by J. D. Robb
"I've got nothing to discuss with you." She slung the file bag over her shoulder, then shoved him when he blocked her path to the door.
"You want to fight then? Well, isn't it handy I'm in just the mood for it. But we'll take this to neutral territory."
"Neutral territory, my ass. There is no neutral territory with you. You own the goddamn city."
"We'll take this out of here, Lieutenant, unless you want to have a bloody, shouting fight with your husband for a couple dozen cops to hear. Doesn't matter a damn to me, but you'll be sorry for it when you've come to your senses."
"I've got all my senses." And because she did, she managed to keep her voice low. "Let's take it outside, pal."
"Outside it is."
They didn't speak again, but the volume of their silence had several cops easing back when they pushed into the elevator. She stalked onto the garage level ahead of him, then knocked his hand away when he reached for the driver's side door.
"I'm driving," he told her, "as you've too much blood in your eye to do the job."
Deciding to pick her battles, Eve strode around the car and dropped into the passenger's seat.
He didn't tear out of the garage, though he wanted to. She'd just try to have him arrested for some traffic violation, he thought nastily. He, too, was picking his battles. Still he wove through traffic with a kind of controlled violence that had other vehicles giving way. Another time, she would have admired it, but at the moment his skill simply reinforced her resentment.
He pulled over at the west edge of Central Park, slammed out of the car while she did the same on the opposite side.
"I don't own this."
"I bet that sticks in your craw."
"What I own, don't own, acquire, don't acquire, is irrelevant."
"You don't own my badge."
"I don't want your goddamn badge." He crossed the sidewalk and kept walking across the green summer grass.
"Controlling something's the same as ownership."
"I've no desire to control your badge, or you for that matter."
"That comes off pretty lame from somebody who's just managed to do both."
"For Christ's sake, Eve, that wasn't what that was about. Use your head for a minute. Stop being so prideful, so flaming stubborn that you see everything as a bloody attack. Do you think Whitney would have agreed to consider this angle if he didn't believe it was a viable method of stopping this woman? Isn't that your primary goal?"
"Don't stand there and tell me what my goal is." She jammed a finger into his chest. "Don't you stand there and tell me what my job is. I've been doing this job since you were still running smuggled contraband. I know what it is."
She stormed away from him. Prideful? Stubborn? Son of a bitch. Then whirled back. "You went over my head, you went behind my back, and you had no right, no right to go to my superior and shove your way into this investigation in a way that undermines my authority, that negates that authority in front of my team. And if anyone had pulled that on you, you'd have had their head on a fucking platter and their blood for sauce."
He started to speak, then took a good swallow of his own pride. "That's very annoying."
"Annoying? You call it—"
"It's annoying," he interrupted, "when you're right. When you're completely right, and I'm wrong. I apologize for it. Sincerely."
"Would you like a suggestion as to where you can shove your sincerity?"
"No need." Irritated with himself, with her, he dropped down on a bench. "I'm sorry for the method. That's the truth. I didn't consider the reflection on you carefully enough, and I should have."
"No, you just get a brainstorm and drop in on your good friend Jack."
"And if I'd come to you with it, you'd have given it all the proper consideration? Don't bother to come up with some clever line, Lieutenant, as we both know you'd have pushed it aside. I'd've pushed back, and we'd have had a row about that."
"Until you got your way."
"Until you cleared the bugs out of your head that make you think I'm stupid enough to let some mad tart do for me. I didn't come down in the last shower of rain, Eve."
"What the hell does that mean?"
He sat back, laughed a little. "Jesus, you make me Irish. Why is that, do you suppose? Come sit down. You don't look as well as you should."
"Don't tell me what to do."
He thought about it for about three seconds. "Ah, bollocks to this." And rising, he stepped to her, evaded the leading edge of the elbow jab, and scooped her off her feet. "There, now stay down." He dumped her on the bench. "We both know I'd not have taken you that easily if you were feeling yourself. I need you to listen to me."
He kept her hands gripped under his, felt the anger and insult vibrating through her. "After you do, if you feel you need to take a punch at me, well, you can have one for free. What I said in Whitney's office was the truth. I'd've done better to come to you so that we could have fought it out between us, but I didn't and I'm sorry. Still, what I said was the truth, Eve."
He squeezed down on her hands until she stopped trying to yank them away. "I'm asking for your help and offering mine to you. She wants to take you apart, little pieces of you sheared off each time she drops a body at your feet. Trying to make you think that you're responsible for putting them there."
"I don't think—"
"No, you know better, in your head. But she made you bleed in that cursed video of hers. In your heart. And she wants to finish you off with me. She doesn't know you. She doesn't understand what's in you, or what it is to love someone. If she managed, through some miracle, to take me out, you wouldn't fall apart. You'd hound her and hunt her. You'd run her to ground. And then, well, darling, you'd eat her alive."
He brought her clenched fists to his lips. "And I'd do exactly the same for you, if you're wondering."
"That's real comforting, Roarke."
"Isn't it?" He said it with such cheer she felt a smile trying to tug at her mouth.
"Let go. I'm not going to hit you. Just let go, and don't talk to me for a minute."
He released her hands, then brushed his fingers over her bruised cheek. Rising, he wandered off to leave her alone.
She sat where she was. The fury had sapped her, left even her bones feeling weak. More than that, she realized, it was the fear that made her weak. The image of seeing Roarke pitch to the floor at her feet, choking, gasping, dying. And Julianna standing there, out of her reach. Just out of her reach. Smiling.
She'd let that happen, Eve admitted. She'd let Julianna plant those weeds of fear, of guilt, of self-doubt. And she'd let them bloom instead of hacking them out by the roots.
That made her ineffective, and it made her slow.
So Roarke had gone for the roots first.
He infuriated her. What else was new? They'd rammed heads countless times in the past, and would ram them countless times in the future. It was part of what they were. There had to be something sick about that, but there it was.
They just weren't peaceful people.
He'd been wrong, but so had she. As a cop, she should have examined and explored the option of using him as bait long before this.
Love messed you up, she thought. No doubt about it.
He came back with two tubes of Pepsi and a greasy scoop of oil fries. And in silence sat beside her again.
"I want to say first that I'm entitled to be prideful when it comes to my work." She dug into the scoop, felt the grit of salt over the grease. And knowing he'd drenched them for her, had to choke back a sentimental sigh. "And second, sometime when you least expect it, I'm going to generate a memo to the top staff of your midtown offices stating that you wear women's underwear under those manly designer suits."
"Why, that's just cold."
"Yeah, then you'll have to strip down at a general meeting to prove it's a filthy lie and my vengeance will be complete." She looked at him then. "She's not just a— what did you call her—a mad tart. She's smart and she's
driven. Don't underestimate her."
"I don't. I don't underestimate you, Eve. But I think, for just a bit of time here with one thing and then the other, you've been underestimating yourself."
"Yeah, I have, and I don't like it thrown in my face. Okay. I've got to get home. There's a lot to do in a short amount of time."
* * *
She worked with him first, studying all the data on hotel security and on the event itself that he'd already had at the ready. She pitched questions, and he batted back the answers with the skill of a man who knew he owned the plate.
The Regency wasn't an urban castle as his Palace Hotel was. It was bigger, sleeker, and geared more for the upper-end business clientele than the fashionable rich.
It had sixty-eight floors, fifty-six of which were guest room levels. Others held offices, shops, restaurants, clubs, and the conference centers, the ballrooms.
On the seventh floor was a casual bar/restaurant and swimming pool, which was open-air during good weather. The top two levels held eight penthouse suites, and were only accessible by private elevator. The health club, level four, was open to all hotel guests and to registered members. Entry, from inside the hotel or its exterior glide door, required a keycard.
Ballrooms were on floors nine and ten, with exterior and interior entries. The event would take place in the Terrace Room, named after its wide, tiled terrace.
"Lots of ways in, lots of ways out," Eve stated.
"That's a hotel for you. All exits will be secured. There are security cameras throughout the public areas. Full sweep."
"But not the guest rooms."
"Well, people are fussy about their privacy. You'll have views in all elevators, in hallways. We can add monitors if you feel it's necessary. She'd be more likely to blend in as staff or an event attendee than a hotel guest, I'd say. She'd want to get out of the building after her job's done, not find a bolt-hole inside it."
"Agreed, but we keep a man monitoring all check-ins. I want that set up, along with field offices, ready rooms in a secured area as close to the ballroom as possible."
"You'll have it."
"Hotel security will be fully briefed. I don't want to alert the rest of the staff, or the outside event people. The less chance she gets wind of trouble, the better."
"You don't intend to tell Louise then?"
She'd considered, debated, weighed the pros and cons. "No, I don't. We'll plant cops alongside the attendees, the servers, within your security. You'll arrange with your catering or whatever it is for the extra servers. Nobody will question you about it."
"I should think not," he mused.
"We'll need to go over the other functions in the hotel that evening. You've got two conventions in, and a wedding deal. She may slip in through one of those."
"We'll nail it down. I'm sorry, I have a holo-conference in a few minutes. I have to take it; I've already re-scheduled twice."
"It's all right, I've got plenty to do."
"Eve."
"Yeah, what?"
He bent over her, pressed his lips to the top of her head. "There are a number of things we need to talk about."
"I'm only half-pissed at you now."
His lips curved against her hair. "That's just one of several. For now I'll just say I was half-pissed at you when Mira dropped by my office this afternoon."
She didn't look up, but she went very still. "I didn't ask her to. Exactly."
"But it occurred to me, very shortly, that you'd wanted her to talk to me because you were worried. You knew the trip to Dallas was eating at me, perhaps more than I knew it myself. So thanks."
"No problem."
"And it would be small of me to qualify that gratitude by pointing out that by sending her along without mentioning it to me, you'd gone over my head and behind my back."
Now she looked up, just a shift of the eyes. "Good thing you're too big a man to do that."
"Isn't it?" He bent lower, gave her one hard kiss, then left her alone.
"Managed to get the last word on that one," she commented, then scooped her hair back and shifted focus to the spa and transpo data. She might still win this little battle by snapping Julianna up before she got her chance at Roarke.
* * *
An hour later, she was back to being annoyed and frustrated. She'd managed to intimidate and browbeat reservation lists out of two of the resort spas on her list. The others were sticking firm to the protection-of-guests' privacy line. And so were the private transportation companies.
Pushing through an international warrant to free up the data was problematic and time-consuming. The case was a hot enough button that the judge she'd tapped for it was sympathetic rather than annoyed. But it was taking time.
Another advantage for Julianna, Eve thought. She didn't have to jump through the hoops of the law.
She paced, checked her wrist unit, and willed the warrant to spill out of her data slot.
"Problem, Lieutenant?"
She glanced back to where he leaned against the doorjamb separating their offices. He looked very alert, and very pleased with himself.
"I guess somebody's time was well spent."
"It was. The meeting went very well. And yours?"
"Bureaucratic snags." She glared at her computer. "Waiting for paperwork."
"Of what sort?"
"Of the legal sort. Privacy codes. Nobody blabs to a badge anymore, especially a foreign badge. And those fancy spa places are damned tight-lipped about who's coming in to have their hips sheered or their chins lifted."
"Ah, well, if that's all."
"No. I thought about it—thought about it a little too easy and a little too fast. This is just a hunch, and I'm not having you slide under the law to access data on a hunch."
"When you spend this much time and energy on an angle, it's more than a hunch."
"I know this is something she'll do. Maybe not now, but soon. She needs that kind of thing and New York's too risky. She needs to pump herself up, reward herself, before she hits at you. She didn't take the time in Denver, and she could have. She wants something more prestigious, more exclusive. With more ... what do you call it? Cachet. So it's France or Italy or something Old World. She doesn't do off planet. It's too nouveau for her."
"Will you get your warrant?"
"Yeah, yeah, it's coming. Eventually. Protocol, politics, bullshit."
"Then what difference does it make, in the grand scheme, if you begin to accumulate data now, or when a document's in your hand?"
"It's the law."
And in less than three days, Eve thought, it was highly probable that the woman she hunted would try to kill Roarke. Not because she knew him. Not because she hated him. But because she dismissed the law and all it stood for.
Because she wanted payback.
"It's hard for you, being so conflicted over something you want to be black and white. But even the law has shades, Lieutenant, and we both know them all very well."
She gave up, and stepped into the gray. "She'd use her own initials. She doesn't like to give up her identity. The list, in order of probability percentage is already loaded on my machine."
"All right then. Let's find her." He sat down at her desk, rolled up the sleeves of his pristine white shirt. "It's really just a head start on a technicality."
She told herself to think about that later.
"I'm looking for reservations starting from yesterday through the next four weeks. I could be pushing her into relaxation mode too fast. Maybe she's going for it after she's won the war."
"We'll scan for the next month then. L'lndulgence first? Over-priced with a coolly efficient staff. Its ratings have stagnated over the last two years. It's falling out of fashion."
"Which is why you don't own it."
"Darling, if I did, I'd make certain it remained in fashion. This'll just take a minute or two. Wouldn't you like coffee?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Good. So would I."
She cou
ld recognize a cue when she heard one, so trooped off to the kitchen AutoChef to order up a full pot. When she came back with it and two large mugs, he was already scanning a list of names.
"I see a couple on here with the right initials, but they're reserved with companions." "She'd travel alone. She has no known associates, doesn't make friends. She makes tools."
"All right, we'll move on to the next."
They found two possibles in the next location, allowing Eve to ran standard background checks for elimination. She leaned over Roarke's shoulder, reading data on-screen even as the computer voiced it.
"No, these are clear. All their documents check out. Just a couple of rich marks paying too much money to get rubbed and scrubbed. Next?"
He hacked into the guest records at two more facilities before the 'link signaled incoming documents. She snatched out the hard copy of the warrant, rolled her shoulders. "Now we do it my way."
"My way's much more fun."
"Out of my chair, pal. And this time you get the coffee."
Her way offered a different kind of fun by allowing her to irritate reservation managers in several countries. They stalled, complained, cited the insult of invading guests' privacy. And really perked up her mood.
"I don't care if you've got people coming there who get off on turkey baster enemas. Transmit the list, as ordered in the duly authorized warrant or the next sound you hear will be your own ass plopping into the sling of international incident."
"Turkey baster enemas?" Roarke said a few moments later as the transmission hummed through.
"I don't know what they do in those places, but if somebody hadn't thought of that one, they would eventually. She's not here. She's just not here. Goddamn it." She pushed away from the desk to pace. "I'm wasting time when I should be nitpicking the setup at the ballroom."
"You've several more locations on your list."
"They're all low probability. Maybe I'm just projecting what I'd like her to do, to make it easy for myself."
"You wouldn't know how to make it easy for yourself if you took classes on it. My name also comes in low probability, but you've dismissed the computer's brain on that, haven't you? You know her, Eve. Don't second-guess yourself now."