“It just keeps coming back to morons.”
“Yeah, it does, and with Cohen lying—it’s pathological with him. Since he lied about Jones, and probably more, no deal. He’ll never see the outside again. When we’re done with him, the feds slap him in a cage for the tax and fraud. Reo gets lots of points on how she handled this one.”
It didn’t shock her to find spinach in the omelette, but at least it was well disguised with cheese and herby stuff.
“I’ll take the Ticker guy next. It’s going to be his hair, his DNA.”
“And save Jorgenson for the last of the three.”
“He’ll go down the hardest, if I can make that happen. And there’s coordinating with the other interview teams as they take the rest. Strong and her teams.”
“A big day.”
“We took them down, now we wrap them up.” She ate while Roarke paused to point a warning finger at the belly-crawling cat. Galahad rolled over, shot up a leg to wash.
The feline middle finger.
“And what’s your plan of attack for the day?” Eve asked.
“Well now, I do have to finalize the purchase of that galaxy.”
“Funny guy.” Now she paused. “Not really, right?”
He smiled at her, then picked up a tablet he’d left on the table. “I’ll be doing a bit more on this.”
He opened it up, did something or other, and had the image on the tablet flashing on the wall screen.
Eve saw a sprawling house—white with blue trim, a lot of fields, what looked like landscaping in progress. “What is it?”
“Darling Eve, it’s your farm in Nebraska.”
“What—” How the hell had he managed to turn a scary dump into a postcard? Maybe still scary to her urban eyes with all that empty land, but …
“Still interior work going on, of course, though winding down. And the outbuildings…” He swiped at the tablet, did a run-through of a big red barn-thing, what she knew was a silo—another couple of buildings, fenced areas.
“You had to pour giant buckets of money into that place.”
“It took an investment, yes, and some vision, some skilled workers. Still in progress, as I said, but on schedule. And though it’s not yet on the market, I’ve had two offers. Or I should say you’ve had two offers. One’s for twenty percent more than the outlay.”
“People are just crazy.” She scooped up more omelette. “Are you taking the offer?”
“That would be up to you, but I’d advise holding. Let them finish the work.”
“You get off on this, don’t you?”
> Roarke did something else with the tablet, split screened the postcard house with the dump he bought—in her name—on a bet. “Who wouldn’t?”
She considered as she ate. “I want to thank you.”
“For the farm?”
“No, Jesus, because that’s just nuts. For … what you said last night. I don’t know, not exactly, why this one’s hit so hard, why it just beat up something in me. I’ve dealt with worse. I’ll deal with worse, maybe tomorrow. Who the hell knows? And I know you’re going to have my back, like I have yours. Marriage Rules.”
“And I’m such a stickler for rules.”
“You are—when they’re your rules. Anyway, it wasn’t just that you pushed me to get it out, because that’s in the rules. It was what you said about why you take time away from buying galaxies to work with me, with the squad and Feeney.”
She shifted to him. “I never really thought about it, not that way, I mean. It mattered. It matters. Maybe even more because we don’t always have the same lines, but we have the same purpose. That’s the big one. I meant it when I said, when I go in today, do the job, I’ll remember that.”