She hurried back to Homicide. She’d have time to think, review, plan on the trip, but for now she had to move fast.
She spotted Peabody eyeing the dubious choices at Vending outside the bullpen. “Peabody, with me.”
She went straight through into her office.
“I’ve got Stibble holding. I was just going to grab some lunch, then—”
“Grab it later. McQueen’s in Dallas. He grabbed Melinda Jones, one of his former vics, last night.”
“Is she alive?”
“Assumed. He left a message for her twin sister. I’ve been invited down there to play with him.”
“To—” Peabody broke off, shut the door. “Does he know what happened to you there?”
“Undetermined.” As she spoke, Eve packed a file box. “I’m leaving asap.”
“You mean
we.
”
“No, I don’t. I need you here. I want you to handle Stibble. Wring him dry. Continue to find out anything you can on this Sister Suzan. She’ll be in Dallas. She’ll have laid the groundwork for McQueen. They’ve got a place, somewhere private enough to hold a hostage. She’ll have a place of her own, close by. Use Baxter and Trueheart. If you need more manpower, let me know and I’ll arrange it.”
“You’re not going there alone.” Peabody shifted to block the door, and had Eve’s eyebrows lifting.
“Were your orders unclear, Detective?”
“Don’t pull that shit on me, Dallas. Just don’t. It’s a trap, and worse, it’s there. It’s where . . . it’s there.”
“I know where it is, and of course he’s figuring it’s a trap. He’ll want to string it out for a while, have some fun with it. That’s a mistake.”
Now Peabody folded her arms, planted her feet. “I’m going with you.”
“Peabody, I know you’ve been working on improving your hand-to-hand, but I can take you down in five seconds flat.” She took a breath as Peabody’s face only tightened into fiercer lines. First Mira, she thought, now this.
“If I can’t handle myself I don’t have any business with this badge or this office.”
“That’s not the point. This is different.”
“Every case is different, and how we deal with every case is different. But what’s the same is we work it, we do the job, and we take the risks the job demands. That’s it.”
She considered demoralizing her partner by moving her bodily from the door. Not only would it leave a bad taste in her mouth, but she needed Peabody on top, confident, clean-headed.
And under it, she just didn’t have the heart to slap back the concern of her partner. Her friend.
“I’m going to talk to Roarke right now, see if he can clear some time to go along as a consultant. The commander cleared it with Dallas PSD. Don’t question me on this, Peabody. I need to go, and I need to go knowing you’re capable of taking charge of the investigation from here.”
“In charge? Me? But Baxter—”
“You studied McQueen, and you’re familiar with all stages of the investigation to this point. You’re a goddamn decorated officer of this department. And you
will
take the lead on the New York end of this investigation as you’ve been trained to do. You will not let me down.”
“I won’t let you down. Please don’t go alone. If Roarke can’t leave this minute, take one of the other men. Take backup that’s familiar, that you know you can trust. You don’t know the people down there.”
“I’ve data on all of them. If Roarke’s not available, I’ll consider hooking Feeney into it.”
“Okay. But if you need me—”
“I know where you are. Now I’ve got to go. He only gave me eight hours and it’s ticking away fast. Send me whatever you get out of Stibble, whatever you get on the partner.”
“I’ll stay in regular contact.” With some reluctance Peabody moved away from the door, followed Eve out. “How do you want me to play Stibble? Should I—”
“You know what to do. Do it. Now brief the men.” Without another word she left.
She pulled out her ’link, tagged Baxter as she worked down the levels to the garage.
“Yo,” Baxter said.
“I’m headed out of town, following a lead on McQueen. Peabody’s taking over here. I want you and Trueheart working with her. She’s primary.”
“Copy that.”
“Don’t give her too much grief, Baxter, but don’t baby her.”
“How much is too much? Don’t worry about it. Trueheart’ll keep me honest. Just go get that fucker, LT.”
“That’s the plan.” She clicked off, contacted Roarke’s office.
His admin, Caro, smiled at her. “Hello, Lieutenant. Roarke’s just finishing up a holo-conference. If it’s important, I’ll cut in.”
“I’m on my way there. I need to talk to him as soon as possible. It’s urgent.”
Caro’s smile shifted to alert. “I’ll clear the time.”
“Thanks.”
And here we go, Eve thought, as she jumped into her vehicle and pushed the DLE Urban Roarke had designed for her to full speed. As she drove, dodging, weaving, hitting vertical to leapfrog, she plugged the disc Whitney had given her into the onboard comp, and began to familiarize herself with Lieutenant Ricchio and his unit.
When she stepped into the expansive black-and-white lobby of Roarke’s headquarters, one of his security met her. “We cleared an elevator for you. Straight up, Lieutenant.”
“Thanks.” She strode quickly past the moving maps, the banks and rivers of flowers, the crisscross of people bustling in and out of the shops and eateries.
Security escorted her to the elevator, then stepped back. “It’s programmed,” he told her before the doors closed.
She spent the time on the fast ride up, up, up, pacing the car, aligning her thoughts, working out what needed to be done and how to do it.
The doors opened again, directly into Roarke’s office, and he stood waiting.
“What’s happened?”
“McQueen’s taken a hostage.” When he gripped her hand, she saw her mistake. He thought it was someone in New York, someone they loved.
“Who?”
“Melinda Jones. She’s one of the twins, the last he abducted.”
“I remember.” But relief didn’t register on his face. He remembered, she thought, everything. “She’s in Dallas.”
“He grabbed her late last night. I can fill you in on it later. He’s given me a deadline to get down there, or he’ll start cutting pieces off of her.”
“He wants you in Dallas?” Those beautiful blue eyes narrowed and sharpened. “He specifically demanded this?”
“Yeah, in eight hours from the time the sister picked up the message. “That was at ten forty-three, their time. It’s twelve-forty now. So I’ve got six hours to get there. Or . . . it’s earlier there, so I lose an hour. Or gain it. Shit, I can’t ever figure that crap out.”
“There’s time enough. It isn’t a coincidence he’s there.”
“There are factors. We can get into them later. Right now I don’t want to fuck around, give him any excuse to start cutting her up. I’m cleared to work with the locals, and to take a partner or aide, or whatever. I need Peabody to stay here, to run this part of the investigation.”
He nodded, and saying nothing more crossed the long space to his desk in front of the sea of glass that gave him New York. “Caro, clear my schedule until further notice. I need a shuttle prepped and waiting at Transportation for a flight to Dallas, Texas. Right away.”
He clicked off the inter-office ’link. “Sit down a minute,” he told Eve.
“I didn’t ask you to go with me. I was going to, but you didn’t give me a chance.”
“Do you think you could go there without me? Ever?”
She closed her eyes a minute. “No questions? No objections? No ‘You can’t go back there’?”
“I’d be wasting my time and yours. Going will hurt you. Not going would break you.”
This time when she let out a breath, it shuddered. And she went to him, wrapped her arms around him. “Yes. And going back without you? I don’t want to think about it.”
“Then don’t.” He drew her back, looked into her eyes. “We’ll deal with this, you and I.”
“Yeah, we will. I—we—need to get home, pack.”
He merely turned to the ’link again. A few seconds later, Summerset appeared on screen.
“Eve and I are leaving for Dallas on urgent police business. I’ll need you to pack for both of us as quickly as possible, and have the luggage sent to my short-range shuttle at Transportation.”
“Right away. Will a week’s wardrobe be sufficient?”
“That should be fine. I’ll contact you with other instructions once we’re on our way. Thank you.”
Even through the rush, the worry, she had room for a good scoop of appalled. “Summerset’s going to pack for me? Like, my underwear?”
Roarke glanced at her, smiled. “You seem more disturbed by that than with the idea of facing down McQueen.”
“The first is humiliating, and I’m looking forward to the second. But I’ll suck it up. It saves time.”
“Spend it sitting down. Take a breath. I need to go consult with Caro for a few minutes.”
“Roarke.” She remained on her feet. “I know you probably think going with me on this kind of deal is part of the marriage rules.”
His lips curved in easy amusement. “You do love your rules.”
“When I know about them, and understand them. I know I give you a lot of grief about owning the world, or buying up planets. It’s not that I don’t get how much work, time, responsibility it takes to run everything you run. I do. So I know you’re putting a hell of a lot on hold for me. I don’t take it for granted.”
“Eve.” He waited a beat. “I once stood in a field in Ireland, alone, a little lost, and wishing for you more than I wished for my next breath. And you came, though I never asked you, you came because you knew I needed you. We don’t always do what’s right, what’s good. Not even for each other. But when it counts, down to the core of it, I believe we do exactly that. What’s right and good for each other.
“There’s no rule to that, Eve. It’s just love.”
Just love, she thought when he stepped out. She may have been going into her own personal hell to face a killer, but right at that moment she considered herself the luckiest woman in the world.
6
E
ve spent the first part of the quick flight reviewing the rest of Whitney’s data, then pacing. Thinking, working out an approach. Until Roarke completed whatever he was doing on his PPC and set the device aside.
“Tell me what to expect when we get there.”
“Can’t be sure.” And it left her unsettled, edgy. “Ricchio, Lieutenant Anton, is Detective Jones’s direct superior. He runs Special Victims, so they deal with a lot of sex crimes and abuse to minors. Jones aimed her arrow right there.”
“And her twin aimed hers toward abuse and rape counseling. I imagine they’ve worked together.”
“Melinda counseled a number of vics in the SVU files,” Eve confirmed. “Ricchio’s a twenty-year man. Married—second time—twelve years. He has a son, eighteen, from marriage one, and a daughter, age ten, from his current. Comes off steady to me, gives his detectives some room. He’s partnered Jones with his most experienced detective, Annalyn Walker. Fifteen years on, the last eight in SVU. Single, no marriages or offspring. She’s got a good record. Those should be the main players we’ll deal with.”
She broke off when her ’link signaled. “The feds,” she said, reading the display before she answered. “Dallas.”
“What happened to cooperation and sharing all data?” Nikos demanded.
Steamed, Eve thought. Very steamed.
“I’m working against the clock here, Agent Nikos. You can get all data from my commander and from Detective Peabody, who now has the lead in the department’s investigation.”
“If McQueen’s in Dallas, with a hostage, Laurence and I should be in Dallas.”
“Your travel and coordination with Dallas police isn’t my call.”
“It’s handled. We’re about an hour behind you. You could’ve offered us a ride.”
“Look, Nikos, I’ve got just a little more important things on my mind than your transpo. McQueen’s got a hostage, and he has every reason to inflict harm on one who got away. I’m not going to give him any reason to inflict that harm. We believe his partner is one Suzan Devon, current address Baton Rouge. My partner and her team are trying to track her.”
“I’m aware. We also have resources—considerable—and in using them have determined one Sister Suzan Devon didn’t exist until about three years ago. The prints and DNA on record are bogus as they belong to a ten-year-old corpse named Jenny Pike. We’re running face recognition on her to see if we can match her in our system.”
“She’ll be in Dallas, with McQueen.”
“Maybe. Or he may have disposed of her by now.”
No, no, Eve thought. Catch up, catch on. “He still needs her. He hasn’t had time to hunt up a new partner. She’s with him. Her ID as Sister Suzan went in the system before she met McQueen, so that’s on her. He’s got himself a player this time around. My partner’s working Stibble, who set them up together. If he knows anything, she’ll get it out of him. We’re going to land in a minute. We’ll continue this at Lieutenant Ricchio’s house.”
Eve clicked off, looked at Roarke. “Crap.”
“Because the FBI adds another factor?”
“Because I didn’t think to inform them. It didn’t cross my mind, and it should have. I promised full disclosure and cooperation.”
“If they’re that close behind us, they got their disclosure quickly enough.”
“It should’ve come from me.” Shoving a hand through her hair she went back to pacing. “Now I’m going to have to apologize. I hate that. And yeah, there’s the other factor. Ricchio’s not only swallowing a New York cop in his business, but the feds. In his place I’d be feeling a little put out.”
“You’ve got an hour’s jump to convince him not to be put out with you. The FBI will have to handle their own diplomacy.”
She considered. “There is that.”
Roarke snagged her hand on her next pass, tugged her into her seat. “Strap in, Lieutenant.” Reaching across, he buckled her in himself. “This is what you do.” He took her face in his hand, kept his eyes on hers as he knew she hated landing as much as takeoff. “Where you do it is only one aspect.”