by J. D. Robb
Eve rubbed her eyes when she was alone with Peabody. The scant three hours’ sleep she’d managed was threatening to fog her brain. “Man the computer in here. As Malloy’s teams report in, adjust the list. I’ll report in to Whitney, then I’ll be in the field. Keep me updated.”
“You could use me in the field, Dallas.”
Eve thought of how close she’d come to getting her aide blown to pieces once already and shook her head. “I need you here,” was all she said, and headed out.
An hour later, Peabody swung between being miserably bored and outrageously edgy. Four buildings had been tagged clean, but there were another dozen to go with just under two hours until noon.
She wandered the room, drank too much coffee. She tried to think like a political terrorist. Eve could do that, she knew. Her lieutenant could slide into the mind of a criminal, walk around in it, visualize a scene from the eyes of a killer.
Peabody envied that skill, though it had occurred to her more than once it couldn’t be a comfortable one.
“If I were a political terrorist, what building in New York would I want to take out to make a statement?”
Tourist traps and lures, she thought. The problem was she’d always avoided that kind of thing. She’d come to New York to be a cop and had deliberately—as a matter of pride, she supposed—avoided all the usual tourist havens.
The fact was, she’d never been inside the Empire State or the Met until Zeke . . .
Her head came up, her eyes brightened. She’d call Zeke. She knew he’d studied his guide disc front and back and sideways. So where would he, as an eager tourist from Arizona, most like to attend a weekday matinee?
She turned from the window to start toward the ’link, then scowled when McNab strolled in.
“Hey, She-Body, they dump you on desk duty, too?”
“I’m busy, McNab.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” He wandered to the AutoChef, poked. “This thing’s out of coffee.”
“Then go drink somewhere else. This isn’t a damn café.” She wanted him out and gone on general principles, and because she didn’t want him smirking when she called her little brother.
“I like it here.” Partially because he wanted to know, and partially to annoy her, he leaned over her monitor. “How many have been eliminated?”
“Get away from there. I’m manning this unit. I’m working here, McNab.”
“What are you so touchy about? You and Charlie have a spat?”
“My personal life is none of your business.” She tried for dignity, but something about him always put her back up. She marched over, elbowed him aside. “Why don’t you go play with your motherboard?”
“I happen to be part of this team.” To irritate her, he plopped his butt on the table. “And I outrank you, sweetheart.”
“Only through some obvious glitch in the system.” She jabbed her finger in his chest. “And don’t call me sweetheart. The name is Peabody, Officer Peabody, and I don’t need some half-wit, skinny-assed e-man breathing down my neck when I’m on assignment.”
He glanced down at the finger that had jabbed twice more into his chest. When he lifted his gaze, she was mildly surprised to see his usually cheerful green eyes had gone to pricks of ice. “You want to be careful.”
The chilly steel of his voice surprised her, too, but she was too far in to back off. “About what?” she said and gleefully jabbed him again.
“About physically assaulting a superior officer. I’ll only tolerate so much of your abuse before I start dishing it back out.”
“My abuse. You come sniffing around every time I blink with your lame comments and innuendos. You try to horn in on my cases—”
“Your cases. Now she’s got delusions of grandeur.”
“Dallas’s cases are my cases. And we don’t need you poking into them. We don’t need you strolling in for comic relief with your stupid jokes. And I don’t need you asking questions about my relationship with Charles, which is completely private and none of your damn business.”
“You know what you do need, Peabody?”
Since she’d raised her voice to a shout, he did the same. And he was up, toe to toe, nearly nose to nose.
“No, McNab, just what do you think I need?”
He hadn’t intended to do it. He didn’t think. Well, maybe he had. Either way, it was done. He’d grabbed her arms, he’d yanked her hard, and his mouth was currently doing a damn fine job of devouring hers.
She made a sound, something that was reminiscent of a swimmer inhaling water by mistake. Somewhere under his bubbling temper was the knowledge that she was likely to kick his ass the minute she recovered from the shock. So, what the hell, he gave the moment all he had.
He trapped her between the table and his body, and took as much of her in as a man could in one, long, greedy gulp.
She was paralyzed. It was the only rational explanation as to why the man still had his mouth on her instead of lying broken and bleeding on the floor.
She’d had some sort of a stroke or . . . Oh my God, who’d known an annoying little twit could kiss like this?
The blood simply drained out of her head and left it buzzing. And she discovered she wasn’t paralyzed after all, when her arms locked around him, and her mouth began to meet his assault with one of her own.
They grappled, groping and biting. Somebody moaned. Somebody swore. Then they were staring at each other, panting.
“What the—what the hell was that?” Her voice came out in a squeak.
“I don’t know.” He managed to suck in air, release it. “But let’s do it again.”
“Jesus Christ, McNab!” Feeney exploded from the doorway and watched the pair of them jump apart like rabbits. “What the sweet hell are you doing?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” He wheezed, coughed, tried to blink his vision clear. “Nothing,” he said for a third time. “At all. Captain.”
“Holy Mary McGuire.” Feeney rubbed his hands over his face, kept them there. “We’ll all just pretend I didn’t see that. I didn’t see a goddamn thing. I’ve just now this second walked into this room. Is that understood?”
“Sir,” Peabody said snappily, and prayed the blush she could feel burning her face would fade sometime before the end of the decade.
“Yes, sir.” McNab took a long sideways step away from Peabody.
Feeney lowered his hands, studied the two of them. He’d locked less guilty-looking pairs in cages, he thought with an inner sigh. “Target’s been located. It’s Radio City.”
chapter ten
They had time. They still had time, was all Eve allowed herself to think. She wore riot gear: the full antiflak jacket, the assault helmet, and face visor. All of which, she knew, would prove as useless as fresh, pink skin if they didn’t have time.
So they did. That was the only choice for her, for the E and B team, and for the civilians they were working feverishly to evacuate.
The Great Stage at Radio City had pulled in a full house: tourists, locals, preschoolers with parents or caretakers, classroom groups with teachers and chaperons. The noise level was huge, and the natives weren’t just restless, they were pissed.
“Seats run between one hundred and two hundred and fifty.” The six-foot blonde, who’d identified herself as the theater manager, galloped beside Eve like a Viking warhorse. Outrage and distress had gone to battle in her voice. “Do you have any idea how complicated it’s going to be to arrange alternate dates or refunds? We’re sold out through the run of the show.”
“Look, sister, you’ll be holding your run of the show in pieces blown over to Hoboken if you don’t let us do our job.” She elbowed the woman aside and pulled out her communicator. “Malloy? Status.”
“Multiple devices detected. We’ve located and neutralized two. Scan indicates six more. Teams already deployed. The stage has four elevators, every one of them can go down twenty-seven feet into the basement of this place. We got hot ones in all of them. Working as fast a
s we can here.”
“Work faster,” Eve suggested. She jammed the communicator back in her pocket and turned to the woman beside her. “Get out.”
“I certainly will not. I’m the manager.”
“That doesn’t make you captain of this sinking ship.” Because the woman outweighed her by a good fifty pounds and looked frazzled enough to put up a good, entertaining fight, Eve was tempted to haul her along personally. It was too bad she couldn’t spare the time. Instead, she signaled to a couple of beefy uniforms, indicated the woman with a jerk of her thumb.
“Move this,” was all she said and pushed her way through the noisy, complaining crowd of evacuees.
She could see the impressive block-long expanse of stage. A full dozen cops in riot gear were posted on it to keep any ticket holders from scrambling in that direction. The heavy red curtain was raised, the stage lights brilliant. No one, she thought dryly, would mistake the helmeted figures onstage for The Rockettes.
Babies wailed, the elderly griped, and a half dozen schoolgirls clutching their souvenir Rockette dolls wept silently.
The cover story of a water main leak had staved off panic, but it didn’t make for cheerful cooperation from the civilians.
The evacuation teams were making progress, but it was no easy task to move several thousand annoyed ticket holders out of a warm theater and into the cold. The main lobby area was jammed shoulder to shoulder.
And there were countless other rooms, lounges, lobbies. Beyond the public areas there were dressing rooms, control centers, offices. Each one had to be searched, emptied, secured.
Add panic to annoyance, Eve mused, and you’d have several hundred casualties before they hit the doors. She slapped on her headset and climbed onto a wide Art Deco table to look down on the grumbling horde being pushed along through the grandiose lobby with its stylized glass and chrome.
She switched on her mike. “This is the NYPSD,” she announced over the echoing din. “Your cooperation is appreciated. Please don’t block the exits. Continue to move outside.” She ignored the shouts and questions thrown at her and repeated her statement twice more.
A woman in her matinee pearls curled a hand around Eve’s booted ankle. “I know the mayor. He’s going to hear about this.”
Eve nodded pleasantly. “Give him my best. Please proceed in an orderly fashion. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
The word inconvenience pushed the bitch button. The shouts increased even as uniforms firmly led people through the doors. Eve had just swiveled her mouthpiece aside, pulled out her communicator for another status check when she saw someone come in instead of out.
Her blood went instantly on boil as Roarke slid gracefully through the crowd toward her.
Her teeth were grinding as she stared down at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Insuring that my property—and my wife,” he added just deliberately enough to make her snarl, “remain in one piece.”
He hopped agilely beside her. “May I?” he began and snatched her headset.
“That’s police property, ace.”
“Which means it’s an inferior product, but it should do the job.”
Then, looking cool and sleek, he addressed the disorderly crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, the staff and performers of Radio City apologize for this difficulty. All tickets and transportation costs incurred will be fully re-funded. An alternate date will be set for today’s matinee at no change to any ticket holders who wish to attend. We appreciate your understanding.”
The noise level didn’t abate, but the tone of it altered dramatically. Roarke could have told Eve that money, unfailingly, talks.
“Pretty slick, aren’t you?” she muttered and swung down behind the table.
“You need them out,” he said simply. “What’s your status?”
She waited until he stood down with her, then contacted Anne. “We’re about fifty percent evacuated. It’s moving, but slow. Where are you?”
“About the same. We’ve got half. Cooled one in the organ console. Working on one in the orchestra pit now. This one’s almost a lock, but they’re scattered all over hell and back. I’ve only got so many men.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Roarke checking a handheld scanner. It sank sickness into her gut. “Keep me posted. You,” she said as she turned to him. “Get out.”
“No.” He didn’t bother to look up but did lay a hand on her shoulder to prevent her from moving in on him. “There’s one up on the catwalk. I’ll take that one.”
“You’re taking nothing but a hike, and now.”
“Eve, we both know there’s no time to argue. If these people have the building under surveillance, they know you’ve tagged them. They could decide to detonate any time now.”
“Which is why all civilians—” She broke off rather than talk to his back. He’d already turned away and was slipping quickly through the oncoming crowd. “Goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it.” Fighting off panic, she muscled her way through after him.
She caught up just as he was unlocking a side door and managed to push her way in behind him.
It slammed, locked, and they eyed each other narrowly. “I don’t need you here,” they said together. Roarke very nearly chuckled.
“Never mind. Just don’t crowd me.” He moved fast up narrow metal steps, moved quickly along twisting corridors.
Eve saved her breath. They were in it now, win or lose.
She could hear the echoes of voices from below, just a hum as the walls were thick. Here the theater was plain and functional, like an actor without costume or makeup.
Roarke took another set of steps, more narrow than the last, and came out on what looked to Eve like the deck of a ship.
It swung out over the plush seats, gave a full view of the stage far below. As heights weren’t on her list of favorite things, she turned away and studied the massive and complicated control panels, puzzled over the thick hanging hanks of rope.
“Where . . .” she began, then lost all power of speech as he stepped through an opening and out into space.
“I won’t be long.”
“Jesus, Roarke. Jesus!” She scrambled over, saw he was not actually walking on air. But from her perspective, he might as well have been. The platform was no more than two feet wide, a kind of bridge that spanned above the theater, slicing through huge hanging lights, more ropes and pulleys, metal beams.
Even as she stepped onto it after him, her ears began to buzz. She’d have sworn she could feel her brain start to swim in her skull.
“Go back, Eve. Don’t be so stubborn.”
“Shut up, just shut up. Where is the fucker?”
“Here.” For both their sakes, he put her fear of heights out of his mind. And hoped she could do the same. Nimbly, he pivoted, knelt, then leaned over in a way that made Eve’s stomach flip in one long, slow rotation. “Under this catwalk.”
He ran the scanner as Eve gratefully lowered to her hands and knees. She kept her teeth gritted and told herself to watch him. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
Of course, she looked down.
The crowd was thin now, just a few dozen stragglers being hurried along by uniforms. The trio of E and B men in the orchestra pit looked like toys, but she heard their shout of triumph through the ocean roar of blood in her ears.
“They took out another one.”
“Mmm,” was Roarke’s only comment.
With sweaty fingers, she took out her communicator and answered Anne’s beep. “Dallas.”
“We’ve got two more down. Closing in. I’m sending a team to the catwalk and another—”
“I’m on the catwalk. We’re working on this one.”
“We?”
“Just do the rest.” She blinked her vision clear and saw Anne stride out onstage, look up. “We’re under control here.”
“I hope to Christ you are. Malloy out.”
“Are we under control here, Roarke?”
> “Hmm. It’s a clever little bastard. Your terrorists have deep pockets. I could use Feeney,” he said absently, then held out a minilight. “Hold this.”
“Where?”
“Just here.” He indicated, then glanced at her, noted she was dead pale and clammy. “On your belly, darling. Breathe slow.”
“I know how to breathe.” She snapped it out, then bellied down. Her stomach might have been doing a mad jig, but her hand was rock steady.
“Good, that’s good.” He stretched out across from her so they were nearly nose to nose and went to work with a delicate tool that glinted silver in the lights. “They want you to snip these wires here. If you do, you’ll be blown into several unattractive pieces. They’re a front,” he went on conversationally while he carefully removed a cover. “A lure. They’ve made it to appear to be a second-rate boomer when in reality . . . Ah, there’s that little beauty. When in reality, it’s top of the line, plaston-driven, with compu-remote trigger.”
“That’s fascinating.” Her breath wanted to come in pants. “Kill the bastard.”
“Normally, I admire your kick-in-the-face style, Lieutenant. But try that with this, and the two of us will be making love in heaven tonight.”
“Heaven wouldn’t have either of us.”
He smiled. “Wherever, then. It’s this chip I need. Turn the light a bit. Aye, that’s the way. I’ll need both hands here, Eve, so I’ll need one of yours as well.”
“For what?”
“To catch this when it pops out. If they’re as clever as I think, they’d have used an impact chip. Which means if this little darling falls, hits below, it’ll take out a good dozen rows and put a very nasty crater in my floor. Very possibly shaking us off our perch here with the backwash. Ready?”
“Oh sure. Absolutely.” She rubbed her sweaty hand on her butt, then held it out. “So you figure we can still have sex, wherever?”
He glanced up long enough to grin at her. “Oh sure. Absolutely.” He took her hand, squeezed it once, then lowered it. You’re going to need to lean out a bit. Keep your eye on what I’m doing. Watch the chip.”
She emptied her mind, shifted so that her head and shoulders were unsupported. She stared at the little black box, the colorful wires, the dull green of the miniboard.