New York to Dallas by J. D. Robb Page A

pockets. He’s as good as you.”
    “Please.”
    “Okay, maybe not, and I’m going on reports and history anyway. We presumed he had money or funds stashed. The clothes, the electronics, the food and wine in his place? He had to have money, more than we found. He grifted, and well, a long time, and the e-fraud was lucrative. EDD couldn’t find a trace of an account attached to him, other than the standard he had under his own name with a couple thousand in it. It’s possible they missed it, but we figured he kept a stash, as he’d been trained to do as a kid. Just dig in, take the cash, and go.”
    “Multiple caches would be smarter. All the eggs in one basket makes an expensive omelette if broken.”
    “You’d know. If he had funds tucked away in New York, he’d have access by now. But . . .”
    “But?” Roarke prompted.
    “I could see a stash, or a few. Running money, quick cash. But he’s smart, greedy, like I said, he wants good clothes, good wine, all that. He knows his way around electronics.”
    “He’d have that account—or likely accounts, you’re thinking. Investments, letting his money make money.”
    “Yeah, I figure that. His other priority would be the partner. He needs that attention, support, and someone to run interference.”
    “The visitor’s list, communications. She’d be in there, wouldn’t she?”
    “Has to be. He might escape on impulse and opportunity, but if he hadn’t had a plan in place, he’d have gone underground until he had one.”
    She paused a moment, let herself think it through now that her mind had cleared. “They’re looking for somebody running, hiding, even scrambling. He’s not. He deliberately sought attention, so he’s confident, secure. He’s not on the run. Getting a hit off the BOLO we’ve got out on him would be sheer luck. He kept his first New York victim in that room for three years. She was strong. He lived there in a working-class neighborhood, on the third floor of a well-occupied building, and managed to transport his victims in, and we assume transport the bodies or remains of the ones who didn’t survive out, without anyone seeing him. He won’t go down easy.”
    “I don’t question your judgment, but will add that this time it’s more than feeding his need, more than the girls. It’s you. It’s showing you up, paying you back. And payback is a distraction. It adds an element of risk that wasn’t in play before.”
    “It’s a factor,” she agreed. “And the break in his pattern complicates things for him more than us. Still, he’s had twelve years to think it through, plan it out, refine the details. I have to catch up.”
    “Then we’d better get started.” He rose, took her hand to bring her to her feet. “You didn’t take him down all those years ago just because you were lucky. You were smarter than he was, even then. He was stronger, had the advantage, but you didn’t lose your head or panic. And you didn’t stop. He may have had this time to plan and refine, but you’ve had it to hone your instincts, to build experience. And you have something else now you didn’t have then.”
    “You.”
    “See how smart you are?” He brushed a kiss over her forehead. “It’ll give me pleasure to use my considerable resources, not to mention skills—”
    “You just mentioned them.”
    “So I did. In any case, I’ll enjoy using them to help you put him away a second time, and for good. And I can start doing just that by accessing his visitors and communications logs from the prison.”
    She opened her mouth, a knee-jerk refusal on the tip of her tongue. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t bent the rules before, but it never sat quite right. “Yeah. Yeah, you do that. They’ve got no business stonewalling until tomorrow while they work on their spin. I don’t care about their spin or the politics. I need to know who he’s talked to, seen. I need it all. A few hours’ jump on this might save some kid from being