by J. D. Robb
“Yes, sir.”
“I suggest you go home, enjoy the holiday.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Dallas,” he said as she started out. “If you had to take a wild guess, off the record, just a guess, when would you say Nadine Furst is going to break the story?”
“If I had to guess, sir, off the record, I’d say that Channel 75’s going to have a hotter story than the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.”
“That would be my guess, too. Dismissed.”
19
THE TRAFFIC WAS MEAN AS A CONSTIPATED LION. New Yorkers, sprung from work early, were out to battle their way home to prepare for the holiday, where they’d give thanks for not having to battle their way to work. Tourists foolish enough to come to the city to see the parade—when, Eve thought, they should stay the hell home and watch it on-screen—thronged the streets, sidewalks, and air.
Street thieves were rolling in the easy pickings.
Tour blimps were doing extra duty, blasting out the highlights and landmarks as they lumbered along, bloating the sky and blocking the commuter trams. And thereby, Eve thought, stalling and inconveniencing the people who actually lived here who wanted to get home to prepare for the holiday, and blah blah.
Billboards flashed and sparkled and sang brightly of the sales that would lure the certifiably insane into the hell-world of the city stores and outlying malls before their turkey dinners had been fully digested.
Crosswalks, people glides, sidewalks, and maxibuses were so mobbed she wondered if there was anyone left outside the borough.
The number of kids on airskates, airboards, zip bikes, and city scoots told her school was out, too.
There ought to be a law.
The street hawkers were doing brisk business selling their designer knockoff everything, their gray-market electronics, their wrist units that would keep time just long enough for the hawker to complete the sale, change location, and melt into the city fabric.
Let the buyer damn well beware, Eve thought.
She was stopped at a red when a Rapid Cab in the next lane attempted a maneuver and clipped the rental sedan behind Eve.
She let out a sigh, pulled out her communicator to inform Traffic. Her intention to let her involvement end there was quashed when the sedan’s driver leaped out, began to screech and pound her fists on the cab’s hood.
That brought the cabbie out, and just her luck, another woman. That had the pushy-shovey starting immediately.
Horns blasted, shouts raged, and a number of sidewalk onlookers began to cheer and choose sides.
She actually saw a glide-cart operator start making book. What a town.
“Hold it, hold it, hold it!”
Both women swung around at Eve’s shout, and the driver of the sedan grabbed what Eve identified as a panic button, worn on an ornamental chain around her neck.
“Wait!” Eve snapped, but was blasted by the ear-splitting scream.
“I know what this is, I know what you’re doing!” The woman blasted the button again and had Eve’s eyes watering. “I know the kind of scams you run in this godforsaken city. You think because we’re from Minnesota we don’t know what’s what? Police! Police!”
“I am the—”
She carried a handbag the size of her home state and swung it like a batter aiming for the fences. It caught Eve full in the face, and considering the stars that exploded in her head, must have been filled with rocks from her home state.
“Jesus Christ!”
The woman used her momentum to spin a full circle and swung at the cabbie. Forewarned, the cabbie nimbly leaped out of range.
“Police! Police! I’m being mugged right on the street in broad daylight. Where are the damn police!”
“You’re going to be unconscious on the street in broad daylight,” Eve warned, and ducked the next swing as she dug out her badge. “I am the damn police in this godforsaken city, and what the hell are you doing in my world?”
“That’s a fake! You think I don’t know a fake badge just because I’m from Minnesota?”
When she hefted her purse for another swing, Eve drew her weapon. “You want to bet this is fake, you Minnesota moron?”
The woman, a good one-seventy, stared. Then her eyes rolled back. On the way down, she toppled over on the cabbie, who might have weighed in at one-twenty, fully dressed.
Beside her, as Eve glared down at the tangle of limbs at her feet, the sedan’s window opened.
“My mom! She killed my mom!”
She glanced in, saw the sedan was packed with kids. She didn’t care to count the number. They were all screaming or crying at a decibel that put the panic button in the shade.
“Oh, bloody, buggering hell.” It was one of Roarke’s favorites, and seemed most appropriate. “I didn’t kill anybody. She fainted. I’m the police. Look.” She held her badge to the window.
Inside the weeping and wailing continued unabated. On the ground, the cabbie, obviously dazed, struggled to pull herself from under her opponent.
“I barely tapped her.” New York was so thick in her voice an airjack wouldn’t have dented it. Eve felt immediate kinship. “And you saw, you saw, she started beating on my ride. And she shoved me first. You saw.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“She clocked you good. You’re coming up a bruise there. Damn tourists. Hey, you kids, button it. Your old lady’s fine. Slam the lid down, now!”
The screams subsided to wet whimpers.
“Nice job,” Eve commented.
“Got two of my own.” The cabbie rubbed her bruised ass, shrugged. “You just gotta know how to handle them.”
They stood a moment, studying the now moaning woman, as the hysteria of horns and voices raged around them. Two uniforms hotfooted it through people, through vehicles. Eve held up her badge.
“Fender bump. Cab against rental. No visible vehicular damage.”
“What’s with her?” one of the uniforms asked, nodding toward the woman who attempted to sit up.
“Got herself worked up, took a swing at me, passed out.”
“You want we should take her in for assaulting an officer?”
“Hell, no. Just haul her up, load her in, and get her the hell out of here. She makes any noises about the bump, or pressing charges, then you tell her she pushes it, she’s going to spend Thanksgiving in a cage. Assault with a damn purse.”
She crouched down, shoved her badge in the woman’s face again. “You hear any of that? You take any of that in? Do us all a favor. Get in that heap you rented and keep driving.” Eve rose. “Welcome to godforsaken New York.”
She glanced at the cabbie. “You sustain any injuries in the fall?”
“Shit, ain’t the first time my ass hit the street. She lets it go, I let it go. I got better things to do.”
“Good. Officers, it’s your party now.”
She got back in her car, checked her face in the mirror as she waited out the next red. The bruise was blooming from the tip of her nose right up her cheekbone to the corner of her eye.
People were a hazard to the damn human race.
Though her face throbbed, she swung by the Icove residence. She wanted another shot at Avril.
One of the police droids opened the door after verifying her ID.
“Where are they?”
“Two are on the second level with the minors and my counterpart. One is in the kitchen. They’ve made no attempt to leave, and have made no outside contact.”
“Stand by,” she ordered, and walked through the house to the kitchen.
Avril was at the stove pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven. She was dressed casually in a blue sweater and black pants, and her hair was pulled back in a shining tail.
“Ms. Icove.”
“Oh, you startled us.” She set the tray down on the stovetop. “We enjoy baking on occasion, and the children love when we have fresh cookies.”
“There’s only one of you in here, so why don’
t you drop the trio bit? Why didn’t you tell me about the surgeries, the subliminal control programs performed on minors routinely at Brookhollow.”
“They’re all part of the process, the training. We assumed you already knew.” She began to move the cookies from baking tray to cooling rack. “Is this an official, recorded interview?”
“No. No record. I’m off duty.”
Avril turned fully, and concern moved into her eyes. “Your face is bruised.”
Eve poked a tongue at the inside of her cheek, relieved she didn’t taste blood. “It’s a jungle out there.”
“I’ll get the med kit.”
“Don’t worry about it. When’s Deena due to contact you, Avril?”
“We thought she would by now. We’re starting to worry. Lieutenant, she’s our sister. That relationship is as true for us as if we were blood. We don’t want anything to happen to her because of something we did.”
“What about something you didn’t do? Like telling me where to find her?”
“We can’t, unless she tells us.”
“Is she working with the others? The others who got away?”
Avril carefully removed her apron. “There are some who formed an underground. There are some who simply wanted to disappear, to live a normal life. Deena’s had help, but what she’s done—what we’ve done,” she corrected, “is what she, and you, I imagine, would call unsanctioned. Deena felt something had to be done, now. Something strong and permanent. We felt, because of what we’d learned about our children, that she was right.”
“By this time tomorrow, Quiet Birth will be all over the media. You want it stopped? Public outrage is going to go a long way to making sure it is. Help me clean up the rest of it. Where are the nurseries, Avril?”
“What will happen to the children, the babies, the yet born?”
“I don’t know. But I suspect there’ll be a lot of loud voices calling for their rights, their protection. That’s part of human makeup, too, isn’t it? Protecting and defending the innocent and the defenseless.”
“Not everyone will see it that way.”
“Enough will. I can give you my word I know how this story’ll be broken, the tone that’s going to be set. The odds of Deena going to prison for her crimes to date are slim to none. Those odds start climbing if she continues her mission now that we’ve taken steps to stop the project, to shut down the training area.”
“We’ll tell her, as soon as we can.”
“What about the data removed from the private office upstairs?”
“She has it. We gave it to her.”
“And the data she removed from Samuels’s quarters?”
Surprise flickered. “You’re very good at your work.”
“That’s right, I am. What was in the files she took from Samuels?”
“We don’t know. There wasn’t time for her to share it with us.”
“You tell her if she gets me the data, the locations, I can slam the door on this. She doesn’t have to do any more.”
“We will, when we can. We’re grateful.” She lifted a platter already loaded with cookies. “Would you like a cookie?”
“Why not?” Eve said, and took one for the road.
There were kids in the yard. It gave Eve a jolt, especially when one dropped out of a tree like a monkey. He seemed to be of the male variety, and let out war whoops as he raced her car to the house.
“Afternoon!” he said, with an accent much broader and somehow greener than Roarke’s. “We’re in New York City.”
“Okay.” He didn’t appear to consider it godforsaken.
“We’ve never been before, but we’re having an American holiday. I’m Sean, and we’ve come to visit our cousin, Roarke. This is his grand house here. Me da said it’s big enough to have its own postal code. If you’re after seeing Roarke, he’s inside. I can show you the way.”
“I know the way. I’m Dallas. I live here, too.”
The boy cocked his head. She was bad with ages when it came to the underaged, but she figured maybe eight. He had a lot of hair the color of the syrup she liked to drown pancakes in, and enormous green eyes. His face exploded with freckles.
“I thought the lady who lived in the grand house with cousin Roarke was Eve. She’s with the garda, and wears a weapon.”
“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.” She shoved back her coat so he could see her sidearm.
“Oh, brilliant! Can I—”
“No.” She flapped the coat back before his reaching fingers made contact with her weapon.
“Well, that’s all right, then. Have you blasted many people with it?”
“Only my share.”
He fell into step with her. “Were you in a fight, then?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“It looks like someone planted a right one on you. Will you be going with us on the city tour?”
Did the kid do anything but ask questions? “I don’t know.” Did she have to? “Probably not. I’ve got . . . things.”
“We’re after going skating at the place, the outside place. Have you done that already?”
“No.” She glanced down, and with hopes of discouraging his inexplicable attachment to her, gave him her flat-eyed cop stare. “There was a murder there last year.”
Instead of shock and terror, his face registered delicious excitement. “A murder? Who was it? Who killed him? Did the body freeze onto the ice so it had to be scraped off? Was there blood? I bet that froze so it was like red ice.”
His questions slapped at her ears like gnats as she quickened her pace to, hopefully, escape into the house.
She opened the door to voices, a great many voices.
And there was a small, human creature of undetermined sex crawling over the foyer tiles. It moved like lightning, and it was heading her way.
“Oh my God.”
“That’s my cousin Cassie. Quick as a snake, she is. Best close the door.”
Eve not only closed it, but backed up against it as the crawling thing made a series of unintelligible noises, quickened the pace, and cornered her.
“What does it want?”
“Oh, just to say hello. You can pick her up. She’s the sociable sort. Aren’t you, Cassie darling?”
It grinned, showing a couple of little white teeth, then to Eve’s horror, got a grip on the bottom of her coat and hauled itself up on its chubby legs. It said: “Da!”
“What does that mean?”
“It means most anything.”
A man dashed out of the parlor. He was tall, beanpole thin, with a messy thatch of dense brown hair. He grinned and in other circumstances Eve might have found him charming.
“There she is. I’m on watch, and I take my eyes off the monkey for a split second and she’s off to the races. No need to mention this to your aunt Reenie,” he said to Sean. Then to Eve’s vast relief, scooped the baby up to bounce her casually on his hip.
“You’d be Eve. I’m your cousin Eemon, Sinead’s son. It’s lovely meeting you at last.”
Before she could speak, he’d wrapped his free arm around her, pulled her into a hug, and into intimate proximity with what was on his hip. Tiny fingers shot out, grabbed her hair.
Eemon laughed. “She’s a fascination with hair, as she has so little of it yet herself.” Competently, he tugged the fingers free.
“Um” was all Eve could think of, but Eemon flashed that smile once more.
“And here you are, barely in your own door and we’ve got you surrounded. We’re already scattered about the place, and sure a beauty of a place it is. Roarke and some of us are in the parlor there. Can I help you with your coat?”
“Coat? No. Thanks.” She was able to ease away, peel it off, toss it over the newel post.
“Gran!” Sean raced forward, and some of Eve’s tension faded when she saw Sinead step into the foyer. At least this was someone she’d already met.
“You’ll never guess it.” Brimming with excitement, Sean danced in a circle. “Cous
in Eve said there was a murder at the skating place. A dead body.”
“Murder usually involves a dead body.”
It occurred to Eve, quite suddenly, that murder probably hadn’t been an appropriate point of conversation. “It was last year. It’s okay now.”
“I’m relieved to hear it, as there’s a considerable horde who’s looking forward to taking a spin on the ice.” She grinned, stepped forward.
She was slim and lovely. Delicate white skin and fine features, golden red hair and sea green eyes. The same face, Eve thought, her twin—Roarke’s mother—would have had if she’d lived.
She kissed Eve’s cheek. “Thank you for having us in your home.”
“Oh. Sure, but it’s Roarke’s—”
“Whatever he built, it’s the home you’ve made together. How is it you manage such a place?” She hooked an arm through Eve’s as she walked back toward the parlor. “Sure I’d be lost half the time.”
“I don’t, really. Manage it. Summerset.”
“Competent, he looks it. A bit intimidating as well.”
“I’ll say.”
But she’d have handled him better than the sight in the parlor. There were so many of them. Had he said there were so many? They were all talking and eating. More kids—the couple others she’d seen outside. They must have come around the side, she thought. Or just whizzed through, invisibly.
Roarke was in the process of serving an older woman a cup of something. She sat in one of the high-backed chairs, her head crowned with white hair, her eyes strong and blue.
There was another man standing by the fireplace having a conversation with yet another who might have been his twin if you carved away the twenty-odd years she judged came between them. They appeared to have no problem ignoring the two kids who sat at their feet and poked viciously at each other.
Another woman, early twenties, sat in the windowseat, looking dreamily out while a baby of some kind sucked heroically at her breast.
Jeez.
“Our Eve’s home,” Sinead announced, and conversation trailed off. “Meet the family, won’t you?” Sinead’s arm tightened like a shackle, and moved Eve forward. “My brother Ned, and his oldest Connor.”