by J. D. Robb
She sighed under him. Yes, this was what she needed. His weight on her, his scent, his flesh. His knowledge of her, mind and body and heart.
No one knew her as he did. No one loved her as he did. For all of her life before him, there’d been no one who could touch her, not all the way down to the tormented child who still lived in her.
When he slid inside her, all those shadows were pushed back. She had light in the dark.
When morning was blooming through the night, she could close her eyes. She could rest her mind. His arm came around her, and anchored her home.
The light was still dim when she woke. It confused her, as she felt reasonably rested. A little hungover from overworking her brain and body, but better than she should have with just a snatch of predawn sleep.
Obviously, she’d underrated the restorative powers of sex.
It made her feel sentimental, and grateful. But when she slid her hand across the sheet, just to touch him, she found him gone.
She started to sulk, then called for time.
The time is nine thirty-six A.M.
That news had her bolting straight up in bed. He’d darkened the windows, and the skylight.
“Disengage sleep mode, all windows. Shit!” She had to slap her hands over her eyes as the sudden blast of sun blinded her.
She cursed and squinted her way out of bed and into the shower.
Five minutes later, she let out a muffled scream when she blinked water out of her eyes and saw Roarke. He stood, wearing a casual white shirt and dark jeans—and held an oversized mug in his hand.
“Bet you’d like this.”
She peered avariciously at the coffee. “You can’t set the bedroom on sleep mode without telling me.”
“We were sleeping.”
“We never set it on sleep mode.”
“Seemed like the perfect time to change our habits.”
She shoved her wet hair back, and walked, dripping, to the drying tube. She glared at him while warm air swirled around her.
“I’ve got stuff to do, people to see.”
“Just a suggestion, but you’ll probably want to dress first.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Aren’t I?”
“Why aren’t you wearing one of your six million suits?”
“I’m sure I have no more than five million, three hundred suits. And I’m not wearing one of them because it seemed overly formal considering we have people arriving today.”
“You’re not working.” She stepped out, grabbed the coffee. “Has the stock market obliterated overnight?”
“On the contrary, it’s up. I can afford to buy another suit. Here you are.” He handed her a robe. “You can wear that while you have some breakfast. I’ll have another cup of coffee myself.”
“I have to contact Feeney, the commander, and check in with the droids on Avril. I have to write a report, check the forensics on Samuels.”
“Busy, busy, busy.” He strolled out and toward the AutoChef. And back, he thought with some relief. The exhausted woman had regenerated into the cop. “What you want’s a nice bowl of oatmeal.”
“No sane person wants a bowl of oatmeal.”
“Fortified.”
She wouldn’t laugh. “Let’s go back to the beginning. You can’t set sleep mode without telling me.”
“When my wife comes home weeping from exhaustion and stress, I’m going to see that she gets some rest.” He glanced back, and there was that steel in his eyes. The kind that warned her arguing would end in a fight. “And she’s lucky I did nothing more than darken the room to see she got some.” He crossed to the seating area with a bowl, set it down on the table.
“Now, you’d better sit down and eat that, or we’re going to start the day with one hell of a fight.”
“Figured that already,” she grumbled.
“And your schedule’s already so full.”
She came as close as she ever did to pouting when she studied the oatmeal. “It’s got disgusting lumps.”
“It certainly doesn’t. What it’s got is apples and blueberries.”
“Blueberries?”
“Sit down and eat them like a good girl.”
“Soon as there’s room in my schedule, I’m going to punch you for that.” But she sat, contemplated the bowl. It looked to her as if perfectly good fruit had been buried in mush. “Technically, I’ve been on shift since eight. But I’m entitled by regs, unless requested otherwise by a superior, to take eight hours between duty. It was after two when I left the Icove place.”
“Have you decided to become a clock watcher?”
“Peabody and McNab had put in for vacation time, starting today. I told her to go.”
“Depleting your team by two.” He nodded, sat. “All within the confines of regulations, all perfectly aboveboard. The pace will slow. Add the holiday and it slows more. What do you intend to do with the time?”
“I already started doing it. I broke Code Blue. I met with Nadine and gave her everything.” She poked a spoon into the oatmeal, lifted it, let the goop dribble out again. “I disobeyed a direct order, a priority order, and am prepared to lie through my teeth about it. I’m dragging my heels to give Avril Icove time to figure out how to disengage the bracelets, get the kids, and poof. And hoping they’ll give me Deena’s location, or at least the location or locations of operations.”
“If you continue to beat yourself up over it, we’re going to start the day with a fight after all.”
“I’ve got no right to make decisions based on emotion, to circumvent orders, ignore my duty.”
“You’re wrong, Eve, on so many counts. First, you’re not making this decision based on emotion, or not solely. You’re basing it on instinct, experience, and your bone-deep sense of justice.”
“Cops don’t make the rules.”
“Bollocks. You may not write them, but you edit them every day, to suit the situation. You have to because if the law, the rules, the spirit of them doesn’t adjust and flex, it dies.”
She’d told herself essentially the same a dozen times already. “I didn’t tell Peabody all of this, but some. And I said I didn’t think I’d have been able to play this the way I am, even five years ago. She said I would have.”
“Our Peabody is astute. Do you remember the day I met you?” He reached in his pocket, took out the gray button that had come off the only suit she’d owned before he’d blasted into her life. He rubbed it between his fingers as he watched her.
“You struggled then, with procedure, the book of it. But you had then, and always had, I think, a clear sense of justice. Those two things will always be true. You’ll struggle, and you’ll see. It’s what makes you as much as that badge makes you. Never in my life have I known anyone who has such a basic dislike of people, yet has such unstinting and bottomless compassion for them. Eat your oatmeal.”
She took a bite. “It could be worse.”
“I’ve got a ’link conference shortly, and there’s a list of messages on your desk.”
“Messages?”
“Three from Nadine, with increasing impatience. She demands you contact her regarding confirmation of information she had on Icove—plural—his connection with Brookhollow, and a further connection to Evelyn Samuels’s murder in New Hampshire.”
“She’s right on schedule.”
“There’s another from Feeney. He’s back from New Hampshire and has a report for you. He was circumspect, as I assume your Code Blue demands.”
“Good.”
“Commander Whitney wants your report, oral and written, by noon.”
“You in the market to make admin?”
He smiled, rose. “Some of Ireland will be arriving around two, which, I’m annoyed to admit, makes me nervous. If you’re delayed, I’ll explain.”
She ate, she dressed. Then she picked up her badge and got to work.
She met with Feeney first. In her office, with the door shut. She filled him in on everything, exclud
ing her meeting with Nadine. Should she get busted for that, she’d go down alone.
“Three of them. Doesn’t even seem that weird anymore.” Feeney munched nuts. “Plays right in with what we found at the schools. Got the records.”
He tapped the discs he’d already dumped on Eve’s desk. “They ran two systems. One neat and tidy for your audits and checks. Had it fronting the second. Every student given a code number, and the code labeling the testing, the adjustments—”
“Adjustments? Such as?”
“Surgeries. Sculpting. They did some of that crap on eight-year-olds. Sons of bitches. Your basic eye fixes, hearing checks, disease control, that’s all on the front, but you got the other on the coded. ‘Enhanced intelligence training,’ they called some of it. Subliminal instruction, visual and audio. Students earmarked for LC status or what they called ‘partnerships’ got their advanced sex education. And here’s a kicker.”
He paused to slurp down coffee. “Deena isn’t the only one who ran.”
“There are others who got out, the ones who dropped off the data screens?”
“Yeah. Files on their rogues. Got more than a dozen who poofed, after graduation, after ‘placement.’ She’s the only one who got out of the school, but she’s not the only one they lost track of. They started implanting the new ones, at birth, with an internal homer. That’s after Deena slipped the knot. They’ve implanted all the current students, too. That was Samuels’s brainstorm, and from her notes and records, it was an addition she didn’t share with the Icoves.”
“Why?”
“She figured they were too close—having one in the family, allowing her too much freedom. They’d lost their objective distance to the project, and to its mission statement. Which was to create a race of Superiors—their term—taking the next logical evolutionary leap through technology: eliminate imperfections and genetic flaws, and eventually mortality. Natural conception, with its inherent risks and questionable success rate, could, and should, be replaced by Quiet Birth.”
“Just cut out the middleman, or -woman, so to speak. Then you do made-to-order in a lab. But to pull it off, you need more than technology, you need political punch. You’d have to get laws changed, bans overturned. You have to seed legislatures, state rooms.”
“They’re working on it. They’ve got some graduates in key government positions already. In the medical field, in research, in the media.”
“That blond bitch on Straight Scoop? I bet, I just bet she’s one of them. She’s got those teeth, you know what I’m saying? Those really big, really white teeth.” She caught herself at Feeney’s bland stare. “Anyway.”
“The estimate was another fifteen years, outside, to have the bans rescinded internationally. Another century to implement others that would ban natural conception.”
“They wanted to outlaw sex?”
“No, just conception outside ‘controlled environments.’ Natural conception means natural flaws. Quiet Birth, they never refer to it as artificial, or cloning—”
“Already got a spin started.”
“You got that.” He took another hit of coffee. “Quiet Birth ensures human perfection, eliminates defects. It also ensures those who are deemed acceptable parents—”
“Yeah, acceptable. Had to go there.”
“Right. Acceptable parents are guaranteed the child will meet their specific requirements.”
Eve pursed her lips. “How long does the warranty hold up? What’s the return policy?”
He grinned despite himself. “That’s a kicker, isn’t it? Women will no longer be subjected to the indignities of gestation or child birth.”
“Maybe they’re on to something.”
“Their projections indicate sterilization laws will be in place in another seventy-five years.”
Enforced sterilization, Quiet Birth, humanity created and tuned in labs. It was like one of Roarke’s science fiction vids. “They think ahead.”
“Yeah, but you know, time isn’t a real problem for them.”
“I can see the hype.” She scooped up some nuts. “Want a kid without the hassle? Pick from our designer selection. Meet a sudden and tragic death? Sign up now for our second chance program. We’ll preserve your cells and get you going again. Long for a mate who’ll fulfill your every fantasy? Have we got a girl for you—restricted to adults only.”
“Why be one when you can be three?” Feeney added. “Watch yourself grow up, in triplicate. Gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘You’re just like your mother.’ ”
Eve let out a half-laugh. “But no line on the base?”
“Lots of references to the ‘nurseries,’ but no location or locations given. I’ve got a lot to go through yet.”
“I’ve got to meet with Whitney, take him what we’ve got. The schools are secure?”
“Droids on that. Droids guarding clones. It’s a fucked-up world. We got legal guardians starting to push. We’re not going to be able to keep a net over it for long.”
“Oh yeah, we are.” She picked up the discs. “Holidays just bog everything up. By the time they get debogged, international law’s coming into it. Those ‘legal guardians’ are in for a world of hurt.”
“You got that. Thing is, you got close to two hundred minors between the two schools. So far, only six guardians have made contact. Most are going to turn out to be ghosts.”
Eve nodded, added her report disc to the carry file. “How are they going to mix in the mainstream, Feeney? Who’s going to take them?”
“That’s a problem for a bigger brain than mine.”
“You got plans for tomorrow?” she asked him when he rose.
“Whole family’s heading over to my son’s new house. Did I tell you he upped and moved to New Jersey?” Feeney shook his head. “What’re you gonna do. You gotta let them live their lives.”
She hit Whitney’s office at precisely noon. Her carefully written report was put into his hands, and she gave her oral rundown standing.
“The information on the schools, and all updates pertaining to them, were just given to me by Captain Feeney and are not included in my written, to date. I have his report, sir, and copies of discs containing the data he extracted from Brookhollow’s records.”
She laid those on his desk.
“There’s no progress on locating Deena?”
“None, sir. With the records Feeney located, we’ll be able to identify and locate all graduates, excluding those who’ve left their positions.”
“And these nurseries referred to are not, to our knowledge, located on Brookhollow’s ground.”
“There was no evidence of artificial twinning areas, cell preservation, or the equipment needed found in that location. Sir, by law, the implants carried inside any minor must be removed.”
He sat back, folded his hands. “Getting ahead of yourself, Lieutenant.”
“I don’t think so, Commander.” And she’d thought it through very carefully. “Internal implants are in direct violation of privacy laws. In addition, with the evidence in our hands, the law demands that any and all legal guardians or any and all students be investigated and verified. We cannot, legally, turn over any minor to what evidence clearly indicates are individuals who are—or have participated in—falsifying identification records in order to claim false guardianship over said minor or minors.”
“You’ve thought this through.”
“They’re entitled to protection. Brookhollow can be shut down. Evidence that purports violations of RICO and tax evasion gives local authorities this right until such time as federal authorities review. Sir, when that happens some of those involved in this are going to scatter, and some are going to circle the wagons. Those students are caught in the cross fire, particularly when the government moves into it.”
“The government is going to want this handled quietly. The students will be debriefed, and . . .”
And, Eve thought. It was the and that worried her. “Quiet may not be an option, sir. I�
��ve had multiple contacts from Nadine Furst. She’s asking me to confirm or deny several aspects of this investigation, which include the connection of the school, the murder of Evelyn Samuels. To this point, I’ve refused, given her the standard line about compromising an ongoing investigation, but she’s got her ear to the ground.”
Whitney kept his eyes level on hers. “How much does she have?”
“Sir, she’s already looked hard at the school, from what I can ascertain. She’s accessed student records. She’s putting it together. Previously, she had done extensive research on Wilfred Icove, Sr., as part of her assignment to cover his death and memorial. At that time she made the connection to Jonah Wilson and Eva Samuels. In fact, sir, she made it before I did. She has resources, and she’s got her teeth into this.”
He steepled his fingers, tapped them together. “We know that circumspectly leaking information to media sources can and does aid an investigation, preserve public relations, and has its rewards.”
“Yes, sir. But Code Blue expressly forbids any and all such leaks.”
“Yes, it does. And if any member of this department should violate Code Blue status, for any reason, I would have to assume this individual would be smart enough to cover his or her ass.”
“I couldn’t say, sir.”
“Best you don’t. I note, Lieutenant, you did not elect to rescind Detective Peabody’s holiday leave.”
“No, sir, I did not. Nor did Captain Feeney elect to rescind Detective McNab’s. We have Avril Icove on house restriction. The trail is currently cold as pertains to Deena Flavia. Brookhollow is secured, and this investigation is on the point of being passed to federal jurisdiction. It may not be feasible to make that pass comprehensively before Monday. What can be done from this point to that, sir, I can handle myself. It seemed unnecessary and unfair to cancel Peabody’s leave.”
She waited a moment, but he didn’t speak. “Do you want me to have her and McNab called in, Commander?”
“No. As you point out, the government’s damn near shut down for the holiday already. We’re moving to a skeleton staff administratively this afternoon at Central. You’ve identified the perpetrators of the homicides under your investigation, and have ascertained the method and the motive. The PA has chosen not to charge one of these perpetrators. And in all likelihood will choose the same if and when Deena Flavia is apprehended. Essentially, Lieutenant, your case is closed.”