Divided in Death

Chapter 17

Eve walked out on the garage level at Central, and laid her hand on her weapon as Qui

“You take chances, Sparrow.”

“You don’t know the half of it. I shouldn’t be speaking to you outside of authorized parameters, Lieutenant. But between us, we’ve got a hell of a mess on our hands. You won’t back off so we have to find some level ground, some area of compromise.”

“I’ve got four bodies. Well, had four.” She eased her hand away from her weapon and moved toward her vehicle. “I don’t compromise.”

“Two of those bodies are ours. You may not think much of our organization, of me, of our directives, but it matters when we lose people.”

“Let’s get this straight. What I think or don’t about your organization isn’t relevant, but the fact is I’m not naive enough to think it doesn’t serve a purpose. Covert operations helped end the Urban Wars, prevented numerous terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, and globally. I might find some of your methods questionable, at best, but that’s beside the point.”

“Then what is the point?”

“You wired, Sparrow?”

“You paranoid, Dallas?”

“Oh yeah.”

“I’m not wired,” he snapped. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

“Your choice. Here’s the point. Four people are dead, and your organization is part of it.”

“The HSO does not murder its own operatives, then frame a civilian.”

“No?” She lifted her eyebrows as she slid a sca

“I don’t know what happened.” He looked away from her. “I don’t know why. You’ve read the file, so you know data was deleted. Covered up. I’m not denying it, or the poor judgment of-”

“Poor judgment?”

“There’s nothing I can say to you. Nothing that can balance the scales after what was done. No excuses I can make, so I won’t make them. But I will say, as you have to me, that’s not the point.”

“Score one for you.” She moved away from him to run a program on the sca

“I’d like to try to give you one, and to find some area of compromise that will satisfy us both. But I’ve got to ask you, where the hell did you get that thing?”

She found herself amused, and she hadn’t expected to be, by the look of fascination and avarice on his face. “I have my co

“I’ve never seen one quite like it. Very compact. Will it multitask? Sorry.” He laughed a little. “I’m big on gadgets. One of the reasons I got into this line of work. Look, if you’re satisfied your car’s clear, maybe we could take a ride. I’ll give you some data that may convince you to find that compromise.”

“Open the briefcase.”

“No problem.” He set it on the trunk of her vehicle, manually entered a code on the lock. When he opened it, Eve blinked.

“Jesus, Sparrow, got enough hardware?”

She saw a stu

She took one out, held it up, and looked him dead in the eye.

He gave her a wi

“Smooth.” She tossed the tracker back in the briefcase, and watched as Sparrow meticulously fit it back in its slot.

It occurred to her that under other circumstances he and Roarke would have bonded like brothers.

“I like gadgets,” he repeated. “I didn’t bug your vehicle. That’s not to say I-or someone else from the organization-won’t do so if ordered, but I didn’t lay the tracker today. Nothing in here’s activated. Your sca

When it did, she looked him up and down. “What about you?”

“I’ve got a lot on me.” He held his arms out to the side for the sca

Eve shook her head. “Get in. I’m heading uptown. I don’t like what you have to say, I’ll dump you in the most inconvenient spot I can manage. And I know all the inconvenient spots in this city.”

He got in the passenger seat. “You really mucked up the works with that media leak.”

She sent him her version of a wi

“With that level of cynicism and paranoia, you ought to be one of us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Start talking.”

“Bissel and Kade were not in-house terminations. We believe, though we have no confirmed intel, that Doomsday broke Bissel’s cover, and took them out.”

“Why?” She backed out of her slot. “If they knew about him, and his co

“He was working a double. We worked over a year to set him up with a Doomsday operative. Look at his profile, and what do you see? An opportunist, a man who cheats on his wife-and his mistress, who likes the good life, spends lavishly. That’s how we wanted him to look, and that part was easy as what you see with Bissel was what you got. It’s how and why we used him to pass carefully arranged data to Doomsday. He took their money. There was no way they’d believe he was behind their philosophies. Just in it for the shine.”

“You set him up to get close to Ewing to spy on Securecomp, and you set him up to get close to Doomsday to screw with them. You guys are something.”

“It was working. The worm they’re developing, have developed,” he corrected, “could undermine governments, give the terrorists an open door. If our data banks and surveillance apparatus are severely compromised, we can’t track, we can’t know how and when they might hit. That doesn’t touch on internal crises: banks, military, transport. We needed to slow them down, and to gather intel, to have our defenses fully in place.”

“And to steal the technology from them to create your own version of the worm.”

“I can’t confirm that supposition.”

“You don’t have to. Where does Carter Bissel come in?”

“Loose ca

“This just doesn’t jibe for me, Sparrow. Not all the way.” She paused at the exit of the garage. “Terminating Bissel and Kade in that ma

“Yeah, but they don’t like being co

“Before Securecomp? God, you’re a piece of work.”

“Look.” He shifted in his seat. “Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck where the shield comes from, as long as we have it in place. But there are some who don’t like the idea of a man with Roarke’s… questionable co