Missing in Death by J. D. Robb Page A

purpose again. I found my way with Lost Time. So apt, isn’t it? All the time I’d lost. Time she’d cost me, had stolen from my wife, my baby.”
    “I’m sorry, Ivan.” Summerset laid a comforting hand on his friend’s arm. “I know what it is to lose a child.”
    “She was so bright, the light . . . the proof of light after all those dark times. And this woman snuffed her out, for money. If you’ve read her files, you know what she was.”
    He paused, sipped brandy, settled himself again. “I formed the plan. I was always good at tactics and strategy, you remember.”
    “Yes, I remember,” Summerset concurred.
    “I had to move quickly, to leak the data to her, to paint the picture that I was dissatisfied with my position, my pay, and might be willing to bargain for better.”
    “You let her make the approach, let her pick the time and the place so she believed she had the advantage.”
    Now he smiled at Eve. “She wasn’t as smart as you. Once, perhaps, but she was arrogant and greedy. She never intended to pay me for the device and the files I’d stolen. She would kill me, have the device and all the records on it, while others competed. She had no allegiance, you see, to any person, agency, any cause. She liked to kill. It’s in her psych file.”
    Eve nodded. “I’ve read it.”
    Again his eyes widened before he glanced toward Roarke. “I think you may be better even than the rumors. How I’d enjoy talking with you.”
    “I’ve thought the same.”
    “In my business there’s no law, as in yours,” Ivan said to Eve. “No police, so to speak, where I could go and say this woman murdered my family. She was paid to do so. It’s . . . business, so there’s no punishment, no justice. I planned, I researched and I accessed her computers. I’m very good at my work, too. I knew before she arranged the meet what she intended. To take the money, disable or kill me, then—” He gestured to the case beside his chair. “May I?”
    “No. She was carrying this,” Eve said as she rose to retrieve the case, “when she got on the ferry.”
    “It’s a bomb. Disabled,” he said quickly. “It’s configured inside the computer. It’s rather small, but powerful. It would have done considerable damage to that section of the ferry. There were so many people there. Children. Their lives meant nothing to her. They would be a distraction.”
    “Like fireworks?”
    “Harmless.” He smiled again.
    “Let me have that.” Roarke glanced at Summerset, got a nod, as he took the case from Eve. And opened it.
    “Wait. Jesus!”
    “Disabled,” he assured Eve after a glance. “I’ve seen this system before.
    “You know, I think how we came to meet. The location was her choice,” Ivan added. “She thought of me as old, harmless, someone who creates gadgets, we’ll say, rather than one who would use them. But old skills can come back.”
    “Six months to refine your skills,” Eve said, “and set the trap.”
    “Maybe there was a cold madness in the planning, in my dedication to it. Even so, I don’t regret. I thought to do it quickly. Slit her throat. Put her in the hamper. I’d use the device to get away.”
    “How?” Eve demanded. “How did you get off the damn ferry?”
    “Oh. I had with me a motorized inflatable.” He shifted to Roarke as he spoke now, and his face became animated. “It’s much smaller than anything used, as yet, in the military or private sectors. Inactivated, it’s the size of a toiletry kit you might use for travel. And the motor itself—”
    “Okay.” Eve cut him off. “I get it.”
    “Yes, well.” Ivan drew in a long breath. “I had thought I’d do what I’d set out to do quickly, then I’d disappear. But I . . . I can’t even remember, not clearly, after I looked in her eyes, saw her shock, saw her death. I can’t remember. I think I will someday, and it will be very hard.”
    Tears glinted in his eyes, and his hand trembled slightly as he drank more