Thankless in Death

“Hung out, had some fancy coffee, saw his chance, and took it. But where did he go after the kill? He had to have another hole dug. Did he buy hair and facecrap to try to make himself look more like Golde in the expired ID? Is he going to chance using that again?”
    “It would be foolish,” Roarke speculated. “He has enough money to make an ID, or, for now, to pay cash for lodging.”
    “Yeah. Used the Golde idea at the second hotel because, most likely, he blew through the cash he’d dug up at his parents’. But he’s got plenty more now. Still … we’ll add Golde’s name to the alert, and EDD will check out the unit in the hotel, see if he used it after Nuccio. You need equipment, specific material to make an ID, and some skill to wiggle fake data into the system so it passes. Unless he got it on that last trip and stuffed it in the duffel, there’s no sign he has anything like that.”
    “He has a schedule, an agenda,” Roarke repeated. “And he had the time to plan it. Any plan should include the ID. He could obtain a reasonably good one with the money he has, but a good one would cut into that considerably.”
    “I’m with you. So we have to figure out where he’d go, and how he’d get one.”
    “You won’t be doing that tonight. You need sleep.”
    “He’s tucked in somewhere.”
    “Undoubtedly.” Roarke rose to eject the disc, and the screen rippled back to mirror glass. “And so should we be.”
    “I can go straight to Central from here, early. I’ve got a change in my locker.”
    “You have one here as well,” he told her, as he steered her toward the bedroom. “I had Summerset send down what we’d both need for the night, and tomorrow. And you needn’t look quite so appalled. Not only does it save time and trouble, but I told him specifically what to send, so he didn’t actually select your wardrobe.”

    “I guess that’s something.”
    And the big bed with its fluffy duvet and mound of pillows looked a lot better than a cot in the crib at Central. By the time she crawled into it, she was ready to give it up for the night.
    Tomorrow? Well, tomorrow Reinhold was going to have her right on his ass.
    She curled in as Roarke’s arm came around her. And let it go.
    In dreams, she sat with Lori Nuccio on the padded crates in the tiny apartment. Lori’s hair swept down to her shoulders, sleek, a glossy reddish brown. Blue eyes reflected sadness out of her unmarred face.
    “I didn’t want to look like how he left me.”
    “Yeah, I get that.”
    “I thought he just needed motivation, and—you know—inspiration. He was cute, and he could be funny. He wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t mean. Not at first. He treated me okay, and I wanted to help him. I was the stupid one.”
    “I don’t think so. You cared about him. You thought you could help him grow up some.”
    “Yeah, I guess. I liked having a steady boyfriend. Having somebody, and he’d had some bad luck. He said he had. A lot of bad luck. People were jealous of him, and screwing with him. But that’s not really the way it was. He had such nice parents, and I thought he’d come around.”
    She knuckled a tear away. “But he just got worse instead of better. He wouldn’t work, and he complained all the time, and he never helped clean up the apartment. Then he took the money, my money, and when I got mad, he hit me. I had to kick him out. It was what I had to do.”

    “It was. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
    “But he killed me for it and now I’ll never get married or have kids or go shopping with my friends. And he hurt me, really bad. He cut my hair off, and it was so pretty. Now I look like this.”
    Her hair fell away, hank by hank, her eyes swelled, blackened, her lip split.
    “I’m sorry for what he did to you. I should’ve stopped him.”
    “I just wanted a fresh start. But he wouldn’t let me. I don’t want my parents to see me like this. Can you fix it? Can you fix me?”
    “I’ll do what I can. I’m going to find him, Lori. I’m going to make sure he’s held accountable for what he did to you.”
    “I’d rather not be dead.”
    “Yeah, it’s hard to argue with that.”
    “He would,” Lori said solemnly. “He wants a lot of people dead.”
    “It’s my job to make sure he doesn’t get what he wants.”
    “I hope you do your job, because so far, he’s getting it.”
    Hard to argue with that, too, Eve thought, and slid into the more comforting dark.
    W hile Eve talked to the