15

 

 

While he worked, once again aligning himself with cops, worry sat heavy in the back of Roarke’s mind. Though he was a man who’d trained himself to remain cool and clearheaded in crises—else the hothead who lived inside him would have spent most of his years in a cage of one sort or another—that worry stiffened and tightened his shoulders to dull aches.

His wife—the center of his world—was running straight into exhaustion, had barely recovered from an ugly dream inside the scant two hours of sleep she’d managed.

He’d read it on her face when she’d come to check their progress, that pale and shadowed look, the one of nearly translucent skin and bruised eyes.

He could feel much the same from the good cops who worked with him, that drawn-tight-as-a-spring fatigue under their gut-deep determination to push on. And push on.

And there was little he could do to fix it. Not the time, the place, to order in gallons of good coffee or platters of food. Neither the money nor the power he’d worked all his life to attain could help.

So he applied his skill, his creativity with tech, and felt it wasn’t nearly enough.

How did one catch a killer by knowing where they’d been, and where they surely weren’t any longer?

She would say, his cop, every detail mattered. So he applied himself to finding those details.

Worry for Eve mixed and melded with worry for Summerset. What help was he there?

The look on Summerset’s face, the grief and horror, the blood on his hands, and more, the slight quaver in his voice haunted.

It jolted, always jolted, those rare glimpses of frailty in the man who had essentially raised him, who had saved him from the alleys, the beatings, the hunger, and the miseries. Who had helped him develop that clearheaded control and bank the furies that raged under it.

Where would he be, who would he be, without these two complicated and opposing forces? He couldn’t say, would never know, but surely not where and who he was now, working alongside cops he’d once reviled.

Eve tracked a killer, prepared to face down the one who’d trained his own child to kill. Summerset tended the wounded.

And he . . . Well, he’d done all he could do here to narrow down locations, positions, possibilities.

He rose, looked toward Feeney. A father figure for Eve. It was all father figures, wasn’t it? Feeney, Summerset, Mackie. Those who trained and schooled, for good or for ill.

“I need to find Summerset, make certain he’s all right.”

“Go,” Feeney told him. “We’re good here. Better than I figured we’d be. You gonna license this program to the NYPSD?”

“We’ll consider it a gift. I’ll arrange it.”

That was something, at least, he thought as he left them.

He tried Summerset’s ’link, but only got v-mail. Forgot to turn the shagging ’link on, he thought, or was too busy staunching blood or splinting bones to answer.

He started to try Eve, decided she’d not welcome an interruption to her work any more than he would have to his at a crisis point.

He wandered through, and cops on guard or at tasks merely nodded to him. Once, they would have chased him hard and fast, he thought. Those days were done, and however much he might entertain a bit of nostalgia for the thrill and adventure of them, he wouldn’t trade a moment of this life he had, not even with the weight of worry.

He saw her first, coming through a door he realized with the blueprint in his head must have led backstage, house left. So pale,

he thought, and because he knew those eyes so well, he knew there had been tears somewhere.

As she walked, she spoke into her ’link, giving more orders, he assumed, coordinating details, and taking reports.

As he started to go to her, Summerset came through the doors, house right.

Frail, Roarke thought again, the bones of his face too prominent against the drawn skin. Something more than fatigue in his eyes. Tears again, the sort that burn in the belly, scorch the heart, and aren’t cooled by the shedding.

In that instant he felt caught between them, these two vital loves, opposing forces.

Then he saw Summerset sway, just slightly, and reach a hand down to the back of a seat to steady himself. There the choice was made for him, and he changed angles to go to the man who’d given him a life.

“You need to sit.” Roarke spoke more brusquely than he meant to as that worry leaped hard into his throat. “I’ll get you some water.”

“I’m all right. So many aren’t. There were so many.”

“You’ll sit,” he said again just as Eve stepped up to them. “Both of you will bloody well sit down for five bloody minutes while I find some bloody water.”

“We need to go to Central. I need you to come in,” she said to Summerset, “give a statement.”

“Well, fuck that,” Roarke snapped. “He needs to go home, he needs to rest. Bugger it, have you no eyes to see?”

“It’ll be easier, away from here. I can have you taken home after.” “He’s going nowhere but home. I’ll be taking him myself.”

With sudden and bright fury, Eve rounded on Roarke. “This is a police investigation, this is a goddamn crime scene, and I say who goes where and when.”

“Then arrest the pair of us since you’ve apparently nothing better to do. Is this how you treat him after he’s fagged to the bone from mopping up blood?”

“Don’t tempt me. I don’t have time for drama.” “I’ll show you drama right enough.”

“Stop it, both of you.” Summerset’s tone, straw-thin with fatigue, still held an edge. “Behaving like cranky toddlers needing a nap.”

“I told you to sit the hell down.”

“And I believe I will, despite your rudeness. Because I need to.” Summerset lowered into an aisle seat, let out a sigh. “I’ll go into Central, of course, but I need to know if Ivanna is all right before I

leave.”

“I just saw her. She’s fine, and we’re having her taken home. I told her you’d contact her as soon as you could.”

“The others. Mavis, Leonardo, Nadine, Trina?”

“The same. They’re all . . .” Eve’s voice broke; she cleared it. “They’re all good.”

“That eases my mind.” His eyes met Eve’s a moment, and he sighed again. Then he looked at Roarke. “I could use some water, as it happens.”

“I’ll get it. You stay just where you are.”

“I frightened him,” Summerset told Eve when they were alone. “It’s difficult to see weakness in the one who raised you.”

“Understood, but—”

“And you worry him. You look, Lieutenant, as brutally tired and heavy as I feel. And what can he do for us, he asks himself, when one he loves above all else must use one he cares for as a child for a parent? Why, snarl at them both, of course.”

He smiled a little.

She could feel herself teetering on some rocky edge, knowing that if she leaned too far one way she’d crumble. No choice then, she thought, no choice but to lean the other way, and hold on.

“I’m sorry, but time’s so narrow. I can’t wait to move to the next step.”

“Understood.” He echoed her. “I would like to go home. The boy has that right. I would very much like to go home. We could save each other time by doing this here and now. Is that possible?”

“Yeah, I just figured you’d want to get away.” “You never get away, do you?”

Roarke came back with two tubes of water.

“Hush, boy,” Summerset muttered as Roarke started to speak. “I’m about to give the lieutenant my statement, as we’ve agreed to do so

right here.”

Eve sat across the aisle. “I have eyes, but I need to know what yours saw.” She engaged her recorder, read in the salient data.

“Tell me what you remember.”

“We were nearly to the doors, Ivanna and I, nearly outside. It was a diverse, celebratory evening. The crowd—I believe they must have sold out tonight, so we were hemmed in by the crowd at first.

But . . .”

When Summerset rubbed at his temple, Roarke pulled out a small case, took out a blocker.

“Take it.” At Summerset’s cool stare, Roarke’s jaw set, but he added, “Please.”

“Thank you.” Summerset cracked the tube, took the pill, sipped the water. “I think, yes, I think I was about to lead Ivanna through the doors when I saw someone fall to the ground—a belly wound, I could see that, too. There were screams as someone else fell—a head wound. Then panic. People running, shoving. I pulled Ivanna aside, worked back until I could get her clear. She argued, but she understood there wasn’t time. She promised she’d go backstage, to Mavis. We’d visited before the concert, and I was confident she’d make her way. Everyone else was trying to get out.”

“The one who went down first. Describe him.”

“Middle thirties, I would think, blond hair. Caucasian. He had a black topcoat, open, and I’d seen the blood spread. By the time I was able to get outside to him, he was gone. Two more strikes—one in each leg. I heard the screams, and the cars—brakes squealing.

Even as I moved to try to help a woman who’d been knocked to the ground, I saw another struck by a car as she ran into the street. And then I . . .”

“What next?”

“For a moment, longer, I fear, I was in another place, another time.

In London, during another strike, during the Urbans. The same sounds, smells, the same terrible fear and rush. Bodies on the ground, bleeding, wounded calling for help, the weeping and the desperation to escape.”

He stared at the tube of water for a moment, then drank from it. “I froze, you see, just froze between that time and this, and did nothing.

I stood there, just stood there. Then someone shoved me, and I fell. I fell beside the body of a woman who was beyond help. Nothing to do for her, nothing at all, and I came back to myself, to the moment.

There was a boy, barely twenty, if that, I’d say, knocked senseless. Someone trampled right over him, stepped on his hand. I heard the bones crack. I did what I could for him until the medicals began to arrive.”

He paused, drank again. “People were still falling, but the medicals, the police rushed in. I called out that I was a medic, and one of them threw me a kit. So we did what we could do, just like on any battlefield. I don’t know how long—minutes, hours—then you came, you and my boy here. The worst was over quickly then, you saw to that. I tended more outside, then inside. And here we are.”

Eve waited a beat. “The woman you were working on when we came?”

“Stabilized, enough, I think. They took her once she was stable enough. They said at least a dozen dead. How many? Do you know?”

“Sixteen DOS, and two more who didn’t make it. So, eighteen.

There would have been more if you hadn’t been here, if you hadn’t helped.”

“Eighteen.” Summerset lowered his head, stared at the water in his hand. “We couldn’t save the eighteen, so we look to you to make them matter, to find them justice.”

“They matter. So do the wounded. I’ll get you their names, the living and the dead.”

He lifted his head, met her eyes. “Thank you.” “Roarke can take you home.”

“No, I think he’ll stay with you. There’s nothing for me to do here, and everything for you. I’ll take a soother and go to bed,” he told Roarke, and seemed steadier when he rose.

“I’d rather you weren’t alone.”

“I’ll have the cat.” Summerset smiled a little, then did something Eve hadn’t seen him do before. He leaned in, kissed Roarke’s cheek.

Moved, embarrassed, Eve got to her feet. “I’m going to arrange transportation.” She started out, stopped. “The medicals and cops

who rushed in? Saying it’s their job doesn’t diminish the risk or the courage. It wasn’t your job, but you took the same risk, showed the same courage. I won’t forget it.”

“I should go with you,” Roarke said.

“No.” Summerset shook his head. “I want quiet, and my bed, and I’ll admit the cat will add some comfort. Wars never really end as long as there are those who feel entitled, even obliged, to take lives. It’s not my war now, but it’s hers, and because it’s hers, it’s yours. I’m proud of you both, and hope you’ll bring me peaceful news when you come home.”

He let out another sigh, a long one, then squeezed Roarke’s shoulder. “I’m going to check in with Ivanna, settle myself there, and let our lieutenant have me taken home.”

“We’ll have you both taken home,” Eve told him. “I’ll take care of having all of you taken home.”

“Thank you. I’m well, boy. Just tired.”

“Then I’ll take you back to Ivanna, walk you both out.”

L

—

ater, Roarke walked Summerset out, to the police car waiting at the curb. When Eve joined him, he could feel the stiffness in her

body, part anger, he mused, part sheer determination to stay on her feet.

“There’s nothing you can do now,” she began, and he found himself snapping toward her.

“I feel useless enough at the moment without you adding to it.” “Useless, my ass. We wouldn’t have the nests without you, and we

now have all three. Maybe they’ll help track her next position, her next target. Fuck your ‘useless.’”

“Then there’s always something else I can do.”

“You should’ve gone with him. You should go home, make sure he goes to bed, and get some sleep yourself.”

“He wants what he wants, and I’ll sleep when you do. Shall we waste time arguing about it?”

“Fine.” She started off at a fast clip. “I sent Peabody ahead. I’ve got a consult with Mira, then I’m taking Mackie into Interview.”

“I’ll see what help I can be elsewhere.” Stopping, he took Eve’s arm—firmly. “He looked shaken and fragile. I couldn’t stand the idea that you would push him. And yourself. I couldn’t stand being caught between the pair of you when you both looked ready to drop, and neither would give way.”

“He held up.” She hissed out a breath. “I wasn’t going to push him, but I needed to know what he saw. He was right there, front lines, and he’s been there before. It gives me insight. She’s going to hit again, and likely quicker now. I needed him.”

“I know it.”

“What he did? I admire it more than I can say. He could’ve gone back in, stayed safe, but he went outside, he risked doing that to save lives.”

“He saved mine, and so did you. It’s a tricky dance for me.”

She stopped at the car. “You were the making of him, that’s what I see.” The stunned look on Roarke’s face had her shaking her head. “He wouldn’t be with you still if that wasn’t the way it is. You say you and I saved each other. Well, before I came along, the two of you did the same. Another way, another path, but just as true. You gave him purpose, and you gave him a son. So let’s just table all this crap.”

“Crap tabled.” Then he pulled her into his arms, held tight. “No one’s paying attention to the likes of us right now. So give me this, as I need it. I swear, I need it.”

She gave what he needed, and took what she needed. Held on. “You know, you got more Irish in there, trying to bully us into doing what you thought we should do.”

“A bloody lot of good it did me.” He drew back. “I’m going to find you a booster. Not now, not the sort you hate, as they wire you up. I’ll find something that suits you.”

“If anybody can. You can drive. I’ve got people to talk to.”

He got behind the wheel, glanced over at her. “Will this new sort of understanding, as it were, also table the daily sniping between you and Summerset?”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“Well then, there’s something to look forward to.”

—

S

he moved fast through Central, didn’t notice—as Roarke did— the other cops, support staff who recognized her, step aside to clear her way.

Even as she strode into Homicide, Peabody stood up behind her desk. “Mira’s in your office. Sweepers are all over the nests.

We’re culling through wit reports. A few may be viable.” “Keep it going. Mackie?”

“En route, with counsel.”

“In Interview, the minute he’s in the house. Give me ten with Mira.” “I’ll take myself off to EDD,” Roarke told Eve. “And if I can’t be of

use there, I’ll be elsewhere.”

“You could catch an hour’s sleep in the crib.” “Not in this lifetime, or the next.”

“Snob.”

“So be it.” He’d have kissed her, actively longed to. But he understood there were Marriage Rules on either side. So he just flicked a finger down the dent in her chin and wandered away.

They’d both do what they could—and he’d access his home system, make certain Summerset was home, and in bed.

Then he’d find his cop a damn booster.

Mira stood in Eve’s office facing the case board. She’d tossed her coat on the visitor’s chair. Clothes might not have been high on Eve’s list of priorities, but observation was. And she observed Mira wore leg-hugging black pants with knee-high black boots and a floaty blue sweater rather than her usual pretty suit and heels.

“I need to update that.”

Mira didn’t turn. “It gives a good sense, and I’m fully briefed on this morning’s attack.”

“I need coffee. You want that tea stuff?”

“Yes, thanks. She continued her father’s agenda. Still seeking his approval.”

“She likes to kill.”

“Yes. Very much yes, but she’s still a child, and the child seeks to please the father. This is their bond. It began with weaponry, honing her skill there, and devolved into revenge. As his skills lessened due to his addiction, hers have sharpened. The apprentice has exceeded the master. She became his weapon.”

“She likes it,” Eve insisted.

“Again, I agree.” Mira took the tea, holding the cup as she studied the dead. “In the first attack, the other two victims were, essentially, cover. Or he convinced himself of that. But I wonder. Did he feel pride when she so skillfully struck three targets? I think he did. In the second, we had five struck, four dead, so he allowed her to test her skills. Or she increased on her own. And now the third.”

“Eighteen dead.”

“Yes. Now she has her head. She has no one to tell her to stop.” “Will he feel pride?”

“I believe he will. He may see, some part of him may see, she’s reveling in the kill—not the agenda, not the mission, but the power of the kill. And still, she’s his child, one he taught. One he loves.”

“What kind of love is that?” Eve snapped it out. “What kind of love raises a kid to be a monster?”

“However twisted, for him it’s genuine. He sacrificed himself to save her. He sent her away, not only in hopes she might eventually complete the mission, but certainly to protect her.”

She turned now to face Eve. “He was a police officer. He certainly had to know, once you’d identified them, you’d also identified at least some of the targets. So those targets would be out of reach.”

“Tell that to Jonah Rothstein.” Eve took the ID shot out of her field kit, put it on the board.

“There’s no point blaming yourself when you know who’s responsible.”

“I just couldn’t . . . No.” Eve sucked in a breath. “No point. So, the instructor—the master—wants the mission completed, and for it to be completed, the student needs to stay safe. Free. And the father protects the child, even as he helps twist her into a killer. Because I think to do what she’s done, it was always in there. Inside there. He just had to recognize it and exploit it.

“But he doesn’t know her agenda—she was smart to keep that to herself. Will he care? When I hit him with hers in the hospital, he wasn’t ready to believe me. Her own mother, her own brother, teachers, kids in school? He slapped that off. When I make him believe it, will he give a fuck?”

“You need him to,” Mira said with a nod. “You need him to, we could say, give a great many fucks in order to pressure him into giving you information on her whereabouts.”

Another time it might have amused her to hear Mira’s clinical use of the f-word. “That’s exactly right.”

“I believe children are important to him. With the divorce, a man in his position—a demanding career—could have opted for generous visitation rather than co-parenting. It was the loss of his wife and the potential of another child that broke the restraints on his control.”

“The kid brother then, the school.” “Will most likely be your best levers.”

“She’s not going to Alaska to live wild and free, as in his plan for her.” Eve nodded. “She’s going to stay right here, shift over to her own mission. He taught her to kill, now she’s going to take what he taught her and eliminate anyone who’s annoyed her. Keeping herself in my crosshairs. Not safe. Yeah, yeah, I’ll play that.”

“Do you want me in Interview?”

“No, I want him looking at me. The one who’s hunting his offspring.

A cop killer. I want him thinking about that, knowing she’s still here. Knowing she’s close, and I’m close. And remembering, as a cop, how we feel about those who target our own. It won’t be hard to make him believe I’d take her out rather than give her a chance to play the misled card and spend time in a cushy facility for minors.”

When Mira said nothing, Eve shifted her gaze, met her eyes. “No.

In fact, that’s last resort. I want her looking at me, knowing I’m the one who stopped her. I want her to remember me every day of the rest of her very long life.”

“She’s not you.”

“Could’ve been. Who knows what Richard Troy would’ve twisted me into if he’d had more time.”

“No. Nature, nurture, both matter, both form us. But at some point, at so many points, the choices we make, the paths we take, they define us. You made yours. She’s made hers.”

“Yeah. Yeah. And we’re going to come together, I swear to Christ we are. Then we’ll see what each other is made of. So I need to break Mackie. I will break Mackie.”

“I’ll be in Observation. If you need me.”

“Okay.”

As Mira turned to go, Cher Reo stepped into Eve’s doorway. “Mackie’s in Interview A,” the APA stated. “I’m here to tell you that my boss says no deals for him. Former cop, now a mass murderer, and a cop killer. Evidence is thick and heavy. A confession would be nice, of course, but the PA’s office believes we have more than enough for a conviction.”

“I hear that.” “However—”

“Bugger the howevers.”

“However,” Reo continued, “if Mackie gives us the location of his daughter before she takes another life or injures anyone else, and if she surrenders peaceably, the PA’s office will agree to try Willow Mackie as a minor.”

“Bullshit, Reo.”

Reo held up a hand, skimmed the other through her windblown, curly hair. “We’re giving you ammunition, Dallas. He needs incentive to lead us to her before she takes out another swath of people. Dr.

Mira?”

“It could play on two levels. On his paternal instincts to protect, and on his need to have the mission complete—however long it might take.”

“Which is just what she will do if we let her walk at eighteen.”

Reo angled her head. “And what are the odds of that actually happening? The odds of a peaceful surrender and no further harm done?”

Eve started to speak, then waited for her initial outrage to fade, and for more caffeine to kick in. “Okay. Okay, I get it. No way she surrenders without a fight. That’s in stone? That part’s nonrefundable?”

Reo smiled. “She resists in any way, stomps her evil little foot and stubs your toe, the deal’s void.”

“Let me work him awhile first. If I can’t break him down, we’ll toss this in. That way it sounds and feels like a concession. I don’t want to walk in with any deal.”

“That’s good, that works. He’s got a court-appointed as his counsel. Guy named Kent Pratt. He’s got a rep as the public

defenders’ patron saint of lost causes.” “All right. Let me get started.”

“I’ll be in Observation if you need to pull me in for the deal.”

“If I do, we play it up. I’m going to be really pissed. I may call you rude names.”

Reo smiled again, sunnily. “Wouldn’t be the first.”