Loyalty in Death

by J. D. Robb

  "Somewhere. Here." She grabbed it up. "What have you got?"

  "She checks out easily if you skim the first few levels. Born in Kansas thirty-six years ago, parents are teachers, pure middle class, one sister, married with son. She went through the local school system, worked for a short time as a department store clerk. She married Branson about ten years ago, moved to New York. I assume you have all that."

  "I want what's under it."

  "So I thought. The names her records show as parents did indeed have a daughter named Clarissa born thirty-six years ago. However, she died at the age of eight. Scraping off the levels, we find this dead child with school and employment records and a marriage license."

  "Bogus."

  "Yes, indeed. A little dip into Clarissa Stanley's medical files indicates she hasn't seen the age of thirty-six for some time. She's forty-six. Tracing the data input, it appears Clarissa was reborn twelve years ago. Whoever, whatever she was before, has been wiped. I might be able to jiggle some out, but it won't be quick."

  "That's enough for now. She wanted a new ID, and not to carve ten years off her age."

  "If you do a bit more math, you see that she would have been exactly the same age as Charlotte Rowan when Apollo headquarters was destroyed."

  "I've already done the math, thanks."

  "Since I followed your avenue here, I took it a bit farther."

  "Farther where?"

  "Some may disagree," he said with a long look at her, "but people in intimate relationships generally have some common ground and a general knowledge of each other's ambitions and activities."

  Guilt fizzed back into her chest. "Look, Roarke—"

  "Shut up, Eve." He said it so pleasantly, she did. "Since it appears Clarissa may have close ties with Rowan and Apollo, I did some back-checking on B. Donald. Nothing in particular there, except for a number of large and perhaps questionable contributions to the Artemis Society."

  "Another Greek god?"

  "Yes, and Apollo's twin. I doubt we'll find any data on it in the banks. However, looking a generation back, I found that E. Francis Branson, B. D.'s father, contributed large amounts to this same organization. He was also—according to CIA files—briefly an operative. He not only knew James Rowan but worked with him."

  "Which closed the link between the Bransons and the Rowans. Branson grew up with Apollo; so did Clarissa. They hooked up and kept heading down the same path. We are loyal." She let out a breath. "Thanks."

  "You're welcome. Eve, how much of a risk are you about to take?"

  "I'll have backup."

  "That wasn't my question."

  "Nothing I can't handle. I appreciate the help."

  "Any time."

  Words, many of them foolish, bubbled into her throat. And Feeney stuck his head in the door. "We have to move, Dallas."

  "Yeah, right. I'm there. Time to saddle up," she said with a half smile at Roarke. "See you tonight."

  "Take care of what's mine, Lieutenant."

  She smiled again as she slipped the 'link away. She knew he hadn't meant the bonds.

  • • •

  Having backup and a tracker didn't stop her from feeling alone and exposed as she moved through the crushing crowd in Grand Central. She spotted some cops whose faces she knew. Her eyes passed over them, and theirs over hers, without interest.

  The speakers droned overhead, announcing incoming and outgoing transports. Flocks of commuters lined the public 'links, calling home, calling lovers, calling their bookies.

  Eve strode past them. In the surveillance van two blocks away, Feeney noted her heartbeat was smooth and steady.

  She saw the vagrants who'd come in from the cold and would soon be rousted out again by security. Vendors sold the news, on paper, on disc, as well as cheap souvenirs, hot drinks, and cold beer.

  She took the stairs rather than the glide and moved down to check point. Lifting her arm as if to push at her hair, she muttered into her wrist unit.

  "Leaving main level for check point. No contact yet."

  She felt the floor tremble, heard the whining scream as a bullet train tore out of the station.

  She stood on the platform, one hand firm on the suitcase, the other in plain view. If they were going to take her out, they would do it here, fast, taking advantage of the crowd waiting for their transport. One takes her out, another snags the case, and they're lost in the confusion.

  That's what she would do. Eve thought. That's how she'd play the game.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw McNab in a bright yellow coat, blue shoes, and ski hat, idling at a computer game while he sat on a bench in the waiting area.

  They were scanning her now, she imagined. They'd find she was armed, but they'd have expected that. If she was lucky, and Feeney was good, they wouldn't make the tracker.

  The public 'link behind her began to ring, loud and shrill. Without hesitating, she turned and answered. "Dallas."

  "Take the incoming train to Queens. Buy a ticket onboard."

  "Queens," she repeated with her mouth all but against her wrist unit. The caller had already disconnected. "Next train," she added. "Incoming."

  Turning away, she moved toward the tracks as the rumble started. McNab pocketed his computer game and strolled up behind her. He'd been a good call, Eve mused. No one looked less like a cop. He was wearing headphones, doing a little head and shoulder dance as if he were listening to music that set him into motion. His body stood at Eve's flank like a shield.

  The displaced air from the train blew over them. The whine shivered away, and people began to bump and shove their way on and off the train.

  Eve didn't bother to try for a seat but gripped a security hook, planted her feet, and braced for the takeoff.

  McNab squeezed in just down the line and began singing lightly under his breath. Eve nearly smiled when she recognized one of Mavis's songs.

  The trip to Queens was crowded, hot, and blessedly short. Yet even that short jaunt made Eve thankful she wasn't an office drone condemned to ride public transpo throughout her days.

  She stepped off onto the platform. McNab moved by her without a blink and headed into the station.

  They sent her to the Bronx next, then Brooklyn. Then shot her to Long Island, back to Queens. She decided she'd just throw out her arms and beg for a laser blast if she had to take one more ride.

  Then she saw them coming. One on the left, one on the right. She ran Fixer's description through her head and decided these were the two who'd made his deliveries and cut out his tongue.

  She backed up out of the crowd of weary commuters, noting the two-man team had slipped into a pincher pattern:

  They were taking no chances, she mused, and as one flipped open his coat to show the police-issue blaster, she assumed they meant to take no prisoners, either.

  She bumped deliberately into a man waiting behind her, lifted a hand as if to catch her balance, "Contact. Two. Armed."

  "Lieutenant." One of them slipped a hand over her arm. "I'll take the payment."

  She let him steer her back. Not a man, she realized when she took a good, hard look. Fixer had been right there, too. They were droids. You couldn't even smell them.

  "You'll get the payment when I get the target, and it's confirmed. That's the deal."

  He smiled. "New terms. We'll take the payment, my partner will cut you in half where you stand, and the target will be destroyed as a celebration to the cause."

  She saw McNab barreling down the glide. He jerked his thumb up, signaling that the target had been made. Eve showed the droid her teeth. "I don't like those terms."

  She swung back, slamming the case into the knees of the droid behind her. With the move she swung down and to the side, catching him by the ankles as he discharged the weapon. The blast put a fist-sized hole in his partner's chest.

  Screaming for civilians to take cover, she reared up, clamped her fingers over his weapon hand, and twisted. The next blast hit the concrete, its path
close enough to singe her hair. She could hear shrieks, stumbling feet, the roaring whine of an oncoming train.

  Eve threw back her weight, brought the droid down with her. They rolled through running feet, toppling people like bowling pins.

  She couldn't get her hand to her weapon, and his was lost in the stampede. Her ears were ringing with the noise, and beneath her, the ground shook like thunder. The droid reared up; something sharp and silver flashed in his hand.

  Eve bucked back, swung up her legs, and slammed her feet into his groin. He didn't buckle as a man would, but teetered back, arms pinwheeling for balance. She rocked to her feet, made one frantic grab, missed.

  He tumbled to the tracks, then disappeared under the silver blur of the train.

  "Jesus, Dallas, I couldn't get through." Panting, red welts swelling on his face, McNab gripped her arm. "Did you take a hit?"

  "No. Damn it, I needed one of them working. They're useless to us now. Call for a cleanup and crowd control here. Where's the target?"

  "Madison Square, they're evacuating and defusing right now."

  "Let's get the hell out of Queens."

  *** CHAPTER NINETEEN ***

  The first charge went off in the upper deck of section B in Madison Square at precisely eight forty-three. The game, a hockey match between the Rangers and the Penguins, was in the bitterly contested first period. There'd been no score and only one minor injury when the offensive guard from the Penguins had cross-checked his man—a little on the high side.

  The Ranger defensive lineman had been carried off, bleeding profusely from the nose and mouth.

  He was already in the ER when the bomb blew.

  The NYPSD had moved fast once the explosives had been detected. The game was halted, and the announcement was made that the arena was to be evacuated.

  This was met with catcalls, profanities, and from the Ranger side of the stadium, a rain of recycled toilet paper and beer cans.

  New York fans took their hockey seriously.

  Despite it, the swarm of uniforms and officials had managed to move close to twenty percent of the attendees out of the Garden in more or less an orderly fashion. Only five cops and twelve civilians had reported minor injuries. There were only four arrests for assault and lewd conduct.

  Below the Garden, Pennsylvania Station was being cleared as rapidly as possible, with all incoming trains and transpos diverted.

  Even the most optimistic of officials didn't expect to scoop up every beggar and sidewalk sleeper who hid in the station for warmth, but an effort was made to sweep through the usual flop spots and hiding places.

  When the bomb blew, spewing steel and wood and pieces of the drunk who'd been dozing on the floor of the bleachers along seats 528 through 530, people got the picture fast.

  They flooded like a raging tide for the exits.

  When Eve arrived on scene, it looked as though the grand old building was vomiting people.

  "Do what you can," she shouted at McNab. "Get these people away from here."

  "What are you doing?" He shouted over the screams and sirens, made a grab for her, but his fingers skidded off her jacket. "You can't go in there. Holy God, Dallas."

  But she was already pushing, punching, and peeling her way through the press of fleeing bodies.

  Twice she was slammed hard enough to make her ears ring as she fought to get clear of the doors and the frantic rush for escape.

  She swung up toward the closest set of stairs, climbing over seats as people leaped for safety. Above, she could see one of the emergency team efficiently putting out several small fires. The nosebleed seats were in smoking splinters.

  "Malloy!" she shouted into her communicator. "Anne Malloy. Give me your location."

  Static hissed in her ear, words hiccupping through it. "Three—cleared…scanned ten…"

  "Your location," Eve repeated. "Give me your location."

  "Teams spread…"

  "Goddamn it, Anne, give me a location. I'm helpless here." Helpless, she thought, watching people claw their way over each other to get out. She saw a child shoot out of the crowd like soap from wet fingers, feet tripping over him as he slid out and bounced facefirst on the ice.

  She swore again, viciously, and leaped over the rail. She hit the ice on her hands and knees, skidding wildly until she slammed in with the toes of her boots. She grabbed the boy by the collar of his shirt and dragged them both away from the stampeding crowd.

  "Up to five." Anne's voice came through, clearer now. "We're clicking here. Update on evacuation."

  "I can't tell. Shit, it's a zoo." Eve pushed a hand over her face, saw blood smeared on her palm. "Fifty percent clear, up here. Maybe more. I've got no contact with the team in Penn. Where the hell are you?"

  "Moving toward sector two. I'm under the floor in Penn. Get those civilians out."

  "I've got a kid here. Injured." She spared the boy under her arm a glance. He was sheet white with a lump the size of a baby's fist on his forehead, but he was breathing. "I'll get him clear and be back."

  "Get him out, Dallas. Clock's ticking."

  She managed to get to her feet, skidded, grabbed clumsily for the rail. "Move your men out, Malloy. Abort and move out now."

  "Cleared six, four to go. Have to stick. Dallas, we lose it down here, we take out Penn and the Garden."

  Eve dumped the boy over her shoulder in a fireman's carry and pulled herself onto the steps. "Get them out, Anne. Save lives, fuck property."

  She stumbled through the seats, kicking aside the bags and coats and food people had left behind.

  "Seven, down to three. We're going to make it."

  "For God's sake, Anne. Move your ass."

  "Good advice."

  Eve blinked the sweat out of her eyes and saw Roarke just as he plucked the boy off her shoulder. "Get him out. I'm going for Malloy."

  "The hell you are."

  It was all he managed before the floor began to tremble. He saw the crack in the wall behind them split. Eve's hand was caught in his.

  They leaped off the platform and ran for the door where cops in full gear were pushing, shoving, all but tossing the last of the civilians through. She felt her eardrums contract an instant before she heard the blast. The wall of sizzling heat slammed them from behind. She felt her feet leave the ground, her head reel from the noise and heat. And the tidal wave force of air shot them through the door. Something hot and heavy crashed behind them.

  Survival was paramount now. Hands gripped, they scrambled up, kept moving blindly forward while rock and glass and steel rained down. The air was full of sounds, the shrieks of metal, the crash of steel, the thunder of spewing rock.

  She tripped over something, saw it was a body trapped under a concrete spear as wide as her waist. Her lungs were on fire, her throat full of smoke. Diamond-sharp fists of glass showered down, propelled by vicious secondary explosions.

  When her vision cleared, she could see what seemed to be hundreds of shocked faces, mountains of smoking rubble, and too many bodies to count.

  Then the wind slapped her face, cold. Hard. And she knew they were alive.

  "Are you hurt, are you hit?" she shouted to Roarke, unaware that their hands were still fused together.

  "No." Somehow, he still had the unconscious boy over his shoulder. "You?"

  "No, I don't think…No. Get him to the MTs," she told Roarke. Panting, she stopped, turned, blinked. From the outside, the building showed little damage. Smoke billowed from me jagged opening where doors had been, and the streets were littered with charred and twisted rubble, but the Garden still stood.

  "They got all but two. Just two." She thought of the station below—the trains, the commuters, the vendors. She wiped grime and blood off her face. "I have to go back, get the status."

  He kept her hand firmly in his. He'd looked behind as they'd flown through the door. And he'd seen. "Eve, there's nothing to go back for."

  "There has to be." She shook him off. "I have men in there.
I have people in there. Take the kid to an MT, Roarke. He took a bad spill."

  "Eve…" He saw the expression on her face, and let it go. "I'll wait for you."

  She crossed the street again, avoiding little pots of flame and smoking stone. She could already see looters joyfully racing down the block, crashing in windows. She grabbed a uniform, and when he shook her off and told her to move along, dug out her badge.

  "Sorry, Lieutenant." His face was dead white, his eyes glazed. "Crowd control's a bitch."

  "Get a couple of units together, get the looting stopped. Start moving the perimeter back and get some security sensors up. You!" she called to another uniform. "Get the medical teams a clear area for the wounded and start taking names."

  She kept moving, making herself give orders, start routines. By the time she was ten feet from the building, she knew Roarke was right. There was nothing to go back for.

  She saw a man sitting on the ground, his head in his hands, and recognized him as part of E and B by the fluorescent yellow stripe across his jacket.

  "Officer, where's your lieutenant?"

  He looked up, and she saw he was weeping. "There were too many. There were just too many, all over hell and back."

  "Officer." Her breath wanted to hitch, her heart to pound. She wouldn't let them. "Where's Lieutenant Malloy?"

  "She sent us out, down to the last two. She sent us out. Just her and two men. Only two more. They got one. I heard Snyder call it over the headphones, and the lieutenant told them to clear the area. It was the last one that took them. The last fucking one."

  He lowered his head and sobbed like a child.

  "Dallas." Feeney came on the run and out of breath. "Damn, goddamn, I couldn't get closer than half a block by the time I got here. Couldn't hear a damn thing over the communicator."

  But he'd heard her heart on the tracker, loud and strong, and it had kept him sane.

  "Sweet holy Jesus." His hand gripped her shoulder while he looked at the entrance. "Mother of God."

  "Anne. Anne was in there."

  His hand tightened on her shoulder, then his arm was around her. "Oh hell."

  "I was one of the last out. We were nearly clear. I told her to get out. I told her to abort and go. She didn't listen."