Divided in Death

She shrugged, moved off his lap, and onto a chair. She finished off her candy bar, sipped lazily at her wine.

It wasn’t exactly a hardship to watch him work. She liked the way he rolled his sleeves up to the elbow, tied his hair back-like a man preparing to do some serious physical labor.

He used both manual and verbal commands, so she could watch his quick fingers fly over keys, hear his voice-more Irish as he concentrated-flow out.

“Access denied? I’ll show you access denied, bloody wanker.”

Smiling a little, she closed her eyes, telling herself she was just going to rest them while she walked mentally through the investigation to date.

The next thing she knew, he was shaking her gently by the shoulder. “Eve.”

“What!” Her eyes popped open. “I wasn’t sleeping. I was thinking.”

“Yes, I could hear you thinking.”

“If that’s some smart-ass way of saying I was snoring, bite me.”

“I’d be more than happy to bite you later, but I really believe you’ll want to see this.”

She rubbed her eyes, and focused on his face. “Since you’ve got that big I’m-the-cat’s-ass grin on your face, I guess you got into whatever you wanted to get into.”

“Have a look.” He gestured toward the screen.

Reading, Eve got slowly to her feet.

HOMELAND SECURITY ORGANIZATION

REDSTAR ACCESS ONLY!

“Jesus Christ, Roarke, you hacked into the HSO?”

“I have.” He toasted himself with a brandy. “By God, I have, and it took considerable doing. You were… thinking for over an hour.”

She knew she was goggling, but she couldn’t stop. “You can’t hack into the HSO.”

“Well, I hate to disagree, but as you can plainly see-”

“I don’t mean you can’t. I mean you can’t.”

“Relax, Lieutenant, we’re shielded.” He leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose. “Right and tight.”

“Roarke-”

“Ssh, you haven’t seen it yet. Computer, employ passcode. Now, you’ll see the file I dug for is encrypted, for obvious reasons. You’d think a gang like the HSO would employ more complex encryptions. Then again, I don’t suppose they counted on anyone actually getting through to this point. It was a bloody battle.”

“I think you’ve lost your mind. You may be able to get off on an insanity defense. They’ll still torture you, brainwash you, and lock you in a cage for the rest of your life, but they might not beat you to death if they know you’re insane. This is the HSO. The antiterrorist organization that employs methods every bit as dirty as the terrorists they were initially formed to seek out and destroy. Roarke-”

“Yes, yes.” He waved away her concerns. “Ah, here we are. Take a look.”

She hissed out a breath, turned back to the screen, and stared at the ID photo and the perso

“Goddamn! Goddamn!” She was gri

Chapter 7

“You have a dead spook,” Roarke pointed out. “I wonder if that’s redundant.”

“It makes sense. Don’t you see?” She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Who gets through security slicker than a spook?”

“Well, foregoing modesty, I must point out that I-”

“You don’t have any modesty to forego. Bissel was HSO, so it jibes for him to have all those blocks on his studio, for him to hook up with a security expert, and for him to be dead.”

“Assassinated by another spook, national or foreign.”

“Exactly. They knew about Bissel and Kade, and when the time was right they let Reva know. Set her up to take the fall.”

“Why? What’s the point in framing an i

Frowning, she studied the screen. He looked like an ordinary man, she thought. Good-looking, if you went for the smooth type, but ordinary. That would, she imagined, be part of the point. Spooks needed to blend in to stay spooks.

“Not sure there has to be a point, but if there is, it could be as simple as not wanting anyone looking too closely at Bissel, taking it on the surface. A philandering husband whacked by his crazed wife in the heat of passion. Homicide comes in, takes a look at the mess, hauls Reva off, and that’s the end of that.”

“That’s simple enough, but it would’ve been simpler yet to stage a burglary gone wrong and leave Reva out of it.”

“Yeah.” She looked back at Roarke. “And that tells me she was already in it.”

“The Code Red.”

“The Code Red, and other things she’s been working on over the past couple of years.” Jamming her hands in her pocket she began to pace. “This current isn’t your only government or sensitive project.”

“Hardly.” Roarke studied Bissel’s ID image. “He married her because of her work. Because of what she was rather than who.”

“Or because of what you are. They’ll have a file on you.”

“Yes, I’m sure they do.” And he intended to take a look at it before he was done.

“What’s level two mean? Level-two operative.”

“I have no idea.”

“Let’s take a look at his dossier. See when he was recruited.” Thumbs hooked in pockets, she read the data on screen. “Nine years ago, so he wasn’t a rookie. Based in Rome a couple of years, and in Paris, in Bo

“Eve, look at his recruiter.”

“Where?”

With a keystroke, he highlighted a name.

“Felicity Kade? Son of a bitch. She brought him in.” She held up her hand for silence and paced out her thoughts. “She’d’ve been a kind of trainer to him, seems to me. A lot of times trainers and trainees develop a close relationship. They worked together, and they were lovers. Probably lovers, on and off, all along. They’re a type.”

“Which type is that?” he wondered.

“Slick, upper-class, social animals. Vain-”

“Why vain?”

“Lots of mirrors, lots of fancy duds, lots of money spent on body and face work, salons.”

Amused, he studied his fingernails. “One could claim those attributes are simply natural elements of a comfortable lifestyle.”

“Yeah, if they add up to you. You’ve got a big trunkful of vanity yourself, but it’s not the same as these two. You don’t throw mirrors onto the walls every damn place so you can check yourself out every time you move, like Bissel.”

Thoughtfully, she glanced back at Roarke and decided if she looked as good as he did, she’d probably spend half the day staring at herself.

Weird.

“All those mirrors, reflective surfaces,” she continued when he just smiled at her, “you could argue that was as much lack of confidence as vanity.”

“That would be my take, but it sounds like a question for Mira.”

“Yeah.” She would get to that, and soon. “Anyway, they’re a type. Like the artsy scene, and showing themselves off. Even if it’s cover, they have to be into it. And on another level, it must take a certain type to go into covert work, on the long haul. You live a lie, you set up an identity, a persona that’s part reality, part fantasy. How else could you make it work?”

“I’ll agree that Bissel and Kade appear to be more suited than Bissel and Reva-at least on the surface.”

“Okay, but they need Reva. They need, want, or have been assigned to infiltrate Securecomp. Felicity approaches Reva first, makes pals. Maybe feels her out. But for whatever reason Reva’s not a good candidate for the HSO.”

“She’s worked for the government,” Roarke pointed out. “Nearly died for it. She’s loyal, and the administration she was attached to had no great affection for the HSO, as I recall.”

“Politics.” Eve blew out a breath. “Makes me screwy. But if we take it down to ‘she’s not a candidate for covert,’ it doesn’t mean she’s not a good resource for the HSO. So they bring in Bissel. Romance, sex. But the marriage, that says they expected her to be of long-term use.”