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“No.” Well, maybe she’d played it a couple of times, but just to test her comp skills. “What’s going?”
“What we’ve got over here is a diagnostic on the Swisher security system. We ran all the standards on it, stripped her down. Nice system, by the way.”
“We already know it was jammed, remote. Bypassed the failsafes and backups.”
“Yeah, yeah, but not how, not what they used. We’re getting that. You work back from the system, code by code, signal by signal, and maybe you put together, code by code, signal by signal, the device that pulled it off.”
“They had to get it somewhere.” Eve nodded. “Even if they reconfigured, added flourishes, they had to get the basic device somewhere.”
“Yep. And what we got going over there is the security on the hospital lot where Jaynene Brenegan was taken out—and the system on the apartment where Karin Duberry was murdered. Hitting correlations. Gonna be the same device, or one configured the same way. When you get them, it’ll help burn them.”
“Have you got room for one more deal?”
“Shoot.”
“I need you to alter my communicator. A fault, but nothing that I’d reasonably notice as a non-EDD cop. Just a blip, so that someone who’s trying to monitor communications might get through, catch a transmission.”
“You want to leak data?”
“Once we get this set up, select our location, put the op together, I want them to be able to monitor my communicator. Maybe it’s fuzzy, but they should get the details. Like the communicator’s going bad on me. Like the shield’s thinning out. It happens, right?”
“Yeah, but there’s a default warning.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time departmental equipment went bad. You should see my damn computer.”
“Still giving you grief?” McNab asked.
“It’s holding. I haven’t gotten any foreign porn when I ask for a file. Lately.”
“Hand it over.” Feeney held up his palm. “We’ll play with it. You got your backup?”
“Yeah.” She pulled both out of her pocket. “Just dink with the one. Can you make it so the signal coming into it is still shielded? So they only get bits of what I transmit?”
“We’ll get you covered.”
There were enough rooms in the house to billet a military battalion. It was risky tucking Webster away with Baxter, but she didn’t want IAB strolling around her office. He wanted to observe, she thought, he could observe Baxter and Trueheart. Before rounding up Peabody, Eve slipped into her bedroom to make a private call.
“How about some more tit for tat?” she asked when Nadine came on-screen. “I need a spin, apparently. An incident last night—”
“Your air show through midtown?” Nadine gave a wicked laugh. “We got some extreme footage on that. Bought it off a tourist from Tokyo. It’s aired twice this morning.”
“Great.”
“You’re taking some heat on that? I’ve never known you to worry about a little sweat.”
“They’ve sicced IAB on me, and it could get in the way of the investigation. Trueheart was with me, and shit trickles even if you plug the dam. I’m advised to spin this around so it’s the courageous cop in pursuit of kid killers. Risking life and limb to apprehend cop killers and protect the known universe.”
“Boy, that’s killing you.” But Nadine angled her head. “That’s what you were doing, wasn’t it?”
“The point is this kind of thing doesn’t reflect well on the department.”
“And the department will take a sacrifice, if deemed necessary.”
“It’ll be Trueheart, Nadine. They’ll give me a slap, maybe a smudge on my record, but if they have to roast somebody, it’ll be him. He’s more disposable. I put him on the line.”
“So you’re asking me to spin the story so the crap doesn’t clog up the momentum of your investigation, and so the cutie-pie doesn’t get his tight little ass fried.”
“That’s the idea. And in return—”
