J. Robb - Conspiracy in Death

Going with the gut, she stumbled forward. "Don't hurt my husband." She let her voice shake, watched with narrowed eyes as the droid shifted the weapon enough to hold out his free hand and stop her forward motion.

It only took an instant.

She slammed her forearm into his weapon hand, disarming him, then, trusting her boots for traction, spun into a vicious back kick. It knocked him back a foot, but not quite long enough to give her time to free her weapon.

The snow cushioned the worst of the fall when he tackled her. They fought in near silence, hampered by the snow. But she tasted blood and cursed roundly when he slipped past her guard and slammed a fist into her mouth.

An elbow to his throat had his eyes rolling back where the knee to the groin did nothing.

"Not anatomically correct, huh?" she panted, rolling with him. "You're cheaper without balls." With her teeth gritted, she managed to draw her weapon and press it hard to his throat. "Tell me, you son of a bitch, who's so economically minded? Who the fuck programmed you?"

"I'm not authorized to give you that information."

She shoved the weapon harder against his throat. "This authorizes you."

"Incorrect data," he said and his eyes jittered. "I am programmed to self-destruct at this time. Ten seconds to detonation, nine…"

"Jesus Christ." She fought her way off, skidding and sliding on the snow as she tried to leap clear of the blast. She barely heard him drone "two, one" as she flung herself down, covered the back of her head with her hands, and braced.

The blast stung her ears, the displaced air whipped over her, and something hot flew overhead, but the thick snow muffled the worst of the explosion.

Wincing, she got to her feet and limped back to where she'd taken him down. She found blackened snow, patches of it still hissing from the flames, and scattered, twisted bits of metal and plastic.

"Damn it, damn it. Not enough left to scrape into a recycle bin." She rubbed her eyes and trudged back to her vehicle.

The back of her right hand burned, and glancing down, she noted the best part of her glove had been singed away to flesh, and the flesh was raw and red. Disgusted, and just a little dizzy, she tugged both off and flung them down in the snow.

Lucky, she decided, hissing as she pulled herself into the four-wheel. Her hair could have caught a spark and gone up. Wouldn't that have been an adventure. She called in the incident, reported the debris on the drive home. By the time she got there, the aches and bruises were singing a full chorus. She was snarling as she slammed inside.

"Lieutenant," Summerset began, then got a look at her. "What have you done? That coat is ruined. You haven't had it a month."

"He shouldn't have made me wear it, should he? Goddamn it." She yanked it off, furious to see the rips, burns, and stains. Disgusted, she dropped it on the floor and limped her way upstairs.

She wasn't a bit surprised to see Roarke coming down the upper corridor toward her. "He just couldn't wait to let you know I ruined that coat, could he?"

"He said you were hurt," Roarke said grimly. "How bad is it?"

"The other guy's in pieces that'll have to be picked up with tweezers."

He only sighed, took out a handkerchief. "Your mouth's bleeding, darling."

"It split open again when I sneered at Summerset." Ignoring the cloth, she dabbed at the blood with the back of her hand. "Sorry about the coat."

"Likely it kept certain parts of you from being ripped, so we'll consider it lucky." He pressed a kiss to her brow. "Come on. There's a doctor in the house."

"I don't care much for doctors right now."

"When have you ever?" But he led her steadily toward her office where Louise continued to work.

"More than ever, then. Nadine had just enough time to get her report on. But there wasn't enough time for somebody to see it, track me down, program the droid, and send him after me. I made somebody nervous last night, Roarke."

"Well, since that was your plan, I'd say you've had quite a successful day."

"Yeah." She sniffed. "But I lost my gloves again."

Late in the afternoon, while the snow continued to fall, Eve sat alone in her office and read over Louise's simple translation of the medical data that had been gathered.

Basically, artificial organs – the process initially discovered by Friendly and his team and refined over the years – were cheap, efficient, and dependable. The transplant of human organs was not. It was necessary to find a match, to remove from a donor a healthy specimen, to preserve and transport the organ.

The building of organs from the patient's own tissues was more advantageous, as there was no risk of rejection, but was costly in time and money.

With current medical knowledge, human donors were few and far between. For the most part, healthy organs were harvested – donated or brokered – from accident victims who could not be repaired.

Science, according to Louise, was a two-sided coin. The longer we were able to preserve life, the more rare human donors became. More than 90 percent of successful transplants were artificial.

Certain conditions and diseases could be and were cured, leaving the patient with his original organs in good repair. Others, too far progressed and most usually in cases of the poor or disenfranchised, left the organ too damaged and the body too weak for these treatments. Artificial replacements were the only course of treatment.

Why take what was useless? Eve asked herself. Why kill for it?

She looked up as Roarke came in. "Maybe it's just another mission, after all," she began. "Just one more lunatic, this one with a highly honed skill and a personal agenda. Maybe he just wants to rid the world of those he considers beneath him and the organs are nothing more than trophies."

"There's no connection between the victims?"

"Snooks and Spindler both had connections to Canal Street, and that's it. There's no other link between them, or to hook them to the victims in Chicago and Paris. Except when you look at what they were."

She didn't need to bring up the data on Leclerk to refresh her memory. "The guy who bought it in Paris was a chemi-head, late sixties, no known next of kin. He had a flop when he could pay for it, lived on the street when he couldn't. He used a free clinic off and on, playing the system to get his social program meds when he couldn't buy a fix. You have to submit to a physical if you want the drugs. Medical records indicate he had advanced cirrhosis of the liver."

"And that's what links them."

"Liver, heart, kidneys. He's building a collection. It comes out of a health center, I'm sure of it. But whether it's Drake or Nordick or another one altogether, I don't know."

"Maybe it's not only one," Roarke suggested, and Eve nodded.

"I've thought of that. And I don't like the implications. The guy I'm looking for is highly placed. He feels protected. He is protected."

She pushed back. "He's educated, successful, and organized. He's got a reason for what he's doing, Roarke. He was willing to kill a cop to protect it. I just can't find it."

"Kicks?"

"I don't think so." She closed her eyes and brought the image of each victim into her head. "There was no glee in it. It was professional, each time. I bet he got a thrill out of it, but that wasn't the driving force. Just a happy by-product," she murmured.

He leaned over, tipped up her face, scanned the bruises. "It's beating you up. Literally."

"Louise did a pretty decent job on me. She's not as annoying as most doctors."

"You need a change of scene," he decided. "A distraction so you can come back to this with your mind clear on Monday. Let's go."

"Go? Where?" She gestured to the window. "In case you haven't noticed, we're getting dumped on."