Divided in Death

“And disposable.”

She turned back to him. “It’s tough to see a friend get kicked around this way. I’m sorry.”

“I wonder if it’ll be easier on her, or harder, knowing all this.”

“Whichever, she’ll have to cope. She doesn’t have a lot of options.” She nodded toward the wall screens. “These two were using her as an information source, and it’s probable they planted various devices in the home, in her data unit, her vehicles, maybe on her person. She was their plant, an unwitting mole, and odds are they tapped her for plenty. No point in keeping up the charade of marriage and friendship if it wasn’t paying off.”

“Agreed.” And the fact that it must have been paying off was, he imagined, going to cause him considerable a

“Messy, but it had the potential of taking out three key players.” She drummed her fingers on her hips. “There’s more. Has to be more. Maybe Bissel and Kade screwed up. Maybe they tried playing both sides. Maybe they blew their cover. We need to pick our way through their lives. I need all the data you can get me on them. And since we’re playing with spooks, screw the rules.”

“Could you say that again? The screw the rules part. It’s such music to my ears.”

“You’re going to enjoy this one, aren’t you?”

“I believe I am.” But he didn’t look pleased when he said it. He looked dangerous. “Someone has to pay for what’s been done to Reva. I’ll enjoy being part of that payment.”

“There’s an advantage to having a friend as scary as you.”

“Come sit on my lap and say that.”

“Get the data, pal. I need to call in, check with the men on Reva’s house. I don’t want anybody sliding in there before we sweep it for devices in the morning.”

“If there were bugs, they’d have had an exterminator of their own.”

“They had to move fast between the time Reva received the package and the hit, then her arrival.” She combed a hand through her hair as she went over the time line. “If they moved right in maybe they swept it out. But somebody was at the Flatiron. Seems to me that an op like this, double murder, would require a small, tight team. Don’t want too many in the know.”

“It’s Homeland,” Roarke reminded her. “Orders to sweep out a private residence wouldn’t require the exterminators being apprised of the reason.”

“Just following orders,” she mumbled and envisioned the bloody mess in Felicity Kade’s bed. What kind of person gave orders for that kind of brutality? Not assassination, she thought. No way to clean up vicious, bloody murder. “Yeah, you’ve got a point. Still, if orders did come down, they could’ve missed something.”

They worked another two hours before he convinced her it was all he could do for the night. He talked her into bed, and when he was certain she slept, he got up, went back. And did more.

It wasn’t difficult to access his file as he was already into the main. They had less hard data on him than he’d anticipated. Hardly more, he noted, than was public knowledge-or that he’d adjusted, personally, for public knowledge.

There were a number of suspecteds, allegeds, probables ru

That hardly mattered.

It amused more than a

He lit a cigarette, tipped back in his chair as he remembered the two women with some fondness. He supposed he couldn’t complain. He’d enjoyed their company, and was confident enough that though their primary mission had failed, they’d enjoyed his.

They didn’t know about his mother, and that was a tremendous relief. Officially, Meg Roarke was listed as his mother, and that was fine by him. What did it matter to the HSO who had birthed him? A young girl foolish enough to love and believe in a man like Patrick Roarke wasn’t of any interest.

Especially since she was long dead.

Since they hadn’t bothered to go back that far, or dig that deep, they didn’t know about Siobhan Brody, or his aunt and the rest of the family he’d discovered in the west of Ireland. His newfound relations wouldn’t be watched or approached or have their privacy invaded by the HSO.

But there was a fat file on his father. Patrick Roarke had been of considerable interest to the HSO, as well as Interpol, the Global Intelligence Council, and other covert organizations the HSO had pooled for data. He discovered that they’d considered recruiting him at one point, but had judged him too volatile.

Volatile, Roarke mused with a dark chuckle. Well, he could hardly argue with that.

They’d tied him to Max Ricker, and that was no surprise. Ricker had been a clever man, and his network spread all over the planet, and off, with rich pockets of weapons and illegals ru

Patrick Roarke was considered one of Ricker’s occasional tools, and not a particularly deft one. Too fond of the drink and other chemicals. And not discreet enough to warrant a higher position, much less a permanent one on Ricker’s payroll.

But seeing the association in black-and-white made the fact that Eve had been the one to lock Ricker in a cage all the more gratifying.

He’d nearly closed the file again when he caught a notation about travel to Dallas. The time, the place made his blood run cold.

Patrick Roarke traveled from Dublin to Dallas, Texas, on circular route and under the name Roarke O’Hara. Arrived Dallas 5-12-2036 at seventeen-thirty. Was met at airport by subject known as Richard Troy aka Richie Williams aka William Bounty aka Rick Marco. Subjects traveled by car to Casa Diablo Hotel where Troy was registered as Rick Marco. Roarke rented a room under O’Hara.

At twenty-fifteen, subjects exited hotel and traveled by foot to the Black Saddle Bar, where they remained until oh two hundred. Transcription of conversation attached.

There was more-standard surveillance reports that covered three days with the two men coming and going, having meetings with others of their kind in bars, in dives.

A great deal of drinking and posturing, and bits and pieces discussed about movement of munitions from a base in Atlanta.

Max Ricker. Roarke didn’t need the transcript to tell him both his father and Eve’s had been on the fringes, at least, of Ricker’s network. They knew the men had met, in Dallas.

Days before, he thought, only days before Eve had been found, battered and broken, in an alley.

They’d known all that, he thought, and so had the HSO.

Subject Roarke checked out of hotel at ten thirty-five the following morning. He was driven by Troy to the airport where he took a shuttle to Atlanta.

Troy returned to hotel room shared with female minor. Surveillance on Roarke passed to Operative Clark.

“Female minor,” Roarke repeated. “You bastards. You bloody bastards, you had to know.”

And with a rage so strong it sickened him, he brought up Richard Troy’s HSO file.

It wasn’t yet dawn when she stirred, and felt his arms go around her. So gently around her. Half dreaming, she turned to him, turned into him and found the warmth of his body, then the warmth of his lips on her lips.

The kiss was so tender, so fragile somehow, that she could let herself drift into it even as she floated on that twilight sleep.

In the dark, she could always find him in the dark and know he’d be there to soothe her or arouse her. Or to ask those things of her.