Nora Roberts - Remember When

As it stood now, they could have no clue. He could be an obsessed fan, or a lover of the maid's who'd been in league with her to burgle the Gannon residence. He could be anyone at all.

But if he went to Maryland he might be seen, or traced. He would hardly blend well in some silly small town. If he killed Samantha Gannon's grandparents, even the most dim-witted of cops might work their way back to the diamonds as the cause.

If he could get to Gannon herself... It was so damn frustrating to discover she'd vanished. None of the careful probes he'd sent out had netted him a single clue to her whereabouts.

But she had to surface sometime. She had to come home sooner or later.

If he had all the time in the world, he could wait her out. But he couldn't tolerate dragging himself into that stupid office much longer, dealing with the idiotic working class or paying lip service to his pathetic parents. All the while knowing everything he wanted, everything he deserved, was just beyond his reach.

He sipped the drink with one arm braced on the pool's edge to anchor him.

"Screen on," he said idly, then scanned the news channels for any updates.

Nothing new, he saw with satisfaction. He couldn't understand the mind-set of those who fed on media, on what they perceived as the glory. A true criminal gained all the satisfaction necessary by succeeding at his work, in secret.

He liked being a true criminal, and liked-very much-raising the bar on his own exploits.

He smiled to himself as he looked around the room at the shelves and displays of antique toys and games. The cars, the trucks, the figures. He'd stolen some of them, simply for the buzz. The same way he sometimes stole a tie or a shirt.

Just to see if he could.

He'd stolen from friends and relatives for the same reason, and long before he'd known he came by the habit... honestly. That thievery was in his blood.

Who'd have believed it looking at his parents?

But then, he'd gotten his interest in the toy collection from his father, and it had served him well. If his fellow collector and acquaintance Chad Dix hadn't bitched to him about his girlfriend, about the book she was writing that was taking all her time and attention, he wouldn't have known about the diamonds, the connection, as soon as he had.

He might never have read the book. It wasn't the sort of thing he did with his time, after all. But it had been a simple matter to pry Dix for more details, then to wheedle the advance copy from him.

He finished off the drink, and though he wanted another, denied himself. A clear head was important.

He set the glass aside, did a few laps. When he pulled himself out of the pool, the empty glass was gone and a towel and robe were laid out. He had a party to attend that evening. He had a party of some sort to attend every evening. And he found it ironic that he'd actually met Samantha Gannon a few times at various affairs. How odd he'd had no interest in her, had assumed they had nothing in common.

He'd never had more in common with a woman.

He might have to take the time and the trouble to pursue her romantically, which would certainly be considerably less lowering than his brief association with Tina Cobb. No more his type, when it came to that. Not from what he'd observed of her, in any case.

Full of herself, he thought as he began to dress. Attractive enough, certainly, but one of those brainy, single-minded females who either irritated or bored him so quickly.

From what he'd been told of her by Chad, she was good in bed, but entirely too absorbed with her own needs and wants outside the sheets.

Still, unless he could figure out a more efficient, more direct way to the diamonds, he would have to spend some quality time with Jack O'Hara's great-granddaughter.

In the meantime, he thought as he flicked a finger over the scoop of a clever scale-model backhoe, he thought it might be time for a heart-to-heart with dear old dad.

Chapter 26

There was a headache simmering like a hot stew behind her eyes by the time Eve got home. She'd only managed to hit three sites. Construction workers, she learned, called it a day long before cops did. She'd gotten nothing from the ones she'd managed to survey but the headache from the clatter of tools, the blasts of music, the calls of workers all echoing in empty or near-empty buildings.

Added to that was the hassle of cajoling, browbeating or begging suppliers for their customer lists. If she never visited another building-supply warehouse or outlet in this lifetime, she would die a happy woman.

She wanted a shower, a ten-minute nap and a gallon of ice water.

Since she'd pulled up behind Feeney's vehicle, she didn't bother to check the in-house. Roarke would be upstairs with him, in the office or the computer lab, playing their e-geek games. Since the cat didn't come out to greet her, she assumed he was with them.

She scotched the idea of ten minutes with her eyes shut. She couldn't quite bring herself to get horizontal with another cop in the house, especially if the cop was on the clock. It would be too embarrassing if she got caught. She compromised with an extra ten minutes in the shower and felt justified when the headache backed off to threatening.

She traded in the day's separates-she was going to remember that one-for a T-shirt and jeans. She thought about going barefoot, but there was that cop-in-the-house factor, and bare feet always made her feel partially naked.

She went for tennis shoes.

Since she felt nearly human again, she stopped by the computer lab on her way to her office.

Roarke and Feeney were manning individual stations. Roarke had his sleeves rolled up and his hair tied back, as was his habit when he settled into serious work. Feeney's short-sleeved shirt looked as if he'd mashed it into a ball and bounced it a few times before putting it on that morning. It also showed off his bony elbows. She wondered why she found them endearing.

She must be seriously tired.

There were screens up with data zipping across them too quickly for her eye to read. The men tossed comments or questions at each other in the geek language she'd never been able to decipher.

"You guys got anything for me in regular English?"

They both looked over their shoulders in her direction, and she was struck how two men who couldn't have been more different in appearance could have identical looks in their eyes.

A kind of nerdy distraction.

"Making some headway." Feeney reached into the bag of sugared nuts on his work counter. "Going back a ways."

"You look... fresh, Lieutenant," Roarke commented.

"I didn't a few minutes ago. Grabbed a shower." She moved into the room as she studied the screens. "What's running?"

Roarke's smile spread slowly. "If we tried to explain, your eyes would glaze over. This one here might be a little more straightforward." He gestured her closer so she could see the split screen working with a photo of Judith Crew on one side and a blur of images running on the other.

"Trying for a face match?"

"We dug up her driver's license from before the divorce," Feeney explained.

"Got another run going over there from the license she used when the insurance guy located her. Different name, and she'd changed her hair, lost weight.

Computer's kicking out possible matches. We're moving from those dates forward."

"Then we're using a morph program on yet another unit," Roarke continued.

"Searching for a match on what the computer thinks she looks like now."

"The civilian thinks if the image was close, we'd have matched by now."

"I do, yes."

Feeney shrugged, nibbled nuts. "Lot of people in the world. Lots of women in that age group. And she could be living off-planet."

"She could be dead," Eve added. "Or she could have evaded standard IDing. She could be, shit, living in a grass shack on some uncharted island, weaving mats."