She knew how to get around the assholes and their tests and their questions. And she knew what buttons to push, you bet she did. Her finger was on the trigger now, and it was staying there.
She had an inside track—and nobody knew but her. And now she had a nice, tidy pile of untraceable credits just for doing what she'd wanted to do in the first place: going public.
Her teeth flashed in a smile as she turned the comer and headed down the dark street toward her building. She was going to be rich, famous, powerful, as she was meant to be.
And with a little help from her friend, she'd pin Dallas to the wall.
"Officer Bowers?"
"Yeah?" Eyes narrowed, she turned, peered into the dark. Her hand lowered, hovered near her stunner. "What?"
"I have a message. From your friend."
"Oh yeah?" Her hand shifted, reached up to pat her container of ice cream. "What's the message?"
"It's delicate. We need privacy."
"No problem." She stepped forward, thrilled that there might be more she could use. "Come on up."
"I'm afraid you need to come down." The droid leaped out of the dark, his eyes colorless, his face blank. He swung the metal pipe once, cracking it against the side of her head before she could suck in air to scream.
The ice cream flew, landed with a splat. Blood smeared the sidewalk as he dragged her across. Her body bounced with muffled bumps on the stairs as he pulled it through the open basement door and down.
Efficiently, he climbed up again, locked the door. He didn't need the light. He'd been programmed to see in the dark. Quickly, he stripped off the uniform, took her ID, her weapon, and bundled all, including the pipe, in the large bag he'd brought with him. It would be placed in a recycle bin he'd already chosen and sabotaged.
And there in the cold dark, with emotionless skill, he used his hands and feet to break her to pieces.
*** CHAPTER THIRTEEN ***
"Sloppy, half-assed work." Eve fumed as she paced Roarke's office. She had to bitch to someone, and he was there. He made sympathetic noises while he scanned an incoming fax and went over the latest progress report from one of his largest interplanetary undertakings, the Olympus Resort.
It occurred to him that the resort could use another personal visit and that his wife could use a vacation. He made a mental note to work it in around their schedules.
"Two different primaries," she continued, striding around the office. "Two different cops, and both of them fucked up the case. What are they using to train them in Chicago—old videos of the Three Boobs?"
"I think that's Stooges," Roarke murmured.
"What?"
He glanced up, focused fully on her, and smiled at the absolute baffled fury on her face. "Stooges, darling. The Three Stooges."
"What's the difference, they're still incompetent knot-heads. Half the paperwork's missing. There's no documentation of witness interviews or reports, the postmortem documents are lost. They did manage to ID the victim, but nobody did a background check. Or if it was done, it's not in the file."
Roarke made some notations on the fax—a small adjustment that dealt with approximately three quarters of a million and change, and shot it off to his midtown office and his assistant's attention. "What do you have?"
"A dead guy," she snapped, "with a missing heart." She frowned as Roarke rose and walked over to select a bottle of wine from his chill box. "I can see one cop screwing up a case. I don't like it, but I can see it. But two cops screwing up the same one, it just doesn't hold. And now both of them are out of touch, so I'm going to have to do some dance with their boss tomorrow."
She had so much anger and frustration bottled up inside her. "Maybe somebody got to them. Bribed, threatened. Shit. The leak on this might not just be in the NYPSD, it might be all over the damn place
."
"And your interfering senator is from the great state of Illinois, as I recall."
"Yeah." Christ, she hated politics. "I have to clear it with the commander, but I should probably dance with this Chicago boss in person."
Taking his time, Roarke poured two glasses, carried both across the room to stand in front of her. "I'll take you."
"It's cop business."