again, she set up a board as she had at Central. With the cat ribboning between his legs, Roarke stood and watched. And studied.

“Hot-tempered and cowardly.”

She stopped, turned. “Why do you say that?”

“Her face, for one. It took several blows to do that to her face. That wouldn’t have been necessary. Would it?”

“No. Keep going.”

Roarke lifted a shoulder. “Binding her hands and feet tightly enough to leave those bruises. That’s anger, I’d think. The burns, bottoms of her feet. There’s a meanness there. And it’s cowardly to strangle her when she was bound – same with the male victim. And the use of the stunner. It just strikes me.”

“Struck me the same. But you missed one. He got some kick out of it. No point seeing their faces when he killed them otherwise. Makes it intimate. Not sexual, but intimate. And he pulled the tape off their mouths before he killed them. Took that extra step. It’s powerful to watch the life go out, to see it and hear it while you cause it. Could’ve done it a lot of other ways, but this method?”

Her eyes flattened as she looked at the pictures she’d tacked up. “You feel it, your muscles, your hands. You hear the chokes, the gasps the tape would’ve muffled. Yeah, there’s temper here, but the power’s bigger.”

She settled into work, unsurprised when the cat padded out after Roarke – who would no doubt be more attentive than she would for the next couple of hours.

She studied the data Peabody had sent to her unit. Copperfield’s neighbors were low on the list, in her opinion. Why bother with a new lock when your potential problem could just make a grab at you in the hallway, in the elevator?