Origin in Death (In Death 21)

"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.

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's stirring anything with a houseful of relatives. It's too distracting."

"I'd point out they're all tucked up neatly in bed now, but the idea of breaking into the Center has me distracted. First you walk in."

"One of the public areas. Emergency care, maybe. Most vulnerable to security, right?"

"Most likely. And as good as any. Let's have a look."

"You look. I have to think. Would she take her along? Take the kid?"

Because she felt a certain kinship with Deena, she asked herself what she'd do.

"Doesn't seem to follow. You pull her out of what you consider a dangerous situation, you don't dump her into another. But she'd keep her close. She'd put her where she feels it's safe. With Avril, or where Avril can get to her. If so, she has to contact Avril. Already has," she said, nodding to herself. "No move on Diana's legal guardians in Ar­gentina. I'm betting Avril got word to her, and Deena caught another flight back, or aborted the flight she was on."