by J. D. Robb
“Yeah, well . . .” Galahad aimed his dual-colored eyes at Eve in a way that promised payback for the indignity. “You don’t have to carry him.”
“I like to. I have a cat named Dopey, and now I have a puppy, too, named Butch. I go to school and I eat like a horse.”
Behind them, Elizabeth laughed. “He certainly does.”
“If I had a horse.” The way Kevin slid his eyes slyly in his mother’s direction told Eve he knew where the butter was best slathered. “I would ride him like a cowboy.”
“One step at a time, little man. Let’s see how you handle Butch. Do you like horses, Nixie?”
“I got to pet one that pulls a carriage around the park. It was nice.”
At his first sight of the nirvana of Roarke’s game room, Kevin let out a shout, dumped Galahad on the floor, and raced to the closest arcade game.
“I’ll take it from here,” Elizabeth told Eve. “I’ve become an expert in this arena.”
With considerable relief, Eve left her to it. And took the opportunity to head back upstairs.
This time, Webster was leaning over Peabody’s shoulder.
“Stop crowding my partner,” Eve snapped.
Webster straightened, but held his ground. “I have to head downtown shortly, give my report.”
“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. What’ve you got?” she asked Peabody.
“Looks like you hit on something with the properties. I’ve got what you call a townstone on the Moss’s block. Purchased three months after the custody resolution in the name of the Triangle Group. No financing, so they plunked down the whole—considerable—shot. No income until six weeks after Moss’s death. Got rentals coming in after that. Tenants are clean and unconnected as far as I can tell. Triangle Group also owns, since March 2054, a two-family building two blocks south of the hospital where Brenegan was murdered. Tenants in and out, every six months like clockwork. I think we might find some of the names from Cassandra or Doomsday in here.”
“Kirkendall, Clinton, Isenberry. Triangle Group. Cute. We tie them to it.”
“It’s a tangle, Dallas.”
She paced away, paced back. Webster was a solid cop, she knew. But he was still IAB. Overtime was racking up, and nothing made the review board, the brass, the nut crunchers bitch like unauthorized OT.
But there were ways around it.
“You’re past shift,” she said to Peabody. “You and the rest of the team. Clock out.”
“But we’ve got—”
“You’re off the clock.” She smiled thinly at Webster as she spoke. “What you do with your own time, in your own home, isn’t my business. Or the department’s. You want to do something useful,” Eve told Webster. “Go file your report. Get them off my back for the next forty-eight.”
“I can do that. Give the detective her orders. I’ve gone suddenly and strangely deaf.”
“Shoot this to your desk unit and get down to Central.”
“Do you want to move on these buildings?”
“Tomorrow. Try for at least six hours’ downtime. We’re going to put this in place tomorrow. We move this team back to Central, avoid inquiries from IAB about what the hell we’re doing here. Get a conference room booked for seven hundred tomorrow. Tell the rest of the team to do the same or work from home.”
She could see it, and in her head was already outlining strategy.
“Start looking for other properties under that name or similar ones. Under any of the tenants’ names who lived in the building near the hospital. I want their base. We get their base, we change this op around, and that’s where we move on them.”
“Will you work from here?”
“I’ll be pursuing the same data. I want your unit talking to mine. Something breaks, I’ll come downtown. Got all that?”
“Got it.”
“Then get all these cops out of my house.”
“Dallas.” Webster stopped her as she turned to the door. “Nobody’s business what I do on my own time, either. If I happened to get copies of this data Detective Peabody’s finessed, I could entertain myself by seeing if I could beat her, or you, to the rest.”
“Peabody, have you got any problem having a race with an IAB suit?”
“I thrive on competition.”
“There you go. Beat his ass.”
Better yet, she thought as she walked out. She’d get Roarke to work unraveling. And she’d work with him, and they’d ring the goddamn bell. There had to be enough civilians in the damn house to ride the controls on a couple of kids while she worked.
She swung by the computer lab, and the lounge where Baxter and Trueheart were set up to relay the data. “Check out the owners before the buy,” she ordered. “See if there’s a connect—military, paramilitary—siblings, spouses, offspring in same. Get current status. Let’s see if we can squeeze out a weasel. But do it from home. You’re officially off the clock.”
She veered off to start downstairs, and Summerset intercepted.
“Lieutenant, your guests require some of your attention.”
“Cram the etiquette lesson. Tell Roarke I’m working in his office and I require some of his attention. Now.”
Pleased to save time, and to have been able to tell Summerset to cram anything, she backtracked and sat at Roarke’s desk.
“Engage computer.”
One moment, please, to verify authorization by voice scan. Verified, Darling Eve. Engaged.
“Christ, what if somebody hears that? Don’t you know there are cops in the damn woodwork around here? Search all data, Triangle Group.”
Searching . . . Triangle Group, licensed real estate brokerage company, subsidiary of Five-By Corporation.
“Location or locations of Triangle Group’s offices or company headquarters.”
Working . . . Triangle Group is listed as an electronic company with base office 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, East Washington.
“Display map, East Washington. Highlight given address.”
Map displayed. Highlighted location is The White House.
“Yeah, even I knew that. Little power trip. Search data on Five-By Corporation.”
She leaned back as the computer fed her data, then glanced over as Roarke came in.
“You needed something?”
“Kirkendall acquired real estate near two of the targets. Prime stuff, good investment. Looks like he kept them. Using a couple of blinds, or a couple we’ve got so far. Triangle Group out of Five-By Corporation.”
“Triangle.” He moved toward her, brushed her out of his chair. “Logical. Five-By? Is that an indication there are two more prime players in this?”
“Five-by-five.”
“Is twenty-five?”
“No, not math. Military term.”
“You’ve got one on me.”
“It’s like loud and clear. Like I hear you fine. Everything’s solid. Like that.”
“Ah.” He looked over what she’d already done. “The White House. Don’t we think a lot of ourselves? And the parent organization is ostensibly housed in the Pentagon and the UN, and I believe this is Buckingham Palace. However grand their delusions, they don’t make much of a blip in the business world. I’ve never heard of either company. Let’s just see what we see.”
“Can I leave you on this a minute? I need to update the commander. It might keep them off my ass a while longer.”
“Go on, but pop downstairs and see if all’s well, will you? I left Mavis as acting host, and Christ knows what she might think up.”
She made the call, and put off her social obligations long enough to pop in on Feeney as he was wrapping up.
Once she made it down, she found all the adults, including Elizabeth, in the parlor.
“They’re fine,” Elizabeth told her. “Having such a good time I thought I’d let them hang together, as Kevin says, for a little while.”
“Good. Okay. Fine.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Mira told her. “I
t’s obvious you’ve had something come up. We can easily entertain ourselves for a while.”
“Even better.”
In the game room Nixie and Kevin took a break from the machines. She liked having another kid around, even if he was a boy. And his mother and father seemed nice. His mother had even played Intergalactic War with them. And nearly won, too.
But she was glad she’d gone away for a while. There were things you couldn’t say with adults around.
“How come you don’t talk like your mom and dad?” Nixie wanted to know.
“I talk like everybody.”
“No, they have a sort of accent. It’s different. How come you don’t?”
“Maybe because they haven’t been my mom and dad the whole time. But they are now.”
“They, like, adopted you?”
“We had a party when they did. Almost like a birthday. There was chocolate cake.”
“That’s nice.” She thought it was, but there was a jittery feeling in her stomach. “Did somebody kill your real mom and dad?”
“My other mom,” he corrected. “Because I have a real mom. You get to be real when you’re adopted.”
“I mean your other. Did somebody kill her?”
“Nuh-uh.” He began to pet Galahad, who’d deigned to stay and have his belly rubbed. “Sometimes she’d go away, and I’d get hungry. Sometimes she’d be nice, and sometimes she’d hit me. ‘Smack the crap out of you, little bastard.’ ” He grinned when he said it, but it wasn’t a pleasant expression. “That’s how her face looked when she hit. But my mom now, she never hits, and she never has that face. My dad either. Sometimes they get this one.”
He drew his eyebrows together and tried to look stern. “But mostly they don’t. And they don’t go away, and I don’t get hungry, not like before.”
“How did they find you?”
“They came and got me from the place where you have to go if you don’t have a mom or something. You get to eat there, and they’ve got games, but I didn’t want to stay there—and I didn’t for very long. Then they came and we got to go live in Virginia. We have a big house. Not as big as this,” he said, stringently honest. “But it’s big and I have my own room, and Dopey came with us.”
Nixie moistened her lips. “Are they going to take me to Virginia?” She knew where that was, sort of. She knew the capital was Richmond because she had to learn all the states and their capitals in school. But it wasn’t New York. It wasn’t here. It wasn’t home.
“I don’t know.” Obviously intrigued, Kevin cocked his head and studied her. “Don’t you live here?”
“No. I don’t live anywhere. People came in our house and killed my mom and dad.”
“Killed them dead?” Kevin’s eyes popped wide. “How come?”
“Because my dad was good and they were wrong people. That’s what Dallas said.”
“That’s the doom.” He gave her a pat, as he had Galahad. “Were you scared?”
“What do you think?” she snapped back, but the sympathy on Kevin’s face didn’t fade.
“I think I’da been so scared I wouldn’t even be able to breathe.”
The little flash of anger died. “I was. They killed them, and they didn’t kill me, and I have to stay here for protection. Dallas is going to find them and put them in a goddamn cage.”
He slapped a hand over his mouth and slid his gaze to the door. “You’re not supposed to say goddamn,” he whispered. “Mom gets that look on her face if you forget and say it.”
“She’s not my mom.”
When tears glimmered, Kevin scooted over and put an arm around her. “It’s okay. She can be your mom, too, if you want.”
“I want my own mom.”
“She got dead.”
Nixie dropped her head to her drawn-up knees. “They won’t let me go back to my house. They won’t let me go to school. And I don’t know where Virginia is, exactly.”
“We have a big yard, and we have a puppy. Sometimes he pees on the floor. It’s pretty funny.”
She sighed, rested her cheek on her knees. “I want to ask Dallas if I have to go to Virginia.” She swiped at her cheeks, rose, and used the house scanner. “Where is Dallas?”
Dallas is in Roarke’s office.
“You have to keep this.” Carefully, she unpinned the homer from her shirt, pinned it on Kevin’s. “It’s how Summerset knows where I am. I just want to talk to Dallas and nobody else, so you have to stay here and play games until I get back.”
“Okay. When you come back, we can look Virginia up on a map, then you can see.”
“Maybe.”
She knew the house, or at least the parts of it Summerset had shown her. To avoid the parlor, she took the elevator up a floor, then dashed down the corridor, and used the steps.
Part of her wanted to run away. But where would she go? She didn’t want to be alone. She knew kids were sometimes. Coyle had told her there were places like Sidewalk City where kids nobody wanted lived in boxes and had to beg for food.
She didn’t want to live in a box, but it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair that they were going to send her away. No one even asked.
Creeping past a door, she paused to listen.
She heard nothing inside, so eased around to look. It was Dallas’s office, and no one was there.
She crept to the next door.
“Gonna nail those sons of bitches. Look at the tenant list, two blocks from the Brenegan murder scene, and we’ve got a fucking revolving door.”
There was a sound in Dallas’s voice, Nixie thought. Kind of mean, and kind of excited, too. Like she’d heard one of the bigger kids sound at free-time in school when he talked about punching another kid.
“Two of those names are known aliases for Cassandra disciples. And one of them’s a face sculptor—a dead one. Bet your excellent ass he’s the one who did the work on Kirkendall and Clinton. The other’s off planet doing life. I’m going to have to go squeeze him, and I hate going off planet.”
“We get lucky here, you won’t have to. Every property or company I find is one away from pinning their base. Just give us some room here, Lieutenant.”
“Right, right.”
Nixie heard footsteps, crouched.
“And stop pacing about. It’s annoying. Why don’t you leave me to this for a half hour, go downstairs—or at the very least go hound someone.”
“I sent my team home. You’re what’s left for me to hound.”
“Just my lucky day.”
There was a beeping, an oath that would have gotten Nixie grounded for a month if she’d so much as thought it.
“Dallas.”
Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Compromised police seal, main front entrance, Swisher murder scene.
“Goddamn kids.”
Patrol dispatched. Acknowledge you have been informed of compromise.
“Acknowledged. Have the patrol hold at scene. Have officers in light armor as precautionary measure. I want to check it out myself. ETA, ten minutes.”
Acknowledged. Seal requires replacement. Dispatch out.
“If there’s a patrol heading there, it seems unnecessary for you to go as well.”
“I chased a bunch of kids away earlier. Should’ve kicked some butt, but I didn’t want to chance another chase. If they’re inside, I want to correct that error in judgment, personally. If they’re nearby, I’m going to take a few minutes of my time to round them up, and kick said butt.”
“I’ll go with you, then.”
“Jesus, Roarke, it’s a kid butt-kicking detail. I can handle it.” There was a long pause, a hiss of breath. “Okay, okay, no unnecessary risks. I’ll catch Baxter, take him along. I need you to stay on this and coordinate with Peabody once she gets to Central.”
“Wear your vest.”
“Oh Christ!” There was a sharp thud, as if something had been kicked. “Yes, mommy.”
“And later when I take it off of you, you’ll be calling me something entirely dif
ferent.”
“Ha-ha. Ten minutes there, ten back, ten to kick teenage butt. Back in thirty.”
In the hall, Nixie streaked away. With her heart drumming, she raced down the stairs, found an elevator, and ordered it to take her to the ground-floor library.
There was an outside door there, and she knew which car Dallas drove.
Eve caught Baxter on the stairs. “I need you to ride with me. Seal’s compromised at the Swisher house. I chased a bunch of teenagers away from it this afternoon. Looks like they came back. Trueheart, take the vehicle. I’ll stick your partner in a cab when we’re done slapping around a bunch of kids.” She tossed Baxter a vest. “Suit up. I take no chances.”
He started to take off his jacket.
“Upstairs. Jesus, you think I want to see what you refer to as your manly chest?” She took a small remote out of her pocket, tapped in a code.
“What’s that?”
She felt the heat rise up the back of her neck. “It’s a remote, brings my ride around on auto.”
“Sweet. Let me—”
She stuck it back in her pocket. “Just suit up, Baxter. I’d like to get this annoying little detail accomplished so I can get back to work.”
She took enough time to signal Mavis out of the parlor. “Listen, I’ve got to go out for a few, and I might be pretty jammed up when I get back. Can you keep everybody happy?”
“It’s what I do best. Hey, maybe I’ll get everybody down to the pool before we eat. That chilly with you?”
“It’s great.” She tried to envision Mavis cavorting in the water with Elizabeth and Mira. “Ah . . . But wear a suit, okay?”
Outside, Nixie dashed behind a tree when she heard the engine. She watched, breath quick and short as Dallas’s car streamed out of the garage and toward the front of the house. She watched it stop, heard locks click.
It was wrong. She shouldn’t do it. But she wanted to go home. Even for a little while. Before they sent her away, before they made her have another mom and dad.
She took one last glance toward the house, then ran for the car and crawled onto the floor of the backseat. She pulled the door shut only a moment before the door of the house opened. And she lay there, eyes squeezed shut.