The In Death Collection Books 16-20 - J. D. Robb [295]
She waited again while members of the team shuffled and took out the bio. “Renquist will become Marsonini, attempt and likely succeed in copying his mannerisms, habits, and routines. You also have, in your packs, the projected image of how he’ll look wearing the long red hair and sunshades. Now let’s go over the details. If Renquist follows this pattern, this is going down tonight.”
She spent another hour before dismissing her team. Since she’d seen McNab look at his purple-banded wrist unit three times during the briefing, she held him back.
“She’s got another two hours. You’d better chill.”
“Sorry. She was just so wigged this morning. She’s going into the sims now. She keeps choking on the sims.”
“If she chokes, she’s not ready to make the grade. The timing blows on this, McNab, but the fact is we’ve got a lot more at stake here than Peabody getting her detective shield.”
“I know it. She’s so damn worried about letting you down she’s turned her guts inside out.”
“Jesus. It’s not about me.”
He pressed his lips together as if wrestling with a decision, then shrugged. “Yeah, it is. Sure it is. A big part of it. I wasn’t supposed to tell you, but I figure you gotta know so if she messes up on this, you can handle it. Handle her.”
“She better handle herself. She’s going straight into this op when she’s done, and she won’t have the results. She better handle herself, and do the job.”
He slipped his hands into his pockets and gave Eve a cheeky grin. “See, you know just how to handle her.”
“Get out of here.”
She sat on the corner of the desk for a moment, to clear Peabody out of her head. It was one thing to be responsible for lives, for justice. But it was a hell of a kick in the ass to be told you had somebody’s psyche in your hands.
How the hell had it gotten there?
“Lieutenant?” Roarke stood in the doorway of their adjoining offices, watching her. “A minute of your time.”
“Yeah.” She rose to walk into the simulation of the Mitchell bedroom again, judging distances, angles, moves. “That’s about all I’ve got for you. We could take him on the street,” she said half to herself. “But Marsonini carried a blaster or stunner, so Renquist will have a blaster or stunner. If he gets to it, starts popping off heat . . . maybe some idiot civilian gets in the way. Potential hostage. Better do it inside. Contained and controlled inside. No place to run, no civilian targets. It should be cleaner inside.”
She looked over, shrugged when she realized she’d walked in and out of the holographic bedroom closet. “Sorry.”
“It’s not a problem. You’re worried because Peabody will be in the bed, in the open.”
“She can take care of herself.”
“So she can. But the fact that you’re worried should help you understand I’ve some concerns of my own. So I’m asking you to let me in on this operation.”
Deliberately she cocked her brow. “Asking? Me? Why don’t you just go to your good pal Jack, or your buddy Ryan?”
“One tries to learn by one’s mistakes.”
“Does one?”
“I want to be there for several reasons, and one is because it’s become personal for you. It’s trickier when it’s personal.”
She turned back. “End hologram program. Screens off.” There was cold coffee on her desk. She picked up the cup, put it down. Then found herself reaching for the little statue of the goddess Peabody’s mother had given her.
“It’s not the notes. They’re just irritating on a personal level, and helpful otherwise. It’s not the fact that he’s marked me as a future target. That goes with the territory. It’s not even that he’s a vicious, arrogant, sick son of a bitch. You get that all the time. It was watching Marlene Cox fighting to come back, and more than that, seeing her mother will her back. Sitting beside that hospital bed, reading to her, holding her hand, talking to her, believing—refusing not to believe because she loved