J. Robb - Conspiracy in Death

All cop, Eve decided on the spot. He was sizing them up, scanning for threat or weapon and braced to defend.

She judged him at just under six feet, a well-built one eighty. His light brown hair was cut ruthlessly short over a square, sturdy face. Shades darker than his hair, his eyes stayed cool as they skimmed from her to Roarke and back.

"My wife didn't get your names."

"Eve Dallas." She didn't offer her hand. "This is Roarke."

"Roarke?" It piped out of the woman just before color flooded her face. "I thought I recognized you. I've seen you on-screen dozens of times. Oh, please, sit down."

"Karen." With one quiet word he had her subsiding, in obvious distress and puzzlement. "You a cop?" he asked Roarke.

"No, indeed not." He laid a hand on Eve's shoulder. "She's the cop."

"Out of New York," Eve continued. "I need some of your time. A case I've been working on crosses one you had before you retired."

"That's the operative word." She caught resentment mixed in the wariness in his tone. "I'm retired."

"Yeah." She kept her eyes steady and level on him. "Just recently, someone's been wanting to see me retire. One way or the other. Could be a… medical thing."

His eyes flickered, his mouth tightened. Before he could speak, Roarke stepped forward and aimed a charming smile at Karen. "Ms. McRae, I wonder if I could trouble you for some coffee? My wife and I drove straight in from the airport."

"Oh, of course. I'm so sorry." Her hands fluttered up from their resting place on her belly to her throat. "I'll make some right away."

"Why don't I help you?" With a smile in place that could have melted a woman's heart at fifty paces, he put a gentle hand on the small of her back. "We'll let our respective spouses talk shop. You have a lovely home."

"Thank you. Will and I have been putting it together for nearly two years now."

As their voices faded, Will never took his eyes off Eve's. "I'm not going to be able to help you."

"You don't know what I want or what I need. Yet. I can't show you ID, McRae, because they took my badge a few days ago." She watched his eyes narrow. "They found a way to get me out, off the case, so I figure I was getting close to something. Or they just didn't like the heat. And I figure they found a way to get you out and have that asshole Kimiki take over the investigation."

Will snorted, and some of the wariness faded. "Kimiki can barely find his own dick with both hands."

"Yeah, I got that. I'm a good cop, McRae, and their mistake this time was another good cop's got the case now. We've got three bodies in New York with parts missing. You had one here, same MO. There's another in Paris, one in London. We're still running like crimes."

"I can't help you, Dallas."

"What'd they use on you?"

"I've got a family." He said it, low and fierce. "A wife, a five-year-old son, a baby on the way. Nothing happens to them. Nothing. You get that?"

"Yeah." She got something else, too. Fear that wasn't for himself. Frustration at being helpless against it. "Nobody knows I'm here, and nobody's going to know. I'm on my own in this, and I'm not letting go."

He walked past her to the window, smoothed the pretty white curtains. "You got kids?"

"No."

"My boy, he's spending a couple of days with Karen's mother. She's due any day. The kid's amazing. Beautiful." He turned, gestured with a jerk of his head to a framed holoprint on the end table.

Obligingly, Eve moved over, lifted it, and studied the cheerfully grinning face. Big brown eyes, dusty blond hair, and dimples. Kids mostly looked the same to her. Cute, innocent, and unfathomable. But she knew the response expected of her. "He's a beaut, all right."

"They said they'd do him first."

Eve's fingers tightened on the frame before she set it carefully down again. "They contacted you?"

"Set a fucking droid on me. Caught me by surprise, knocked me around some. I don't give a shit about that." He whirled back. "Told him to tell his keeper to go to hell. I did the job, Dallas. Then the droid explains just what'll happen to my family, my little boy, my wife, the baby she's carrying. Scared me bloodless. So I figure I'll send them away, do the job, get these bastards. Then I get pictures in the mail, pictures of Karen and Will, coming out of a toy store, the market, playing in the yard at my mother's, where I sent them. And one of that fucking droid holding Will. Holding him," he said in a voice pitched low but vibrating with vicious fury. "He had his hands on my son. Message that came with it said the next time they'd cut out his heart. He's five years old."

He sat, buried his head in his hands. "Sometimes the badge can't come first."

She understood love now, and the terror it could bring to you. "Did you tell your boss?"

"I didn't tell anybody. It's been eating at me for months." He sat, continued to lean over, while his fingers kept raking through his close-cropped hair. "I'm working private security at night, playing down in that idiot workshop half the day making birdhouses. I'm going crazy here."

Eve sat beside him, leaned in. "Help me get them. Help me put them away where they can't touch your family."

"I can't ever go back to the job." He lowered his hands. "I can't ever pick up a badge again. And I can't be sure just how far they can reach out."

"Nothing you tell me goes in a report, official or otherwise. Tell me about the droid; give me a line here."

"Hell." He rubbed his eyes. For weeks he'd lived with doing nothing, with backing down, with the fear. "Six two, two ten. Caucasian, brown and brown. Sharp features. Top-line model. Combat trained."

"I met his brother," she said with a thin smile. "What buttons were you pushing when the threats started?"

"I'd shaken out some slime from the black market, but it wasn't going anywhere. Nothing I'd run on the victim turned up anything that made it look like a personal hit. I went in circles awhile, but I kept coming back to how it was done. So goddamn neat, right?"

"Yeah, very neat and tidy."

"There's a free clinic a few blocks from the crime scene. The victim had been in there a few times. I interviewed the rotation doctors, ran them. It looked like a dead end, too. But it didn't feel like one," he added, relaxing a little when Eve nodded.

"I started circling out, hitting other med centers, crosschecking surgeons. I started scratching at the Nordic Clinic, and the next thing I know, the boss calls me in and says that fathead Waylan's making noises about harassment, entrapment, Christ knows what, and demanding that we show some respect for the medical community. Shit."

"Waylan. He cropped up on my watch, too."

"Damn embarrassment to the state," Will began. "Karen's the one who gets into politics. Don't get her started on Waylan." For the first time, he grinned, and his face looked abruptly younger. "In this house, we hate him. Anyhow, I figured there was something there, too. What the hell does he care – except he's got relatives in the AMA. I'm starting to check it out, then I'm blind-sided, flat on my back, and the goddamn droid's got a laser at my throat."

He sighed, rose to pace. "I was going to tell my boss, put it in the report, but on my next shift, I get called upstairs. Commander tells me that there's more complaints about the tone of my investigation. I'm not getting support from the brass; instead, they're warning me to watch my step, don't step on the wrong toes. Ease back, it was only scum that got taken out, anyway. Don't hassle nice people. Rich, powerful people," McRae said, turning back. "Pissed me off. That's when I decided to send my family away and dig in deeper. Until I got the pictures, then I folded. Faced with the same choice, I'd do the same thing again."

"I'm not going to beat you up over it, Will. I don't have what you have to risk. The way I look at it, you took it as far as you could, for as long as you could."