J. Robb - Delusion in Death

“Over a hundred and twenty people are dead. I’ll make time if I’m needed.”

“I’ll let you know. Thanks for this.” She patted her pocket. “I’ll bone up on the way to Central.”

“It’s a dangerous world out there. Take care of my cop.”

“Don’t worry.”

Wishing he could give her what she asked, he watched her walk out.

With her mind on steps, angles, she hurried downstairs to find Summerset in the foyer. He held out her long leather coat.

“It’s been fitted with the body armor lining, as in your jacket,” he told her.

“Yeah?” Roarke, she thought, never a miss. She took the coat, tested the weight, studied the flexible, protective lining.

He might tell her to take care of his cop, but he often beat her to it.

“A cold front moved in,” Summerset said simply. “We’ve had a hard frost, and there’s a bitter wind this morning.”

“Okay.” She hesitated, knowing very well they were both aware he rarely greeted her in the morning, much less with a weather forecast. “I can’t give you all the details, but we found a link between the suspect and Red Horse. I have to tighten it, but it’s a connection, maybe—probably—an important one.”

“I could be useful.”

“Be useful to him.” She glanced upstairs. “He’s let too much slide the last couple months. I’ve got this.”

“Then I wish you a very productive day.”

She stepped outside, found Summerset’s description of the wind exactly on target. The bitter blew straight into her bones before she jumped into the vehicle—heater already running—at the base of the steps.

She plugged in the disc Roarke had given her, started to order it on audio. Then gave herself permission to deal with personal business first.

A sleepy-eyed, slurry-voiced Mavis came up on her in-dash screen.

“Hey. Guess I woke you up.”

“Not so much. We’re all having a snuggle. We put in a late night, and Belle woke up early.”

“Okay. Sorry I haven’t been able to get back to you. You texted you were all in Florida. Still?”

“Miami. We zipped down a couple days ago. I had a two-night gig, and Leonardo’s meeting with some totally-too-tanned clients while we’re here. We’re good.”

“Why don’t you stay down there until I get back to you?”

There was a rustle, baby-voiced babbling, and a low rumble that must have been Leonardo. “That’s affirmative.” Mavis shook back her hair, a cotton-candy pink froth sparkling with some sort of silvery overlay. “Weather’s mag, and we got a place with our own pool. Bellarina’s our little mermaid. We got the skinny off screen. What the you-know-what, Dallas.”

“I can’t give you the details, but we’re working it. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”

“There’s lots of buzz about terrorism.”

“It’s not, but it’s messy. Just stay sunny.”

“Totally, but—okay, sweet potato. Bella hears your voice. Hang a mo.”

“Das!” Belle’s pretty face popped on screen. Eve had a flash of that pretty face, with tears streaming.

“Hey, kid.”

“Das, Das, Das,” she repeated, and bouncing launched into a long, incomprehensible babble, ending with, “Kay? Kay, Das?”

“Ah, sounds good. You do that.”

“Say bye, Belle. Bye-bye.”

“Bye, bye, Das! Bye slooch!”

Lips pursed, Belle pecked kisses at the screen. Sliding her gaze right and left—in case any other driver might catch a glimpse—Eve gave a single peck back. “See ya.”

“Ya!”

“She wants you to watch her swim,” Mavis said.

“How do you know that?”

“I’m multilingual-like. I speak Belle.”

“If you say so. Gotta go.”

“Stay chilly, stay safe.”

“That’s the plan. Talk later.”

Satisfied, oddly relieved, Eve ordered the disc to audio. She listened to data on the MacMillons the rest of the way to Central.

She tagged Peabody the minute she’d parked in the garage. “Where are you?”

“Walking into Central.”

“Grab me a coffee—real coffee from my office, then meet me in the conference room. I need to fill you in.”

“On that.”

Time to fill her in, Eve decided as she muscled onto the packed elevator. On a lot of levels.

Eve worked the board, running through data, connections, time lines as she added them.

Callaway to Hubbard to MacMillon to Menzini. How many turns, decisions, mistakes made in that chain? she wondered. All of them leading to this.

And how long had Callaway simmered, stewed, planned? How long had some suit whose purpose was to sell products—half of which people didn’t need in the first place—dreamed of murder?

And how long had he known murder was his legacy?

She thought of her recent dreams. Murder and misery could have been her legacy, if she’d reached for it, if she’d opened that door instead of another.

So now she stood here, studying murder—the victims, the killer, the whys, the hows. Another path, another choice, she might have been up on a board like this, with someone else doing the studying, the wondering.

Mira was right, she determined, in reality and dreams. It always came down to choices.

She heard Peabody’s clumping footsteps, then caught the scent of coffee.

“Long night,” Peabody said. “I worked with McNab, and we’ve got everything there is to know on Macie Snyder and Jeni Curve, plus we have deep data on five of the abductees who settled in New York.”

She paused, scanned the new data on the board. “Wow. Long night for you, too.”

“Did you read the data I sent you on Guiseppi Menzini?”

“Twice. Bad guy, chemist, religious crazy—and the primary suspect in two attacks, using the agent we’ve identified was used in our attacks. Captured and erased.”

“Callaway’s linked to Menzini through his mother, an abductee.”

“Callaway.” Peabody’s eyes narrowed on the board. “I took him for a lightweight. I don’t remember any Audrey Hubbard on the list.”

“Because there wasn’t. She was born Karleen MacMillon to Gina MacMillon—Tessa Hubbard’s half-sister—and an unknown father. The MacMillons were reported killed during the home invasion. Hubbard recovered the kid, changed her name, got a fresh birth certificate, and moved with her husband to New York.”

Eve grabbed the coffee. “There’s more. I want the images programmed as I’ve outlined while I fill you in.”

She ran it through while Peabody set up the programming.

“I’ve got two men on him. Roarke dug into the mother—Gina MacMillon. There’s more there, but we’ll pass that to Feeney.”

“With all the angles, all the data to sort through, I never thought we’d zero in this fast.” As Eve had, Peabody turned to the victim board. “I went to bed last night thinking we’d have to go into another scene like the bar and the café. I didn’t get a lot of sleep thinking it.”

“We won’t give him a chance to add to this board.”

“I’ll sleep a hell of a lot better tonight then. Are we picking Callaway up this morning?”

“I want to see what he does this morning, where he goes. But yeah, we’ll be talking to him. I want to interview the Hubbards, and I’m damned if I’m going to Arkansas. I figure Teasdale has the pull to bring them here. Maybe enough pull to get a warrant to search their place while they’re out of it.”

“Do you think there’s something there, something with his parents? Jesus, Dallas, do you think they know?”

“I think there’s something there.” Eve stepped back from the board, drinking coffee as she scanned. “I can’t say what they know, but there’s a direct link from Red Horse, Menzini to Lewis Callaway. It’s biological, and there’s nothing here that comes close to proving he knew his own biology, or cared, or has any information on the substance used.”