Loyalty in Death (12 page)

She wondered if they’d ever find his arm.

She stepped away and through the blackened hole into what was left of the lobby.

The fire sprinklers had gone off so that streams and puddles of wet ran through the waste. Her feet squelched as she pushed through. The stench was bad, very bad. Blood and smoke and ripe gore. She forced herself not to think about what littered the floor, ordered herself to ignore the two emergency workers who were weeping silently as they marked the dead, and looked for Anne.

“We’ll need extra shifts at the morgue and the labs, to deal with IDs.” Her voice was rusty, so she cleared it. “Can you clear that with Central, Feeney?”

“Yeah, goddamn it. I brought my daughter here on her sixteenth birthday. Fucking pigs.” He yanked out his communicator and turned away.

Eve kept going. The closer she came to point of impact, the worse it got. She’d been there once before, with Roarke. She remembered the opulence, the elegance. Cool colors, beautiful people, wide-eyed tourists, excited young girls, groups of shoppers crowding at tables to experience the old tradition of tea at The Plaza.

She fought her way through rubble then stared, cold-eyed, at the blackened crater.

“They never had a chance.” Anne stepped up beside her. Her eyes were wet and hot. “Not a fucking chance, Dallas. An hour ago there were people in here, sitting at pretty tables, listening to a violinist, drinking tea or wine and eating frosted cakes.”

“Do you know what they used?”

“There were children.” Anne’s voice rose, broke. “Babies in strollers. It just didn’t mean a damn. Not one damn to them.”

Eve could see it, and much too well. She already knew it would come back to her in dreams. But she turned, faced Anne. “We can’t help them. We can’t go back and stop it. It’s done. All we can do is move forward and try to stop the next. I need your report.”

“You want business as usual?” In a move Eve didn’t bother to block, Anne snagged her by the shirt front. “You can stand here and look at this and want business as fucking usual?”

“They do,” Eve said quietly. “That’s all this is to them. If we’re going to stop them, we have to do the same.”

“You want a goddamn droid. You can go to hell.”

“Lieutenant Malloy.” Peabody stepped forward, laid a hand on her arm.

Eve had forgotten Peabody was there, and now shook her head. “Stand back, Officer. I’ll settle for a droid if you can’t give me your report, Lieutenant Malloy.”

“You’ll get a report when I’ve got something to give you,” Anne snapped. “And right now I don’t need you in my face.” She shoved Eve aside and pushed her way through the ruins.

“She was off, Dallas, way off.”

“Doesn’t matter.” But it stung, Eve realized, more than a little. “She’ll pull herself back together. I want you to edit that from the record. It isn’t pertinent. We’ll need masks and goggles from the field kit. We won’t be able to work in here otherwise.”

“What are we going to do in here?”

“The only thing we can at this point.” Eve rubbed her stinging eyes. “Help the emergency team collect the dead.”

It was miserable and gruesome work — the kind that would live inside you always unless you turned off everything you were.

It wasn’t people she was dealing with, she told herself, but pieces, evidence. Whenever her shield began to slip, whenever the horror of it crept through, she yanked it up again, blanked her mind, and went on with the job.

It was dark when she stepped outside with Peabody. “You all right?” Eve asked.

“I’ll get there. Jesus, Dallas, sweet Jesus.”

“Go home, take a soother, get drunk, call Charles and have sex. Use whatever works, but blank it out.”

“Maybe I’ll go for all three.” She tried for a halfhearted smile, then spotted McNab coming their way and stiffened like a flagpole.

“I need a drink.” He looked directly, deliberately at Eve. “I need a whole bunch of drinks. Do you want us back at Central?”

“No. We’ve had enough for one day. Report at eight hundred hours.”

“You got it.” Then, following the lecture he’d given himself off and on throughout the day, he made himself look at Peabody. “You want a lift home?

“I — well…” Flustered, she shifted from foot to foot. “No, um. No.”

“Take the lift, Peabody. You’re a mess. No point in fighting public transpo at this hour.”

“I don’t want…” Before Eve’s baffled eyes she blushed like a schoolgirl. “I think it would be better…” She coughed, cleared her throat. “I appreciate the offer, McNab, but I’m fine.”

“You look tired, that’s all.” And Eve watched in amazement as his color rose as well. “It was rough in there.”

“I’m okay.” She lowered her head, stared at her shoes. “I’m fine.”

“If you’re sure. Well, ah, eight hundred hours. Later.”

With his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched, he headed off.

“What’s the deal here, Peabody?”

“Nothing. No deal.” Her head came up sharply, and despising herself, she watched McNab walk away. “Not a deal. Not a thing. Nothing going on.”

Stop it, she ordered herself as babbling continued to stream out of her mouth. “Zip. Zero happening here. Oh look.” With outrageous relief for the distraction, she saw Roarke step out of a limo. “Looks like you’ve got a lift. A class one.”

Eve looked across the avenue, studied Roarke in the blinking red and blue emergency lights. “Take my vehicle and go home, Peabody. I’ll get transpo to Central in the morning.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, but Eve was already crossing the street.

“You’ve had a lousy day, Lieutenant.” He lifted a hand, started to stroke her cheek, but she stepped back.

“No, don’t touch me. I’m filthy.” She saw the look in his eyes, knew he’d ignore her, and yanked the door open herself. “Not yet. Okay? God, not yet.”

She climbed in, waited for him to settle beside her, order the driver to take them home, then lift the privacy screen.

“Now?” he said quietly.

Saying nothing, she turned to him, turned into him. And wept.

It helped, the tears and the man who understood her enough to offer nothing more until they were shed. When they were home, she took a hot shower, and the wine he poured her and was grateful he said nothing.

They ate in the bedroom. She’d been certain she wouldn’t be able to swallow. But the first spoonful of hot soup hit her raw stomach like a blessing.

“Thanks.” She sighed a little, leaned her head back against the cushions in the seating area. “For giving me an hour. I needed it.”

She needed more than an hour, Roarke thought, studying the pale face, the bruised eyes. But they’d take it a step at a time. “I was there earlier.” He waited while her eyes opened. “I would have done what I could to help you, but civilians weren’t permitted.”

“No.” She closed her eyes again. “They’re not.”

But he had seen, briefly at least, he had seen the carnage, the horrors, and her. He had seen her deal with it, her hands steady, her eyes dark with the pity she thought she hid from everyone.

“I don’t envy you your job, Lieutenant.”

She nearly smiled at that. “You can’t prove that to me when you’re always popping up into it.” With her eyes still closed, she reached out for his hand. “The hotel was one of yours, wasn’t it? I didn’t have time to check.”

“Yes, it was one of mine. And so are the people who died in it.”

“No.” Her eyes flashed open. “They’re not.”

“Only yours, Eve? Are the dead your exclusive property?” He rose, restless, poured a brandy he didn’t want. “Not this time. The doorman who lost his arm, who may yet lose his life, is a friend of mine. I’ve known him a decade, brought him over from London because he had a yen to live in New York.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The wait staff, the musicians, the desk and bell staff, every one of them died working for me.” He turned back, and a fierce and cold fury rode in his eyes. “Every guest, every tourist who wandered through, every single person was under my roof. By Christ, that makes them mine.”

“You can’t take it personally. No, you can’t,” she repeated when his eyes flashed. She got up, gripped his arm. “Roarke, it’s not you or yours they’re interested in. It’s their point, it’s the power.”

“Why should it matter to me what they’re interested in beyond using that to find them?”

“It’s my job to find them. And I will.”

He set his brandy down, caught her chin in his hand. “Do you think you’ll close me out?”

She wanted to be furious, and part of her was, if for nothing more than the proprietary way he held her face. But there was too much at stake, too much to lose. And he was much too valuable a source. “No.”

His grip gentled, his thumb skimmed over the shallow dent in her chin. “Progress,” he murmured.

“Let’s understand each other,” she began.

“Oh, by all means.”

Now she did suck in a breath. “Don’t start that with me. By all means, my butt. Makes you sound like some sort of snotty blue blood, and we both know you grew up scrambling for marks in Dublin alleys.”

Now he grinned. “See, we already understand each other. You don’t mind if I get comfortable before the lecture, do you?” He sat again, took out a cigarette, lighted it, then picked up his brandy while she smoldered.

“Are you trying to irritate me?”

“Not very hard, but it rarely takes true effort.” He drew in smoke, blew out a fragrant stream. “I don’t really need the lecture, you know. I’m sure I have the salient points memorized. Such as this is your job, I’m not to interfere. I’m not to explore any angles on my own, and so on.”

“If you know the points, why the hell don’t you follow them?”

“Because I don’t want to — and if I did, you wouldn’t have Fixer’s data decoded.” He grinned again when she gaped at him. “I had it late this morning and slipped the code into McNab’s unit. He was close, but I was faster. No need to mention that,” Roarke added. “I’d hate to dent his ego.”

She frowned at him. “Now I suppose you think I should thank you.”

“Actually, I was hoping you would.” He crushed out his cigarette, set aside his barely touched brandy. But when he reached for her hand, she folded her arms over her chest.

“Forget it, pal. I’ve got work.”

“And you’ll reluctantly ask me to assist you with it.” He hooked his fingers in her waistband and tugged until she tumbled on top of him. “But first…” He rubbed his mouth persuasively against hers. “I need you.”

Her protest would have been lukewarm in any case. But those words melted it away. She skimmed her fingers through his hair. “I guess I can spare a couple of minutes.”

He laughed, and tucking her close, reversed position. “In a hurry, are you? Well then.”

Now his mouth crushed down on hers, hot, greedy, and with enough bite to shoot her pulse from steady to screaming. She hadn’t expected it, but then she never quite did expect what he could do to her with a touch, with a taste, with as little as a look.

All the horror, the pain, the misery she’d waded through that day fell away in the sheer drive to mate.

“I am. In a big hurry.” She tugged at the hook of his trousers. “Roarke. Inside me. Come inside me.”

He yanked down the soft slacks she’d slipped into after her shower. Mouth still devouring mouth, he lifted her hips. And he plunged into her.

Into the heat and the welcome and the wet. His body shuddered once as he swallowed her groan. Then she was moving under him, driving him, setting a frantic pace that ripped her to peak and over before he could catch his breath.

She closed around him, vise tight, erupted around him, nearly dragged him off that fine edge with her. Gasping for air, he lifted his head, watched her face. God, how he loved to watch her face when she lost herself. Those dark blind eyes against flushed skin, that mouth full and soft and parted. Her head tipped back, and there was that long smooth throat, its pulse wildly beating.

He tasted her there. Flesh. Soap. Eve.

And felt her building again, fast and sure, her hips pistoning as she climbed, her breath ragged as the wave swept in.

And this time, when it crested, he buried himself deep and let it swamp them both.

He collapsed on her, let out a long, contented sigh as his system shimmered. “Let’s get to work.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“We’re not doing this in here because I want to get around CompuGuard.” Eve took her stand in the center of Roarke’s private office while he settled down at the control console of his unregistered — and illegal — equipment.

“Mmmm,” was his response.

She narrowed her eyes to slits. “It’s not the issue here.”

“That’s your story, and I’ll stick with it.”

She gave him a scalpel-thin smile. “Stick your smart-ass comments, pal. The reason I’m going this route is because I’ve got good reason to believe Cassandra’s got just as many illegal toys as you do, and likely just as much disregard for privacy. It’s possible they can slide into my equipment here or at Central. I don’t want to chance them getting a line on any part of the investigation.”

Roarke leaned back, nodded soberly. “And it’s a very good story, too, well told. Now, if you’ve finished soothing your admirable conscience, why don’t you get us some coffee?”

“I really hate when you snicker at me.”

“Even when I have cause?”

“Especially.” She strode to the AutoChef. “What I’m dealing with here is a group that has no kind of conscience, that has what appears to be heavy financial resources, expert technical skills, and a knack for getting by tight security.”

She brought both mugs to the console, smiled again. “Reminds me of someone.”

“Does it really?” He said it mildly as he took the coffee she offered.

“Which is why I’m willing to use everything you’ve got on this one. Money, resources, skills, and that criminal brain of yours.”

“Darling, they are now and always at your service. And following that line, I’ve made some progress on Mount Olympus and its subsidiaries.”

“You got something?” She went on full alert. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“There were other matters. You needed an hour,” he reminded her. “I needed you.”

“This is priority,” she began, then stopped herself with a shake of her head. Complaining was a waste of time. “What have you got?”

“You could say, nothing.”

“But you just told me you’d found them.”

“No, I said I’d made progress, and that progress is nothing. They’re nothing. They don’t exist.”

“Of course they exist.” Frustration shimmered around her. She hated riddles. “They appeared all over the computer — electronics companies, storage companies, office complexes, manufacturers.”

“They exist only on the computer records,” he told her. “You might call Mount Olympus a virtual company. But IRL — in real life — it’s nothing. There are no buildings, no complexes, no employees, no clients. It’s a front, Eve.”

“A virtual front? What the hell is the point of that?” Then she knew, and swore. “A distraction, a time waster. Energy defuser, whatever. They knew I’d do a search and scan on Cassandra, that it would lead me to this Mount Olympus, and then to the other fake companies. So I waste time chasing down what was never there in the first place.”

“Not very much time,” he pointed out. “And whoever set up the maze — and a very complex and well-executed maze it was — doesn’t know you’ve gotten from one end to the other.”

“They think I’m still looking.” She nodded slowly. “So I continue to search through EDD, tell Feeney to take it slow so Cassandra thinks we’re still running into walls.”

“Building their confidence while you concentrate in other areas.”

She grunted and, sipping her coffee, paced. “Okay, I’ll handle that. Now, I need to know all I can about the Apollo group. I gave Peabody the assignment, but she’ll have to go through channels and won’t find enough data, not fast, anyway. I don’t just want their party line,” she added, turning back to him. “I want what’s under it. I’ve got to get a handle on them and hope that gives me one on Cassandra.”

“Then that’s where we’ll start.”

“I need names, Roarke, of known members, living or dead. I need to know where they are, what happened to them. Then I need names and locations of family members, lovers, spouses, siblings, children, grandchildren.”

She paused, her eyes going cop flat. “In Fixer’s little journal, he mentioned revenge. I want survivors and loved ones. And I want those closest to James Rowan.”

“The FBI will have files, sealed, but they’ll have them.” He lifted a brow, amused by the obvious struggle on her face. “It’ll take some time.”

“We’re a little pressed in that area. Can you zing whatever you pull up into one of the auxiliary units? I can start a comparison run on ID, see if I can tag anyone connected who worked or works in the three target buildings.”

He nodded toward a machine on the left of his console. “Help yourself. I’d focus on lower-level positions,” he suggested. “Security checks are likely to be spottier there.”

She settled down, spending the next twenty minutes reviewing everything she could find on the Pentagon bombing. At the control center, Roarke went coolly about the business of bypassing FBI security and delving into sealed files.

He knew the route — had taken it before — and slid through the locked levels like a shadow through the dark. Occasionally, for his own amusement, he checked in to see just what the Bureau had in their file marked Roarke.

It was surprisingly lean for data on a man who had been and done and acquired all he had been and done and acquired. Then again, he’d erased and destroyed a great deal of that data, or at least altered it, when he’d still been a teenager. Files at the FBI, Interpol, IRCCA, and Scotland Yard contained nothing he didn’t care for them to contain.

It was, he liked to think, a matter of privacy.

He regretted only mildly the fact that since he’d met Eve, none of those agencies had cause to add any interesting facts about his activities.

Love had him walking the straight and narrow, with only the occasional step into the dark.

“Incoming,” he murmured, and had Eve’s head coming up.

“Already?”

“It’s only the FBI,” he pointed out, and tipping back in his chair, ordered data onto the wall screen. “There’s your head man. James Thomas Rowan, born in Boston, June 10, 1988.”

“They so rarely look like madmen,” Eve murmured, studying the image. A handsome face with sharp bones, easily smiling mouth, clear blue eyes. His dark hair was shot with distinguished gray, lending him the look of a successful executive or politician.

“Jamie, as he was called by friends, came from good, solid, New England stock.” Roarke angled his head as he read data. “And healthy Yankee money. Prep schools, Harvard. Poli-sci major. Likely being groomed for politics. Did his military stint — angled into Special Forces. He did some work for the CIA. Parents deceased, one sibling. Sister. Julia Rowan Peterman.”

“Professional mother, retired,” Eve read. “She lives in Tampa. We’ll check her out.”

She rose as much to stretch her legs as to get a closer look at the screen. “Married Monica Stone, 2015. Two children: Charlotte, DOB September 14, 2016, and James Junior, DOB February 8, 2019. Where’s Monica?”

“Display current data on Monica Stone Rowan,” Roarke ordered. “Split screen.”

Going by the age of the subject, Eve decided the picture was fairly recent. So the Bureau was keeping tabs. She’d probably been an attractive woman once. The bones were still good, but lines had dug deep around her mouth, her eyes, and both the mouth and eyes carried bitterness. Her hair had gone gray and was carelessly cut.

“She lives in Maine.” Eve pursed her lips. “Alone and unemployed. Pulls in a retired professional mother’s pension. I bet it’s stinking cold in Maine this time of year.”

“You’ll have to wear your long Johns, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah. It’ll be worth a little chill to talk to Monica. Where are the kids?”

Roarke called the data up and had Eve raising her brow. “Believed dead. Both of them? Same date? Get me more here, Roarke.”

“One minute. You’ll note,” he added as he bent to the task, the dates of death coincide with the date James Rowan was killed.”

“February 8, 2024. I saw that.”

“Explosion. The feds blew up his house, though the public stand is he did the job himself.” He glanced up again, face blank and set. “But that’s confirmed in this file — time, unit, authorization to terminate. It appears he had his children in the house with him.”

“You’re telling me the FBI bombed his house to take him out, and took two kids along for the ride?”

“Rowan, his children, the woman he’d taken as his lover. One of his top lieutenants and three other members of Apollo.” Roarke rose, moved to get more coffee. “Read the file, Eve. They’d tagged him. They’d been hunting him since his group had claimed responsibility for the Pentagon bombing. The government wanted payment, and they were pissed.”

He brought fresh coffee to Eve. “He’d gone under, moved from location to location. Using new names, new faces when necessary.” Roarke settled behind her as they read the data. “He still managed to make his videos and get them on air. But he stayed a step or two ahead of the hounds for several months.”

“With his kids,” she murmured.

“According to these files, he kept them close. Then the FBI ran him to ground, surrounded his house, moved in, and did the job. They wanted to take him out and break the back of the group. That’s what they did.”

“It didn’t have to be done that way.”

“No.” He met her eyes. “It’s rare in war for either side to consider the innocent.”

Why hadn’t they been with their mother? It was her first thought, one that came unwillingly to mind. What did she know of mothers? she reminded herself. Her own had left her in the hands of the man who’d beaten and raped her throughout her childhood.

And would the woman who had given birth to her have carried the same bitter look in her eyes as the woman now on-screen? Would she have had that same tight-lipped scowl?

What did it matter?

She shoved the thought aside, sipped her coffee again. For once, Roarke’s superior blend left a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Revenge,” she said. “If Fixer was right and that’s part of the motive, this could be the root of it. ‘We are loyal,’” she murmured. “Every message they send has that phrase in it. Loyal to Rowan? To his memory?”

“A logical step.”

“Henson. Feeney said a man named William Henson was one of Rowan’s top men. Do we have a dead list on here?”

Roarke brought it up to the wall screen. “Christ Jesus,” he said quietly. “There are hundreds.”

“From what I was told, the government hunted them down for years.” Quickly, Eve scanned the names. “And they weren’t too particular about it. Henson’s not on here.”

“No. I’ll run a check on him for you.”

“Thanks. Shoot this much through to my machine here, and keep digging.”

He stopped her by brushing a hand over her hair. “It hurts you. The children.”

“It reminds me,” she corrected, “of what it’s like to have no choice, and to have your life in the hands of someone who thinks of you as a thing to be used or discarded as the mood strikes.”

“Some love, Eve, and fiercely.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “And some don’t.”

“Yeah, well, let’s see what Rowan and his group loved, and fiercely.”

She turned away to man her computer.

The answer, she thought, was in the series of statements on file that Apollo had issued during its three-year run.

We are the gods of war.

Each statement began with that single line. Arrogance, violence, and power, she thought.

We have determined the government is corrupt, a useless vehicle for those inside it, used for exploitation of the masses, for suppression of ideas, for the perpetuation of futility. The system is flawed and must be eradicated. Out of its smoke and ashes, a new regime will rise. Stand with us, you who believe in justice, in honor, in the future of our children who cry for food and comfort while the soldiers of this doomed government destroy our cities.

We who are Apollo will use their own weapons against them. And we will triumph. Citizens of the world, break the chains binding you by the establishment with their fat bellies and bloated minds. We promise you freedom.

Attack the system, she decided, cry out for the common man, for the intellect. Justify the mass murder of innocents, and promise a new way.

We are the gods of war.

Today at noon, our wrath struck down the military establishment known as the Pentagon. This symbol and structure of this faltering government’s military strength has been destroyed. All within were guilty. All within are dead.

Once again, we call for the unconditional surrender of the government, a statement by the so-called Commander-in-Chief resigning all power. We demand that all military personnel, all members of the police forces lay down their weapons.

We who are Apollo promise clemency for those who do so within seventy-two hours. And annihilation for those who continue to oppose us.

It was Apollo’s most sweeping statement, Eve noted. Broadcast less than six months before Rowan’s house had been destroyed, with all its occupants.

What had he wanted, she wondered, this self-proclaimed god? What all gods wanted. Adulation, fear, power, and glory.

“Would you want to rule the world?” she asked Roarke. “Or even the country?”

“Good God, no. Too much work for too little remuneration, and very little time left over to enjoy your kingdom.” He glanced over. “I much prefer owning as much of the world as humanly possible. But running it? No thanks.”

She laughed a little, then propped her elbows on the counter. “He wanted to. When you take out all the dreck, he just wanted to be president or king or despot. Whatever the term would be. It wasn’t money,” she added. “I can’t find a single demand for money. No ransoms, no terms. Just surrender, you fascist pig cops, or resign and tremble, you big fat politicians.”

“He came from money,” Roarke pointed out. “Often those who do fail to appreciate its charms.”

“Maybe.” She skimmed back to Rowan’s personal file. “He ran for mayor of Boston twice. Lost twice. Then he ran for governor and didn’t pull it off, either. You ask me, he was just pissed. Pissed and crazy. The combo’s lethal more often than not.”

“Is his motive important at this point?”