by J. D. Robb
“What I’m saying is you’ve got a . . . powerful ego. You needed it to get where you are, and, I must be feeling sloppy because I’m going to say you’ve earned it. You’re confident, confident enough in yourself, in who you are, to back away from a fight because it was important to me. You don’t agree with me. What you said before, that you’d be able to live with the consequences, is true. You’d have felt justified. You’d have felt right.”
“There was complicity in their neglect. They’re guilty because they ignored you. More guilty because they were in a position of authority.”
“I’m not arguing that.” She tried to put her thoughts into cohesive words as she dressed. “You understood me enough to know if you took action in that direction it would damage me. Us. You put that first, subjugating your own ego. It takes balls to do that.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but I wonder if you could formulate metaphors that didn’t include my genitalia. It’s beginning to weird me out.”
“You’re courageous enough to do something that in some part of your heart you see as cowardly.” She stepped toward him when he stopped buttoning his shirt, when he looked over at her. “You think I don’t know that about you? That I don’t understand the nasty little war this waged?”
She tapped a finger to his heart. “And what it cost you to surrender? It makes you the bravest man I know.”
“There was nothing courageous about hurting you. And I was hurting you.”
“You put me first. That was brave and that was strong. You didn’t circumvent the issue by pretending to go along, then going behind my back to do what you wanted. You didn’t want a lie between us.”
“I don’t want anything between us.”
“No, because you know how to love. You know how to get the job done. How to be a man. How to take care of the people who matter, even those who don’t. You’re really smart, and you’re capable of very scary behavior, and incredibly kind behavior. You see the big picture, but you never miss the details. You have power, more than most people could dream of, but you don’t trample the little guy with it. Do you know what that makes you?”
“Words fail me.”
“It makes you the exact opposite of Blair Bissel.”
“Ah. So this entire praisefest was just your way of getting back around to your investigation. That certainly crushes my ego.”
“You couldn’t crush your ego with a hydrovice. That’s part of my point. His is fragile, because it’s based on smoke. He’s not really smart or clever, he’s not even talented. His art is just crap, trendy and expensive crap. He doesn’t have relationships. He has conquests. He got sucked into this, initially, by a woman who undoubtedly got hooks in his cock, and therefore his ego. ‘Aren’t I iced? I’m a fricking spy.’ ”
“And?”
“He should never have been recruited. Look at his profile. He’s unstable, immature, reckless. But those are part of the reasons Kade and Sparrow wanted him. He has no genuine ties to anyone. He’s attractive, can be charming, has some arty connections, knows how to travel.”
“He also has no conscience. It seems to me that would be useful in some areas of covert work.”
“That’s right, as long as they controlled him. But Sparrow got greedy, and asked for more than Bissel could deliver. He used Bissel to kill, and never figured that Bissel would do more than scamper away with his tail between his legs when he realized he’d been set up just as Reva was. And if he caused any trouble, well, they’d keep it in the HSO, and he’d tag Bissel as rogue, schedule him for termination, or feed enough intel to Doomsday or some other group to have them do it.”
“I’m sure you’re right, but I also think neither of them figured on you. They, or Sparrow at least, would have had some idea you’d be involved in some way. Using Reva meant using me, which meant you. But, it would seem, neither of them understood how far you’d go, not just for me or Reva, but for the emblem you’re currently wearing over your heart.”
“So it got sticky. Sparrow does what you’d expect. He uses his position in his organization, tries muscle first, then reason, then cooperation, but always behind the shield of the HSO.”
“If Bissel hadn’t put him in the hospital, he’d have tried to kill you, or, from what you say, have you killed as he didn’t have the stomach for doing the job himself. That would have been his next step.”
“I’m sure that was in his pack of contingencies. But a last resort. He should’ve been smart enough to factor in what it would do to Bissel’s twisted ego when Bissel’s hands got bloody. He’d killed. He wasn’t a stinking level-two now. He’d succeeded in two terminations, and I guarantee he liked the rush.”
“But the rush doesn’t last.”
“No, then you’re out in the cold. Isn’t that what spies call it? Out in the cold.”
She focused, with some surprise, on the plates Roarke set on the table in the sitting area. “Are we eating?”
“Yes.”
Thoughtfully, she pressed a hand on her stomach. “I could eat.” She sat down to eggs, crisp slices of bacon. “So anyway, he’s out in the cold. His direct supervisors are either dead by his own hand or hunting him. He’s been betrayed, used, fucked. Cops are looking into the murders in a way he’d been assured they would not, and sooner or later he’s going to get squeezed from that side, too. There’s nobody to tell him what to do, what to think. He kills twice more to protect himself, to cover his tracks. Both are unnecessary, and mistakes, because the murders only serve to lead the police investigation to the fact that he’s still alive. What would you have done?”
“In his place?” He spread jam on toast as he considered. “I’d’ve gone under, deep. Accessed some of the funds I’d squirreled away, and buried myself until I could plan a way to either kill Sparrow or expose him as a traitor. Wait and watch. A year, two, maybe longer, then hit him. One way or the other.”
“But he won’t. He can’t. He can’t suppress his ego that long, or think that clearly. That coldly. He needs to slap back at everything and everyone who had a part in screwing this up for him. At the same time he’s scared, like a little boy whose mommy and daddy left him home alone. And he needs to feel safe. He’s still in New York, somewhere he feels safe. And he’s going to make a move.”
She could almost see him, almost see him. “Bigger, more violent, more reckless. Each of his kills was a degree away from the bull’s-eye. And each was less carefully thought through, and with more risk of collateral damage than the last. He doesn’t care who gets hurt now, as long as he proves himself.”
“You think he’ll go after Reva.”
“Sooner or later. She didn’t cooperate. She’s not curled up in a cage crying over her dead husband and proclaiming her innocence. But we’re not going to give him a chance to go after her.”
She took the toast Roarke handed her, bit in. “We’re going to lock him down before that, before he starts contacting the targets again. He’ll try for Sparrow again sooner. I’m not averse to using that schmuck as bait, but I don’t like the idea of taking Bissel at the hospital and risking civilians. We need to track him down, take him in his hole, with minimal risk to civilians. Where would you hide? If you were staying in New York?”
It soothed his soul to sit with her like this, sharing a meal and the work that drove her. It settled, and it comforted, he found, as much as the lovemaking. And when he smiled at her, she smiled back.
“Am I thinking like myself, or like Bissel?”
“Like you.”
“A small apartment in a lower middle-class neighborhood where no one pays attention to anyone else. Better, something just outside the city, convenient to public transportation so I could get back and forth easily.”
“Why not a house?”
“Too much overhead, too much of a paper trail. I wouldn’t want to waste my capital on the roof over my head, or deal with lawyers and so forth. Just a simple, short-term lease on a modest couple of rooms where I’d be invisible.”
>
“Yeah, that would be smart, and patient.”
“Which means you think he’s likely in the heart of the city, in something more suited to his taste.”
“Yeah, I do. Something big enough where he can work. Someplace with plenty of security where he can lock himself up, stew, rant, plot.”
“You probably don’t need to be told that there are countless places in the city that fit those requirements.”
“You should know, you own most of them. And I . . .” She trailed off with a forkful of eggs halfway to her mouth. “Jesus, would he be that dumb? Or that smart?”
She shoveled in the eggs, snagged her coffee as she rose. “Let’s roust the team. I want to check something out.”
“You may want to put some shoes on first,” Roarke suggested. “You look like you’re about to kick some ass, and there’s no point in bruising your pretty pink toes.”
“Cute.” But she winced when she looked down at her feet. She’d forgotten about the pink toenails. Hauling open a drawer, she yanked out some socks and hastily covered all evidence of pedicure.
“Lieutenant?”
She grunted as she pulled on her boots.
“It feels good to know you and I are a team again.”
She reached out, took his hand. “Let’s go kick some ass together.”
22 AS THE TECHS outnumbered the nontechs on her team, Eve took the briefing to the lab.
She didn’t understand the nature of the work, or the purposes of the tools meticulously arranged on work counters and workstations. She couldn’t decipher the patterns of the color-coded boards, the gibberish scrolling by on screens or the constant hum and clack that was the odd communication in the network of machines.
But she knew what she was looking at was a great number of man-hours and a large dose of brain power.
“You’ll kill the worm.”
“We will, yes. It’s already failing.” Roarke glanced at the lines of code and commands on one of the screens. “It’s a clever bug that can look more dangerous than it is.”
“You can say that makes it plenty dangerous.”
“You could,” he agreed. “Its limitations don’t negate the fact that it can and would play hell with most home units. We’re tracking it back to Sparrow, and its origin.”
“Tokimoto’s largely responsible for that,” Reva put in.
“I’m hardly working alone. And,” Tokimoto added, “wouldn’t have researched or explored that possibility of origin without the data supplied to me.”
“Which is what Sparrow counted on. He creates the worm, then assigns Bissel to play double agent. Our side believes Doomsday has the worm, they believe our side has it. Both sides, due to his planted intel, believe the worm is more powerful than it actually is, and shell out a lot of money. Bissel funnels the money, or most of it, back to Sparrow through Kade.”
“A good con,” Roarke commented. “And might’ve been a tidy one in the short haul. He’d have been wiser to keep it on a smaller scale, induce a couple of corporations to haggle over it rather than involving the HSO and the like.”
“Ambitious guy. And greedy,” Eve added. “He supplies the data on the progress Securecomp’s making on the worm, and in that way can cover himself anytime the direction the R and D’s taking gets too close. Good setup for him.”
“But his thinking was narrow.” Roarke watched the codes whiz by, noted the progress. “He believed he could control it all, without getting his own hands bloody, and keep Bissel on a leash until he was of no more use.”
“Coward.” Eve remembered how he’d wept and wailed in the hospital. “Bissel’s getting blackmailed and wants more. Kade wants more. And Securecomp’s getting close to ending his nice, profitable enterprise.”
“He gives Bissel a new assignment that solves all those problems.” Peabody shook her head. “It’s way over the top, and Bissel’s too dim to see the frame going up. Sorry,” she said to Reva.
“No problem.”
“Not just too dim,” Eve added. “Too egocentric. He’s living his fantasy. He’s got his license to kill.”
“Sir!” Peabody beamed. “You’ve been boning up on Bond.”
“I do my homework. But now he’s in hip-deep. He can’t go to the HSO. He can’t go to the other side. He waited too long to run, so his accounts have been located and frozen. He killed to stay dead, but that cover’s been blown. He took a hit at Sparrow, but he missed. Instead of being dead, Sparrow’s in custody, and he’ll use whatever juice he can to cut a deal and bury Bissel. He’s lost his fantasy job, and all the glory and polish he garnered from his art.”
“If you can call that crap art.” Reva grinned when everyone looked at her. “Hey, Blair isn’t the only one who can fake it. I never liked his stuff.” She rolled her shoulders as if shedding weight. “Feels good to be able to say that. It’s starting to feel good all around.”
“Don’t get too happy yet,” Eve warned. “He needs to make a statement, but first he needs to lick his wounds, to reassert himself and find some satisfaction. Reva, you said his art was his genuine passion.”
“Yeah. I don’t see how that could’ve been faked. He’s worked for years, studied, pursued. He’d sweat days over a piece, hardly sleep or eat when he was in full mode. I might not have liked the shit he turned out, but he put heart and soul into it—his black, withered and rotting heart and soul. I’m going to be bitter for a while,” she continued, “and take as many cheap shots at him as humanly possible.” She grinned again. “Just FYI.”
“I think it’s healthy,” Tokimoto said. “And human.”
“So his art, such as it is, is the real deal to him. They can take away his fantasy job, but he’s still an artist.” Eve nodded. “He can still create. He has to create. McNab, do a tenant search, look for any connection to Bissel. Target the Flatiron.”
“Of course,” Roarke murmured. “I can help you with that, Ian,” he said to McNab, but he continued to look at Eve. “He’d want to be close to his work, to where he’d felt powerful, and in charge. If he had another place in the building, it’s possible Chloe McCoy knew of it.”
“Guy like that, he’d want to take her there, to ball her, sure, but also to show her how important he was. Look, I’ve got this secret place. Nobody knows about it but you.”
“And then things went wrong and he needed the place,” Peabody finished. “She had to die, just because she knew it was there.”
“Lieutenant.” Roarke tapped the screen where he worked with McNab. “LeBiss Consultants. LeBiss is an anagram for Bissel.”
“Yeah, he’d want his own name. Another ego thing.” She leaned over Roarke’s shoulder. “Where is it?”
He gave a command and a diagram of the Flatiron came on screen, revolved, then magnified a highlighted sector. “One floor below his gallery. He’d have enough skill to be able to go between floors with minimal risk should he want to access his studio.”
“Fully soundproofed, right?”
“Of course.”
“And privacy shades on the windows. Monitors. Add another level of security and he’d be able to know if anyone tried to get on the elevator or through the door. He could muck that up, the way Sparrow did on the night of the first murders. Then clear out before anybody got in.
“Probably work at night,” she said half to herself. “Probably work mostly at night when the building’s shut down, offices closed, nobody’s going to bother him. Cops’ve already been through, and there’s nothing in there that applies to the investigation. Lease is paid up. So until the estate’s settled, he can use it without much risk of detection.”
“He loved that studio.” Reva stepped forward, studying the diagram herself. “I’d bring up the possibility of him building one at home, and he wouldn’t consider it. I know it could’ve been because he wanted the freedom of being away, having accessibility to the women he was sleeping with, but I know, at the core, he just loved that place. Damn it, I’m slipping. I didn’t think to put it
on the list you wanted of his habits and hangouts.”
“Why would you? It was already on my list.”
“Yeah, but this was his place, and if I’d had my head on straight, I’d have put it together. He always said he needed the stimulation, the energy of the city, of that spot, just as he needed the serenity and privacy of our house. One to charge him up, the other to relax him.”
“We need to go in,” Eve said.
“Dallas,” Reva added. “He wouldn’t just work at night, not if some piece had him. He wouldn’t be able to step away from it. I think, unless I’ve misjudged everything about him, that the risk wouldn’t factor into it. Or maybe it would, in some way, fuel the creative drive.”
“Good. Good point. We need to assume he’s in there, just as we need to assume he’s armed and dangerous. The building’s full of civilians. We need to move them out.”
Feeney, who’d continued to work on McCoy’s data unit throughout the briefing, finally glanced up. “You want to clear out a twenty-two-story building?”
“Yeah. Without Bissel knowing it. Which means first we should verify he’s in there. Don’t want to clear it out while he’s around the corner picking up a sandwich at the deli. So let’s figure out how to verify, then how to clear out the civilians.”
Feeney puffed out a breath. “She don’t ask for much. Side note: I’ve got some data out of this. Reads like a diary. Enough sex stuff with who she calls BB to make a seasoned LC blush.” He colored a bit himself when he glanced toward Reva. “Sorry.”
“It’s not a problem. Not a problem,” she repeated in three viciously bitten off words. “He lied to me, screwed around on me, he tried to frame me for murder. Why should knowing some poor little twit romped around naked—”
She paused, breathed deep when the room remained silent but for the machine. “Okay, I’m making it a problem by trying to prove it’s not. Let me put it this way.” She looked at Tokimoto now. Directly. “Love can die. It can be killed, no matter how alive it was, it’s not invulnerable. Mine’s dead. It’s dead and it’s buried. I just want one thing more, and that’s the chance to look him in the face and tell him he’s nothing. If I can do that one thing, it’ll be enough.”