by J. D. Robb
“I don’t know, but I think herds. Anyway, she had a miserable disposition, a mile-wide mean streak, and a dozen heirs who are all glad to see her dead. I’m letting Trueheart act as primary.”
“He ready for it?”
“It’s a good time to find out. I’m staying close. I told him I thought the butler did it, and he just nodded, all serious, and said he’d do a probability. Christ, he’s a sweet kid.”
Cops popped out like corks on every level. There was almost breathable air by the time the elevator reached the garage.
“Heard you had to spring the prime suspect on the double homicide. That’s gotta sting.”
“It only stings if she did it.” She paused by Baxter’s shiny sports car. “How do you afford this ride?”
“It’s not about afford, it’s about the deft juggling of numbers.” He looked over to where her pitiful police issue sat dolefully in its slot. “Me, I wouldn’t be caught driving that heap if I was wearing a toe tag. You’ve got rank enough to pull better.”
“Maintenance and Requisitions both hate me. Besides, it gets me where I’m going.”
“But not in style.” He slid into his car, gunned the engine so it roared like a mad bull, then, with another wide grin, zoomed off.
“What is it about guys and cars?” she wondered. “I just don’t get how their dicks are attached to cars.”
With a shake of her head, she started across the garage.
“Lieutenant Dallas.”
Instinctively, her hand slipped inside her jacket and onto the butt of her weapon. She held it there as she pivoted, and studied the man who stepped out from between parked cars.
“This garage facility is NYPSD property, for authorized personnel only.”
“Quinn Sparrow, Assistant Director, Data Resources, HSO.” He held up his right hand. “I’m going to reach, with my off hand, for my identification.”
“Reach slow, AD Sparrow.”
He did, drawing out the flip case with two fingers. He held it up, waiting for her to approach. Eve studied the ID, then his face.
He looked young for any real juice in the HSO, but then she had no idea how early they recruited. He might’ve been forty, she supposed, but calculated he was missing a few years from that date. But he wasn’t green. His calm demeanor told her he’d had some seasoning.
His body had the compact, ready look under its black, government employee suit that made her think boxer or ballplayer. His voice had no discernible accent, and he waited, without movement or word, until she’d finished summing him up.
“What do you want, Sparrow?”
“I’m told you want a conversation. Why don’t we have one. My car’s beside yours.”
She glanced over at the black sedan. “I don’t think so. Let’s take a walk instead.”
“No problem.” He started to dip a hand in his right pocket. She had her weapon out and at his throat. She heard him suck in air, let it out. She saw the quick flicker of surprise and alarm on his face before it settled into passive lines again.
“Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“That’s no problem either.” He held them out, and up. “You’re jumpy, Lieutenant.”
“I’ve got reason, Assistant Director. Let’s walk.” Rather than holstering her weapon, she slid it inside her jacket as they walked toward the garage exit. “What makes you think I want a conversation?”
“Reva Ewing spoke with a mutual contact in the Secret Service. Given the current situation, I was assigned to come over from the New York base and speak with you.”
“What’s your function?”
“Data cruncher, primarily. Administrative area.”
“You knew Bissel?”
“Not personally, no.”
She turned, moved briskly down the sidewalk. “I assume this conversation is being recorded.”
He gave her a very easy, very pleasant smile. “Is there something you don’t want on record?”
“I bet there’s a lot you don’t.” She swung into a bar and grill, largely patronized by cops. Because it was change of shift, it was packed with them. Eve moved to a high-top where two detectives from her division were sharing beer and shoptalk.
“I got a meet here.” She dug out credits, laid them down. “Do me a favor and let me have the table. Beer’s on me.”
There was some grumbling, but the credits were scooped up, and the detectives moved off. Eve chose a stool that kept her back to the wall.
“Felicity Kade recruited Blair Bissel for the HSO,” Eve began.
“How did you come by that information?”
“Subsequently,” she went on, “he functioned as a data liaison—data’s your territory, right?—transporting same to and from sources, and using his profession as a cover. Was he ordered to marry Reva Ewing, or was that his own suggestion?”
Sparrow’s face had gone to stone. “I’m not authorized to discuss—”
“Then just listen. He and Kade targeted Ewing due to her contacts with government officials, and her position in the private sector at Securecomp. She was, without her knowledge, injected with an internal observation device—”
“You’re going to wait a minute.” He laid a hand on the table. “You’re going to wait a damn minute. Your data’s incorrect, and if you put this sort of skewed information in your reports, it’s going to cause trouble for you. I want your source.”
“You’re not getting my source, and my data is on the mark. The device was removed from Ewing today. You’re finished using her. You shouldn’t have set her up on my watch, Sparrow. You want to take out a couple of your own, that’s your business, but you don’t set up civilians to take the fall for murder.”
“We didn’t set her up.”
“Is that the company line?”
“There was no hit ordered or sanctioned by the HSO.”
“You lied when you said you didn’t know Blair Bissel. You’re the AD, you damn well knew him.”
Sparrow’s gaze never flickered, and Eve decided she’d been right about the seasoning. “I said I didn’t know him personally. I didn’t say I didn’t know him professionally.”
“Being slippery, Sparrow, isn’t making me like you any better.”
“Look, Lieutenant, I’m doing my job here. The incident involving him and Kade is being investigated, internally. It’s believed that the hit was carried out by a cell of the Doomsday Group.”
“And why would a group of techno-terrorists bother to build a frame around Ewing?”
“It’s being investigated. This is a global security matter, Lieutenant.” His voice was very low now, and very cold. “The termination of two operatives is an HSO matter. You’re required to step back.”
“I’m required to do my job. Another of Bissel’s side dishes is dead. This one was a twenty-one-year-old girl, still wet enough behind the ears to believe in true love.”
His jaw clenched, visibly. “We’re aware of the disposal. We—”
“Disposal? Fuck you, Sparrow.”
“It didn’t come from us.”
“You know everything that goes on inside your organization?”
He opened his mouth, then seemed to check whatever he was going to say. “I’ve been thoroughly briefed on these matters. This conversation is a courtesy, due to Ewing’s exemplary service to her country, and the desire of HSO to cooperate, as much as possible, with local authorities. However, it’s only a courtesy. There are details of these matters you are not cleared to know. The charges against Ewing have been dropped.”
“And that smooths it all out? You think you can look and listen and sit back, playing with people, nudging them around like pawns in a chess game?”
She recognized the pressure on her chest, knew she’d need to gulp for air if she let it take over. If she let herself think about that room in Dallas.
So she blocked it out, slammed it down, and thought of a young woman in a frilly bedroom with a purple stuffed bear and a pink rosebud.
“A few get broken along the way, well, that’s a shame. Chloe McCoy is dead. You got a way to smooth that out?”
His tone never changed. “It’s being investigated, Lieutenant. It will be resolved. Responsible parties will be dealt with as appropriate. You need to back off.”
“The way you people backed off in Dallas?” It was out before she could stop it. “The way you sat on your asses gathering intel no matter what the cost to the innocent.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dallas isn’t a factor in this matter.”
“You look like a smart guy, Assistant Director Sparrow. Look it up, put it together.” She slid off the stool. “And hear this: I don’t back off. Ewing’s not only going to be sprung, she’s going to be publically exonerated, with or without your cooperation. And whoever killed Chloe McCoy will be dealt with, as the law deems appropriate, not your gang of spooks.”
She didn’t shout, but neither did she trouble to keep her voice low. A few heads turned—and, she knew, more than a few cops’ ears tuned in.
“This time there’s going to be payment. You and your listening posts put that into your data banks and analyze it. You approach me again, be ready to deal. Or we have nothing to say.”
She strode out of the bar. Her breath was starting to come too fast, and her head was going light. She had to bear down. She wasn’t going to think about what had been done to her, but about what she was going to do.
There would be payment, she promised herself. She couldn’t get it for the battered, terrified child in Dallas, she would do everything in her power to ensure Roarke didn’t, but she would, she damn well would get it for Reva Ewing and Chloe McCoy.
She ignored the tension at the base of her skull as she drove out of the garage. She resigned herself to the iron grip of it as she battled traffic.
Ad blimps blasted out their evening siren song of SALES, SALES, SALES. Fall blow-out in EVERY store at The Sky Mall. One hundred lucky customers would receive an In-Touch palm ’link ABSOLUTELY FREE. While supplies lasted.
The noise of it rolled down over her, punctuated by the whispering clack of traffic copter blades, horns blasting against the pollution codes.
The tension began to sneak its way up, squeeze around her temples. When the headache kicked in full, she knew it would be a bitch.
All through the noise of New York, the throb of its violent heart, she heard the cool, composed voice of Sparrow speaking of disposal.
We are not disposable, she told herself when her hands gripped the wheel like iron. No matter how many bodies she’d stood over, no matter how many she’d ordered bagged, none of them, none of them, none of them were disposable.
She punched through the open gates of home, and prayed for ten minutes of silence, for ten minutes without the noise screaming in her head.
She rushed into the house, hoping to circumvent her nightly confrontation with Summerset, and was halfway up the stairs when she heard her name called.
She looked around and saw Mavis at the bottom of the stairs.
“Hey. Didn’t know you were here.” Absently, she rubbed at the ache in her temple. “I was bolting, hoping to miss my nightly treat of Ugly Guy.”
“I told Summerset I wanted a few minutes. You look like you’re pretty busy, and tired. It’s probably a bad time.”
“No, that’s okay.” A dose of Mavis was a better cure than any blocker.
Just one more reminder of who she was, Eve thought. Of who she was now.
She assumed Mavis was in a conservative mood, as she was wearing nothing that glowed. The fact was, she didn’t know the last time she’d seen Mavis in something as ordinary as jeans and a T-shirt. Even if the T-shirt stopped a couple inches above the waist and was covered with red and yellow fringe, it was pretty tame on the Mavis Freestone scale of fashion.
Her hair was quietly brown, with only one red and yellow tuft poofed at the crown to liven it up.
She looked a little pale, Eve noticed as she started down, then realized Mavis was wearing no lip dye or eye enhancements.
“You been to church or something?” Eve asked.
“No.”
With a frown, Eve took another survey. “Wow, you’re sort of starting to poke out. I haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks, and—”
She broke off in horror when Mavis burst into tears.
“Oh shit. Oh damn. What did I say? Am I not supposed to say you’re poking out?” Frantic, she patted Mavis’s shoulder. “I thought you wanted to poke out with the baby and all. Oh boy.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know what to do.”
“Is something wrong with the . . . thing? The baby?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s wrong,” she wailed. “Nothing. Everything. Dallas.” On a pathetic sob, she threw herself into Eve’s arms. “I’m so scared.”
“We should call a doctor.” She looked desperately around the foyer as if a medic would magically appear. In her panic, she actually wished, fiercely, for Summerset. “Or something.”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Mavis wept on Eve’s shoulder in great, gulping sobs. “I don’t need a doctor.”
“Sitting down’s good. You should sit down.” Lie down? Eve wondered. Be sedated? Oh, help me. “Maybe I should see if Roarke’s back yet.”
“I don’t want Roarke. I don’t want a man. I want you.”
“Okay, okay.” She eased Mavis onto a couch, tried not to be freaked when her friend all but crawled into her lap. “You’ve got me. Um . . . I was thinking about you today.”
“You were?”
“I had lunch at the Blue Squirrel, and . . . Oh, Mother of God,” she muttered when Mavis’s sobs increased. “Give me a hint, give me a clue. I don’t know what to do if I don’t know what’s going on.”
“I’m so scared.”
“I got that part. Why? Of what? Is somebody bothering you? You got a crazed fan or something?”
“No, the fans are great.” Her shoulders shook as she burrowed into Eve.
“Ah . . . you and Leonardo have a fight?”
Now her head shook. “No. He’s the most wonderful man in the world. The most perfect human being in the universe. I don’t deserve him.”
“Oh, that’s just crap.”
“It’s not crap. I don’t.” Mavis jerked back, turned her tear-ravaged face up to Eve’s. “I’m stupid.”
“No, you’re not. It’s stupid to say you’re stupid.”
“I never even finished school. I ran away when I was fourteen, and I wasn’t even worth looking for.”
“If your parents were stupid, Mavis, it doesn’t mean you are.”
If mine were monsters, it doesn’t mean I am.
“What was I when you busted me? On the grift. That’s all I knew, cons—short cons, long cons, lifting wallets or playing the beard for some other grifter.”
“Look at you now. You’ve got the most perfect human being in the universe crazy about you, you’ve got a mag career, and this baby thing going. Oh God, oh God, please don’t cry like that anymore,” she begged when Mavis dissolved again.
“I don’t know anything.”
“Yeah, you do. You know . . . stuff. Music stuff.” Such as it was. “Fashion stuff. And you know about people. Maybe you learned it on the grift, Mavis, but you know about people. How to make them feel good about themselves.”
“Dallas.” Mavis swiped her hands over her face. “I don’t know anything about babies.”
“Oh. Ah . . . but you’re listening to all those discs, right? And didn’t you say you were going to go to some class about it? Something?”
Not my area, she thought frantically. Definitely out of my orbit. Why the hell had she sent Peabody to Jamaica?
“What good’s any of that?” Exhausted from the crying jag, Mavis flopped back, resting her head on the pillows on the end of the couch. “All that’s just how to feed a baby, or change one, or pick them up so you don’t break them. Like that. How to d
o things. They can’t tell you how to know, how to feel. They can’t tell you how to be a mom, Dallas. I don’t know how to do it.”
“Maybe it just comes to you. You know, when you finally push it out, it just happens. And you know.”
“I’m scared I’m going to mess it up. That I’m not going to be able to do it right. Leonardo’s so happy and excited. He wants this so much.”
“Mavis, if you don’t—”
“I do. I want it more than anything in the world and beyond. That’s what’s so scary. Dallas, I don’t think I could stand it if I messed this up. If I have this baby and I don’t feel what I’m supposed to, don’t know what it needs—the real needs, not the food and the diapers. How will I know how to love it when nobody ever loved me?”
“I love you, Mavis.”
Mavis’s eyes filled again. “I know you do. And Leonardo. But it’s not the same. This . . .” She laid a hand on her belly. “It’s supposed to be different. I know it is, but I just don’t know how. I guess I panicked,” she said on a long sigh. “I couldn’t talk about it to Leonardo. I just needed you.”
She reached for Eve’s hand. “Some stuff you can only tell your best pal. I’m better now. Probably just hormones weirding me out.”
“You’re the first real friend I ever had,” Eve said slowly. “You had it stuck in your head to get close to me, and I just couldn’t shake you off. Before I knew it, there we were. We’ve seen each other through some rough spots.”
“Yeah.” Mavis sniffed, and the first hint of a watery smile touched her lips. “We have.”
“And because you’re my first real friend, I’d tell you if you were stupid. I’d tell you if I thought you’d make a crappy mother. I’d tell you if I thought you were making a mistake having the baby.”
“You would? Really?” Mavis clutched Eve’s hand, stared hard at her face. “Swear to God?”
“Swear to God.”
“That makes me feel better. It really does.” She let out a long, shaky breath. “Oh boy, it really does. Could I hang for a while? Maybe call Leonardo and tell him to—Oh God. Oh my God.”
Eve popped up as Mavis’s teary eyes went wide, as she sat straight up, pressing a hand to her belly. “What? Are you going to get sick or something?”