J. Robb - Delusion in Death

On impulse she called up Callaway’s parents’ ID photos, studied them. And began the slow, painstaking process of pulling up abductee photos, aging them.

She got more coffee, considered, then rejected, a booster when the caffeine didn’t eliminate the growing fatigue.

Then …

“Wait a minute.”

“Eve.”

“Wait. Wait. I think I’ve got something.”

“So do I.”

“Look at this. Give me your take.”

He came around to study the screen and the images on it. The first he recognized now as Callaway’s mother; split-screened beside it was a computer-generated image.

“They appear to be the same woman, or very close. Different hair color and style, but the face is the same.”

“The aged image is of Karleen MacMillon, an abductee at the age of eighteen months. Never recovered. But she was recovered and raised by the Hubbards as Audrey, because there she fucking is.”

“The record of Audrey Hubbard’s live birth is fake. It’s a good one, but it’s fake.”

“Because she wasn’t born to the Hubbards. She was one of the taken. But never listed as recovered.”

“Hubbard retired from the army and moved from England to the U.S. with his wife and four-year-old daughter. His wife had a half-sister. Gina MacMillon. I’m still digging there.”

“Gina and William MacMillon, listed as Karleen’s parents, both killed in the raid where the kid was abducted. It’s the link. It links him to Menzini and Red Horse. Not enough for an arrest, but enough to put a tail on him.”

She walked to the board. “He found out his mother was an abductee, and it set something off. But how did a four-year-old kid get the formula, or have knowledge? Maybe Hubbard was in on the raid that took Menzini down, or in on interrogations. They have something—or had it—and Callaway kept going back to find it, to find everything he could, or interrogate his mother. I need to talk to her.”

“Are we going to Arkansas?”

“No, my turf. Teasdale’s got the HSO muscles to get the mother here. She told Callaway what she knows. Now she’s going to tell us.”

“You need to sleep. I’ll put the run on the half-sister on auto. We’ll both catch a few hours. You’ve done what you set out to do tonight,” he told her when she hesitated. “You’ll want to gear up for tomorrow.”

“You’re not wrong. I want to get this data to Whitney, get a couple men on Callaway tonight. I don’t want him hitting some twenty-four/seven while I’m sleeping.”

“Fair enough. Get it done, and I’ll put what I have together for your briefing tomorrow. Then we’ll go to bed.”

“That’s a deal.”

In the dream she knew for a dream, the world exploded. Fire plumes of murderous reds, virulent orange, greasy black lit the night sky to the east as blasts shook the ground and punched like fists through the smoke-stung air.

She heard the boom of explosives, the crack, crack, crack of what she recognized as gunfire. There’d been a time, too long a time, she thought, when people had lived and died by guns.

Now they found other ways to kill. But she wasn’t in the now.

The canyons and towers of New York thundered with the sounds of war. The Urbans.

A dream, she thought, just a dream. Still, she made her way carefully, weapon drawn, down the deserted street. Maybe dreams couldn’t kill, but they could damn sure hurt. She’d woken far too often with phantom pain screaming to travel unarmed, even in her own subconscious.

But sometimes dreams showed you what you needed to know and didn’t recognize in the busy business of the day.

So she’d look, she’d listen.

She stopped by a body sprawled over the sidewalk, crouched to check for a pulse. And found the bloody slice across his throat. Barely more than a boy, she judged. They’d taken his shoes, and likely his jacket if he’d had one—and not long before as his body still held some warmth.

She left him where he was—no choice, just a dream. But checked her weapon. And saw it wasn’t her police issue but a .38 automatic. She recognized the style from Roarke’s gun collection, checked to make certain it was loaded, tested the weight.

Moved on.

She passed windows and doors, dark and boarded, burned out husks of cars her subconscious must have fashioned out of memories of vids from the period.

Chained fences barred the entrance to a subway station. Uptown train, she noted and skirted its black maw carefully. Streetlights—those that weren’t broken stood dark. Traffic lights blinked red, red, red, and made her think of the room in Dallas where she’d killed Richard Troy.

It’s not about that, she reminded herself. It wasn’t about the child she’d been, but who she was now. What she did now.

She came to a street sign, Leonard and Worth, and realized she wasn’t far from the first crime scene.

Maybe the answer lurked there.

She started to cross, heard the gunfire—closer now—the screams. She changed directions, ran toward the sounds.

She saw the truck—military, armored, and the man at the machine gun on the roof. She heard more gunfire from inside the building the truck guarded, and the cries and screams. Children, she realized. They’d come for the children.

She didn’t hesitate, but took her stance, took aim at the man on the truck. He’d be wearing body armor, she calculated, and aimed higher. Took the head shot.

As he fell she raced forward, ducked into shadows as two men and two women dragged out struggling, screaming children. She sucked in her breath, held it. Fired.

She took both men out, credited either the target shooting she did with Roarke or the luck of dreams. The women fled, one with a wailing baby in her arms.

No, Eve thought, not even one, not even in dreams. She ran in pursuit, barely pausing at the huddle of terrified children.

“Get back inside, block the door. Wait for me.”

And ran on.

The women split up, so she ran after the one with the baby.

“NYPSD! Halt! Halt, goddamn it or I’ll shoot you in the fucking back. I swear to Christ.”

The woman stopped, turned slowly. “That would be just like you.”

She stared into her mother’s face, watched the blood run in thin rivers from the gaping wound across her throat.

“You’re already dead.”

“I just look that way. How many times do you have to kill me before you’re happy?”

“McQueen killed you. I’d’ve put you in a cage, but you’d still be breathing.”

“I’d be alive if you’d minded your own.”

She had been minding her own, Eve realized. But why explain? Even in dreams Stella would never comprehend.

“That’s an old tune, Stella. I’m bored with it. Put the kid down.”

“Why should I? You know what this little bitch is worth to the right people? I’ve got to get by, don’t I? You don’t know what it’s like now, here. It’s hell here. I lived through it. What do you think made me what I am?”

“I lived through it.” Mira stood beside Eve, spoke quietly. “So many of us did. She made her choices, Eve, just as I did, just as you did. You know that. Nothing made her. She made herself.”

“What the hell does she know? Fucking shrink with her fancy clothes, fancy ways. She just wants to fuck you over, like everyone else. I’m the one who carried you inside me. I made you.”

Mira barely spared Stella a glance. “You know the truth, and you know the lie. You always have. Say it to me, say the truth.”

“I made myself.”

“Yes. Yes, you made yourself, and did it despite her. She never controlled you, not where it matters. Why do you let her control you now, even here?”

“I can’t. It has to stop.”