by J. D. Robb
“What does that tell you?”
“Can’t be sure. Callaway’s too young to have been taken during the Urbans. But one of his parents? Grandparents somehow involved? Possible. Gotta dig into that. Fucker’s not a scientist so there has to be a connection, a way he got his hands on the formula.”
Roarke handed her the wine she’d left downstairs. “You never had this.”
“Right.”
“Or food.”
She looked back at her board.
“You can talk it through while we eat. I’m under orders to feed my wife.”
Her shoulders hunched, then released again. “He’s okay?”
“It’s hard—as you’d know better than most—to go back, look close at traumatic past events. He said more tonight about the horrors of his experiences than he has to me in all the years we’ve been together. I don’t know, not really, who he was before he saved me, took me in.”
“You never looked. You never looked at my past either, until I asked you to.”
“No. Love without trust? It’s not love at all.”
It upset him, she knew, worried him to see Summerset so frail, so tired. “I’ll get the food. We’ll eat.”
He ran a hand down her hair, brushed a kiss on her lips. “I’ll get it. Orders.”
She looked at the board again, sighed, then walked to the kitchen while Roarke programmed the meal. “Roarke? Whoever he was before, he was the kind of man who’d take in a young boy, tend to him, give him what he needed. He’s still a pain in the ass, but that matters.”
“I’m not sure, not at all, I’d have lived to be a man without him. I expect my father might have done for me, as he did for my mother, however slippery and clever I might have been. I’m not sure, had I lived, what manner of man I’d have been without him. So it matters, yes. It matters.”
She sat with him by the window at the little table, the spaghetti and meatballs she had a weakness for heaped on her plate like comfort.
Would they be here now, together like this, if Summerset had made another choice the day he’d found the young boy, beaten half to death by his own father? If he’d walked on, as some would, or had dumped Roarke in an ER, would they be here, sharing wine and pasta?
Roarke would say yes, they were meant to be. But she didn’t have his faith in fate and destiny.
All the steps and choices made life an intricate maze with endless solutions and endings.
“You’re quiet,” Roarke commented.
“He wanted something else for you. You’re his, and he wanted something—someone else for you. He deals with me now, we deal with each other. But he had a kind of vision for you. That’s what parents do, right?”
“Whatever he envisioned, under it he wanted me happy. He knows I am. And he knows, as he told me before I came upstairs, you’ve made me a better man.”
For an instant she was, sincerely, speechless. “He must really be feeling off.”
When Roarke simply shook his head, sipped at his wine, she wound pasta around her fork. “It just made me think, wind it through my head.” She held up her fork. “Like pasta.” She ate, wound again. “The abductees. They wanted kids under a certain age, when it’s likely they’re more malleable, more defenseless. Most of Red Horse would be, by the popular term, bat-shit crazy. But not all. It’s never all. There’d be kids there, too—sucked in or swept along. And women who felt they had no choice—scared. Men too weak-spined or weak-minded to do anything but go along.”
“Add the world was going to hell in a handbasket.”
“What does that mean? What’s a handbasket? If it’s a basket, you need your hands to carry it, so it’s a given.”
“It might be a bushel basket. You’d need your arms.”
“How much is a bushel?”
“Four pecks.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Now you’re messing with me. Peck’s what chickens do.”
He laughed. “I stand corrected.”
“What I was saying, before handbaskets, is some people would, given human nature, feel protective of the kids. And maybe bond with them, especially kids who were kept for a good chunk of time. They’d have to assign people to take care of them. The babies, say.”
“And there’d be that bonding. Yes, I can see that.”
“With the bonding comes the vision, the wants for the kid. The kid has to depend on you, for food, shelter, protection. Mira asked me questions today that made me think about that. I was afraid of Troy, and even as a kid, hated him on some level. But I depended on him. Not on her. I never depended on her.”
Was there a twinge of pain there? Eve wondered. Maybe—maybe just a twinge.
“I think that’s one of the reasons I remember him much more clearly. It’s not just that he had me longer, but that he was the one who brought in the food, that sort of thing. He couldn’t turn me. Maybe I was stronger than either of us knew, or he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. But it’s not hard to turn a kid—even an adult—pain and reward, pain and reward, deprivation, fear, repetition. You can even turn them with kindness, if you’re smart about it.”
“I agree, but as you said, Callaway’s too young to have been an abductee.”
“If his father was, Callaway might’ve been raised in the doctrine. Or he could know someone who was. I’m going to fine-tune those lists of abductees.”
“Why Callaway? Specifically.”
“It’s little things. They start to add up. He’s the first to come forward—with Weaver. Come in, show concern for their pal and coworker. He admits to being at the bar, and that’s the ground zero area, from what I can piece together. Vann left too early. Weaver’s already in charge, and like I said, she’d have used a man.”
“Then why not go after Weaver, or Vann for that matter? Weaver’s a woman, in charge. Vann’s got the family connections, the shine.”
“Maybe he’s working his way up. Eliminating direct competition first. Maybe he’s just hitting indiscriminately, and he got lucky. In ratio, his office lost more than any other in the two attacks. Relationships. He lives and works in that sector. Weaver and Vann live on the edges of it, but Callaway’s right in the middle. Geography. And he’s pushing, and pushing Weaver to push for information.
“He’s single,” she went on. “Has no long-term relationships that I’ve found.”
“And Vann’s been married, has a child. Weaver’s had two engagements.”
“You could say Weaver and Vann don’t ace it on commitment, but they each gave it a shot. Nothing shows where Callaway did. And though it was kind of a toss out, Weaver mentioned her mother, Vann his son. Callaway?”
“No one,” Roarke finished.
“It adds up,” she repeated. “He lives alone, and he’s spinning in middle management. Of the three of them he was the most controlled tonight. Careful what he said. It felt as if he took his lead from them—didn’t want to stand out, not in this situation. He wanted to let me think about the other two, respond primarily to them. Until closer to the end of it. He wasn’t getting everything he wanted, so he had to insert himself instead of relying on the other two to pull out the information he was after.”
She sat back, hissed out a breath. “And it’s all a feel, a read. I don’t even have enough to pull the manpower to watch him.”
“Then we’ll have to find enough.”
“If I’m right, there’s going to be something, something buried in his background. His education, family history. And there has to be a trigger. He didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to kill a bunch of people. Something set him off, or gave him permission.”
“The campaign seems to have been their focus for the last several weeks. It’s interesting that the first attack came the night they’d completed it, and Vann left for the client presentation.”
“Maybe you know somebody who knows somebody who could arrange for me to talk to the client on the QT. Get impressions.”
“Why don’t you leave that to me? The client’s mor
e likely to talk to me about business than to a cop about a murder suspect.”
“Okay, if you deal with that—”
“In the morning.”
Her brows drew together. “Why not now? I don’t want to waste time on this.”
“During business hours,” Roarke insisted. “If I approach this now, it’s going to make the client wonder. A contact during regular business hours—then it’s regular business.”
“I guess you’d know,” she grudgingly agreed.
“I guess I would. And it frees me to help otherwise. Abductees or background?”
She considered. “Go ahead with the background. Teasdale’s probably looking at abductees. Not the way I’m going to. But I can jump off her data.”
“Will you tell her what you’re doing?”
“After I do it, sure. It’s my case,” Eve reminded him when he smiled. “She’s consulting. She’s probably clean, especially after you microscoped her and think so. But I don’t know what she’s made of. She’ll get what I’ve got at tomorrow’s briefing, just like the rest of the team. Unless one of us strikes gold and we can move tonight.”
“Then I’ll get started being nosy. And since I fed you, you can deal with the dishes.”
“There’s always a catch.”
“The way of the world, darling.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Plus the spaghetti had hit just the right spot. She felt fueled and ready. All she needed was coffee to top it off.
By the time she’d finished, had a pot on her desk, she’d aligned her strategy. She’d start with the unrecovered.
Seventy-eight children who’d never been located—alive or dead. Most, she noted with a quick scan, had families, though there were war orphans and fosters scattered through. Easier prey, she decided. And without a parent searching for them, easier to indoctrinate.
She’d start with those, working her way from youngest to oldest.
The first, a female infant—three months—snatched in a raid of a makeshift orphanage in London. Mother dead, father unknown. She’d been one of eight children abducted. No DNA on file, but a small birthmark, like a blurry heart on the back of the left knee.
She called up the records, studied the search patterns, the statements from witnesses. Three women had died trying to protect the kids. Two survivors—male and female—had described the raid, the men and women who’d attacked the location.
The oldest, an eleven-year-old boy, managed to escape with two others. Smart kid, she thought as she read. His father had been a soldier, had taught him how to track, how to evade pursuit. He’d lead his two friends to a base camp, given the location where they’d been kept.
As a result, two more of the kids had been recovered—and the remains of another. Only the infant—who’d been named Amanda— and a two-year-old boy—Niles—were left. Whereabouts unknown.
She ordered the computer to perform an age-approximation image on both Amanda and Niles, studied the faces as the computer portrayed them today. Split-screened those images with those of the ID shots of Callaway’s mother and father, his paternal aunt, his uncle by marriage, even his grandparents, though that was stretching it.
No distinguishing marks listed on IDs for the women, she noted. But such things could be removed or covered up. Still she found no resemblance at all between the two lost children and any member of Callaway’s family.
She wondered if either child still lived, and if so where, how, with whom? Then she let it go. If she thought about each young innocent, she’d drown in depression.
So she moved on, inching her way through photos, descriptions, witness accounts, interviews with recovered kids, family members, interrogations of prisoners.
An ugly time, she thought, and as with any ugly time the innocents suffered and paid more than those who incited the ugliness.
More than lives lost, but lives fractured, or damaged beyond all understanding.
By the time she’d worked her way through half the list of lost children, she had a solid handle on how Red Horse had worked. Their leadership, their individual missions, credos, disciplines, even communications may have been loose, but their methods ran along a common line.
Use females to infiltrate camps, hospitals, child centers, gather intel on routines, security, numbers, then raid. Often, very often, she noted, sacrificing the female or female infiltrators in the process.
Take the kids, kill the rest—or as many as possible. Secure the kids, transport—scatter.
If kids died during the operations, well, there were always more kids.
She took a much needed break and carried her coffee to the door of Roarke’s office.
“I’ve got considerable,” he told her without looking up, “and some fairly interesting. I’m not quite done.”
“No, I just needed to step away from it a minute. It’s harsh.”
Now he stopped, looked at her. He’d seen her stand over the dead countless times, mutilated bodies, and take the blood and gore with her. So this was more.
“Tell me.”
She did, because it helped.
“After they scattered, regrouped, they’d begin indoctrinations on the kids who survived the raid. The younger ones, under four, they’d draw in with reward. Candy, sweets, toys. The older ones, or the stubborn ones, they broke down with pain or deprivation. No food, no light, whippings. A few escaped—very few. Some died, not so few. I’ve been reading old interviews with recovered kids that detail abuse—physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, off-balanced by care and comfort, then back to abuse if the kid didn’t renounce his family or swear allegiance to Red Horse—learn the doctrines, toe the line.”
“They tortured children.”
“All in the name of some vengeful God they’d decided to worship.”
“God has nothing to do with it. Man created torture.”
“Yeah, we’re good with inventing ways to screw each other up. If the kid had family, they threatened to kill his mother or father if he didn’t cooperate. Or they’d say his family was already dead. Or tell him, again and again, his family didn’t care about him, no one was coming for him.”
“Methods used throughout history to demoralize and break POWs, and to turn them when possible into assets.”
“It’s worse than what happened to me.”
She wanted to pace, to steam off the angry energy. Because she needed all the energy she could get, from whatever source, she continued to stand, rocking on her heels.
“These kids lost families who loved them, or were taken from them, then systematically tortured and brainwashed. The older ones, the stronger ones were used as labor—and if a girl was old enough, they forced her to have sex with one of the boys. They had freaking ceremonies, Roarke, and watched. Like a celebration.”
“Sit down, Eve.”
“No, I’m okay. Working through being pissed. It’s harder to work clean pissed off. I’ve got records of over thirty live births through abducted kids. The youngest on record was twelve. Twelve, for God’s sake. They took the babies from the girls. Impregnated them again when possible. I have one who was fifteen when recovered. She’d had three babies. She self-terminated six months after recovery. She’s not the only. Self-termination rates among the abductees is estimated at fifteen percent, before the age of eighteen.”
She took a long breath. “Most of the data on pregnancies and suicides came from Callendar and Teasdale. Nadine didn’t dig it up, because it’s classified. I’m not sure Summerset’s sources knew all of it or told him.”
“No, he’d have told us if he knew.”
“Why isn’t this public knowledge? Why wasn’t it screamed from fucking rooftops?”
Difficult for anyone to think of children being tortured and raped, he thought. But when you’ve been a child who’d been tortured and raped, it hit harder, and it hit closer.
“I think a combination of factors.” He rose to go to her, ran his hands up and down her arms to soothe them both. “The massiv
e confusion during that era, the desperation of governments to cover up some of the worst. And the needs of the victims, their families, to put it all behind them.”
“It’s never behind you. It’s always in front of you.”
“Would you consider going public with what happened to you?”
“It’s my personal business. It’s not …” She breathed again. “Okay, I get that. Or at least some of it. But burying it—not just here, but in Europe, everywhere it happened. That took work and purpose and a hell of a lot of money.”
“The authorities didn’t, or couldn’t, protect the most vulnerable, and from a radical cult, one that wasn’t well funded or organized. Such things are worth the work and money to many.”
“HSO was practically running things, at least in the States back then.”
“And the power may have slipped away during the post-war rebuild if this had been public knowledge. I don’t know, Eve.”
“They’re giving me the data now, or some of it.”
“It appears Teasdale’s superior genuinely intends to run a clean house, or as clean as such houses can be.”
“Then he’s got a lot of dirt to sweep.” Not her job, she reminded herself. “I need to get back to it.”
“Why don’t we take a look at some of Callaway’s background first?”
“You’re not finished.”
“Enough to start.”
“I can’t let this get personal. And I can’t stop it from being personal.”
“If you could stop it, you wouldn’t be the woman or the cop you are.”
“I hope that’s true.”
“I know it is. Here, let’s have some of this.” He put his arms around her. “For both of us.”
She held on. He’d given her someone to hold on to. A gift she never wanted to take for granted. She thought she’d known what darkness was, and despair and terror. Now she knew there were people who lived and worked and slept and ate who’d known far, far worse.