The In Death Collection Books 21-25 - J. D. Robb [129]
“Son of a bitch! Sorry,” she said when Sinead’s eyebrows shot up. “Son of a bitch.” And she leaped to her desk ’link. “Lieutenant Dallas. Get me the lead officer on duty,” she barked. “Now.”
“This is Officer Otts, Lieutenant.”
“Determine location of student Diana Rodriguez, age twelve. Immediately. Security check, full parameter. I’m staying linked until you report affirmation on both. Move your ass!”
Sinead’s eyes were wide, and for a moment resembled her grandson’s. “Well now, you’re formidable, aren’t you?”
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Eve kicked her desk as Sinead looked on. “Her mother. Waiting for her mother. Well, who the hell’s her mother? Not that bogus data listing, that’s for damn sure. Deena. She meant Deena.”
“I’m sure she did,” Sinead replied softly.
“Lieutenant, Diana Rodriguez can’t be located. I’ve ordered a full search of the facilities and the grounds. There’s been an unreported breach in the southwest wall. I’m checking on that.”
“You’re checking on it.”
Sinead stood, fascinated, as Eve verbally chewed Officer Otts down to bare bone.
20
“I SHOULD’VE THOUGHT OF IT. I SHOULD’VE known.” She had to calm down, Eve told herself. Feeney was on his way. They’d use the homer implant. They’d track the kid.
“You have thought of it,” Roarke reminded her.
“After it was too late to stop it. To use it. You got a top security facility, you’ve got seasoned cops, and still she walks in, gets the kid, walks out.”
“She’d studied the system, Eve. She’d gotten through it once before. And her motivation was very strong.”
“Which makes me more of an idiot for not realizing the kid was key. She wants to stop it. Will kill to stop it. That’s what I focused on. But the kid, more than a replica of her. She’s from her.”
“Her child,” Roarke agreed. “Obviously knowing Diana existed was one thing. Seeing her, face to face, pushed getting her out to priority.”
“She wasn’t trained the same as Avril,” Eve pointed out. “Look at her records. Languages, electronics, comp sciences, martial arts training, international law and global studies, weaponry, explosives. Light on domestic sciences.”
“Training her to be a soldier.”
“No, a spook.” Furious with herself, she shoved at her hair. “I’m betting spook. Infiltrate covert ops, move up the ranks. But she used her training to get out, stay gone. The murders looked professional because they were. They looked personal because they were.”
“They . . . encoded her . . .” Roarke said, for lack of a better term, “. . . to do exactly what she did.”
“That’s the point, and the point Legal will use if and when she goes to trial. See here? They shifted training with Diana somewhat. Trying to prevent her from repeating the same pattern. Add in more of the domestic sciences, push art appreciation, theater, music. Blah, blah. Maybe, maybe it would’ve worked. But here comes the intangible. She sees the person she considers her mother.”
He was working on the center, manually now, his sleeves rolled up, his hair tied back. “If they’ve based anything here, they’ve covered themselves brilliantly. Every area is fully accounted for.”
“Okay, forget that, forget it.” She pressed her fingers to her temples as if to clear her brain. “This is your place, your base. Where do you put it?”
He pushed back, considered. “Well, you go under. This isn’t the sort of thing you can run cleverly in plain sight. That’s the most fun, of course, but you can’t mix this—or not all of it, not the core of it—in with the work-a-day. Some of the lab business, yes. With the setup they’ve got, you’ve plenty of checkpoints there. Certainly you could do alterations, sculpting, the subliminals, whatever you liked in any number of locations. But for the creating, the—for lack of a better word—the gestating. You’d need maximum cover.”
“Sublevel, then.” She leaned over him, studied the screen. “How do we get in?”
“Are we breaking and entering, darling? You’ll get me stirred up.”
“Cut it out. Nobody