by J. D. Robb
“What’s the status?”
“She’s one of mine.” His face gray, Dawson rocked back and forth on his heels. “Lottie Roebuck. She’s one of mine.”
“Roebuck has an explosive vest, a dead man’s switch.” Whitney snapped out the words while Feeney, McNab, Callander worked on the eyes and ears, on the door locks. “She’s taken the entire division hostage.”
“How the hell did she get in here with explosives?” Roarke began, then cut himself off. “Never mind. Let me see the bloody locks.”
“We have to bypass the alert,” Feeney told him. “When they’re secured from inside, they’ll set off an alarm if we trigger them from out here. We can’t just cut through.”
“Reineke’s in the break room, feeding us data. Roebuck doesn’t know he’s in there.” Sweat ran down McNab’s face. “Dallas knows. He’s keeping us apprised while we work on this.”
“Apprise me,” Roarke demanded as he got to work.
“She’s got everybody facedown on the floor but Dallas. Dallas is keeping her talking, but he thinks she’s gearing up.”
“Reineke’s described the vest to the E and B team,” Feeney said quietly. “He managed to get a picture of it with his ’link—cracked the break-room door just enough for it. They said it could take out the whole room.”
“Then we’d better stop her.” Coating the hammering fear with calming ice, Roarke worked precisely. “I’m not losing my wife today. I need more shagging light here.”
“We won’t be able to rush her.” Feeney laid a hand on Roarke’s arm. “We get the lock down, we can’t rush her.”
“Eve will have thought of that.” She’d think, Roarke assured himself, step by careful step. “Does she have terms, this Roebuck?”
“She wants to die,” Mira said from behind him. “With Eve. She’ll see it as a kind of suicide pact between them. They could patch me through. I could try to negotiate, but I believe it would push her further and faster. It needs to stay between her and Eve.”
“Got it!” McNab swiped sweat off his brow. “Eyes and ears.”
Roarke glanced over at the monitor briefly, saw Eve on screen facing a woman who’d tried to make herself her twin. The hair, the eyes.
She didn’t come close, he thought, then forced himself to look away from the beat of his heart, and work to save her.
“She’s doing well,” Mira told them. “Staying calm, asking questions, using her name, keeping it personal.”
Roarke tuned it out, all of it. Just the sound of Eve’s voice—not the words, just the sound of her voice—was all he let in as he worked to lift the most important lock of his life.
“I can get us out of here, you and me,” Eve said. “You take me hostage—I’ll play along with that. Jet copter on the roof, we’re gone, anywhere you want to go. You and me, Lottie. It’s all we need, right? Then if it’s the only way to make it right, the only way we can really balance the scales, we do it at midnight. Symbolism’s important. We end at the stroke, and that’s how we begin again. Like you said.”
“There’s no place to go. It has to be here, that’s the symbol. This is our real home.”
“Being together’s what really matters, isn’t it? You and me.”
Keep saying it, Eve reminded herself. You and me. Us. We. And was rewarded by a faint, trembling smile.
“You’re not afraid to die?”
“I pick up a badge every day. You know how it is. But we have to do it right, Lottie. I’m not going to feel right about it if we take all these good cops with us. I can’t feel right about that.”
Even the faint smile vanished in a fresh flash of temper. “They can’t matter! Why don’t you see that? Her?” She swung toward Peabody, the hand on the switch trembling. “Why is she more than me?”
“She’s not.” Instinct, however foolish, had Eve shifting so she stood between Peabody and Lottie. “We’re partners now, you and me, Lottie, but hey, I trained her. I’ve got some pride in that, and she’s brought a lot of bad people to justice. We can’t forget that. We can’t forget justice, Lottie. It’s the heart of it, right? Bastwick, Ledo, they got what they deserved. Scales balanced. But this? This is going to weigh them down on the wrong side.”
“It’s not. You need to purge yourself of all this. Of the people holding us back. You don’t want to see it, but I’m going to show you. And when it’s done, you’ll thank me.”
“What if it doesn’t work? You’ve got to consider that. I’m just going to take off my coat. It’s getting hot. Think about it,” she continued, shrugging out of the coat, shifting to toss it aside and angling just a little closer as she did. “Odds are slim it won’t, I get that, but it’s a risk. You took one, I get that. Took a big one coming in here like this. Into a roomful of armed cops.”
“It had to be done.”
“I get it, but it was gutsy. And you’re in control of all of it. It’s not like any cop in the room could get off a stream—no room for that kind of break while you’re in charge. But if one of them could take the shot, he’d do it now. He’d take you down right now.”
She shifted to the balls of her feet, counting on Reineke.
He got off a stream, center mass. Before it hit, before Lottie’s body convulsed, Eve was in the air.
One chance, one chance only. For herself, for her partner, for every good cop in the room.
She grabbed Lottie’s wrist with her left hand, clamped like a vise. She thought, Roarke, and jabbed the thumb of her right hand down on Lottie’s thumb and the switch.
“Get out! Get out now. Get that fucking door open and get clear.”
“Bugger that,” Roarke said as he shoved the doors open.
“Couldn’t have said it better.” Baxter, closest, dropped down on his knees beside her. “Hold her steady, LT.”
“Fucking A.” Eve shut her eyes, bore down. “She’s jiggling under me, and my damn hand’s sweaty. If you’re going to risk getting blown up, get me off her. I’ve got the switch secure. Get me off her before she shakes me loose.”
“I’ve got you.” Roarke clamped a hand over hers, then rolled her. “I’ve got you,” he repeated as his heart beat again. “I’ll hold it now.”
“Bugger that.” Breathe, she ordered herself, just breathe. Hold it down, just hold that switch, and nobody was a dead man. “So you broke my clever code.”
“‘Later, honey’? I should say.”
“We’re going to disarm this now, Lieutenant.”
Eve turned her head to study one of the boomer team. “Say hallelujah. Peabody, once this is disarmed, I want this crazy bitch cleared medically then tossed in a box. We have a lot to talk about.”
“Peabody’s a bit preoccupied,” Roarke replied, and she turned a bit more, saw her partner and the e-geek who loved her in a full body and lip lock.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“And we’re clear.” The head of E and B gave the signal. “You can release that, Lieutenant.”
“Be damn sure,” she said as cops cheered. Her hand, sandwiched between Lottie’s and Roarke’s, didn’t want to let go. She managed to unclamp one finger at a time.
Then found herself dragged to her knees to experience a full body and lip lock.
With relief surging through her she gave it a minute—maybe two—before she shoved at Roarke. “On duty.”
“Alive.”
He rested his forehead on hers. Murmured to her in Irish—words he’d translated for her before, and that would’ve mortified her if anyone in the room understood.
“Okay.” She clamped a hand on his a moment, held it tight. “Back at you.” Then she got to her feet, turned first to Reineke. “Nice shot, Detective.”
“Nice jump, boss. Ah hell.”
To her shock he threw his arms around her, lifted her to her toes in a giant bear hug.
“Okay, okay. Hey.”
“Just went back for a cup of christing coffee. Stuck back there, my family out here. I can’t do squat.”
“Going for christing coffee and keeping your head saved your family. So . . .” She gave him a punch in the shoulder. “Good work. Everybody . . . take a couple minutes. Settle. And if somebody would get me some christing coffee, I might hug them.”
Her knees felt too fluid—and God, she could use a chair.
But not yet.
“Get her out of our house,” she ordered with another glance at Lottie. “Have her examined and cleared. I want her in the box within the hour. I’m going to take her apart, piece by lunatic piece.”
“Happy New Year.” Peabody, eyes still damp, offered her a cup of coffee.
“Yeah. Hell.” Eve took the coffee, passed it off to Roarke. And hugged her partner.
• • •
She took a little time to settle herself. She had to admit to being a little light-headed.
“Have you eaten since breakfast?” Roarke asked her when she dropped into her office chair.
“Maybe not.”
With a sigh, he pulled out his ’link.
“What are you doing?”
“Ordering pizza—for your division—and more for the E and B team. And don’t give me any bloody grief about it. I’m a bit on edge here as I couldn’t get through the bloody, buggering door for more than five minutes—and that was after Feeney started on it before me. And my wife about to be blown to bits on the other side.”
She knew the fear, the soul-emptying terror of it. She’d felt it for him a time or two. All she could do now was try to ease it.
“I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
“Weren’t you now?”
“Nope. I wasn’t going to let the last words I said to you be ‘Later, honey.’”
Since it made him laugh, she sat back, closed her eyes for one blessed moment while she heard him ordering twenty-five (good God!) large pies with a variety of toppings.
She heard the brisk click of heels, opened her eyes, and waited for Mira.
“I’m sorry to intrude.”
“Still on shift,” Eve reminded her.
“Would you like some tea?” Roarke asked, rose.
“Oh God, I would love some. Thank you. I can get it. You should sit.”
“Not at all. I’ll leave the two of you to talk. I have a few threads to tie off. I left my downtown meeting rather abruptly.” He gave Mira the tea, then smiled, bent down, kissed the top of Eve’s head, lingered there. “Pizza in thirty, and you’ll have a slice at least before you take on your prisoner.”
“I could eat.”
Eve waited as Mira sat, gingerly, on the edge of the miserable visitor’s chair. “You’re going to tell me she’s crazy, which isn’t news! but you’re going to add she’s going to skew legally insane. I’m not going to get her locked in an off-planet cage for the rest of her crazy life.”
“No, you’re not. You will get her locked in an institution for the rest of her life.”
“I’m dealing with her first. She had my people. All of my people. She would’ve killed all my cops. Well, maybe Reineke would’ve survived the blast—then he’d never have gotten over surviving it.”
She stopped for a minute, pressed her fingers to her eyes because to her shock and unease, tears burned at them.
“But they were nothing to her, goddamn it. They were nothing to her. She’d worked with them, maybe all of them, at some point. Worked the same crime scene, and she didn’t care. And why, because she has some sort of sick crush on me?”
Mira rose, set the tea on Eve’s desk. “Drink that.” Gently, she brushed a hand over Eve’s hair. “For me.”
“I don’t— Fine.” To get it done, Eve downed the contents of the cup in one go.
And oddly felt steadier.
“It’s more than that,” Mira said. “More than a crush. She idolized you, idealized you, and that was unhealthy. Then she wanted to demonize you, but she couldn’t accept it. What planted these seeds in her will take years to really understand.”
“Sister, mother, dead.”
“Yes, I familiarized myself with some of her data while I— I want to say you handled it, handled her, with insight and intelligence, and incredible courage.”
“I couldn’t hold her.”
“No. No, she had made the last turn, and wouldn’t have come back. But you made her talk, got her to take that time, give you time. If you couldn’t have reached the switch, held it—”
“I had to. All my people, Mira. All of them. My family. Reineke said it. You do whatever you have to do for family. It’s taken me some time to figure that one.”
“It took you time to make the family, then you didn’t have to figure out anything. I’ll observe. It’s best I’m not in the room. As much as it will hurt Peabody, it would be best if she’s not in the room. Just the two of you.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll interview her myself, tomorrow.”
“First of the year.”
“It shouldn’t wait. Dennis understands. We’re lucky, you and I, in that area.”
“No snake eyes for us.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing. Colorful metaphor.”
• • •
She ate pizza, grateful Whitney stayed with her people, ate with them. And got a surprise when Peabody didn’t argue about the interview.
“Mira explained it. I’m going to observe though.”
“Don’t you have a ball drop to get to?”
“Hours yet. I want to see it through. Everybody wants to see it through.”
Eve moved into Observation first—wanted a look at the prisoner—and found out Peabody meant everybody literally.
“Don’t you people have anywhere to go?”
“Take her down, LT,” Jenkinson told her. “Wrap up that crazy bitch.”
“You got pizza sauce on your tie, Detective.”
“Damn it.”
Feeney handed Jenkinson a napkin, and as Eve had with Reineke, punched Eve’s shoulder. “Finish the job, kid, and we’ll all get the hell out of here.”
They had her cold on the explosives—and she’d pretty much confessed to the murders. But the courts, the lawyers, the shrinks wanted all the t’s crossed.
She stepped into the room where Lottie sat slumped in the chair at the scarred table, her hands and feet chained.
“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, entering interview with Roebuck, Lottie, on the matter of . . . a lot of things. Ms. Roebuck, you’ve been charged with the unauthorized transport of explosive devices, forced imprisonment, attempted murder—several counts—of a police officer, assault with a deadly on a police officer. Officer Hanks from Evidence is okay, by the way. And various other charges stemming from this incident. You are also being held on suspicion of murder—first degree—two counts; attempted murder, two counts; intent to murder, one more. Officers are now searching your residence, your electronics—home and work—and other charges may be coming as a result of what they find. You’ve been read your rights by Detective Peabody, on record, but I’m happy to refresh that.”
“I know my rights. I know what’s right.”
“Okay, then.” Eve sat. “Let’s go back, take this all in chronological order. Leanore Bastwick.”
“She deserved to die. You said you understood, you wanted it! She made her living getting criminals off. You risk your life to stop the very people she talks free again. She said terrible things about you, in public. She showed you no respect.”
“So you went to her apartment, in the guise of a delivery person, stunned her, carried her to her bedroom, strangled her with piano wire. And cut out her tongue.”
“It was symbolic.”
“What was symbolic?
”
“Cutting out her tongue. She lied for a living. She lied about you. I was happy to kill her. It made me happy. I liked feeling happy.”
“So you killed her because she lied.”
“For you! For justice.” Lottie banged her fists on the table. “I’m so disappointed in you, Eve. I’m so disappointed.”
“I bet. Take me through it. Start to finish. Maybe there’s just something I’m missing.”
“I dreamed about it for a long time. Making a difference, a real difference. The way I thought you did. I watched you testify in the Barrow case. I testified in others, and had to sit there, just sit there and listen to her—to Bastwick and others like her—try to twist the truth. So I started a log, just watching her.”
“You followed her,” Eve prompted.
“She never saw me. Nobody did. Not in court, or her office, or shopping, or home. I made fake deliveries to her building three times before I was ready, and nobody paid any attention.”
“You practiced.”
“I didn’t want to make a mistake, and I didn’t. The same with Ledo, Hastings. Others.” She smiled a little. “There are so many. They never notice me. No one does. People notice you. I changed my hair.”
She fluffed at it.
“I see that.”
“I wore a wig at work the last few weeks, but at home, I could look at myself and see you in there. My eyes, too. I had to wear contacts over them, but I could see with your eyes. I saw Bastwick with your eyes. That’s how close we are, Eve. So we killed her. We killed Bastwick.”
“We?”
“You and me. You were inside me, you were my courage. You gave me courage, Eve. I was so grateful. I wrote you a note on the wall. Why don’t you see I’m your friend?”
“Why did you put Bastwick in bed?”
“It’s tidier. It’s respectful. Just because she was disrespectful doesn’t mean we have to sink to her level. It’s nice to talk to you like this. Just the two of us. It’s all I wanted.”
“Take me through it, Lottie. Take me through Bastwick.”
Once she had, Eve led her to Ledo, then to Hastings.
“I failed. I almost tagged Dawson, told him I was sick, but I wanted to see you that night—at the Hastings scene. I wanted to see if you were upset with me. And I heard you say things to Peabody that weren’t nice about me. You said things on screen, too. It hurt my feelings. Why don’t people see I have feelings?”