by J. D. Robb
She leaped the bar, ignoring the curses of the servers and patrons. Bottles smashed, and there was a sudden, heady scent of top-grade liquor. Her weapon was in her hand when she hit the door with her shoulder.
The bar kitchen was full of noise. A cook droid was sprawled on the floor in the narrow aisle, its head jerking from the damage done by the fall. She stumbled over it, and the blast from Hayes’s laser sang over her head.
Rather than right herself, she rolled and came up behind a stainless-steel cabinet.
“Give it up, Hayes. Where are you going to go? There are innocent people in here. Drop your weapon.”
“Nobody’s innocent.” He fired again, and the line of heat scored across the floor and finished off the droid.
“This isn’t what your father wants. He doesn’t want more dead piling up at his feet.”
“There’s no price too high for duty.” A shelf of dinnerware exploded beside her, showering her with shards.
“Screw this.” She sent a line of fire over her head, rolled to the left. She came up weapon first and cursed again as she lost the target around a corner.
Someone was screaming. Someone else was crying. Keeping low, she set off in pursuit. She turned toward the sound of another blast and saw a fire erupt in a pile of linens.
“Somebody take care of that!” she shouted and turned the next corner. Saw the exit door. “Shit!”
He’d blasted the locks, effectively sealing it. In frustration she rammed it, gave it a couple of solid kicks, and didn’t budge it an inch.
Holstering her weapon, she made her way back out the mess and smoke. Without much hope, she ran through the lobby, out the main doors to scan the streets. By the time she’d made it to the corner, Darcia was heading back.
“Lost him. Son of a bitch. He had a block and a half on me.” Darcia jammed her own weapon home. “I’d never have caught him on foot in these damn shoes. I’ve got an APB out. We’ll net the bastard.”
“Fucker smelled the collar.” Furious with herself, Eve spun in a circle. “I didn’t give him enough credit. He knocked some people around in the bar kitchen. Offed a droid, started a fire. He’s fast and smart and slick. And he’s goddamn mean on top of it.”
“We’ll net him,” Darcia repeated.
“Damn right we will.”
10
“Lieutenant.”
Eve winced, turned and watched Roarke walk toward her. “Guess you heard we had a little incident.”
“I believe I’ll just see to some damage control.” Humor cut through the anger on Darcia’s face. “Excuse me.”
“Are you hurt?” Roarke asked Eve.
“No. But you’ve got a dead droid in the bar kitchen. I didn’t kill it, in case you’re wondering. There was a little fire, too. But I didn’t start it. The ceiling damage, that’s on me. And some of the, you know, breakage and stuff.”
“I see.” He studied the elegant facade of the hotel. “I’m sure the guests and the staff found it all very exciting. The ones who don’t sue me should enjoy telling the story to their friends and relations for quite some time. Since I’ll be contacting my attorneys to alert them to a number of civil suits heading our way, perhaps you’d take a moment to fill me in on why I have a dead droid, a number of hysterical guests, screaming staff, and a little fire in the bar kitchen.”
“Sure. Why don’t we round up Peabody and Feeney, then I can just run through it once?”
“No, I think I’d like to know now. Let’s just have a bit of a walk.” He took her arm.
“I don’t have time to—”
“Make it.”
He led her around the hotel, through the side gardens, the patio cafe, wound through one of the pool areas and into a private elevator while he listened to her report.
“So your intentions were to spare Skinner’s feelings and reputation.”
“Didn’t work out, but, yeah, to a point. Hayes made us first glance.” The minute she was in the suite, she popped open a bottle of water, glugged. Until that moment she hadn’t realized the smoke had turned her throat into a raw desert of thirst. “Should’ve figured it. Now he’s in the wind, and that’s on me, too.”
“He won’t get off the station.”
“No, he won’t get off. But he might take it in mind to do some damage while he’s loose. I’ll need to look at the maps and plats for the resort. We’ll do a computer analysis, earmark the spots he’d be most likely to go to ground.”
“I’ll take care of that. I can do it faster,” he said before she could object. “You need a shower. You smell of smoke.”
She lifted her arm, sniffed it. “Yeah, I guess I do. Since you’re being so helpful, tag Peabody and Feeney, will you? I want this manhunt coordinated.”
“Too many places for him to hide.” An hour later, Eve scowled at the wall screens and the locations the computer had selected. “I’m wondering, too, if he had some sort of backup transpo in case this turned on him, someone he’s bribed to smuggle him off-site. If he gets off this station, he could go any fucking where.”
“I can work with Angelo on running that angle down,” Feeney said. “And some e-maneuvering can bog down anything scheduled to leave the site for a good twenty-four hours.”
“Good thinking. Keep in touch, okay?”
“Will do.” He headed out, rattling a bag of almonds.
“Roarke knows the site best. He’ll take me around to the specified locations. We’ll split them up with Angelo’s team.”
“Do I coordinate from here?” Peabody asked.
“Not exactly. I need you to work with Mira. Make sure Skinner and his wife stay put and report if Hayes contacts them. Then there’s this other thing.”
“Yes, sir.” Peabody looked up from her memo book.
“If we don’t bag him tonight, you’ll have to cover for me in the morning.”
“Cover for you?”
“I’ve got the notes and whatever in here.” Eve tossed her ppc into Peabody’s lap.
“Notes?” Peabody stared at the little unit in horror. “Your seminar? Oh, no, sir. Uh-uh. Dallas, I’m not giving your seminar.”
“Just think of yourself as backup,” Eve suggested. “Roarke?” She walked to the door and through it, leaving Peabody sputtering.
“Just how much don’t you want to give that seminar tomorrow?” Roarke wondered.
“I don’t have to answer that until I’ve been given the revised Miranda warning.” Eve rolled her shoulders and would have sworn she felt weight spilling off them. “Sometimes things just work out perfect, don’t they?”
“Ask Peabody that in the morning.”
With a laugh, she stepped into the elevator. “Let’s go hunting.”
They hit every location, even overlapping into Angelo’s portion. It was a long, tedious, and exacting process. Later she would think that the operation had given her a more complete view of the scope of Roarke’s pet project. The hotels, casinos, theaters, restaurants, the shops and businesses. The houses and buildings, the beaches and parks. The sheer sweep of the world he’d created was more than she’d imagined.
While impressive, it made the job at hand next to impossible.
It was after three in the morning when she gave it up for the night and stumbled to bed. “We’ll find him tomorrow. His face is on every screen on-site. The minute he tries to buy any supplies, we’ll tag him. He has to sleep, he has to eat.”
“So do you.” In bed, Roarke drew her against him. “Turn it off, Lieutenant. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”
“He won’t go far.” Her voice thickened with sleep. “He needs to finish it and get his father’s praises. Legacies. Bloody legacies. I spent my life running from mine.”
“I know.” Roarke brushed the top of her head with his lips as she fell into sleep. “So have I.”
This time it was he who dreamed, as he rarely did, of the alleyways of Dublin. Of himself, a young boy, too thin, with sharp eyes, nimble fingers, and fast feet. A belly too ofte
n empty.
The smell of garbage gone over, and whiskey gone stale, and the cold of the rain that gleefully seeped into bone.
He saw himself in one of those alleyways, staring down at his father, who lay with that garbage gone over, and smelled of that whiskey gone stale. And smelled, too, of death—the blood and the shit that spewed out of a man at his last moments. The knife had still been in his throat, and his eyes—filmed-over blue—were open and staring back at the boy he’d made.
He remembered, quite clearly, speaking.
Well now, you bastard, someone’s done for ya. And here I thought it would be me one day who had the pleasure of that.
Without a qualm, he’d crouched and searched through the pockets for any coin or items that might be pawned or traded. There’d been nothing, but then again, there never had been much. He’d considered, briefly, taking the knife. But he’d liked the idea of it where it was too much to bother.
He’d stood then, at the age of twelve, with bruises still fresh and aching from the last beating those dead hands had given him.
And he’d spat. And he’d run.
He was up before she was, as usual. Eve studied him as she grabbed her first cup of coffee. It was barely seven A.M. “You look tired.”
He continued to study the stock reports on one screen and the computer analysis of potential locations on another. “Do I? I suppose I could’ve slept better.”
When she crouched in front of him, laid a hand on his thigh, he looked at her. And sighed. She could read him well enough, he thought, his cop.
Just as he could read her, and her worry for him.
“I wonder,” he began, “and I don’t care to, who did me the favor of sticking that knife in him. Someone, I think, who was part of the cartel. He’d have been paid, you see, and there was nothing in his pockets. Not a fucking punt or pence on him, nor in the garbage hole we lived in. So they’d have taken it, whatever he hadn’t already whored or drank or simply pissed away.”
“Does it matter who?”
“Not so very much, no. But it makes me wonder.” He nearly didn’t say the rest, but simply having her listen soothed him. “He had my face. I forget that most times, remember that I’ve made myself, myself. But Christ, I have the look of him.”
She slid into his lap, brushed her hands through his hair. “I don’t think so.” And kissed him.
“We’ve made each other in the end, haven’t we, Darling Eve? Two lost souls into one steady unit.”
“Guess we have. It’s good.”
He stroked his cheek against hers, and felt the fatigue wash away. “Very good.”
She held on another minute, then drew back. “That’s enough sloppy stuff. I’ve got work to do.”
“When it’s done, why don’t we get really sloppy, you and I?”
“I can get behind that.” She rose to contact Darcia and get an update on the manhunt.
“Not a sign of him anywhere,” Eve told Roarke, then began to pace. “Feeney took care of transpo. Nothing’s left the station. We’ve got him boxed in, but it’s a big box with lots of angles. I need Skinner. Nobody’s going to know him as well as Skinner.”
“Hayes is his son,” Roarke reminded her. “Do you think he’d help you?”
“Depends on how much cop is left in him. Come with me,” she said. “He needs to see us both. He needs to deal with it.”
He looked haggard, Eve thought. His skin was gray and pasty. How much was grief, how much illness, she didn’t know. The combination of the two, she imagined, would finish him.
But, she noted, he’d put on a suit, and he wore his precinct pin in the lapel.
He brushed aside, with some impatience, his wife’s attempt to block Eve.
“Stop fussing, Belle. Lieutenant.” His gaze skimmed over Roarke, but he couldn’t make himself address the man. “I want you to know I’ve contacted my attorneys on Hayes’s behalf. I believe you and Chief Angelo have made a serious error in judgment.”
“No, you don’t, Commander. You’ve been a cop too long. I appreciate the difficulty of your position, but Hayes is the prime suspect in two murders, in sabotage, in a conspiracy to implicate Roarke in those murders. He injured bystanders while fleeing and caused considerable property damage. He also fired his weapon at a police officer. He’s currently evading arrest.”
“There’s an explanation.”
“Yes, I believe there is. He’s picked up his father’s banner, Commander, and he’s carrying it where I don’t think you intended it to go. You told me yesterday no losses are acceptable. Did you mean it?”
“The pursuit of justice often…In the course of duty, we…” He looked helplessly at his wife. “Belle, I never meant—Reggie, Zita. Have I killed them?”
“No, no.” She went to him quickly, wrapped her arms around him. And he seemed to shrink into her. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your doing.”
“If you want justice for them, Commander, help me. Where would he go? What would he do next?”
“I don’t know. Do you think I haven’t agonized over it through the night?”
“He hasn’t slept,” Belle told her. “He won’t take his pain medication. He needs to rest.”
“I confided in him,” Skinner continued. “I shared my thoughts, my beliefs, my anger. I wanted him to carry on my mission. Not this way.” Skinner sank into a chair. “Not this way, but I beat the path. I can’t deny that. Your father killed for sport, for money, for the hell of it,” he said to Roarke. “He didn’t even know the names of the people he murdered. I look at you and see him. You grew out of him.”
“I did.” Roarke nodded. “And everything I’ve done since has been in spite of him. You can’t hate him as much as I can, Commander. No matter how hard you try, you’ll never reach my measure of it. But I can’t live on that hate. And I’m damned if I’ll die on it. Will you?”
“I’ve used it to keep me alive these past months.” Skinner looked down at his hands. “It’s ruined me. My son is a thorough man. He’ll have a back door. Someone inside who’ll help him gain access to the hotel. He’ll need it to finish what he started.”
“Assassinate Roarke?”
“No, Lieutenant. Payment would be dearer than that. It’s you he’ll aim for.” He lifted a hand to a face that had gone clammy. “To take away what his target cherishes most.”
When he hissed in pain, Eve stepped forward. “You need medical attention, Commander. You need to be in the hospital.”
“No hospitals. No health centers. Try to take him alive, Dallas. I want him to get the help he needs.”
“You have to go.” Belle stepped in. “He can’t take any more of this.”
“I’ll send Dr. Mira.” Even as Eve spoke, Skinner slumped in the chair.
“He’s unconscious.” Roarke instinctively loosened Skinner’s tie. “His breathing’s very shallow.”
“Don’t touch him! Let me—” Belle jerked back as her eyes met Roarke’s. She took a long, deep breath. “I’m sorry. Could you help me, please? Take him into his bedroom. If you’d call for Dr. Mira, Lieutenant Dallas, I’d be grateful.”
“His body’s wearing down,” Eve said once Skinner was settled in the bedroom with Mira in attendance. “Maybe it’s better all around if he goes before we take Hayes.”
“His body was already worn down,” Roarke corrected. “But he’s let go of his reason to live.”
“There’s nothing to do but leave him to Mira. The computer didn’t think Hayes would come back to the hotel. Skinner does. I’m going with Skinner. Hayes wants me, and he knows Skinner’s on borrowed time so he has to move fast.” She checked her wrist unit. “Looks like I’m going to give that damn seminar after all.”
“And make yourself a target?”
“With plenty of shield. We’ll coordinate your security people and Angelo’s and pluck him like a goose if he tries for a hit here.” She started out, pulling a borrowed communicator out of her pocket.
Then drew her weapon a
s she saw Hayes step out of the stairway door at the end of the corridor.
“Stop!” She pounded after him when he ducked back into the stairwell. “Get to security!” Eve shouted at Roarke. “Track him!”
Roarke shoved through the door ahead of her. The weapon in his hand was illegal. “No. You track him.”
Since cursing was a waste of time, she raced down the stairs with him. “Subject sighted,” she called through the communicator as they streaked down the stairs. “Heading down southeast stairwell, now between floors twenty-one and twenty. Moving fast. Consider subject armed and dangerous.”
She clicked the communicator off before she spoke to Roarke. “Don’t kill him. Don’t fire that thing unless there’s no choice.”
A blast hit the landing seconds before their feet. “Such as now?” Roarke commented.
But it was Eve who fired, leaning over the railing and turning the steps below into rubble. Caught in midstride, Hayes tried to swing back, bolt for the door, but his momentum skewed his balance.
He went down hard on the smoking, broken steps.
And Angelo shoved through the door, weapon gripped in both hands.
“Trying to take my collar, Dallas?”
“All yours.” Eve stepped down, onto the weapon that had flown out of Hayes’s hand. “Two people dead. For what?” she asked Hayes. “Was it worth it?”
His mouth and his leg were bleeding. He swiped at the blood on his chin while his eyes burned into hers. “No. I should’ve been more direct. I should’ve just blown you to hell right away and watched the bastard you fuck bleed over you. That would’ve been worth everything, knowing he’d live with the kind of pain his father caused. The commander could’ve died at peace knowing I’d found his justice. I wanted to give him more.”
“Did you give Weeks or Vinter a choice?” Eve demanded. “Did you tell them they were going to die for the cause?”