Divided in Death

Chapter 7

“You have a dead spook,” Roarke pointed out. “I wonder if that’s redundant.”

“It makes sense. Don’t you see?” She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Who gets through security slicker than a spook?”

“Well, foregoing modesty, I must point out that I-”

“You don’t have any modesty to forego. Bissel was HSO, so it jibes for him to have all those blocks on his studio, for him to hook up with a security expert, and for him to be dead.”

“Assassinated by another spook, national or foreign.”

“Exactly. They knew about Bissel and Kade, and when the time was right they let Reva know. Set her up to take the fall.”

“Why? What’s the point in framing an innocent woman?”

Frowning, she studied the screen. He looked like an ordinary man, she thought. Good-looking, if you went for the smooth type, but ordinary. That would, she imagined, be part of the point. Spooks needed to blend in to stay spooks.

“Not sure there has to be a point, but if there is, it could be as simple as not wanting anyone looking too closely at Bissel, taking it on the surface. A philandering husband whacked by his crazed wife in the heat of passion. Homicide comes in, takes a look at the mess, hauls Reva off, and that’s the end of that.”

“That’s simple enough, but it would’ve been simpler yet to stage a burglary gone wrong and leave Reva out of it.”

“Yeah.” She looked back at Roarke. “And that tells me she was already in it.”

“The Code Red.”

“The Code Red, and other things she’s been working on over the past couple of years.” Jamming her hands in her pocket she began to pace. “This current isn’t your only government or sensitive project.”

“Hardly.” Roarke studied Bissel’s ID image. “He married her because of her work. Because of what she was rather than who.”

“Or because of what you are. They’ll have a file on you.”

“Yes, I’m sure they do.” And he intended to take a look at it before he was done.

“What’s level two mean? Level-two operative.”

“I have no idea.”

“Let’s take a look at his dossier. See when he was recruited.” Thumbs hooked in pockets, she read the data on screen. “Nine years ago, so he wasn’t a rookie. Based in Rome a couple of years, and in Paris, in Bonn. Got around. I’d say his artistic profession would make good cover. Spoke four languages-and that’d be a plus. We know he’s good with the ladies, and that couldn’t hurt.”

“Eve, look at his recruiter.”

“Where?”

With a keystroke, he highlighted a name.

“Felicity Kade? Son of a bitch. She brought him in.” She held up her hand for silence and paced out her thoughts. “She’d’ve been a kind of trainer to him, seems to me. A lot of times trainers and trainees develop a close relationship. They worked together, and they were lovers. Probably lovers, on and off, all along. They’re a type.”

“Which type is that?” he wondered.

“Slick, upper-class, social animals. Vain-”

“Why vain?”

“Lots of mirrors, lots of fancy duds, lots of money spent on body and face work, salons.”

Amused, he studied his fingernails. “One could claim those attributes are simply natural elements of a comfortable lifestyle.”

“Yeah, if they add up to you. You’ve got a big trunkful of vanity yourself, but it’s not the same as these two. You don’t throw mirrors onto the walls every damn place so you can check yourself out every time you move, like Bissel.”

Thoughtfully, she glanced back at Roarke and decided if she looked as good as he did, she’d probably spend half the day staring at herself.

Weird.

“All those mirrors, reflective surfaces,” she continued when he just smiled at her, “you could argue that was as much lack of confidence as vanity.”

“That would be my take, but it sounds like a question for Mira.”

“Yeah.” She would get to that, and soon. “Anyway, they’re a type. Like the artsy scene, and showing themselves off. Even if it’s cover, they have to be into it. And on another level, it must take a certain type to go into covert work, on the long haul. You live a lie, you set up an identity, a persona that’s part reality, part fantasy. How else could you make it work?”

“I’ll agree that Bissel and Kade appear to be more suited than Bissel and Reva-at least on the surface.”

“Okay, but they need Reva. They need, want, or have been assigned to infiltrate Securecomp. Felicity approaches Reva first, makes pals. Maybe feels her out. But for whatever reason Reva’s not a good candidate for the HSO.”

“She’s worked for the government,” Roarke pointed out. “Nearly died for it. She’s loyal, and the administration she was attached to had no great affection for the HSO, as I recall.”

“Politics.” Eve blew out a breath. “Makes me screwy. But if we take it down to ‘she’s not a candidate for covert,’ it doesn’t mean she’s not a good resource for the HSO. So they bring in Bissel. Romance, sex. But the marriage, that says they expected her to be of long-term use.”

“And disposable.”

She turned back to him. “It’s tough to see a friend get kicked around this way. I’m sorry.”

“I wonder if it’ll be easier on her, or harder, knowing all this.”

“Whichever, she’ll have to cope. She doesn’t have a lot of options.” She nodded toward the wall screens. “These two were using her as an information source, and it’s probable they planted various devices in the home, in her data unit, her vehicles, maybe on her person. She was their plant, an unwitting mole, and odds are they tapped her for plenty. No point in keeping up the charade of marriage and friendship if it wasn’t paying off.”

“Agreed.” And the fact that it must have been paying off was, he imagined, going to cause him considerable annoyance. “But what point is there in eliminating two operatives? If it was an in-house assassination, it seems wasteful. Outside, it seems like overkill. Messy, Eve, either way.”

“Messy, but it had the potential of taking out three key players.” She drummed her fingers on her hips. “There’s more. Has to be more. Maybe Bissel and Kade screwed up. Maybe they tried playing both sides. Maybe they blew their cover. We need to pick our way through their lives. I need all the data you can get me on them. And since we’re playing with spooks, screw the rules.”

“Could you say that again? The screw the rules part. It’s such music to my ears.”

“You’re going to enjoy this one, aren’t you?”

“I believe I am.” But he didn’t look pleased when he said it. He looked dangerous. “Someone has to pay for what’s been done to Reva. I’ll enjoy being part of that payment.”

“There’s an advantage to having a friend as scary as you.”

“Come sit on my lap and say that.”

“Get the data, pal. I need to call in, check with the men on Reva’s house. I don’t want anybody sliding in there before we sweep it for devices in the morning.”

“If there were bugs, they’d have had an exterminator of their own.”

“They had to move fast between the time Reva received the package and the hit, then her arrival.” She combed a hand through her hair as she went over the time line. “If they moved right in maybe they swept it out. But somebody was at the Flatiron. Seems to me that an op like this, double murder, would require a small, tight team. Don’t want too many in the know.”

“It’s Homeland,” Roarke reminded her. “Orders to sweep out a private residence wouldn’t require the exterminators being apprised of the reason.”

“Just following orders,” she mumbled and envisioned the bloody mess in Felicity Kade’s bed. What kind of person gave orders for that kind of brutality? Not assassination, she thought. No way to clean up vicious, bloody murder. “Yeah, you’ve got a point. Still, if orders did come down, they could’ve missed something.”

They worked another two hours before he convinced her it was all he could do for the night. He talked her into bed, and when he was certain she slept, he got up, went back. And did more.

It wasn’t difficult to access his file as he was already into the main. They had less hard data on him than he’d anticipated. Hardly more, he noted, than was public knowledge-or that he’d adjusted, personally, for public knowledge.

There were a number of suspecteds, allegeds, probables running through his somewhat checkered career. Most of them were true enough, but there were a few sins ascribed to him that weren’t on his actual plate.

That hardly mattered.

It amused more than annoyed him to find that twice he’d been romantically involved with an operative assigned to him in the hopes of eliciting information.

He lit a cigarette, tipped back in his chair as he remembered the two women with some fondness. He supposed he couldn’t complain. He’d enjoyed their company, and was confident enough that though their primary mission had failed, they’d enjoyed his.

They didn’t know about his mother, and that was a tremendous relief. Officially, Meg Roarke was listed as his mother, and that was fine by him. What did it matter to the HSO who had birthed him? A young girl foolish enough to love and believe in a man like Patrick Roarke wasn’t of any interest.

Especially since she was long dead.

Since they hadn’t bothered to go back that far, or dig that deep, they didn’t know about Siobhan Brody, or his aunt and the rest of the family he’d discovered in the west of Ireland. His newfound relations wouldn’t be watched or approached or have their privacy invaded by the HSO.

But there was a fat file on his father. Patrick Roarke had been of considerable interest to the HSO, as well as Interpol, the Global Intelligence Council, and other covert organizations the HSO had pooled for data. He discovered that they’d considered recruiting him at one point, but had judged him too volatile.

Volatile, Roarke mused with a dark chuckle. Well, he could hardly argue with that.

They’d tied him to Max Ricker, and that was no surprise. Ricker had been a clever man, and his network spread all over the planet, and off, with rich pockets of weapons and illegals running among other business ventures. But he’d been entirely too vain to cover all of his tracks.

Patrick Roarke was considered one of Ricker’s occasional tools, and not a particularly deft one. Too fond of the drink and other chemicals. And not discreet enough to warrant a higher position, much less a permanent one on Ricker’s payroll.

But seeing the association in black-and-white made the fact that Eve had been the one to lock Ricker in a cage all the more gratifying.

He’d nearly closed the file again when he caught a notation about travel to Dallas. The time, the place made his blood run cold.

Patrick Roarke traveled from Dublin to Dallas, Texas, on circular route and under the name Roarke O’Hara. Arrived Dallas 5-12-2036 at seventeen-thirty. Was met at airport by subject known as Richard Troy aka Richie Williams aka William Bounty aka Rick Marco. Subjects traveled by car to Casa Diablo Hotel where Troy was registered as Rick Marco. Roarke rented a room under O’Hara.

At twenty-fifteen, subjects exited hotel and traveled by foot to the Black Saddle Bar, where they remained until oh two hundred. Transcription of conversation attached.

There was more-standard surveillance reports that covered three days with the two men coming and going, having meetings with others of their kind in bars, in dives.

A great deal of drinking and posturing, and bits and pieces discussed about movement of munitions from a base in Atlanta.

Max Ricker. Roarke didn’t need the transcript to tell him both his father and Eve’s had been on the fringes, at least, of Ricker’s network. They knew the men had met, in Dallas.

Days before, he thought, only days before Eve had been found, battered and broken, in an alley.

They’d known all that, he thought, and so had the HSO.

Subject Roarke checked out of hotel at ten thirty-five the following morning. He was driven by Troy to the airport where he took a shuttle to Atlanta.

Troy returned to hotel room shared with female minor. Surveillance on Roarke passed to Operative Clark.

“Female minor,” Roarke repeated. “You bastards. You bloody bastards, you had to know.”

And with a rage so strong it sickened him, he brought up Richard Troy’s HSO file.

It wasn’t yet dawn when she stirred, and felt his arms go around her. So gently around her. Half dreaming, she turned to him, turned into him and found the warmth of his body, then the warmth of his lips on her lips.

The kiss was so tender, so fragile somehow, that she could let herself drift into it even as she floated on that twilight sleep.

In the dark, she could always find him in the dark and know he’d be there to soothe her or arouse her. Or to ask those things of her.

She threaded her fingers through his hair, cradling his head as she urged him to deepen the kiss. Deeper, a mating of lips and tongues, and still soft as a dream she was already forgetting.

For now there was only Roarke, the smooth glide of his skin over hers, the lines of him, the scent and taste. She was already filled with him as she murmured his name.

His mouth trailed over her like a benediction. Cheeks, throat, shoulders, then pressed delicately on the slope of her breast to linger where her heart beat.

“I love you.” His lips formed the words against her breast. “I’m lost in love with you.”

Not lost, she thought, and smiled in the dark even as her pulse thickened. Found. We’re both found.

He cradled his head there a moment-cheek to heart-and closed his eyes until he could be sure he had his fiercer emotions in check, until he could be sure his hands would be gentle on her.

He had a searing need to be gentle.

She sighed, soft and sleepy, and was content, he knew, to be wakened like this. No matter what had been done to her, her heart was open for him, and that open heart lifted him beyond anything he’d expected to become.

So he was gentle when he touched her, and when he roused her to peak it was lovely and sweet.

When he slipped inside her, they were one shadow moving in the dark.

She held him there, close in the big bed under the sky window where the light was going pearl-gray with dawn. She could stay like this for an hour, she thought. Stay quiet and joined and happy before it was time to face the world, the job, the blood.

“Eve.” He pressed his lips to her shoulder. “We need to talk.”

“Mmm. Don’t wanna talk. Sleeping.”

“It’s important.” He drew away, though she groaned a protest. “I’m sorry. Lights on, twenty percent.”

“Oh, man.” She clapped a hand over her eyes. “What is it? Five? Nobody has to have a conversation at five in the morning.”

“It’s nearly half-five, and you’ll have your team here at seven. We need the time for this.”

She spread her fingers, squinted through. “For what?”

“I went back last night and accessed more files.”

And through those spread fingers, he saw the annoyance. “I thought you said that was all you could do.”

“For you, it was. I did this for me. I wanted a look at my own dossier, in case… Just in case.”

She sat up quickly. “Are you in trouble? Christ, are you in trouble with the fucking HSO?”

“No.” He put his hands on her shoulders, ran them up and down her arms. And suffered, knowing she would suffer. “It’s not that. While I was at it, I had a look at my father’s files.”

“Your mother.” She reached for his hand, squeezed.

“No. It seems she didn’t earn as much as a blip on their radar. They weren’t paying much mind to him that long ago, and she didn’t matter to them, wasn’t useful or interesting, which is all to the good. But Patrick Roarke became of more interest, and they spent time tracking his moves now and again. Mostly, it appears, on the chance he’d give them something to use against Ricker.”

“I’d say he didn’t, as Ricker stayed in operation until last year.”

“He didn’t give them enough. It’s a long, convoluted file, a great many cross-references, a lot of man-hours that didn’t amount to anything that would stick.”

“Well, he’s away now. Ricker. What does that have to do with this?”

“They had my father under surveillance, believing he was working as a bagman for Ricker, and they tracked him to Dallas, in May. The year you were eight.”

She nodded, slowly, but had to swallow. “We knew he’d been in Dallas about that time, helping to set up for the Atlanta job, the sting where Skinner’s operation went to hell. It’s not important. Look, since I’m up, I’m going to get a shower.”

“Eve.” He clamped his hands on hers, felt hers jerk as she tried to escape. “He was met at the airport by a man named Richard Troy.”

Her eyes were huge now, with fear-the kind he saw when she woke from nightmares. “This has nothing to do with the case. The case is priority. I need to-”

“I’ve never looked into your past, because I knew you didn’t want it.” Her hands had gone cold in his, but he held them. He wished he could warm them. “I didn’t intend to look now, but only to assure myself that my family wasn’t being watched. The connection…” He brought her rigid hands to his lips. “Darling Eve, the connection between your father and mine is there. We can’t pretend otherwise. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t stand to hurt you.”

“You have to let me go.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry. I tried to talk myself out of telling you. ‘She doesn’t need to know, doesn’t want to know.’ But I can’t hold this back from you. It would hurt you more, wouldn’t it, and insult you on top of that if I treated you like you couldn’t take it.”

“That’s tricky.” Her voice was scratchy and her eyes burned. “That’s pretty fucking tricky.”

“Maybe, but no less true for all that. I have to tell you what I’ve found, and you’ll decide how much of it you want to hear.”

“I need to think!” She yanked her hands free from his. “I need to think. Just leave me alone and let me think.” She sprang off the bed, rushed into the bathroom. Slammed the door.

He nearly went after her, but when he asked himself if doing so would be for her sake or his own, he wasn’t at all sure. So instead, he waited for her.

She took a shower, blistering hot. Halfway through her heart rate was nearly normal again. She stayed in the drying tube too long, and felt a little lightheaded afterward. She just needed coffee, that was all. Just a few hits of coffee-and she needed to put this crap out of her mind.

She had a job to do. It didn’t matter, it didn’t fucking matter about Patrick Roarke or her father, or Dallas. It didn’t apply. She couldn’t afford to crowd her head with that kind of bullshit when she had work to do.

And she looked at her face in the mirror over the sink, her pale, terrified face. She wanted to smash her fist through it. Nearly did.

But she turned away, yanked on her robe, and walked back into the bedroom.

He’d gotten up, put on a robe of his own. He said nothing as he walked over and handed her a cup of coffee.

“I don’t want to know about this. Can you understand? I don’t want to know.”

“All right, then.” He touched her cheek. “We’ll put it away.”

He wouldn’t call her a coward, she realized. He wouldn’t even think it. He would just love her.

“I don’t want to know about this,” she repeated. “But you have to tell me.” She walked to the sitting area and lowered to a chair because she was afraid her knees would shake. “His name was Troy?”

He sat across from her, keeping the low table between them because he sensed she wanted the distance. “He had a number of aliases, but that was his legal name, so it seems. Richard Troy. There’s a file on him. I didn’t read the whole of it, but just the… just the business in Dallas. But copied it for you in case you wanted to.”

She didn’t know what she wanted. “They met in Dallas.”

“They did. Yours picked mine up at the airport, brought him to the hotel where you… where you were. He registered. They went out later that night and got piss-faced. There’s a transcript of their conversation, such as it was, and the same over the three days they were there together. A lot of posturing and bragging, and some speculation on the operation in Atlanta.”

“Ricker’s gun-running operation.”

“Yes. My father was to go on to Atlanta, which he did the following day. There is speculation that he took payoff money from the cops who were using him as an inside man in Ricker’s organization. He took that, and Ricker’s money, and-double-crossing both sides-went back to Dublin.”

“That confirms what we theorized when we dealt with Skinner. Sloppy job by the spooks if they didn’t cop to what your father had in mind, and warn the locals. Puts HSO on the trigger for the thirteen cops who died in that botched raid as much as Ricker, as much as anyone.”

“I’d say HSO didn’t give a damn about the cops.”

“Okay.” She could focus on that, pinpoint some of the rage on that. “They’d consider Ricker the prime directive. The Atlanta operation was major, but it wasn’t the whole ball. Maybe they were too focused on bringing down Ricker, crushing his network and doing the victory dance that they didn’t figure a small cog like Patrick Roarke was going to screw all sides. But it’s unconscionable they’d let cops die that way.”

“They knew about you.”

“What?”

“They knew there was a child in that bloody room with him. Female, minor child. The bastards knew.”

When her eyes went glassy, he cursed. Shoving the table away, he pushed her head between her knees. “Take it slow, breathe slow. Christ, Christ, I’m sorry.”

His voice was a buzz in her ears. His beautiful voice, murmuring in Gaelic now as his control wavered. She could hear it wavering, feel it in the quiver of his hand on the back of her head. He was kneeling beside her, she realized. Suffering as much, if not more, than she was herself.

Wasn’t that strange? Wasn’t that miraculous?

“I’m okay.”

“Just give it a minute more. You’re trembling yet. I want them dead. Those who knew you were trapped with him and did nothing. I want their blood in my throat.”

She shifted enough to rest her cheek on her knee and look at him. At the moment, he looked every bit like a man who could rip out another’s throat. “I’m okay,” she said again. “It’s not going to matter, Roarke. It’s not, because I survived, and he didn’t. I need to read the file.”

He nodded, then just laid his head on hers.

“If you’d blocked this from me”-her voice was thick but she didn’t try to clear it-”it would’ve set me back. It would’ve set us back. I know this isn’t easy for you either, but telling me… Trusting us to get through it, that’s going to make it better. I need to look at some of this data.”

“I’ll get it for you.”

“No, I’ll go with you. We’ll look at it together.”

They went back in his private room, and read what he brought up on screen together.

She didn’t sit. She wasn’t going to let her legs go weak on her again. Not even when she read the field operative’s report.

Sexual and physical abuse involving minor female purported to be subject’s daughter. No recorded data on minor, no birth mother or surrogate registered. Intervention is not recommended at this time. If subject becomes aware he is being observed, or if any social or law-enforcement agency is informed of the situation with minor female, subject’s value would be compromised.

Recommend nonaction re minor female.

“They let it go.” Roarke spoke softly, too softly. “I hate fucking cops. Saving your presence,” he added after a moment.

“They’re not cops. They don’t give a rat’s ass about the law, much less about justice. They sure as hell don’t give a damn about an individual. It’s all big picture to them, always was, from the moment they formed at the dawn of the Urban Wars, it was big picture and fuck the people in it.”

She packed away her rage, her horror, and continued to read. It wasn’t until she came to the end that she had to reach out, lay her hand on the console for balance.

“They knew what happened. They knew I killed him. My God, they knew, and they cleaned up after me.”

“For security, my ass. To cover their own culpability.”

“It says… it says the listening devices planted were defective and shut down that night. What are the chances?” she drew a deep breath and read the section again.

Surveillance returned at seven hundred and sixteen hours. No sound or movement recorded on premises for six hours. Assumption that subject had moved on during dark period caused field agent to risk a personal check of room. Upon entering, agent observed subject DOS. Cause of death determined to be multiple stab wounds inflicted with small kitchen knife. Female minor child could not be located on premises.

No data on premises pertaining to Ricker or Roarke. On orders from Home, area was cleaned. Body disposal team notified.

Minor child, female, believed to be subject’s daughter, located under medical observation. Severe physical and emotional trauma. Local authorities investigating. Minor has no identification and will be assigned a social caseworker.

Subsequently local authorities unable to identify minor child, female. Minor subject unable to remember and/or relate name or circumstances. No connection to Troy or this agency can be made. Minor subject has been absorbed by the National Agency for Minors and has been given the name Dallas, Eve.

Case file Troy is closed.

“Is there a file on me?”

“Yes.”

“Did they make the connection?”

“I didn’t read it.”

“Aren’t you just full of willpower?” When he didn’t speak, she turned away from the screen, and took a step toward him.

He took one back. “Someone will pay for this. Nothing will stop me. I can’t kill him, though God, I’ve dreamed of it. But someone will pay for standing by, standing back, and letting this happen to you.”

“It won’t change anything.”

“Aye, by God it will.” Some part of the fury he’d held inside him since reading the reports lashed out. “There are balances, Eve. You know it. Checks and balances, that’s what makes your precious justice. I’ll have my own on this.”

She was cold, already so cold, but his words, the look of him now all but numbed her. “It’s not going to help me to think about you going off and hunting up some spook assigned to this over twenty years ago.”

“You don’t have to think about it.”

A little bubble of panic rose in her throat. “I need you focused on the work-do what you promised to do.”

He stepped around the console, up to her. His eyes were blue ice as he took her chin in his hand. “Do you think I can or will let this go?”

“No. Do you think I can stand back and let you hunt someone down and mete out your personal sense of justice?”

“No. So we have a problem. In the meantime, I’ll give you whatever you need from me on this case. I won’t fight with you over this, Eve,” he said before she could speak. “And I won’t ask or expect you to change your moral ground. I only ask you do the same when it comes to me.”

“I want you to remember something.” Her voice wanted to shake. Her soul wanted to tremble. “I want you to think about this before you do something you can’t take back.”

“I’ll do what I have to do,” he said flatly. “And so will you.”

“Roarke.” She gripped his arms, and was afraid she could already feel him slipping away from her. “Whatever happened to me back in Dallas, I came out of it. I’m standing here because of it. Maybe I have everything that matters to me, including you, because of it. If that’s true, I’d go through it all again. I’d go through every minute of the hell to have you, to have my badge, to have this life. That’s enough balance for me. I need you to think about that.”

“Then I will.”

“I need to get ready for the morning briefing.” To think about something else-anything else. “So do you. This has to be put away for now. If you can’t put it away, you’re no good for me, or your friend.”

“Eve.” He said it gently, as he’d loved her gently, and he brushed the tear she hadn’t been aware of shedding from her cheek.

She broke when his arms came around her. And because they did, she burrowed into him and let herself weep.