by J. D. Robb
His grip gentled, his thumb skimmed over the shallow dent in her chin. “Progress,” he murmured.
“Let’s understand each other,” she began.
“Oh, by all means.”
Now she did suck in a breath. “Don’t start that with me. By all means, my butt. Makes you sound like some sort of snotty blue blood, and we both know you grew up scrambling for marks in Dublin alleys.”
Now he grinned. “See, we already understand each other. You don’t mind if I get comfortable before the lecture, do you?” He sat again, took out a cigarette, lighted it, then picked up his brandy while she smoldered.
“Are you trying to irritate me?”
“Not very hard, but it rarely takes true effort.” He drew in smoke, blew out a fragrant stream. “I don’t really need the lecture, you know. I’m sure I have the salient points memorized. Such as this is your job, I’m not to interfere. I’m not to explore any angles on my own, and so on.”
“If you know the points, why the hell don’t you follow them?”
“Because I don’t want to—and if I did, you wouldn’t have Fixer’s data decoded.” He grinned again when she gaped at him. “I had it late this morning and slipped the code into McNab’s unit. He was close, but I was faster. No need to mention that,” Roarke added. “I’d hate to dent his ego.”
She frowned at him. “Now I suppose you think I should thank you.”
“Actually, I was hoping you would.” He crushed out his cigarette, set aside his barely touched brandy. But when he reached for her hand, she folded her arms over her chest.
“Forget it, pal. I’ve got work.”
“And you’ll reluctantly ask me to assist you with it.” He hooked his fingers in her waistband and tugged until she tumbled on top of him. “But first . . .” He rubbed his mouth persuasively against hers. “I need you.”
Her protest would have been lukewarm in any case. But those words melted it away. She skimmed her fingers through his hair. “I guess I can spare a couple of minutes.”
He laughed, and tucking her close, reversed position. “In a hurry, are you? Well then.”
Now his mouth crushed down on hers, hot, greedy, and with enough bite to shoot her pulse from steady to screaming. She hadn’t expected it, but then she never quite did expect what he could do to her with a touch, with a taste, with as little as a look.
All the horror, the pain, the misery she’d waded through that day fell away in the sheer drive to mate.
“I am. In a big hurry.” She tugged at the hook of his trousers. “Roarke. Inside me. Come inside me.”
He yanked down the soft slacks she’d slipped into after her shower. Mouth still devouring mouth, he lifted her hips. And he plunged into her.
Into the heat and the welcome and the wet. His body shuddered once as he swallowed her groan. Then she was moving under him, driving him, setting a frantic pace that ripped her to peak and over before he could catch his breath.
She closed around him, vise tight, erupted around him, nearly dragged him off that fine edge with her. Gasping for air, he lifted his head, watched her face. God, how he loved to watch her face when she lost herself. Those dark blind eyes against flushed skin, that mouth full and soft and parted. Her head tipped back, and there was that long smooth throat, its pulse wildly beating.
He tasted her there. Flesh. Soap. Eve.
And felt her building again, fast and sure, her hips pistoning as she climbed, her breath ragged as the wave swept in.
And this time, when it crested, he buried himself deep and let it swamp them both.
He collapsed on her, let out a long, contented sigh as his system shimmered. “Let’s get to work.”
chapter twelve
“We’re not doing this in here because I want to get around CompuGuard.” Eve took her stand in the center of Roarke’s private office while he settled down at the control console of his unregistered—and illegal—equipment.
“Mmmm,” was his response.
She narrowed her eyes to slits. “It’s not the issue here.”
“That’s your story, and I’ll stick with it.”
She gave him a scalpel-thin smile. “Stick your smart-ass comments, pal. The reason I’m going this route is because I’ve got good reason to believe Cassandra’s got just as many illegal toys as you do, and likely just as much disregard for privacy. It’s possible they can slide into my equipment here or at Central. I don’t want to chance them getting a line on any part of the investigation.”
Roarke leaned back, nodded soberly. “And it’s a very good story, too, well told. Now, if you’ve finished soothing your admirable conscience, why don’t you get us some coffee?”
“I really hate when you snicker at me.”
“Even when I have cause?”
“Especially.” She strode to the AutoChef. “What I’m dealing with here is a group that has no kind of conscience, that has what appears to be heavy financial resources, expert technical skills, and a knack for getting by tight security.”
She brought both mugs to the console, smiled again. “Reminds me of someone.”
“Does it really?” He said it mildly as he took the coffee she offered.
“Which is why I’m willing to use everything you’ve got on this one. Money, resources, skills, and that criminal brain of yours.”
“Darling, they are now and always at your service. And following that line, I’ve made some progress on Mount Olympus and its subsidiaries.”
“You got something?” She went on full alert. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“There were other matters. You needed an hour,” he reminded her. “I needed you.”
“This is priority,” she began, then stopped herself with a shake of her head. Complaining was a waste of time. “What have you got?”
“You could say, nothing.”
“But you just told me you’d found them.”
“No, I said I’d made progress, and that progress is nothing. They’re nothing. They don’t exist.”
“Of course they exist.” Frustration shimmered around her. She hated riddles. “They appeared all over the computer—electronics companies, storage companies, office complexes, manufacturers.”
“They exist only on the computer records,” he told her. “You might call Mount Olympus a virtual company. But IRL—in real life—it’s nothing. There are no buildings, no complexes, no employees, no clients. It’s a front, Eve.”
“A virtual front? What the hell is the point of that?” Then she knew, and swore. “A distraction, a time waster. Energy defuser, whatever. They knew I’d do a search and scan on Cassandra, that it would lead me to this Mount Olympus, and then to the other fake companies. So I waste time chasing down what was never there in the first place.”
“Not very much time,” he pointed out. “And whoever set up the maze—and a very complex and well-executed maze it was—doesn’t know you’ve gotten from one end to the other.”
“They think I’m still looking.” She nodded slowly. “So I continue to search through EDD, tell Feeney to take it slow so Cassandra thinks we’re still running into walls.”
“Building their confidence while you concentrate in other areas.”
She grunted and, sipping her coffee, paced. “Okay, I’ll handle that. Now, I need to know all I can about the Apollo group. I gave Peabody the assignment, but she’ll have to go through channels and won’t find enough data, not fast, anyway. I don’t just want their party line,” she added, turning back to him. “I want what’s under it. I’ve got to get a handle on them and hope that gives me one on Cassandra.”
“Then that’s where we’ll start.”
“I need names, Roarke, of known members, living or dead. I need to know where they are, what happened to them. Then I need names and locations of family members, lovers, spouses, siblings, children, grandchildren.”
She paused, her eyes going cop flat. “In Fixer’s little journal, he mentioned revenge. I want survivors and
loved ones. And I want those closest to James Rowan.”
“The FBI will have files, sealed, but they’ll have them.” He lifted a brow, amused by the obvious struggle on her face. “It’ll take some time.”
“We’re a little pressed in that area. Can you zing whatever you pull up into one of the auxiliary units? I can start a comparison run on ID, see if I can tag anyone connected who worked or works in the three target buildings.”
He nodded toward a machine on the left of his console. “Help yourself. I’d focus on lower-level positions,” he suggested. “Security checks are likely to be spottier there.”
She settled down, spending the next twenty minutes reviewing everything she could find on the Pentagon bombing. At the control center, Roarke went coolly about the business of bypassing FBI security and delving into sealed files.
He knew the route—had taken it before—and slid through the locked levels like a shadow through the dark. Occasionally, for his own amusement, he checked in to see just what the Bureau had in their file marked Roarke.
It was surprisingly lean for data on a man who had been and done and acquired all he had been and done and acquired. Then again, he’d erased and destroyed a great deal of that data, or at least altered it, when he’d still been a teenager. Files at the FBI, Interpol, IRCCA, and Scotland Yard contained nothing he didn’t care for them to contain.
It was, he liked to think, a matter of privacy.
He regretted only mildly the fact that since he’d met Eve, none of those agencies had cause to add any interesting facts about his activities.
Love had him walking the straight and narrow, with only the occasional step into the dark.
“Incoming,” he murmured, and had Eve’s head coming up.
“Already?”
“It’s only the FBI,” he pointed out, and tipping back in his chair, ordered data onto the wall screen. “There’s your head man. James Thomas Rowan, born in Boston, June 10, 1988.”
“They so rarely look like madmen,” Eve murmured, studying the image. A handsome face with sharp bones, easily smiling mouth, clear blue eyes. His dark hair was shot with distinguished gray, lending him the look of a successful executive or politician.
“Jamie, as he was called by friends, came from good, solid, New England stock.” Roarke angled his head as he read data. “And healthy Yankee money. Prep schools, Harvard. Poli-sci major. Likely being groomed for politics. Did his military stint—angled into Special Forces. He did some work for the CIA. Parents deceased, one sibling. Sister. Julia Rowan Peterman.”
“Professional mother, retired,” Eve read. “She lives in Tampa. We’ll check her out.”
She rose as much to stretch her legs as to get a closer look at the screen. “Married Monica Stone, 2015. Two children: Charlotte, DOB September 14, 2016, and James Junior, DOB February 8, 2019. Where’s Monica?”
“Display current data on Monica Stone Rowan,” Roarke ordered. “Split screen.”
Going by the age of the subject, Eve decided the picture was fairly recent. So the Bureau was keeping tabs. She’d probably been an attractive woman once. The bones were still good, but lines had dug deep around her mouth, her eyes, and both the mouth and eyes carried bitterness. Her hair had gone gray and was carelessly cut.
“She lives in Maine.” Eve pursed her lips. “Alone and unemployed. Pulls in a retired professional mother’s pension. I bet it’s stinking cold in Maine this time of year.”
“You’ll have to wear your long johns, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah. It’ll be worth a little chill to talk to Monica. Where are the kids?”
Roarke called the data up and had Eve raising her brow. “Believed dead. Both of them? Same date? Get me more here, Roarke.”
“One minute. You’ll note,” he added as he bent to the task, the dates of death coincide with the date James Rowan was killed.”
“February 8, 2024. I saw that.”
“Explosion. The feds blew up his house, though the public stand is he did the job himself.” He glanced up again, face blank and set. “But that’s confirmed in this file—time, unit, authorization to terminate. It appears he had his children in the house with him.”
“You’re telling me the FBI bombed his house to take him out, and took two kids along for the ride?”
“Rowan, his children, the woman he’d taken as his lover. One of his top lieutenants and three other members of Apollo.” Roarke rose, moved to get more coffee. “Read the file, Eve. They’d tagged him. They’d been hunting him since his group had claimed responsibility for the Pentagon bombing. The government wanted payment, and they were pissed.”
He brought fresh coffee to Eve. “He’d gone under, moved from location to location. Using new names, new faces when necessary.” Roarke settled behind her as they read the data. “He still managed to make his videos and get them on air. But he stayed a step or two ahead of the hounds for several months.”
“With his kids,” she murmured.
“According to these files, he kept them close. Then the FBI ran him to ground, surrounded his house, moved in, and did the job. They wanted to take him out and break the back of the group. That’s what they did.”
“It didn’t have to be done that way.”
“No.” He met her eyes. “It’s rare in war for either side to consider the innocent.”
Why hadn’t they been with their mother? It was her first thought, one that came unwillingly to mind. What did she know of mothers? she reminded herself. Her own had left her in the hands of the man who’d beaten and raped her throughout her childhood.
And would the woman who had given birth to her have carried the same bitter look in her eyes as the woman now on-screen? Would she have had that same tight-lipped scowl?
What did it matter?
She shoved the thought aside, sipped her coffee again. For once, Roarke’s superior blend left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“Revenge,” she said. “If Fixer was right and that’s part of the motive, this could be the root of it. ‘We are loyal,” ’ she murmured. “Every message they send has that phrase in it. Loyal to Rowan? To his memory?”
“A logical step.”
“Henson. Feeney said a man named William Henson was one of Rowan’s top men. Do we have a dead list on here?”
Roarke brought it up to the wall screen. “Christ Jesus,” he said quietly. “There are hundreds.”
“From what I was told, the government hunted them down for years.” Quickly, Eve scanned the names. “And they weren’t too particular about it. Henson’s not on here.”
“No. I’ll run a check on him for you.”
“Thanks. Shoot this much through to my machine here, and keep digging.”
He stopped her by brushing a hand over her hair. “It hurts you. The children.”
“It reminds me,” she corrected, “of what it’s like to have no choice, and to have your life in the hands of someone who thinks of you as a thing to be used or discarded as the mood strikes.”
“Some love, Eve, and fiercely.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “And some don’t.”
“Yeah, well, let’s see what Rowan and his group loved, and fiercely.”
She turned away to man her computer.
The answer, she thought, was in the series of statements on file that Apollo had issued during its three-year run.
We are the gods of war.
Each statement began with that single line. Arrogance, violence, and power, she thought.
We have determined the government is corrupt, a useless vehicle for those inside it, used for exploitation of the masses, for suppression of ideas, for the perpetuation of futility. The system is flawed and must be eradicated. Out of its smoke and ashes, a new regime will rise. Stand with us, you who believe in justice, in honor, in the future of our children who cry for food and comfort while the soldiers of this doomed government destroy our cities.
We who are Apollo will use their own weapons against them. And we wil
l triumph. Citizens of the world, break the chains binding you by the establishment with their fat bellies and bloated minds. We promise you freedom.
Attack the system, she decided, cry out for the common man, for the intellect. Justify the mass murder of innocents, and promise a new way.
We are the gods of war.
Today at noon, our wrath struck down the military establishment known as the Pentagon. This symbol and structure of this faltering government’s military strength has been destroyed. All within were guilty. All within are dead.
Once again, we call for the unconditional surrender of the government, a statement by the so-called Commander-in-Chief resigning all power. We demand that all military personnel, all members of the police forces lay down their weapons.
We who are Apollo promise clemency for those who do so within seventy-two hours. And annihilation for those who continue to oppose us.
It was Apollo’s most sweeping statement, Eve noted. Broadcast less than six months before Rowan’s house had been destroyed, with all its occupants.
What had he wanted, she wondered, this self-proclaimed god? What all gods wanted. Adulation, fear, power, and glory.
“Would you want to rule the world?” she asked Roarke. “Or even the country?”
“Good God, no. Too much work for too little remuneration, and very little time left over to enjoy your kingdom.” He glanced over. “I much prefer owning as much of the world as humanly possible. But running it? No thanks.”
She laughed a little, then propped her elbows on the counter. “He wanted to. When you take out all the dreck, he just wanted to be president or king or despot. Whatever the term would be. It wasn’t money,” she added. “I can’t find a single demand for money. No ransoms, no terms. Just surrender, you fascist pig cops, or resign and tremble, you big fat politicians.”
“He came from money,” Roarke pointed out. “Often those who do fail to appreciate its charms.”
“Maybe.” She skimmed back to Rowan’s personal file. “He ran for mayor of Boston twice. Lost twice. Then he ran for governor and didn’t pull it off, either. You ask me, he was just pissed. Pissed and crazy. The combo’s lethal more often than not.”