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She toggled back and forth between locations, financials, added Isenberry into the mix. And slid into her own zone.
When the in-house ’link beeped beside her, she wished she could curse in Gaelic.
“Detective Baxter and Officer Trueheart have arrived and would like to speak with you.”
“Have them wait in my office.” She clicked off, then shot the data and the notes she’d been working on to her office unit. “I’ve got some stuff,” she said to Roarke.
“So do I. I’m in Kirkendall’s CIA file right now. Busy, busy boy.”
“Tell me one thing. Do agencies like that pay fees—outside fees—for wet work? For special assignments?”
“Apparently. I’m finding a number of what’s listed as ‘op fees’ in his file. His top seems to be a half mil—USD—for the termination of a scientist in Belingrad. He worked fairly cheap.”
“How do we manage to live in the same world when you actually exist on a plane where half a million is cheap?”
“True love hobbles us to the same post. Freelancers can get double that for an assassination. Easily.” He looked up from his work. “I was once offered that, at the tender age of twenty—to do away with the business rival of a weapon’s runner. A bit difficult to turn it down—quick money—but murder for pay has always struck me as tacky.”
“Tacky.”
He just smiled at her. “I’m in now, so I’ll keep with it, and run through Clinton’s and Isenberry’s. It won’t take long now, as I’ve already punched through.”
“I’ll be in my office. Just for curiosity, what does .
. .” She paused, brought the Gaelic phrase back in her mind, and mangled it in the repeating.
Surprise flickered over his face as he angled his head. “Where did you hear that?”
“Out of your mouth a little while ago.”
“I said that?” He looked mildly shocked—and if she wasn’t mistaken, a little embarrassed. “Well, what does come back to you. Just a flash from my youth. A very crude one.”
“Oh, then, as a cop who’s worked the tidy and genteel streets of New York for eleven years and counting, I’d be shocked by crude language.”
“Very crude,” he repeated. Then shrugged. “Basically, it’s fuck yourself in your own ass.”
“Yeah?” She brightened. “How do you say it again—the right way? I could use it on Summerset.”
He laughed, shook his head. “Go to work.”
She walked out, mumbling the phrase.
And walked into her office in time to see Baxter take a big bite of a loaded burger. Since there were no takeout bags in evidence, and the smell was real meat, she deduced it came from her own kitchen.
“Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” He grinned and chewed, and gestured toward Trueheart, who was chewing on an identical meal—with the grace, at least, to look slightly shamefaced. “We didn’t stop for fuel. Eats are better here.”
“I’ll give your compliments to the chef. Are you going to report, or just push dead cow in your mouth?”
“Both. Reached out to the primary on Moss, and on Duberry. Team working Moss, they crossed all the hatches. Nothing to go on. No specific threats filed. Moss hadn’t mentioned anything to his wife, his associates, friends, neighbors, about any threats. He and his kid drove upstate to this cabin he owned one weekend a month. Man-to-man time. Fishing and shit. Vehicle was parked, private garage—full vid surveillance, droid security. Droid on showed no tampering, but had a thirty-minute break on his disc. Same with the security cams.”
“What kind of cabin?”
Baxter nodded, picked up one of the fries he had ordered along with the burger. “We thought the same. Why go through all that when it’d be easier to take him out in a cabin upstate. Troy?”
Trueheart swallowed hastily. “The cabin’s in a gated, recreational community, and the security is good. The investigators believed, due to the nature of the explosive device and the ability to jam the lot security, that the possibility was strong on urban terrorism. Several other vehicles were destroyed, and the lot suffered some structural damage.”
“Yeah,” she murmured. “Smarter. Add the urban terrorism element to murk the waters.”
