Apprentice in Death (In Death 43)

“Not if she’s there. Not if I’m wrong. And not while there’s a cop unsecured. But . . .”

“If she’s not there, you’re not wrong, and the rest are secure, you’ll feed Nadine the other op. As if it’s going down.” Roarke smiled as he fiddled with the sensor. “She’ll be very annoyed with you, our Nadine.”

“She’ll get over it when I give her the exclusive on this op.”

“This helmet’s heavy. And it echoes.”

Eve flicked a glance in the rearview mirror at Peabody with the black helmet and visor in place. “Take it off until you need it. You look ridiculous.”

“Not at all.” Roarke smiled back at her. “Sexy Stormtrooper.”

“Really?”

“Stay on point,” Eve warned. “I’m still figuring out how to get in without giving her time to kill us.”

“I have every confidence,” Roarke said, continuing his work on the portable, hoping to boost its range.

“I don’t want to double park, drawing her attention when people start blasting horns and bitching. How much inside fifty feet?”

“I think I can get a read at sixty now. It’s worth a try.”

Eve considered the option of using a building, flashing the badge and getting Roarke set up in a neighboring house. But she spotted a curbside barely big enough for a mini. She could make it work.

Making it work meant using the DLE to nudge another vehicle up to the bumper of the one in front of it, and doing the same to the one behind. With that, and a lot of maneuvering, she squeezed in.

“This is more like sixty-five than sixty.”

“If you can’t do it from here, why didn’t you say so before I got here?”

“I didn’t say that. Just give me another minute.”

She put a hand to her ear. “Yeah, go,” she said to Jenkinson.

“Santiago and Carmichael are in. The check-in droid gives a negative on the suspect.”

“How reliable a negative?”

“They say it’s wonky, so Feeney’s sending Callendar in to work on it. We got about a dozen single heat sources. Feeney’s done some calculation and takes four of them out. You can’t get accurate height and weight, but his calcs say those four are way too big for the suspect.”

“Good enough. We’re about sixty-five feet from the target location. Roarke’s working on scanning for heat sources. We’ll let you know.”

She ended transmission, shifted to Roarke. “Well?”

“You understand this is meant to work at much closer range, which I’d already managed to increase before you added to that range, so bugger off a minute.”

She buggered off by tapping her fingers on the steering wheel.

Better if they nailed her at the other location, Eve thought. Better if they had that flop surrounded, took her there.

But . . .

“All right then, let’s see if I’ve performed a small miracle.”

Roarke programmed the coordinates, tapped in codes, scanned the small screen.

“Geeks rule.” With her chin on the back of his seat, Peabody studied the screen through her visor. “You’ve got a read.”

“Now let’s see if there’s anyone home.”