by J. D. Robb
“The HSO does not murder its own operatives, then frame a civilian.”
“No?” She lifted her eyebrows as she slid a scanner out of her pocket. “They just sit back and watch while a child is brutalized, raped, and tortured, then tidy up after her when she takes a life desperately defending her own. When she’s traumatized and broken. And they leave her alone, to wander the streets.”
“I don’t know what happened.” He looked away from her. “I don’t know why. You’ve read the file, so you know data was deleted. Covered up. I’m not denying it, or the poor judgment of—”
“Poor judgment?”
“There’s nothing I can say to you. Nothing that can balance the scales after what was done. No excuses I can make, so I won’t make them. But I will say, as you have to me, that’s not the point.”
“Score one for you.” She moved away from him to run a program on the scanner, checking her car for devices. “I’m pissed, Sparrow, and I’m tired, and it’s very, very difficult for me to accept that strangers know my private business. Because of that, I’ve got no reason to trust you, or the people you work for.”
“I’d like to try to give you one, and to find some area of compromise that will satisfy us both. But I’ve got to ask you, where the hell did you get that thing?”
She found herself amused, and she hadn’t expected to be, by the look of fascination and avarice on his face. “I have my connections.”
“I’ve never seen one quite like it. Very compact. Will it multitask? Sorry.” He laughed a little. “I’m big on gadgets. One of the reasons I got into this line of work. Look, if you’re satisfied your car’s clear, maybe we could take a ride. I’ll give you some data that may convince you to find that compromise.”
“Open the briefcase.”
“No problem.” He set it on the trunk of her vehicle, manually entered a code on the lock. When he opened it, Eve blinked.
“Jesus, Sparrow, got enough hardware?”
She saw a stunner, a miniblaster, a complex little palm ’link, a recharger, and the smallest data system she’d ever come across. There was also a number of the same sort of tracking devices she’d taken off her vehicle earlier in the day.
She took one out, held it up, and looked him dead in the eye.
He gave her a winning smile. “I didn’t say the tracker you removed from your vehicle wasn’t HSO, I just said I was unaware of any directive to place said tracker on your vehicle.”
“Smooth.” She tossed the tracker back in the briefcase, and watched as Sparrow meticulously fit it back in its slot.
It occurred to her that under other circumstances he and Roarke would have bonded like brothers.
“I like gadgets,” he repeated. “I didn’t bug your vehicle. That’s not to say I—or someone else from the organization—won’t do so if ordered, but I didn’t lay the tracker today. Nothing in here’s activated. Your scanner will verify.”
When it did, she looked him up and down. “What about you?”
“I’ve got a lot on me.” He held his arms out to the side for the scanner. “All deactivated. You see, we’re not having this conversation. We will have had it if the outcome’s satisfactory. Otherwise, we left things up in Tibble’s office.”
Eve shook her head. “Get in. I’m heading uptown. I don’t like what you have to say, I’ll dump you in the most inconvenient spot I can manage. And I know all the inconvenient spots in this city.”
He got in the passenger seat. “You really mucked up the works with that media leak.”
She sent him her version of a winning smile. “I don’t believe I confirmed playing any part in any media leak.” She set the scanner on the seat beside her, activated. “Just in case you decide to flip something on,” she said when Sparrow frowned at it.
“With that level of cynicism and paranoia, you ought to be one of us.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Start talking.”
“Bissel and Kade were not in-house terminations. We believe, though we have no confirmed intel, that Doomsday broke Bissel’s cover, and took them out.”
“Why?” She backed out of her slot. “If they knew about him, and his connection to Ewing and hers to the Code Red, it would make more sense to watch him, or haul him off and pull data out of his toenails.”
“He was working a double. We worked over a year to set him up with a Doomsday operative. Look at his profile, and what do you see? An opportunist, a man who cheats on his wife—and his mistress, who likes the good life, spends lavishly. That’s how we wanted him to look, and that part was easy as what you see with Bissel was what you got. It’s how and why we used him to pass carefully arranged data to Doomsday. He took their money. There was no way they’d believe he was behind their philosophies. Just in it for the shine.”
“You set him up to get close to Ewing to spy on Securecomp, and you set him up to get close to Doomsday to screw with them. You guys are something.”
“It was working. The worm they’re developing, have developed,” he corrected, “could undermine governments, give the terrorists an open door. If our data banks and surveillance apparatus are severely compromised, we can’t track, we can’t know how and when they might hit. That doesn’t touch on internal crises: banks, military, transport. We needed to slow them down, and to gather intel, to have our defenses fully in place.”
“And to steal the technology from them to create your own version of the worm.”
“I can’t confirm that supposition.”
“You don’t have to. Where does Carter Bissel come in?”
“Loose cannon. He has serious issues with his brother, and took the time and trouble to learn about the extramaritals. Blackmailed him. That actually worked for us. Solidified Bissel’s cover, gave him another reason for needing quick money. We don’t know where he is, or if he’s alive or dead. Maybe they took him out, maybe they just took him. Maybe he ran or is on a fucking bender.” Frustration eked through. “But we’ll find him.”
“This just doesn’t jibe for me, Sparrow. Not all the way.” She paused at the exit of the garage. “Terminating Bissel and Kade in that manner was sloppy. And Doomsday hasn’t taken credit. They like credit.”
“Yeah, but they don’t like being conned. He conned them for months. We’ve gathered significant intel on the worm through Bissel. Enough bits and pieces that we should be able to develop the shield before . . .”
“Before Securecomp? God, you’re a piece of work.”
“Look.” He shifted in his seat. “Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck where the shield comes from, as long as we have it in place. But there are some who don’t like the idea of a man with Roarke’s . . . questionable connections having his fingers in a pie this sensitive.”
“So you undermine Securecomp, get busy like bees to beat Roarke to the punch, so you can beat your red, white, and blue chests and add the big fee to your budget.”
“Everything about the NYPSD is sunshine and roses, Dallas? You got a perfect system here?”
“No, but I don’t screw somebody just so I can take the collar.” She eased out into traffic. “I’m seriously thinking about ditching you in front of this nice little cafe where Zeus addicts hang.”
“Come on, Dallas, give a little, get a little. We need a look at the units you confiscated, and have locked down. The ones you took from the various crime scenes. Or at least the scan and analysis reports. Doomsday has the worm. Even Roarke can’t put together the brain trust we can to complete the shield and complete it now. Without it, we could be facing a crisis of goddamn biblical proportions.”
At those words, the wrath of God hit. She felt the intense blast of heat, and saw the blinding flash of light. Glass imploded, and the dust of it spewed into her face.
Instinctively, she wrenched the wheel sideways, slammed the brakes, but her tires were no longer in contact with the road. Dimly she realized they were airborne.
She choked out a warning for Sparrow to hang on, and through the haze of smoke saw the
world revolve. They hit, and the impact snapped her safety harness. She tumbled, stomach pitching, head ringing, and thudded hard on the safety bags that deployed with an explosive snap. The last thing she remembered was the taste of her own blood in her mouth.
She wasn’t out long, the stink of the smoke, the quality of the screams told her she hadn’t lost consciousness more than a minute or two. That, and the fact that the pain hadn’t had time to fully process in her brain. Her vehicle—what was left of it—was on its top, like a turtle laying on its shell.
She spat out blood and shifted enough to reach Sparrow, to check for a pulse in his throat. She found a weak one, though her hand came away slick with blood that was still running down his face.
She heard the sirens now, and the rush of feet, the shouted orders that said cops. Dimly she thought, If you are going to take a sudden, unexpected air trip while still in road mode, it is good to do so within a block of Cop Central.
“I’m on the job,” she called out and began to try to wriggle her way back, out of the smashed driver door and window. “Dallas, Lieutenant. There’s a civilian pinned in here—bleeding bad.”
“Take it easy, Lieutenant. MTs are on the way. You probably don’t want to move until—”
“Get me the hell out of here.” She tried to dig into the roadbed with the toes of her boots, searching for traction. She made it two inches before hands gripped her legs, her hips, and eased her out of the wreckage.
“How bad you hurt?”
She managed to focus on the face, recognized Detective Baxter. “I can still see you, so I’m in considerable pain. But I think I’m just banged up. Passenger’s bad.”
“They’re getting to him.”
She winced as Baxter ran his hands over her, checking for breaks. “You better not be using this to cop a feel.”
“Just one of those little bonuses life hands you. Got some lacerations, probably going to have contusions all over that nifty bod of yours.”
“Shoulder burns.”
“You gonna punch me if I take a look?”
“Not this time.”
She rolled her head back, closed her eyes as he unbuttoned her ruined shirt. “Friction burns from the harness, looks like,” he told her.
“I want to stand up.”
“Just take it easy until the medicals look at you.”
“Give me a damn hand up, Baxter. I want to see the damage.”
He helped her up, and when her vision didn’t waver, she figured she’d gotten off lucky.
The same couldn’t be said of Sparrow. The passenger side had taken the brunt when it rammed a maxibus on one of its revolutions. Trueheart was working with another uniform to sheer away the metal trapping Sparrow inside.
“He’s pinned between the door and the dash,” Trueheart called out. “Looks like his leg’s broken, maybe his arm, too. But he’s breathing.”
She stepped back as the MTs hustled up. One wriggled into the driver’s side where she’d wriggled out. The calls turned to medical jargon and orders. She heard talk about spinal and neck injuries, and cursed.
Then she looked at the car.
“Holy Jesus Christ.”
The front end was all but disintegrated. Metal was blackened, melted, fused to metal. Window glass had gone to powder and continued to smoke.
“It looks like . . .”
“Like it was hit with a short-range missile,” Baxter finished. “You’d be toast if it’d broadsided you instead of skimming the front end. I was heading in to Central, and saw this flash, this streak. Big boom, and a vehicle, yours, flew right over mine. Flew up, came down, flipped three times then spun around like a top. Smashed a couple of civilian vehicles, laid waste to a glide-cart, skipped the curb, skipped back, then plowed into a maxi like a torpedo.”
“Civilian casualties?”
“I don’t know.”
She could see some of the injured, and hear weeping, some screaming. Soy dogs, soft drink tubes, candy sticks were scattered over the street and sidewalk like some nasty buffet.
“Harness held, until the last minute.” She wiped absently at a trickle of blood on her temple. “It held, or God knows . . . Reinforcements in the roof kept us from being crushed like a couple of recycled milk cartons. Major damage on the passenger side from the crash. He got the worst of it.”
Baxter watched the MTs fix the unconscious man to a back-and-neck board. “Friend of yours?”
“No.”
“You piss somebody off enough to fire missiles at you or did he?”
“Good question.”
“You need to have the MTs look you over.”
“Probably.” The pain was seeping through now, making mincemeat of the adrenaline and shock. “I hate that. Really do. And you know what else? The guys in requisitions are going to slap me around for this. They’re going to slap me around, then give me some piece of shit transpo to punish me.”
She hobbled over to the curb, sat among the confusion and noise. Then sneered in warning at the MT who headed, with his kit, in her direction. “You even think about using a pressure syringe on me,” Eve told her, “and I’m taking you down.”
“You want the pain, you keep the pain.” The MT shrugged and opened his kit. “But let’s have a look.”
It took her another two hours to get home, and then she had to catch a ride with Baxter as she’d been ordered not to drive. Since she didn’t have anything to drive, it wasn’t hard to follow orders.
“I guess I’m supposed to ask you in for a drink now or some happy shit.”
“That’s right, but I’ll take a raincheck. I got a date. Scorching date, and I’m running behind.”
“Appreciate the ride.”
“That’s your best comeback? You’re in bad shape. Take a pill, Dallas,” he suggested as she eased her aching body out. “Flake out awhile.”
“I’m okay. Go bang the bimbo of the week.”
“Now that’s more like it.” He gave a cheery chuckle and drove away.
She limped into the house, but couldn’t quite limp past Summerset.
He looked down his nose, sniffed. “I see you’ve managed to destroy several more articles of clothing.”
“Yeah, I thought I’d rip and burn them while wearing them, just to see what happened.”
“I assume your vehicle suffered similarly as it’s not in evidence.”
“It’s trash. But then, it always was.” She headed for the stairs, but he blocked her path, then scooped up the cat who was trying to climb up her legs.
“For God’s sake, Lieutenant, take the elevator. And you may as well take something voluntarily for the pain before you have to be humiliated into it.”
“I’m walking it off so I don’t stiffen up and start to look like you.” She knew it was stubborn, she knew it was stupid, but she took the stairs. The worst was, if he hadn’t been there at the door, lurking, she’d have taken the damn elevator in the first place.
She was dripping with sweat by the time she made it to the bedroom, so she simply stripped off her ruined clothes, tossed her weapon and her communicator on the bed, and whimpered her way into the shower.
“Jets on half power,” she ordered. “One hundred degrees.”
The soft spray of hot water stung, then soothed. She braced her hands against the tile wall, dipped her head, and let it flow over her.
Who had they been after? she wondered. Her or Sparrow? She was betting on herself. Sparrow, and the civilians in the line of fire, were just what they’d call collateral damage. So why try to take her out, and why hadn’t they done a better job of it?
Sloppy, sloppy, she thought. It’s all been sloppy.
“Jets off,” she grunted, and feeling a bit steadier, stepped out of the shower.
She knew her heart shouldn’t have jolted when she saw Roarke. Summerset—the big, fat tattletale—would have told him.
“The MTs cleared me,” she said quickly. “I’m just banged up, that’s all.”
“I can see that. You don’t want the drying tube. The hot air won’t do you any good. Here.” He picked up a bathsheet, walked to her, and wrapped it gently around her. “Do I have to force a blocker on you?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s something.” He feathered his fingers over the abrasions on her face. “We may be angry with each other, Eve, but you should have contacted me. I shouldn’t have heard you’d been in an accident from a damn media bulletin.”
“They didn’t release names,” she began, then trailed off.
“They didn’t have to.”
“I didn’t think. I’m sorry, I really didn’t think about it. It’s not because I’m—whatever I am with you right now. I didn’t think about the media, or that you’d hear anything about it until I got back and could tell you myself.”
“All right. You need to lie down.”
“I’ll take the blocker, but I’m not going down. AD Sparrow’s bad. He was with me. His spine’s messed up, and there’s severe head trauma. The passenger side was—shit. Shit. I don’t know how he lived through it. It was a short-range missile.”
She scooped her hair back and went into the bedroom to sit.
“You said missile.”
“Yeah. Probably one of those nifty one-man jobs. Handheld launcher. He must’ve fired from the roof across from Central. Had me staked out. Maybe Sparrow, but I’m thinking me. To mess up the investigation? To mess you up? Both?” She shook her head. “Maybe to put the HSO on the hot seat, taking out a cop when they couldn’t get her to pass the investigation over to them. Maybe to throw the suspicion onto the terrorists.”
He handed her a small blue pill and a glass of water. “Your word you’ll swallow it or I’ll check under your tongue.”
“I’m not quite feeling up to sex games. Leave my tongue alone. I’m swallowing it.”
Some of the warmth came back in his eyes as he sat beside her. “Why isn’t it the HSO or Doomsday?”
“Not very covert to launch a missile at a cop car in New York traffic in the middle of the day. If they wanted me out, they’d find a more subtle way and without losing one of the assistant directors in the process.”