by J. D. Robb
“Kirkendall acquired real estate near two of the targets. Prime stuff, good investment. Looks like he kept them. Using a couple of blinds, or a couple we’ve got so far. Triangle Group out of Five-By Corporation.”
“Triangle.” He moved toward her, brushed her out of his chair. “Logical. Five-By? Is that an indication there are two more prime players in this?”
“Five-by-five.”
“Is twenty-five?”
“No, not math. Military term.”
“You’ve got one on me.”
“It’s like loud and clear. Like I hear you fine. Everything’s solid. Like that.”
“Ah.” He looked over what she’d already done. “The White House. Don’t we think a lot of ourselves? And the parent organization is ostensibly housed in the Pentagon and the UN, and I believe this is Buckingham Palace. However grand their delusions, they don’t make much of a blip in the business world. I’ve never heard of either company. Let’s just see what we see.”
“Can I leave you on this a minute? I need to update the commander. It might keep them off my ass a while longer.”
“Go on, but pop downstairs and see if all’s well, will you? I left Mavis as acting host, and Christ knows what she might think up.”
She made the call, and put off her social obligations long enough to pop in on Feeney as he was wrapping up.
Once she made it down, she found all the adults, including Elizabeth, in the parlor.
“They’re fine,” Elizabeth told her. “Having such a good time I thought I’d let them hang together, as Kevin says, for a little while.”
“Good. Okay. Fine.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Mira told her. “It’s obvious you’ve had something come up. We can easily entertain ourselves for a while.”
“Even better.”
In the game room Nixie and Kevin took a break from the machines. She liked having another kid around, even if he was a boy. And his mother and father seemed nice. His mother had even played Intergalactic War with them. And nearly won, too.
But she was glad she’d gone away for a while. There were things you couldn’t say with adults around.
“How come you don’t talk like your mom and dad?” Nixie wanted to know.
“I talk like everybody.”
“No, they have a sort of accent. It’s different. How come you don’t?”
“Maybe because they haven’t been my mom and dad the whole time. But they are now.”
“They, like, adopted you?”
“We had a party when they did. Almost like a birthday. There was chocolate cake.”
“That’s nice.” She thought it was, but there was a jittery feeling in her stomach. “Did somebody kill your real mom and dad?”
“My other mom,” he corrected. “Because I have a real mom. You get to be real when you’re adopted.”
“I mean your other. Did somebody kill her?”
“Nuh-uh.” He began to pet Galahad, who’d deigned to stay and have his belly rubbed. “Sometimes she’d go away, and I’d get hungry. Sometimes she’d be nice, and sometimes she’d hit me. ‘Smack the crap out of you, little bastard.’ ” He grinned when he said it, but it wasn’t a pleasant expression. “That’s how her face looked when she hit. But my mom now, she never hits, and she never has that face. My dad either. Sometimes they get this one.”
He drew his eyebrows together and tried to look stern. “But mostly they don’t. And they don’t go away, and I don’t get hungry, not like before.”
“How did they find you?”
“They came and got me from the place where you have to go if you don’t have a mom or something. You get to eat there, and they’ve got games, but I didn’t want to stay there—and I didn’t for very long. Then they came and we got to go live in Virginia. We have a big house. Not as big as this,” he said, stringently honest. “But it’s big and I have my own room, and Dopey came with us.”
Nixie moistened her lips. “Are they going to take me to Virginia?” She knew where that was, sort of. She knew the capital was Richmond because she had to learn all the states and their capitals in school. But it wasn’t New York. It wasn’t here. It wasn’t home.
“I don’t know.” Obviously intrigued, Kevin cocked his head and studied her. “Don’t you live here?”
“No. I don’t live anywhere. People came in our house and killed my mom and dad.”
“Killed them dead?” Kevin’s eyes popped wide. “How come?”
“Because my dad was good and they were wrong people. That’s what Dallas said.”
“That’s the doom.” He gave her a pat, as he had Galahad. “Were you scared?”
“What do you think?” she snapped back, but the sympathy on Kevin’s face didn’t fade.
“I think I’da been so scared I wouldn’t even be able to breathe.”
The little flash of anger died. “I was. They killed them, and they didn’t kill me, and I have to stay here for protection. Dallas is going to find them and put them in a goddamn cage.”
He slapped a hand over his mouth and slid his gaze to the door. “You’re not supposed to say goddamn,” he whispered. “Mom gets that look on her face if you forget and say it.”
“She’s not my mom.”
When tears glimmered, Kevin scooted over and put an arm around her. “It’s okay. She can be your mom, too, if you want.”
“I want my own mom.”
“She got dead.”
Nixie dropped her head to her drawn-up knees. “They won’t let me go back to my house. They won’t let me go to school. And I don’t know where Virginia is, exactly.”
“We have a big yard, and we have a puppy. Sometimes he pees on the floor. It’s pretty funny.”
She sighed, rested her cheek on her knees. “I want to ask Dallas if I have to go to Virginia.” She swiped at her cheeks, rose, and used the house scanner. “Where is Dallas?”
Dallas is in Roarke’s office.
“You have to keep this.” Carefully, she unpinned the homer from her shirt, pinned it on Kevin’s. “It’s how Summerset knows where I am. I just want to talk to Dallas and nobody else, so you have to stay here and play games until I get back.”
“Okay. When you come back, we can look Virginia up on a map, then you can see.”
“Maybe.”
She knew the house, or at least the parts of it Summerset had shown her. To avoid the parlor, she took the elevator up a floor, then dashed down the corridor, and used the steps.
Part of her wanted to run away. But where would she go? She didn’t want to be alone. She knew kids were sometimes. Coyle had told her there were places like Sidewalk City where kids nobody wanted lived in boxes and had to beg for food.
She didn’t want to live in a box, but it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair that they were going to send her away. No one even asked.
Creeping past a door, she paused to listen.
She heard nothing inside, so eased around to look. It was Dallas’s office, and no one was there.
She crept to the next door.
“Gonna nail those sons of bitches. Look at the tenant list, two blocks from the Brenegan murder scene, and we’ve got a fucking revolving door.”
There was a sound in Dallas’s voice, Nixie thought. Kind of mean, and kind of excited, too. Like she’d heard one of the bigger kids sound at free-time in school when he talked about punching another kid.
“Two of those names are known aliases for Cassandra disciples. And one of them’s a face sculptor—a dead one. Bet your excellent ass he’s the one who did the work on Kirkendall and Clinton. The other’s off planet doing life. I’m going to have to go squeeze him, and I hate going off planet.”
“We get lucky here, you won’t have to. Every property or company I find is one away from pinning their base. Just give us some room here, Lieutenant.”
“Right, right.”
Nixie heard footsteps, crouched.
“And stop pacing about. It’s annoying. Why don’
t you leave me to this for a half hour, go downstairs—or at the very least go hound someone.”
“I sent my team home. You’re what’s left for me to hound.”
“Just my lucky day.”
There was a beeping, an oath that would have gotten Nixie grounded for a month if she’d so much as thought it.
“Dallas.”
Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Compromised police seal, main front entrance, Swisher murder scene.
“Goddamn kids.”
Patrol dispatched. Acknowledge you have been informed of compromise.
“Acknowledged. Have the patrol hold at scene. Have officers in light armor as precautionary measure. I want to check it out myself. ETA, ten minutes.”
Acknowledged. Seal requires replacement. Dispatch out.
“If there’s a patrol heading there, it seems unnecessary for you to go as well.”
“I chased a bunch of kids away earlier. Should’ve kicked some butt, but I didn’t want to chance another chase. If they’re inside, I want to correct that error in judgment, personally. If they’re nearby, I’m going to take a few minutes of my time to round them up, and kick said butt.”
“I’ll go with you, then.”
“Jesus, Roarke, it’s a kid butt-kicking detail. I can handle it.” There was a long pause, a hiss of breath. “Okay, okay, no unnecessary risks. I’ll catch Baxter, take him along. I need you to stay on this and coordinate with Peabody once she gets to Central.”
“Wear your vest.”
“Oh Christ!” There was a sharp thud, as if something had been kicked. “Yes, mommy.”
“And later when I take it off of you, you’ll be calling me something entirely different.”
“Ha-ha. Ten minutes there, ten back, ten to kick teenage butt. Back in thirty.”
In the hall, Nixie streaked away. With her heart drumming, she raced down the stairs, found an elevator, and ordered it to take her to the ground-floor library.
There was an outside door there, and she knew which car Dallas drove.
Eve caught Baxter on the stairs. “I need you to ride with me. Seal’s compromised at the Swisher house. I chased a bunch of teenagers away from it this afternoon. Looks like they came back. Trueheart, take the vehicle. I’ll stick your partner in a cab when we’re done slapping around a bunch of kids.” She tossed Baxter a vest. “Suit up. I take no chances.”
He started to take off his jacket.
“Upstairs. Jesus, you think I want to see what you refer to as your manly chest?” She took a small remote out of her pocket, tapped in a code.
“What’s that?”
She felt the heat rise up the back of her neck. “It’s a remote, brings my ride around on auto.”
“Sweet. Let me—”
She stuck it back in her pocket. “Just suit up, Baxter. I’d like to get this annoying little detail accomplished so I can get back to work.”
She took enough time to signal Mavis out of the parlor. “Listen, I’ve got to go out for a few, and I might be pretty jammed up when I get back. Can you keep everybody happy?”
“It’s what I do best. Hey, maybe I’ll get everybody down to the pool before we eat. That chilly with you?”
“It’s great.” She tried to envision Mavis cavorting in the water with Elizabeth and Mira. “Ah . . . But wear a suit, okay?”
Outside, Nixie dashed behind a tree when she heard the engine. She watched, breath quick and short as Dallas’s car streamed out of the garage and toward the front of the house. She watched it stop, heard locks click.
It was wrong. She shouldn’t do it. But she wanted to go home. Even for a little while. Before they sent her away, before they made her have another mom and dad.
She took one last glance toward the house, then ran for the car and crawled onto the floor of the backseat. She pulled the door shut only a moment before the door of the house opened. And she lay there, eyes squeezed shut.
“Some smooth ride you scored this time, Dallas.”
Baxter. He was nice, funny. He wouldn’t be too mad if they found her.
“Don’t play with my controls. When we’re done with this, I need you to hook up with Peabody, keep pushing the property angle. We’re going to find them Upper West. Shit, they could be a fucking block away.”
“There goes the neighborhood. We scattering for the night because of the IAB hound?”
“Webster’s okay—but if I’ve got the team officially on the clock, and working out of my home, it’s a gray area. Politicians grumbling, and they don’t like gray unless they’re painting it. We got dead cops, we got injured cops, we’re poking into other cops’ cases—one of them closed with a guy doing cage time for it. And I’m not shutting it down fast enough to suit them. I’m not going to give them a reason to pull me off.”
“Taking the kid into your place opened you up to it.”
“I know it.”
“It was the right thing, Dallas. The right thing for her. Kid didn’t just need protection. She needed . . . comfort.”
“She needs me to close this thing, and I can’t if I get jammed up with bullshit. So we straddle the line, and Webster will keep the brass off our ass until we do. There’s the black-and-white. Let’s get this done.”
Eve strode to the two uniforms. “Either of you go inside?”
“No, sir. We were ordered to hold. Light was on up there, right front window, second floor.” One of them nodded toward the house. “Switched off when we pulled up. No one’s come out.”
“You check the back?”
“We were told to hold.”
“Jesus, don’t either of you have possession of a brain today? Kids’ve probably scrambled. Baxter, go around the back. I’ll take the front. The two of you stand here and give the appearance of being cops.”
She approached the front entrance, examined the seal and lock. Both had been hacked and mangled. It screamed kids, but she followed the suggestion of the tingle at the base of her spine and drew her weapon before she booted the door.
She swept, center, right, left, back to center. Called for lights and listened.
There was some debris scattered around. Home brew bottles, bags of soy chips. Snack food littered the floor, and had been crushed underfoot. It all said kids, disrespect, party.
When she heard a soft creak overhead, she crossed to the stairs.
Because she couldn’t hear anything, Nixie risked easing her head up, peeking out the window. She saw the two policemen and bit her lip when her eyes welled with tears. They wouldn’t let her go inside. If she tried to, they’d see her.
Even as she thought it, there were two bright flashes, and the policemen flew backwards and fell down the steps to her mother’s office. So quickly it seemed like pretend, two figures in black ran across the sidewalk and into her house.
The shadows.
She wanted to scream, to scream so loud, but nothing came out of her throat as she squeezed her body down onto the floor again. The shadows would kill Dallas and Baxter, just like they’d killed everybody. While she hid. They would cut them up while she hid.
Then she remembered what was in her pocket, and fumbled out the ’link Roarke had given her. She pushed the button, hard, and began to weep as she crawled out of the car. “You have to come, you have to help. They’re here! They’re going to kill Dallas. Hurry and come.”
Then she ran home.
At his desk Roarke felt the cool satisfaction of outwitting a foe. He was peeling away layers. He didn’t have the core yet, not yet, but it was only a matter of time. Dig deeply enough, and there were always footprints under the muck. He could follow them now. Triangle to Five-By, Five-By to Unified Action—another military term. And all the crisscrossing threads between. He came across the name Clarissa Branson, listed as president of Unified. Jolt from the past, he thought. One of Cassandra’s top-level operatives.
Eve had caught her, he remembered, before the crazy bitch could kill them both and blow up the Statue of Liberty for good m
easure. Clarissa and William Henson, the man who’d trained her. Both dead now. But . . .
He pulled up another program and ordered a search for New York properties under Clarissa Branson, William Henson, or any combination thereof.
He checked the time, judged Eve would have arrived at the Swisher house. No point in interrupting her fun, he decided. Which she would gain, whatever she said, from busting down on a bunch of foolish kids.
“Ah, well now, there you are you shagging bastards. Branson Williams, West Seventy-third. My cop’s right again. Best interrupt her after all.”
“Roarke.” Summerset, normally the most restrained of men, rushed into the office without knocking. “Nixie’s missing.”
“Be specific.”
“She’s not in the house. She took off the homer, put it on the boy. She told him she wanted to talk with the lieutenant, and left him in the game room. I’ve checked the scanners. She’s not in the house.”
“Well, she could hardly get off the property. Likely she’s just . . .” He thought of Eve leaving with Baxter. “Oh bloody hell.”
As he swung to his desk ’link, the one in his pocket signalled. He yanked it out, heard the child’s voice.
“Call for backup,” he snapped out and uncoded a drawer. “Contact Peabody and the rest, give them the situation.”
“I’ll do it on the way. I’m going with you. That child was my responsibility.”
Rather than argue, Roarke checked the weapon he’d taken out, tossed it to Summerset, and chose another. “You’ll have to keep up.”
23
AS SHE REACHED THE STEPS, EVE EASED HER communicator out of her pocket. She keyed in a code, ordering Baxter in as backup. When there was no response, she let the curses roll in her head. She tapped into Dispatch, keyed in for officer-needs-assistance. If it was kids playing hide-and-seek upstairs, she’d live down the humiliation.
She backed down, made her way quietly toward the rear of the house. She’d call Baxter again, and she’d use the domestic’s steps.
She’d reached the kitchen when the lights shut off.
She crouched in the dark, and though her heart gave three solid bumps, her mind stayed cool. They’d sprung a trap before she did, but it didn’t mean she’d wouldn’t take the cheese and walk away.