by J. D. Robb
She heard the scream as she raced for the corner. He was dragging a woman out of a car. Even as Eve reached the curb and brought up her weapon, he'd tossed her onto the street and had dived behind the wheel.
Pivoting, she pounded to the sportster she'd parked at the entrance.
"I'll drive." Roarke beat her to the car by a stride. "I know the car better."
With no time to argue, she jumped into the passenger seat. "Suspect's jacked a vehicle, is heading east on Seventy-fourth in a white minijet, N-Y-C license C-H-A-R-L-I-E. That's Charles Abel Roger Loser Ice Even. This is Dallas in pursuit. I need ground and air support. He's got a four-block lead, now approaching Lex."
Roarke shoved the sportster into turbo, rocketed.
"Make that three blocks," she murmured, eyes straight ahead when they swung around a commuter tram with a layer of paint to spare.
"He didn't boost a snail," Roarke commented, zigzagging through traffic without a single tap for the brakes. "Those minijets have muscle if he knows how to use it. But he shouldn't be able to outrun us in the long haul."
As he approached a red light, Roarke gauged the timing, punched for power, and streaked his way through the crossing traffic, leaving tire squeals and blasting horns in his wake.
"Not if we live through it. Suspect is turning south on Lexington, heading downtown. Where is my goddamn air support?" she barked into the communicator.
"Air support is being deployed." Whitney's words sliced through like shards of glass. "Ground units heading in from east and west, should join your pursuit at Forty-fifth and Lex."
"I'm in a civilian vehicle, Commander," she told him, then finished with a description. "We're less than two blocks behind him now and closing. Suspect crossing Fiftieth."
She barely hissed when a maxi-bus lumbered across their path. Roarke punched for vertical, sending the car in a long sweeping rise that had Eve's stomach pitching. They leapfrogged over the bus and dived for the street.
But the bus had blocked their view just long enough. "He's turned off. Damn it. Which way?"
"Right," Roarke decided. "He was shifting to the right lane before the fucking bus."
"Suspect believed to now be traveling west on Forty-ninth. Ground and air support adjust direction to pursue."
The light changed as they reached the corner. Roarke readied to whip for the turn. New Yorkers being what they were, pedestrians surged forward into the street as the light beamed yellow and, in defiance of the electric blue bullet bearing down on them, didn't give an inch.
"Idiots, assholes." Eve barely had time to finish the thought before Roarke was airborne again and skimming down the sidewalk. "Don't kill anyone, for Christ's sake."
He nearly nipped the outer edge of a glide-cart umbrella, terrorized a trio of Hasidic Jews carrying their briefcases of gems to market. A Bosc pear heaved by the cart operator sailed past Eve's window.
She caught sight of the fishtailing rear of the minijet as it rounded the corner on Fifth Avenue. The glide-cart on that corner wasn't as lucky. She saw the unit upend and the operator go sprawling.
"We're losing ground here. He's on Fifth now." She checked the skies and ground her teeth when she spotted media copters rather than cops. "Commander, I need my air support."
"A hitch at Control. Support delayed. Deployment in five minutes."
"That's too late, too goddamn late," she murmured, and felt little satisfaction when she heard the scream of sirens approaching from the rear.
"We'll take the long shot," Roarke decided. His smile was as sharp and deadly as a laser when he punched the sportster into sharp vertical, into full-speed nose lift that had the blood draining out of Eve's face and her fingers digging hard into the buttery leather of her seat.
"Oh Christ, I hate this."
"Just hang on. We go up and diagonal, we'll cut his lead."
And over twenty-story buildings at approximately a hundred miles an hour.
The street dropped away as they rose up into the arena of tourist blimps and air tram commuters. Eve got a much closer look at the New York City Tourist Board's pride and joy than she cared to. The monotonous recording touting the joys of the Diamond District blared in her ears.
"There!" She had to shout over the noise, pointed due west. "Blue minijet. He's caught in a jam on Fifth, between Forty-sixth and Forty-fifth." Then she spotted another, half a block ahead of the first. "Shit, there are two of them. Take us down, park it on the sidewalk if you have to. All units, two blue minijets on Fifth, both stopped. One between Forty-sixth and Forty-fifth, the second between Forty-fifth and Forty-fourth. Block southbound traffic on Fifth at Forty-third."
Her stomach tripped over her throat as Roarke took them into a dive. He leveled off ten feet above street level, set down with barely a shimmy in a maxi-bus lane directly across from the northernmost minijet.
Eve leaped out, aimed her weapon at the driver. "NYPSD. Out of the car, keep your hands where I can see them."
The driver was male, mid-twenties. He was wearing a lime green Day-Glo jacket and matching pegged pants. Sweat poured down his face as he got out of the car. "Don't stun me, for God's sake, I'm just a runner, that's all. Just making a living."
"In the position." She reached out, spun him around. "Hands on the roof of the car."
"I don't want my wife to know about this. I want a lawyer," he demanded as she patted him down. "I've only been doing runs for six months. Give me a fucking break."
She dragged her restraints from her pocket, dragged his arms behind his back. Even as she snapped them on, she knew he wasn't her man.
"Move one inch from this spot and I'll zap you unconscious."
She started off at a jog, then slowed as she watched Roarke walk back toward her from the other car. "All I got is an illegals runner with the brains of a toadstool."
"The other car's empty," he told her. "He's ditched it." Jaw set, he scanned the street crowded with vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Three criss-crossing sky-glides were jammed with people. Grand Central was a crosstown block away. "We lost him."
*** CHAPTER EIGHTEEN ***
Two hours later, Eve was in the Tower, explaining the failure of the operation to Chief Tibble.
"I take full responsibility for the unsatisfactory outcome of the operation, sir. The performance of the officers involved in the task force is not to blame."
"Fucking circus." Tibble tapped a huge fist lightly on the surface of his desk. "Dogfights, injured civilians, the primary officer hot-rodding around and over the city in a souped-up, two-hundred-thousand-dollar sports jet. The damn media flybys caught you shooting across town in it. That's going to look just dandy for the departmental image on screen."
"Excuse me, sir," Eve said stiffly. "My department-issue unit was recently destroyed and has yet to be replaced. I opted to utilize a personal vehicle until my new unit is issued. Departmental procedure allows for this contingency."
His fist stopped pounding as he narrowed his eyes at her. "Why the hell hasn't your unit been replaced?"
"The automatic requisition was not processed, for reasons I can't explain, Chief Tibble. My aide applied again today for a replacement, and was told that it would take approximately a week to never."
He let out a long breath. "Idiot paper pushers. You'll have your replacement by oh eight hundred, Lieutenant."
"Thank you, sir. There's no question that the operation today was unsatisfactory. However, Detective McNab has pinpointed the Luxury Towers as the source of today's transmission. I'd like to join the sweep and search team deployed there."
"How many angles of this investigation do you intend to handle personally, Lieutenant?"
"All of them, sir."
"And have you considered that your objectivity might be in question in this matter? That you've begun to pit your ego against the killer's. Are you investigating a series of homicides, Lieutenant, or are you playing his games?''
She accepted the slap, agreed that she deserved it, but she wo
uldn't back off. "At this point in time, sir, I don't believe I can do one without doing the other. I realize that my performance in this matter has been substandard. It won't continue to be."
"I'd like to know how the hell I'm supposed to give you a dressing-down when you keep beating me to it." He pushed away from the desk and rose. "Consider your wrist officially slapped. Privately, I'll tell you that I don't find your performance in this matter substandard. I've watched the recordings of the operation. You command well, Lieutenant, with authority and without hesitation. Your strategy to entrap this perpetrator can't be faulted. Damn poodle," he said under his breath. "And you were denied air support due to some foul-up at control—a foul-up that will be fully investigated. Consider yourself officially supported.
"Now…" He lifted a small clear globe filled with glinting blue fluid, turned it so that the tiny enclosed sea ebbed and flowed. "The media will no doubt enjoy our embarrassment today. We'll just take that on the chin. Will he contact you again?"
"He won't be able to stop himself. He's likely to have a period of silence. He'll sulk, have a temper fit, and he'll attempt to find some way to harm me physically. I'd say he'd consider that I cheated, and it's his game. Cheating would be a sin, and he'll want God to punish me. He'll be scared, but he'll be pissed, too."
She hesitated, then decided to lay out her thoughts. "I don't believe he'll return to the Luxury Towers. Whatever he is, Chief, he's smart. He'll know that if we could get as close as we did today, it's likely we've begun to track his transmissions. He made us in the lobby today, so he's got sharp instincts when it comes to cops. He walked into us at the hotel and we blew it. But if we can find his equipment, if we can find his hole, we'll find him."
"Then find his hole, Dallas, and bury it."
• • •
She swung by her office to make copies of all audio and video discs from the failed operation. She intended to study every second of every disc.
"I told you to go on home," she said when she saw Roarke waiting for her.
He rose, walked over, and rubbed his knuckles over her cheek. "How much skin did Tibble leave on your hide?"
"He barely stripped any, considering."
"This wasn't your fault."
"Fault doesn't matter, responsibility does. And this was mine."
Understanding, he rubbed her shoulders. "Want to go out and kick some poodles?"
She let out a short laugh. "Maybe later. I've got to get my record copies then I'm heading over to join the search and sweep team."
"You haven't eaten in hours," he pointed out.
"I'll grab something at a QuickMart." Disgusted, she scrubbed her hands over her face. "Goddamn it, Roarke, we were inches away. Inches. Did he see Baxter go for his weapon through the door? Did one of the team look too hard in his direction? Did he just smell us?"
"Why don't you let me look at the records, with the eye of a veteran cop-spotter?''
"It couldn't hurt." She turned to her computer, ordered dupes of all operational files. "We should have plenty of full views of him on the lobby file. There's not much of his face, but maybe you'll spot something that clicks. You've got to know him, Roarke."
"I'll do what I can."
"I don't know when I'll be home." She handed him the copies. "But don't wait up."
• • •
She grabbed a cheese phyllo and an energy bar at a QuickMart and settled for a tube of Pepsi rather than their notoriously poisonous coffee. She carried the miserable meal with her into the second-floor conference room where McNab was heading the electronic sweep.
"Anything?"
"Plenty of hits on mega-links, laser faxes. The building's lousy with high-end electronics. We're checking floor to floor, but there's nothing on the scale of what our guy plays with."
Eve set the bag down, then reached out and turned McNab's face toward her with a firm thumb to his chin. There was a bruising knot on his forehead and a long thin scrap just above his right eye. "Get the MTs to look at that ugly face of yours?"
"Just a bump. Damn dog came at me like an Arena Ball tackle." He shifted in his chair so that the gold rings in his ears jangled. "I'd like to apologize for my insubordination during the operation, Lieutenant."
"No, you wouldn't. You were pissed and you still are." She pulled out her tube of Pepsi, broke the safety seal. "You were wrong, and you still are. So stuff the apology. Don't ever question an order from a superior officer during an operation, McNab, or you'll end up skulking in some little dark room listening to sex noises for a private security hack instead of rising through the ranks of the illustrious EDD."
While his temper bobbed up and down, he meticulously manipulated his scanner, noting the location of a dual communication unit on floor eighteen.
"Okay, maybe I'm still a little steamed, and maybe I know I was over the line. I'm lucky if I get out of my cube at Central once a month. This was the closest I've come to action, then you yanked me."
Looking at him, at that young, smooth, eager face, she felt incredibly old and jaded. "McNab, have you ever participated in hand-to-hand other than in training?"
"No, but—"
"Have you ever discharged your weapon at anything other than a heat target?"
His mouth went sulky. "No. So I'm not a warrior."
"Your strengths are right here." She tapped a finger on his scanner, then pulled out her energy bar. "You know as well as I do how many applicants wash out of the EDD program every year. They only take the top. And you're good. I've worked with the best," she said, thinking of Feeney, "so I know. This is where I need you to take this fucker down."
Then none too gently, she tapped her finger on the swollen bruise on his forehead. "And action mostly just hurts like a bitch."
"Guys are going to rag me for weeks. Getting taken down by a dog."
"It was a pretty big dog." Sympathetic now, Eve took out the phyllo and gave it to him. "Really big teeth. Lorimar took a bite in the ankle."
"Yeah?" Somewhat cheered, McNab bit into the bread and cheese. "I hadn't heard." A series of beeps had him frowning at the scanner. "Lots of goodies on nineteen, east wing apartment." He shifted to his communicator. "Blue team, check on nineteen twenty-three. It looks like some rich kid's entertainment center, but it's loaded."
"I'll go check on the door-to-doors," Eve said. "You get any interesting hits, pass them on to me."
"You first, Dallas. Thanks for the food. Say, ah, where's Peabody?"
Eve lifted a brow as she glanced back over her shoulder. "Overseeing the breakdown of equipment in the penthouse at the Arms. She doesn't like you, McNab."
"I know." He flashed a grin. "I find that really attractive in a woman." He turned back to his scanner, humming as he went through the complicated task of separating the beeps into known components.
• • •
At midnight, she ordered in a new crew, sent McNab home for eight hours off, and packed it in. It didn't surprise her to find Roarke up, in his office, enjoying a glass of wine while he studied the recordings.
"I had the first team wrap for the night. They were getting punchy."
"You look a bit punchy yourself, Lieutenant. Shall I pour you a glass of wine?''
"No, I don't want anything." She walked over, noted that he paused the recording at the point where McNab made abrupt contact with the stationary panel of the main doors. "I don't think he'd consider that suitable for framing."
"No luck locking in on his communication center?"
"McNab's worried he's shut it down." She rubbed at the stiffness at the base of her neck. "So am I. He could have done it by remote while he was on the run, or contacted someone he's working with. Mira's profile indicates he'd want constant praise and attention during the game, so it's possible he's got a partner—likely a female, strong personality. Authority figure."
"Mother?"
"That would be my first guess. But a remote's just as likely as him having Mommy by his side. He wants to believe he's runnin
g the show, so he probably has his own place."
She stepped forward, closer to the screen, staring hard at the image of the man in the long coat and chauffeur's cap. "It's like a costume," she murmured. "Another part of the game. He's dressing up. It's concealing, but it's also, I don't know, dramatic. Like in a play, and he's the star. But right here, you can see that we've thrown him a cue he wasn't expecting. See the shock, the panic in the body language. His weight's off balance because he took a step back. Instinctive retreat. His free hand's coming up, a defensive gesture. I bet his eyes are moon wide with shock behind the sunshades."
Something caught her, made her frown and step even closer. "Can't see what the hell he's looking at. You can't see where his eyes are focused. Just the angle of his head. Is he looking at Baxter going for his weapon on the other side of the glass? Or is he looking at McNab crash headfirst into the panel?"
"From his angle, you'd see both."
"Yeah. Baxter look like a cop going for his stunner to you? Couldn't he be a doorman, alerted by the commotion, reaching for his security beeper?''
"I'd go for cop," Roarke told her. "Look at the way he moves." He ordered the recorder to rewind thirty seconds, then play. The room erupted with noise so he muted audio. "Watch—it's a textbook cop move. The spin, knees bent, body braced, the right hand sweeping inside the coat at the armpit. Doormen wear beepers on their belts, so his grab's too high for that."
"But it happened fast, look how fast."
"If he knows cops, has had many dealings with them, it could have been enough. McNab doesn't look anything like a cop, doesn't move like one. The only way that would have tipped him is if he recognized Ian, knew him to be a cop."
"McNab doesn't do much field work, as he complained to me tonight. But they're both electronics jocks, so it's not impossible they've brushed up against each other. Damn it, I should have thought of that before I sent him out."
"You're Monday morning quarterbacking, darling Eve."
"What?"
"We really have to do something about your lack of interest in sports other than baseball. It's useless to second-guess yourself here. I watched you run that operation, and you did it with a cool and steady hand."