“Was Cobbe there? Did he witness the last time Patrick Roarke beat you?”
“I don’t know,” Roarke realized. “I think no, but can’t tell you for certain. There are some blanks there, as I can’t tell you for certain, either, why he went at me as he did. It was the worst of the worst, and felt like dying. I likely would have died if Summerset hadn’t found me, taken me in, tended to me. I … It was the book. Odd to remember that now.”
“What book?”
“Yeats. I found an old book in an alley. Yeats, poetry. I taught myself to read, after a fashion, with it. Jenny and Brian helped, as they could both read and write better than the rest of us. It was the world inside the book, the words so strong and lovely. I kept it with me most of the time. No, no, Cobbe wasn’t there. No one was there. He caught me on my own, not working but practicing with the book.
“ ‘Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild.’ ”
“ ‘With a faery, hand in hand,’ ” Dennis continued. “ ‘For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.’ ”
“Aye, it was magic, those words. I knew about the weeping world right enough, and wondered how it would be to come away. And he found me. He took the book, and cursed at me for loafing, not working.”
Roarke closed his eyes a moment, searching, searching through the shadows and gaps. “I tried to get it back from him. It was mine, you see. I hadn’t even stolen it, but found it. He knocked me down, tore a page out of it. And that tore something in me.”
He opened his eyes. It came back, clear as the day it happened. Part of him—the most of him, he admitted—wanted to draw the shade down again, right and tight.
Looking the past clear in the eye was looking at pain.
He’d spent so much of his life believing the point of living was looking ahead, not behind.
But now, what had been stood ahead of him.
“I went at him. Blind rage and stupidity, as he was twice my size, and strong. He was a strong man, I had reason to know. But I went at him. It’s likely the shock of me wading in’s the reason I managed to hit him—once. I landed one, I did, and busted his lip open.”
He nearly laughed. “Now, that moment of intense satisfaction was very short-lived. He tossed the book aside, and, well, I didn’t land another. So.” He shrugged.
“So,” Mira said after a long breath. “Did you see Cobbe again after you lived with Summerset in Dublin?”
“A few times once I was out and about again, but I kept clear of him. I know after the old man got a knife in his throat Cobbe tried to take over the operation.”
“Could Cobbe have killed him?” Dennis asked.
“He didn’t—nor did I. The old man’s gang fell apart, scattered to others, as Cobbe couldn’t hold them. So he went to work for others and moved to Belfast for a time. I didn’t have what you’d call a conversation with him again until years later, in a bar in France.”
“He pulled a knife on you,” Mira said. “Eve told me during our consult this morning. Is that accurate?”
“It is. I saw him come in, and saw clearly what he had in mind in his eyes. Down he sat, put the knife in my ribs—not deep, as he needed to have his say before he jammed it in me. So as he’s talking, telling me how he’ll gut me with the knife under the table if I didn’t give him money and the name rightfully his, I took him down with the stunner I had under the table. I walked away, leaving him breathing, which I hope you understand I regret now.”
“He thinks you’re weak, because you left him breathing. At the same time, you bested him, just as you did when you were children. You have the name he covets,” Mira continued. “You have wealth and position he can’t compete with. While he’s surely accumulated wealth, the only respect he has is from fear. That feeds him. I don’t believe he came to New York to confront you. Maybe to test the waters, to gauge the ground. But seeing you, after he killed, after he’d earned his fee, riding on that, then there you are, he had to gloat.
“ ‘Here I am,’ ” Mira said. “ ‘That could’ve been you. I can do that to you, and claim my birthright.’ He’d have kept track of you through the years, like worrying a sore, and that angry pain, that feeds him.”
“It’s not hard to keep track of what I let people see.”
“He will try to kill you, and because it’s so personal, so deeply dug in him, he’ll make mistakes. But because it’s so personal, so might you.”
“I won’t.” And there, Roarke was certain. “Because it’s not only my life he’d try to take. It’s Summerset’s, and it’s Eve’s—because they’re with me.”
Studying Roarke, seeing that absolute certainty, Mira sipped her wine. “He’d understand Summerset being with you as a job, and your marriage to Eve as a convenience and cover for you. He isn’t capable of understanding love.”
“Summerset saved my life, and has been an integral part of my life since. Killing him would be a by-product, even a distraction, but a pleasurable one. Eve is mine. Whether he understands what she is to me or not, she’s mine.”
He leaned forward. “I was born a thief. The foundation of everything I own came from that. I continued to steal when it was no more than a pleasant hobby. I have no regrets. I gave that up for Eve because she could never have belonged to me or me to her otherwise. I have no regrets.
“He’s only to dig down deep enough, to ask the right questions of the right people, to learn that. Understand it, no, but know it, he could. If he did know it, what would he do?”
“Try to kill her, or at least take her, first. And I know of no one more capable than Eve of stopping him.”
“Agreeing with that is what will keep me from making a mistake. I trust her to see he lives his life in a cage. But if he gets past her considerable skill and harms her in any way, he won’t be breathing when I walk away.”
“He won’t get past her, or you,” Dennis commented. “I believe that absolutely. Separately, you’re strong, clever people. Together you’re a force. There are parallels in your childhoods. You were meant to be together.”
“Two lost souls,” Roarke murmured, but Dennis shook his head.
“No, not lost. Only waiting. Can I get you another beer?”
“Thanks, no. I’ve taken enough of your evening. Unless you need more.”
“Tell Eve I’ll adjust the profile. She was right to ask you to speak to me—to us—directly. We know more, and the more we know, the quicker we’ll stop him.”
Before Roarke took his leave, Eve headed home. She’d done all she could—or wanted to do—at Central, had gone by the hotel to update the Modestos.
And that, she thought, was about all the emotion she could take for one day.
She had work, and plenty of it, but she needed a break. A quick swim, maybe, a glass of wine, and a meal with Roarke so they could update each other.
She really wanted him inside those gates. Hoped she’d find him there already.
But when she turned toward them, she saw the bag—some sort of sack, tossed in front of them. Even as the gates started to open, she backed up.