Remember When

meatballs."
    "Really?" She perked up. "Okay, that sets me up." She laid the menu aside. "What are you having?"
    "I think I'll try the two-sauce lasagna. You put it in my head, and I can't get it out. We'll have some antipasto to start, or we'll disappoint our hosts."
    "Let's keep them happy."
    The instant Roarke set down his menu, both the maOtre d' and the waiter materialized at the table. She let Roarke order, and drew the ID photo of Tina Cobb out of her bag. "Do you recognize this woman?" she asked Gino.
    "I'm sorry?"
    "She was in here on a date in July. Do you remember seeing her?"
    "I'm sorry," he repeated. He looked apologetic, then apoplectic as he glanced at Roarke. "We have so many customers." His brow pearled with sweat; he wrung his hands and stood like a nervous student failing a vital test.
    "Just take a look. Maybe you'll remember her coming in. Young, probably spruced up for a date.
    About five feet three inches, a hundred and twenty pounds. First-date glow on her."
    "Ah..."
    "You could do me a favor," Eve said before the guy dripped into a nerve puddle at her feet. "You could show that to the waitstaff, see if she rings any bells."
    "I'd be happy to. Honored to, of course. Right away."
    "I like it better when they're annoyed or pissed off," Eve decided as he scurried away. "Well, either way, it's a long shot."
    "We'll get a good meal out of it. And..." He lifted her hand, kissed her knuckles. "I get a date with my wife."
    "Place does a hell of a business. How come you don't own it?"
    He kept her hand as he sipped his wine. There was no sign of a man who'd bounced from city to city all day, firing embezzlers and incompetents. "Would you like to?"
    She only shook her head. "Two dead women. One a means to an end, the other just in the right place at the wrong time. He's not a killer by design. He kills because it's expedient. Wants to reach the goal. To reach it, you have to utilize tools, dispose of obstacles. Sort of like what you did today, only with real blood."
    "Hmm" was Roarke's comment.
    "What I mean is you're going to get from point A to point B, and if you have to take a side trip and mow over somebody, you do. I mean, he's directed."
    "Understood."
    "If Jacobs hadn't been there, he wouldn't have had to kill her. If he hadn't had to kill Jacobs, he probably wouldn't have killed Cobb. At least not right away, though I'd lay odds he'd worked out how he'd do it when and if. If he'd found the diamonds-fat chance-or more likely found something that led him to them, he'd have followed the trail."
    She grabbed a bread stick, broke it in half, then crunched down. "He doesn't quibble at murder, and must have-because he thinks ahead-he must have considered the possibility of disposing of Samantha Gannon once he had his prize in hand. But he didn't go into her house with murder on the agenda."
    "He adjusts. Understands the value of being flexible and of keeping his eye on the ball, so to speak. What you have so far doesn't indicate a man who panics when something alters his game plan. He works with it, and moves on accordingly."
    "That's a pretty flattering description."
    "Not at all," Roarke disagreed. "As his flexibility and focus are completely amoral and self-serving. As you pointed out, I've had-and have-game plans of my own, and I know, very well, the seductive pull of glittering stones. Cash, however sexy it might be, doesn't hook into you the same way. The light of them, the dazzle and the colors and shapes. There's something primitive about the attraction, something visceral. Despite that, to kill over a handful of sparkles demeans the whole business. To my mind, in any case."
    "Stealing them's okay though."
    He grinned now, and took the second half of her bread stick. "If you do it right. Once-in another life, of course-I... relieved a London bird of a number of her sparkling feathers. She kept them locked away in a vault-in the dark-such a pity. What's the point in locking all those beauties away, after all, where they only wait to shine again? She kept a house in Mayfair, guarded like Buckingham bloody Palace. I did the job solo, just to see if I could."
    She knew she shouldn't be amused, but she couldn't help it. "Bet you could."
    "You win. Christ, what a rush. I think I was twenty, and still I remember-remember exactly-what it was to take those stones out of the dark and watch them come alive in my hands. They need the light to come alive."
    "What did you do with them?"
    "Well now, that's