J. Robb - Betrayal in Death

He stepped out of the room.

Tired, frustrated, Eve sat on the bed. The cat padded in, leaped up. He turned three tight circles, kneaded the silk and lace duvet with some enthusiasm, then curled up and stared directly into her face…

"Don't you start on me. You slept with the guy, for God's sake. What does that make you?"

She put out an all-points on Michael Connelly, though she expected he would be well into the wind. Her only hope was that word didn't spread from Mick to Naples to Yost before she closed in.

But even if the heist was aborted, she believed Yost would stick. He'd contracted for Summerset, and he wasn't the type to leave a job unfinished. It would give her time.

And if she was lucky, very lucky, she could use Yost to hook Naples. Her case would not be closed in her mind until she had them both.

"We proceed on the assumption that the hotel will be the target," she told her team. "Everything is set for it. Even if Connelly has bolted, Naples can still implement. He has all the data, and has gone to considerable expense. He'll want to make good on his investment."

"If Connelly goes to him," Feeney put in, "they may still try for it, but they'll shift strategy. They may hit sooner, or wait, come at it from another angle."

"Agreed. We put our counter-plan into place expecting adjustments, and expecting them to hit at any time."

"We'll need Roarke and his top security team," McNab commented.

"I'm aware of that. Feeney, would you discuss that level with Roarke?" She gestured to the adjoining door.

He got up, knocked, and passed through.

"Study the Connelly data until you know it backwards," Eve ordered, then went into the kitchen for coffee, and a moment alone.

Peabody slid her eyes toward McNab, away, then back again. She was getting damn sick of the silent treatment. She hadn't done anything. He was the one who had jumped right on some redhead. Oh yeah, she'd gotten the word on that minor orgy through the grapevine. Little prick.

"Have a good time on your date?"

"Oh yeah. It rocked."

"You bite."

"Is that an invitation?

She sniffed. "I don't go around with jerks who bounce on bimbos."

"I don't go around with jerkettes who bounce on LCs," he tossed back.

"At least an LC knows how to treat a woman."

"Sure, if you pay him enough." He crossed his legs, examined the toes of his new Airstream boots. "What's the matter, Peabody, Charles's calendar too full? You sound like a woman who isn't getting any."

"Screw you."

"Any time, Peabody. You can even have it for free."

She leaped up. So did he. "I wouldn't let you touch me again if you paid me."

"Fine. I don't have time on some stiff-assed, cornbread uniform."

"Break it up," Eve ordered. "Now!" If she wasn't mistaken, her aide was on the verge of tears. And McNab didn't look far behind. They were both giving her a bitch of a headache. "Private business on your own time, damn it. The two of you will work together through this, around this, or under this, I don't give a damn how you manage it. But when you're on my watch, you stand up and do the job. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir." It came from both of them, at a mumble, and would have to satisfy.

"Peabody, check on Lane at the hospital, and see that the tag on Liza is still in place. I want an update on both. McNab, run a full analysis of Connelly's data. I want all possible adjustment scenarios on my desk within two hours."

"Sir, Roarke – "

"Did I give you an order, Detective, or ask for a discussion?"

"An order, Lieutenant."

"Then follow it." She marched to Roarke's door, pushed it open. Both he and Feeney were behind the console. Both looked up.

"Feeney, I've started McNab on an analysis. Will you see he gets started?"

"No problem."

She waited until the door shut after him. "I'm tired," she said, "I have a headache, and I'm pissed off at you."

"Well, that should about cover it."

"No, it doesn't. I don't have the time or the energy to waste having a sniping match with you like the one I just had the misfortune to overhear between Peabody and McNab. You were wrong to let Connelly go. But that's from where I stand. From where you stand, you did what you had to. We can't come together on that, but we need each other to finish this job. When it's finished, we'll have to deal with the fact that we're standing on opposite sides of a line. Until then, it's tabled."

She turned for the door, gave it a shove, and found it locked. "Unlock this door. Don't mess with me now."

"I'd prefer you shouted and got this done, but since it's not the anger so much that's driving you, you won't. I'll need a few moments of your time."

"I've done all the personal business I'm going to do right now."

"I hurt you. You see it as me choosing him over you. It wasn't."

"You're wrong." She turned around now, faced him across the room. "He hurt you, and you won't let me stand for you. You took it out of my hands and gave me no way to make it right."

"You'd have put him in a cage. Darling Eve, that wouldn't have made it right for me. You know some of what I was, and where I came from. But not all."

No, not all. He wasn't sure he himself knew or understood the all. But he could give her another part of it. "Your past comes to you in nightmares that try to eat you up from the inside. Mine, it lives in me. In corners of me. Do you know how many years it was before I ever went back to Ireland after I'd left? I don't. And it was some time after that before I ever stepped on a Dublin street. It wasn't until you went back with me to bury my friend that I went again to that part of Dublin that birthed me."

He looked down at his hands. "I used these, and my brain, and whatever else I could find to claw and steal and cheat my way out of that. And I left behind those who'd come through it all with me just as much as I left behind the dead bastard who'd made my life a misery. He damaged me, Eve, and might have made me what he was."

"No." She came forward then.

"Oh yes. He could have. Without the friends I made, and those pockets of escape I had with them, he would have. I was able to go my own way because there were those I could count on in the worst of times. When I took you with me to Dublin last year so I could wake and bury Jenny, I realized I'd never paid that back. I couldn't have turned him over, Eve, not even to you, and lived with it."

She hissed out a breath, swore. "I know it. I'm not calling off the all-points on him."

"I wouldn't expect it. Neither would he. I was to give you his apologies for the trouble he's caused, and his not saying his good-byes in person."

"Oh, please," she replied.

"He left something for you." He pulled a small vial out of his pocket, handed it to her.

"Dirt?"

"Soil, he claimed, dug from the Hill of Tara. That place of Irish kings long dead. Knowing Mick, it likely came out of our own gardens, but it's the thought, after all. It's for luck, he said, as you were the most regal of cops he'd ever had the pleasure of meeting."

"Regal, my ass."

"Well, as I said, it's the thought."

She jammed the vial in her pocket. "This regal cop hopes to have the pleasure of meeting him again, very soon. But meanwhile, we need our expert consultant, civilian, on this data analysis. I need to focus on Yost, and leave you compu-droids to the tech work."

"Absolutely, Lieutenant." He came around the console, took her hand. "One other thing I think you'll be in the mood for."

"I don't have time for sex."

"There's always time for sex, but that wasn't what I meant. Just now. Yost, as Roles, holds the deed to beachfront property, and the house just completed on it in the Tropics Sector of Olympus."

"Son of a bitch."