by J. D. Robb
“Commander—”
He held up a hand. “You’ve come perilously close to being written up for insubordination, Lieutenant. I expect better control from you, and have rarely had the need to remind you of it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Moreover, I find myself insulted both on a personal and professional level that you assumed I had or would approve an asinine schedule that pulls you off a priority.”
“I apologize, Commander, and can only offer the weak excuse that any and all contact with Lee Chang results in my temporary insanity.”
“Understood.” Whitney turned the disc over in his hand. “It surprises me, Dallas, that you didn’t shove this down his throat.”
“Actually, sir, I had another orifice in mind.”
His lips quirked, just slightly. Then he snapped the disc in two, just as she had.
“Thank you, Commander.”
“Let’s get this damn circus over with, so we can both get back to work.”
Chapter 11
She got through it, parroting the departmental chorus. As a result of stifling her own opinion, ignoring her own gut instincts, she stewed in her own simmering juices all the way home.
“Dallas.” They were nearly at the gates when Peabody dared to speak. That way, if Eve tossed her bodily out of the car, she wouldn’t have far to hike. “Don’t take my head off, okay? You did what you had to do.”
“What I have to do is investigate the case, and close it.”
“Yeah, but sometimes serving the public’s complicated. There are a lot of people who’ll sleep easier tonight because they heard their home unit isn’t going to fry their brains if they sit down and balance their financials or do some e-mail. If their kid does his school report. That’s important.”
“I’ll tell you what I think.” Eve headed toward the gates without dropping speed so that beside her Peabody’s heart took a fast spring into her throat. “I think people shouldn’t always believe what they hear.”
“Sir. I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Maybe whoever’s manning the switch doesn’t like the way Mr. Smith with his pretty wife and charming little girl and small household pet lives his life. Maybe he decides Mr. Smith shouldn’t be cruising the porn sites, or stopping off at a strip club after a hard day selling furniture, or occasionally getting zonked on Zoner with his pretty wife. Mr. Smith isn’t following all the rules as well as he should be. Time to make an example of Mr. Smith so others like him understand the program.”
“But, they’re going after known predators. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m not saying that, Dallas, because it’s not. But it’s a really big leap to go from school yard dealers and pedophiles to some guy who tokes some recreational Zoner on Saturday night.”
“Is it?” Eve stopped the car at the base of the front steps. “The law’s ignoring Mr. Smith. It hasn’t punished him, just like it didn’t punish the others. Purity punished them, and a lot of people thought: Hey, that’s not a bad idea. Cops didn’t do the job, so good, somebody else did. Nobody’s thinking, hmm, that Mary Ellen George was acquitted. Maybe she was innocent.”
“She wasn’t, so—”
“No, she wasn’t, but the next one could be. The one after that. It’s not easy to watch somebody walk, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than it is to know an innocent didn’t. These people are deciding who’s guilty. With what criteria, what system, what authority? Their own. They’re rolling, Peabody, and public opinion’s rolling with them. Let’s see how happy the public is when it starts coming into their homes, their lives.”
“You really think that’ll happen?”
“Damn right it’ll happen, unless we stop them. It’ll happen because they’re on a mission, and there’s nothing more dangerous than someone on a mission.”
She should know, Eve thought as she slammed out of the car. She’d been on one since she’d picked up a badge.
When she walked in, it was one of the rare times she wasn’t annoyed to see Summerset lurking in the foyer.
“Lieutenant, I’d like to have some idea how many of your guests will be staying overnight.”
“They’re not guests. They’re cops and a kid. Head on up, Peabody, I’ve got something to do here.”
“Yes, sir.” And assuming that something was to have her usual pissing match with Summerset, Peabody darted up to check on McNab.
“Give me the status on McNab, and give it in English,” Eve demanded.
“There’s no change.”
“That’s not enough. Aren’t you supposed to be doing something?”
“The nerves and muscles aren’t responding to stimuli.”
“Maybe we should’ve left him in the hospital.” She paced the foyer. “Maybe we shouldn’t have brought him here.”
“The simple truth is there would be little more they could do for him there as can be done here during the first twenty-four hours.”
“We’re past twenty-four,” she snapped. “We’re over that, and he should have it back.” She stopped herself, pulled it back in, and studied Summerset’s cadaverous face. “What are his chances? Don’t pretty it up. What are his chances of regaining sensation and mobility?”
“They decrease by the hour now. Rapidly.”
He watched Eve close her eyes, turn away. But before she did, he saw the raw grief. “Lieutenant. McNab is young and he’s fit. Those qualities play strongly in his favor. Being allowed to work at this time helps keep his mind active and off his difficulties. That can’t be discounted.”
“They’ll bounce him on disability, or stick him in a cube doing drone work. He’ll never feel like a cop again once that happens. He prances when he walks,” she said quietly. “Now he’s stuck in that chair. Goddamn it.”
“Arrangements have been made with the clinic in Switzerland. I believe Roarke mentioned this.” He waited until she turned around, looked at him again. “They’ll take him as early as next week. They have an impressive rate of success in regenerating nerves. He must continue his treatments until—”
“What’s their rate?”
“Seventy-two percent with injuries similar to McNab’s make a full recovery.”
“Seventy-two.”
“It’s not impossible he’ll recover naturally. In an hour. A day.”
“But his chances of that suck.”
“In a word. I am sorry.”
“Yeah, so am I.” She started up.
“Lieutenant? He’s frightened. He’s pretending not to be, but he’s a very frightened young man.”
“They used to put bullets in you,” she murmured. “Little steel missiles that ripped through flesh and bone. I wonder, when it comes down to it, if this is any cleaner.”
She walked up, and into her office to what appeared to be a recreation break. Her team was spread out, lounging, she thought sourly, while each sucked on the beverage of his choice.
Jamie was feeding Galahad little bits from what seemed to be a sandwich the size of Utah. Perched on the arm of McNab’s chair, Peabody filled them in on the details of the media conference.
“Well, this all looks so nice and cozy,” she said. “I bet those terrorists are shaking in their boots.”
“You gotta rest the brain cells and orbs every few hours,” Feeney told her.
She stepped over the feet Roarke had stretched out. He could consider himself lucky, she decided, she didn’t give them a good kick. She walked directly to her desk. Sat. “Maybe while you’re resting those cells and orbs, someone could take just a moment out of playtime and update me.”
“Missed lunch again, didn’t you?” Roarke said mildly.
“Yes, I did. It had something to do with the woman who’d hanged herself with her own bedsheets, the pesky little details of serial homicides, an annoying little meeting with city officials—some of whom seem to be more interested in media image than those inconvenient dead people—and the hour or so I was ordered to spend feeding those media hounds.”
Sh
e bared her teeth in a smile that had Jamie sliding down in his chair. “And how was your day?”
Roarke rose, took half the sandwich Jamie and the cat had yet to devour and set it in front of her. “Eat.”
Eve shoved it aside. “Report.”
“Now, let’s not have any bloodshed.” Feeney shook his head. The two of them made him think of a couple of bulls about to ram heads. “We’ve got some progress for you, which is why we’re on break. We built a shield that partially filtered the virus. We think we’ve nearly isolated the infection on the Cogburn unit. We were able to extrapolate a portion of it. Computer’s running an analysis now. Once we’ve got that, we may be able to simulate the rest of the program without going back into an infected unit.”
“How long?”
“I can’t give you that. It’s a program the likes of which I’ve never seen. Encoded, fail-safed. We’re working with the bits and pieces we got out before the sucker self-terminated.”
“You lost the unit?”
“That baby is fried,” Jamie put in. “Didn’t just blast the program, it killed the whole machine. Toasted it. But we got some good data. We’d have had enough to be sure of a sim if Roarke had had another minute—even forty-five seconds, but—”
He trailed off because Eve was getting to her feet. Really slow. Something in the movement made him think of a snake coiling up right before it lashed out with fangs.
“You operated the Cogburn unit?”
“I did, yes.”
“You operated an infected unit, using an experimental filter, one that subsequently failed? And you took this step without direct authorization from the primary.”
“Dallas.” Feeney rose. It was a testament to his courage under fire that he didn’t back off when she murdered him with one vicious glare. “The electronic end of this investigation falls on me. The lab work falls under my hand.”
“And your hand falls under mine. I should have been notified of this step. You know that.”
“It was my call.”
“Was it?” She looked back at Roarke as she spoke. “Get out.”
No one mistook she meant for Roarke to leave. The general exodus was more of a scramble. And at the doorway, Feeney batted the flat of his hand at the back of Jamie’s head.
“What?” Sulkily, Jamie rubbed the spot. “What?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Feeney muttered and closed the door at his back.
Eve kept the desk between them. She wasn’t entirely sure what she might do without the symbolic barrier holding the line. “You may run half the known universe, but you don’t run my investigation, my operations, or my team.”
“Nor do I have any desire to, Lieutenant.” His voice was just as cold, just as hard as hers.
“What the hell do you think you were doing? Exposing yourself to an unidentified infection so you could prove you’ve got the biggest dick?”
His eyes flashed hot, then chilled. “You’ve had a very difficult day, so I’ll take that into consideration. The filter needed to be tested, the program isolated and analyzed.”
“With sims, with computer runs, with—”
“You’re not an e-man,” he interrupted. “You may be in charge of the investigation, but what goes on in the lab is beyond your scope.”
“Don’t you tell me what’s beyond my scope.”
“I am telling you. I could spend the next hour explaining the technical ins and outs of the thing to you, and you wouldn’t understand the half of it. It’s not your field, but it’s one of mine.”
“You’re a—”
“Don’t you toss that civilian bullshit at me, not over this. You wanted my help, so I’m part of this team.”
“I can take you off the team.”
“Aye, you could.” He nodded, then reached out, fisted a hand in her shirtfront and pulled her across the desk. “But you won’t, because the dead mean more to you than even your pride.”
“They don’t mean more than you.”
“Well, damn it.” He released her, jammed his hands in his pockets. “That was a low blow.”
“You had no right to risk yourself. Not even to tell me. You went around me on this, and that pisses me off. You took a chance with your life that I find unacceptable.”
“It was necessary. And it wasn’t some blind leap, for Christ’s sake. I’m not a fool.”
He thought of the weapon he’d secreted just in case. And the small gray button he’d rubbed like a charm before he’d begun the work.
No, he wasn’t a fool, but he’d felt a bit like one.
“There were four e-men in that lab who agreed the step had to be taken,” he continued. “I was monitored, and the exposure was limited to ten minutes.”
“The filter blew.”
“It did, yes. Blew to hell in just over eight minutes. Jamie has some ideas on that I think are sound.”
“How long were you exposed without a shield?”
“Under four minutes. A bit closer to three, actually. No ill effects,” he added. “But for a little nagging headache.”
He grinned when he said it, and she wanted to strangle him. “That’s not funny.”
“Maybe not. Sorry. My medicals are clear, and we have a partial picture of the infection. It required a human operator, Eve, one who knows his way inside a computer, and who knows the tricks and blocks a good programmer employs. If I hadn’t done it, Feeney would have.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Why didn’t he?” she demanded. “He wouldn’t have just passed this to you.”
“We decided it logically. We flipped a coin.”
“You—” She broke off, rubbed her hands roughly over her face. “Somebody implied today I chose to act or think like a man. Boy, was she out of orbit on that.”
She dropped her hands. “Whether or not the electronics lab is out of my scope, it is under my authority. I expect and insist on being informed and consulted before any step is taken that carries personal risk to any of my team.”
“Agreed. You’re right,” he said after a moment. “You should’ve been informed. It can be a tricky balancing act. I’m sorry for my part in cutting you out of the loop.”
“Accepted. And though I’ve about hit my quota of apologizing today, I’ll add one more for bringing your dick into the argument.”
“Accepted.”
“I need to ask you a question.”
“All right.”
Her stomach was knotted, but she would say the words. She would ask the question. “If you think these people are justified in what they’re doing, if you think their targets deserve what they get, why would you risk this? Why would you take this chance with your own welfare to help me stop them?”
“For Christ’s sake, Eve, you’re like a goddamn chessboard. Black and white.” Temper was there, bubbling in a way she knew meant it could spurt out any moment.
“I don’t think that’s an unreasonable question.”
“You wouldn’t. Why do you think that I think this is justified? I feel no twinge of remorse or pity for someone like Fitzhugh and suddenly I’m the side of terrorists?”
“I didn’t mean it exactly like . . . Maybe I did.”
“You think I’m capable of finding any justification in what happened to that poor boy, Halloway?”
“No.” She felt vaguely ill. “But the others.”
“Perhaps I can believe the pure philosophy of it. That evil, real evil, can and should be destroyed by whatever means possible. But I’m not stupid enough, and not quite egocentric enough to believe there can be purity in the spilling of blood. Or that it can be done, in general, without law and courts and humanity.”
“In general.”
“You would pin that, wouldn’t you?” He nearly laughed. “We can’t think just the same on this issue.”
“I know that. I guess it shouldn’t bother me. But it does. Damn it, Roarke, it does.”
“So I see. I can’t be pure for you, Eve.”
�
��I don’t want that. This whole thing has me tangled up. Maybe because I can’t feel pity for someone like Fitzhugh or George either. I can’t feel it, and at the same time I’m outraged, I’m insulted that anyone, anyone felt they had the right to sit back and push a button that murdered them. Then call themselves guardians.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong. I don’t believe you are. But my morals, we’ll say, are more flexible than yours. Even so, to make myself clear to you as you seem to need it, I don’t subscribe to their means, their methods, or their agenda. If and when you confront evil, you do it face-to-face and hand-to-hand.”
As she did, he thought. As he had himself.
“And you don’t flog your message to the public like you were selling a new line of bloody sports cars. Eat some of that sandwich, will you?”
“I guess maybe we’re a little closer on this than I figured.” Steadier, she picked it up, took a bite. “God, what’s in this?”
“I’m fairly sure it’s everything. The boy eats like food’s about to be banned and he best gulp it all down while he can.”
She took another bite. “It’s pretty good. I think there’s corned beef in here. And maybe chocolate.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Are we back on track now, you and me?”
“Yeah. Much as we ever are.”
“Before we leave this topic, I’ll tell you one more reason I did what I did this afternoon.”
“Because you like to show off?”
“Naturally, but that isn’t what I was going to say. I did it because whatever else I feel or believe or don’t, I believe in you. Now, why don’t you have some coffee to wash that back, then we’ll show you what we’ve got.”
She wasn’t an e-man, but she could follow the basics. Even, if she pushed, the slightly more complex. But when she studied the printout of the data Roarke had been able to access from Cogburn’s now-toasted unit, she might have been trying to decipher hieroglyphics.
“It’s really jazzed,” Jamie told her as he monitored the progress of the decoding program he’d devised. “Totally. Whoever built the program is an ultimate. No Chip Jockey could’ve done it. It’s even beyond Commando level.”