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“You drive,” she said as they both bolted out of the room. “I’ll try to contact both of them.”
Everyone you care about, she thought again, snapping Mavis’s name into her ’link while they rushed down the stairs.
Yo! Can’t chat ’cause I’m doing something mag! But I’ll catch you later. Fill me in on what’s the what. Cha!
“Mavis, tag me back. It’s urgent. If you’re still at Madison Square, stay inside. Stay inside.”
Even as she jumped into the car, she tried Summerset.
I’m unavailable at the moment. please leave your name, a contact number, and a brief message. I’ll return your call as soon as possible.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck. They’re all right. They’re both fine.” She wanted to try Leonardo, but realized if he’d stayed home with the baby, she’d just terrify him.
No point, no point, she told herself as Roarke bulleted through the gates.
Instead she set the dash ’link on a loop, tagging them each in turn while she punched in Baxter, and hit the sirens.
He didn’t block video, looked wild-eyed and exhausted at the same time, showed a shadow of beard and hair in messy sleep tuffs.
“Baxter.”
“She hit Madison Square—big concert. I’m on my way. I need you to contact the squad. I want Jenkinson and Reineke on scene. The rest report to Central unless I tell you different.”
“Done.”
She cut him off, tagged Feeney.
“I’m on my way,” he said the minute he came on. “McNab filled me in. ETA, maybe fifteen. Do you know how many?”
“No, we’re five minutes out. I need a location for Mavis’s and Summerset’s ’links. They were both at this concert.”
“Christ. I’ll work it. Goddamn it.”
He cut her off. Eve did the only thing she could think of. She touched Roarke’s hand, squeezed briefly. Then prepared to deal with what came next.
“As soon as we find them, I need you, Feeney, McNab working that program. We want the nest. She won’t be there, but we want the nest.”
“I think he was taking Ivanna—Ivanna Liski. He said something about having dinner with her and broadening his musical horizons with this bloody concert. And I . . . I told him he should take Ivanna backstage to meet Mavis. He should see about arranging that.”
Delicate blonde, Eve thought, former ballerina—and former spy. And maybe former flame of Summerset. “So it’s likely they were both inside when this hit. We’ll find them.”
Seventh Avenue was chaos. Roarke cut across Thirty-Fifth, snaking through other vehicles and barricades while lights glared and sirens screamed.
She’d been in this chaos before, when the Cassandra group had blown up the arena in its crazed quest to destroy New York landmarks. And now, rebuilt, renewed, reopened, that resilience had been used as a target by another killer.
Should she have realized it? Anticipated it?
She shoved those thoughts aside as she and Roarke leaped out of opposite doors.
“Wait. They won’t let you through, and I need my field kit.”
She grabbed it, yanked out her badge to clip it to her coat, before the two of them bulled their way through the clamoring crowds pressed to the police line.
“Lieutenant. Jesus, Lieutenant, we got a hell of a mess here.”
“Hold the line, Officer, and start moving it back. I want this area cleared back to Sixth on the east, and Eighth to the west—two blocks north and south. How many victims?”
“I can’t tell you, sir. We came in on crowd control. I heard up to twenty, but I can’t say for sure.”
