"We're not the only ones feeding her," Eve pointed out.
"I'm aware of that." His voice managed to be both rich and chilly at the same time. "Whatever they toss out, we'll spin back. We can count on Chang for that. You'll work directly with him and Deputy Mayor Franco on media relations."
He glanced at his wrist unit. Frowned. "Keep me informed," he ordered, then strode off to the prep room.
"He's good at this," Whitney told Eve. "He'll come off strong, controlled, and concerned. We're going to need strong image projection to keep this lid from blowing off and spilling the contents all over New York."
"It seems to me the way to keep the lid on is to identify and stop The Purity Seekers."
"That's your priority, Lieutenant. But the job has more than one channel. The memorial service for Detective Halloway is scheduled for tomorrow, ten. Full honors. I want you there."
"Yes, sir. I'll be there."
"Today's meeting has been bumped up to thirteen hundred. Get some sleep," he added before he walked over to take his turn in the studio. "It's going to be a long one."
At home, she fell facedown on the bed for three and a half hours.
The alarm on her wrist unit woke her with its incessant beeping. She crawled out of bed in the dark, stumbled into the shower, and stayed under hot, crisscrossing jets for twenty full minutes.
When she came back in the bedroom, Roarke was just getting up. "Did I wake you? You could catch another half hour."
"I'm fine." He gave her face a critical study, then nodded. "And you look considerably better than you did at four this morning. Why don't you order us up some breakfast while I get a shower?"
"I was just going to grab a bagel at my desk."
"You've changed your mind," he said as he went into the bath. "Because you've remembered that your body needs proper fuel to maintain energy and health and because you'd prefer I not pour a protein shake down your throat as that just starts your day off on the wrong foot. Scrambled eggs would be good, wouldn't they?"
She bared her teeth, but he was already in the shower.
She ate, she told herself, because she was hungry.
And when Roarke buzzed Summerset on the in-house 'link and asked about McNab, she tried to feel optimistic at the information that the patient had spent a restful night.
Just as she struggled against despair when she watched him ride into her office in an electronic wheelchair.
"Hey!" His face was just a little too cheerful. His voice was just a little too bright. "I'm getting me one of these rides when I'm back on my feet. They rule."
"No racing in the corridors."
He grinned at her. "Too late."
"We'll wait for Feeney before I start the briefing," Eve began.
"We caught the morning report on 75, Lieutenant." Peabody's eyes were shadowed, and more than a little desperate when they met Eve's behind McNab's back. "I'd say we got a good start on the briefing."
"I need coffee." She gestured for Roarke to distract McNab, then jerked a thumb toward the kitchen. "You've got to hold up better than this," she told Peabody the minute they were out of earshot. "He's not stupid."
"I know. I'm okay. It's just, when I see him in that chair, I get a little shaky. There's no change. They said he should start to feel a tingling, like you do when your foot's asleep and starts to wake up. That would signal the nerves are coming back. But he's not, they're not."
"Recovery time varies. I've taken a full body blast and had no appreciable numbness within minutes. And I've had a glancing stream hit my arm and put it down for hours."
"He's scared. He's pretending he's not, but he's really scared."
"If he can pretend he's not, so can you. And if you want to do something about the people who put him in that chair-temporarily-then you need to pull it in and focus."
"I know." Peabody drew a deep breath, straightened her shoulders. "I can handle it."
"Good, then get started by handling the coffee."
She walked back out, stopped cold when she saw Feeney in her office doorway. His face was a picture of misery, sorrow, and fury as he stared at the back of McNab's chair.
Eve started to make a sound, anything that would snap him back, but before she could, he hit some internal switch. His face cleared.
"What's all this?" He came in scowling at McNab. "This looks like malingering to me. Trust you to manage to get a toy out of it all."
"Iced, huh?"
"First time you run over my foot, I'm flattening you. Baxter's on his way in. Got coffee?"
"Yeah." Eve nodded. "We got coffee."
By nine-thirty, she'd given the team the basic details. By nine forty-five she'd filled in the gaps, and by ten she'd added a basic theory.
"At least one of the key people in this group has been personally affected by a crime, most likely a crime against a child. Most probably more than one of them. You need like minds to get something like this off the ground. They have superior and as yet unknown electronic abilities, and must have some sort of medical consultant. It's also likely they have contact of some sort with the police or with the judicial system. Or both.
"They're organized, they're articulate, and they're media savvy."
"When you've got a group like this," Baxter said, "you've got those like minds. But you almost always have one or more who's in it for the thrill, the blood, or because they're just seriously wacko."
"Agreed. You can start a search for serious wackos who fit another of the group's profile. They will contact Nadine again," she continued. "They want public attention, and approval."
"They're going to get it." Feeney slurped at his coffee. "This is just the sort of thing that gets people riled up, arguing in the streets, making up T-shirts, taking sides."
"We can't stop the media train, so we do our best to steer it onto our tracks. Nadine wants to interview both you and McNab. You can blow," she said before Feeney could do just that. "But you won't be saying anything I didn't already say or think. The point is, the department believes this will be helpful."
"You think I'm giving this airtime?" Feeney slammed his cup down. "You think I'm going to go on-screen and yammer about what happened yesterday, talk about that boy?"
"What you'll say will help people understand what happened with Halloway." Roarke spoke quietly. "It will make them see him as he was-a good cop who was doing his job. Who was killed in the line of duty by a group of people who want to be perceived as guardians of justice. You'd make them see him as a person."
"I'd like to talk about it." McNab was strapped into the chair. It was something he couldn't ignore no matter how hard he tried. He wasn't just sitting, but secured in. So he wouldn't slump down like a ragdoll, tumble out like a baby.
It burned in his belly along with the fear that he would be strapped in a chair the rest of his life. "If people listen they'd understand he wasn't the one who put me down. It was whoever infected that unit he was working on. Halloway didn't put me in here, and he doesn't deserve anyone thinking he did. So I'd like to do the interview. I'd like to say what I have to say."
"If that's what you want." Feeney picked up his coffee again, drank it to wash away the fist-sized lump in his throat. "Then that's what we'll do."
"The department's issued statements. You'll both need to read them." Eve walked to her desk, gave herself time to settle. "They won't preclude or censor anything you feel you want to say, but they'd like you to get in the bullet points, and some of the language. It's important NYPSD show unity inthis regard. Nadine can do the interviews here."
She turned back. "Now maybe we can get down to the business of cop work. We need to determine the nature of the virus in the units, and that can't be done until we have some sort of shield against that virus."
"I've done a bit of work on that," Roarke told her. "And taken the liberty of calling in a technical adviser." He turned to the 'link. "Summerset, send him up."
"You should've cleared this with me," Eve began.
"You need specific skills for this. Feeney and McNab need more than me. And I need more than an assistant. I've someone who's been doing some very innovative work with my R and D departments, and I don't think you'll find anything to worry about regarding his loyalty or his clearance."
Eve looked at the doorway. And her jaw dropped. "Well, for Christ's sake, Roarke, I can't use a kid for this."
Chapter 8
"Genius has no age."
So said Jamie Lingstrom as he strutted into her office on a pair of dilapidated airboots.
He wore his sandy hair short and spiked on top with a longer hank in the front that flopped over his forehead. The only piercing-apparently-was to accommodate the tiny silver hoop at the tail of his left eyebrow. His face had done some fining down since the last time she'd seen him, and right now his mouth was twisted into a smirk.
He'd always been cocky.
His grandfather had been a cop, who'd gone down while unofficially investigating a cult. The cult had killed Jamie's sister and had come uncomfortably close to sacrificing Eve.
He'd sprouted up at least two inches. When did kids stop growing? she wondered. He was sixteen-no, likely seventeen by now. And he should have been doing whatever teenagers did rather than standing in her office with that cocky expression.
"Why aren't you in school?"
"I do the home thing mostly, on work program. You get to do hands-on-the-job crap as long as it's with a business that contracts through the school and shit."
Eve turned to Roarke. "One of yours."
"Actually, I have several companies that contract with the education program. The youth of today, after all, is the hope of tomorrow."
"So." Jamie scanned the room then dipped his thumbs into the front pockets of baggy jeans with holes at both knees. "When do we get started?"
"You." Eve jabbed a finger at Roarke. "There." Pointing at his office, she strode in ahead of him, slammed the door smartly.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Bringing in an expert assistant."
"He's a kid."
"He's a brilliant kid. You do recall how he managed to bypass the security here with a homemade jammer?"
"So he got lucky."
"Luck had nothing to do with it." That particular homemade had been refined, adjusted, expanded. "He has more than a knowledge of electronics-though he has that in spades, I can promise you. He has a feel, an instinct that's very rare."
"I'd like to keep his brain inside his head, at least until he turns twenty-one."
"I've no intention of allowing him to do anything that puts him in physical jeopardy."
"Neither of us intended that last fall, either, but he came damn close. And he's, well, he's like Feeney's family."
"Exactly. It'll give Feeney a lift to work with him. The fact is, Eve, we need someone like him. Someone with an open mind and a quick brain. He won't automatically think a thing can't be done because it's not been done before." Roarke spread his hands. "He'll see possibilities. He wants to be a cop," he added before Eve could speak.
"Yeah, I remember, but-"
"Is determined to be, unless I can bribe him into one of my R and D divisions permanently with great gobs of money." His lips twitched. "Which I'll certainly attempt. At the moment, he plans to ditch any thought of college and leap straight into the Academy when he hits eighteen next year."
"So what. You're hoping to use this assignment to turn him off that idea, into college so you can scoop his genius brain up for your own uses?"
He smiled slowly, and with great charm. "That's a lovely thought. But actually, I thought this would be a valuable experience for him. And we need him. I'm not blowing smoke when I say that. What you need electronically is going to take considerable work and research and experimentation, all of which you require in a compressed time frame. Correct?"
"Yeah, but-"
"Look. I'm your expert consultant for a rather pathetic monetary wage, and under that agreement I have the option of selecting a technical assistant. He's mine."
She blew out a breath, paced to the window. Paced back. "Not just yours. It makes him mine, too. I don't know how to deal with a teenaged type person."
"Ah, well, I'd say you'd deal with him as you deal with everyone else. You order him around, and if he argues or doesn't jump quickly enough you freeze his blood with one of those vicious looks you're so good at and verbally abuse him. It always works so well for you."
"You think so?"
"There, see." He cupped her chin. "There it is now. I can actually feel my blood running cold."
"You can keep him, but he's on probation. And you've waived your pathetic monetary wage."
"Have I?" He frowned. "I can't seem to recall doing so."
"And his fee comes out of your pocket."
He'd already intended to pay Jamie, but knew how to play the game. "That's exceedingly unfair. I'm going to talk to my departmental representative about this highhanded treatment."
"You don't have a departmental rep." She walked back to the door. "You got me."
"To both my joy and sorrow," he replied behind her back as she strode into her office.
Jamie was crouched between Feeney and McNab, showing off some handheld device. "It'll read every system on the market and some that aren't on it yet," he was saying. "Then it clones..."
His head came up, and then his body. The handheld was jammed into his back pocket. "So, hey. We got a deal or what?"
Roarke merely crossed to him, held out a hand.
Shoulders slumping, Jamie pulled the jammer out of his pocket. "I only borrowed one so I could see about fine-tuning a couple of functions."
"Don't hose me, Jamie. And if you continue to borrow equipment, you'll be losing your work program privileges very quickly." The jammer disappeared into one of Roarke's pockets.
"It was my prototype."
And the royalties from it, Roarke mused, would make the boy a very rich young man. But he said nothing, merely lifted an eyebrow and waited for Jamie to squirm.
"Okay, okay. Don't fry your circuits." Sulking, he looked at Roarke, looked at Eve. He was never quite sure which of them was in charge.
Either way, he knew both of them could stomp him flat before he saw them lift a foot.
It'd been easy with his parents before the divorce. His father had been in charge. After, especially after Alice died, Jamie himself had mostly been in charge.
But around here, you just never knew.
"What's the word?" he demanded.
"You're attached as Roarke's tech in a probationary capacity," Eve told him. "You step out of line, over the line, try wiggling under the line, I squash you like a bug. Now, do you see everyone in this room?"
"Yeah, nothing wrong with the orbs. So?"
"They're all the boss of you. Which means, anyone here gives you an order, including telling you to stand on your head and whistle through your teeth, you do it. Clear? Next," she continued before he had time to complain, "all data, all info, all conversations, all actions or proposed actions done or discussed pertaining to this assignment are confidential. You speak of this to no one, including your best pal, your mother, any girl you're hoping to see naked, or your pet poodle."
"I don't blab off," he said with some heat. "I know how it works. And I don't have any lame poodle. Plus, I've seen naked girls." He grinned now. "Including you."
"Careful, lad," Roarke said quietly. "Step carefully."
"You've got a smart mouth. I remember that about you." Deliberately Eve walked a circle around him. "I like a smart mouth, under certain circumstances. So instead of yanking your ears over your head and tying them in a knot, I'm going to overlook that comment. Once. Baxter, take this drone into the work area. Show him the basic setup. If he touches anything, break his fingers."
"You got it. Let's go, kid." When they reached the doorway, Baxter leaned down. "How'd you see her naked?"
"He's going to be trouble," Eve muttered.
"He'll be worth it." Roarke slid a hand over the jammer in his pocket. "Believe me."
"He's a good kid, Dallas." Feeney pushed to his feet. "Smart, and as steady as you get at that age. We'll keep him in line."
"I'm counting on it. I'm dumping him on you e-guys. Nadine and her camera are due in about twenty. She's never late. You both good to do the one-on-ones downstairs somewhere?"
J D Robb - Dallas 15 - Purity in Death Page 12