The Lost

“Don’t get any ideas,” she muttered under her breath. “It’s next door you might be useful.” She led the way and heard both Roarke and McNab hum in pleasure as some men would at the sight of a pretty woman.

“Geek heaven,” she supposed. “Seal up, then see what you can find on all this. Peabody, let’s take the second floor.”

“Do you want me to get someone in to take over street surveillance?” McNab asked.

“He’s not coming back. He hasn’t been back since he took those weapons out of the chest. He doesn’t need this place anymore.”

“There are still clothes in the closet,” Peabody pointed out when they started down. “I saw them when we cleared the bedroom.”

“I’ll tell you what we won’t find. We won’t find any of his IDs, any of his emergency cash, any credit cards, passports.”

She moved into the bedroom where the decor managed to be spartan in neatness and homey in its fat pillows and frayed fabrics. She opened the closet.

“Three suits-black, gray, brown. See the way they’re arranged, spaces between? Probably had three more. Same with the shirts, the spare trousers. He took what he needed.” She crouched, picked up a pair of sturdy black shoes, turned them over to reveal the worn-down heels, scuffed soles. “Frugal. Lived carefully, comfortably, but without any excess. I bet the neighbors are going to say what a nice, pleasant man he was. Quiet, but friendly.”

“He’s got drawer dividers. Cubbies for socks, boxers, undershirts. And yeah,” Peabody added, “it looks like several pair are missing. Second drawer’s athletic wear. T-shirts, sweats, gym socks.”

“Keep at it. I’ll take the second bedroom.”

Across the hall in a smaller room fashioned into a kind of den, Eve opened another cabinet. She found wigs, trays of makeup, facial putty, clear boxes holding various styles of facial hair, body forms.

She saw herself reflected, front and back, in the mirror-backed doors.

She began a systematic search of the room, then the bathroom. He’d left plenty behind, she thought. Ordinary pieces of the man. Hairbrush, toothbrush, clothes, book and music discs, a pair of well-tended houseplants.

Everything well used, she thought, well tended. Very clean, ordered without being obsessive.

Food in the AutoChef, slippers by the bed. It all gave the appearance of a home someone would return to shortly. Until you noticed there was nothing important. Nothing that couldn’t be easily replaced.

Except the photo over his work area, she mused. But he’d have copies of that. Certainly he’d have copies of that image that drove him. She studied the wigs and other enhancements again.

He’d left all this, and the weapons, the electronics. Left what he’d been all these years? she wondered. He’d done what he’d set out to do, so none of it mattered to him now.

Peabody came in. “I found a lock box, open and empty.”

“One in here, too.”

“And bits of adhesive behind drawers, behind the headboard.”

Eve nodded. “Under the bathroom sinks, behind the john. He’s a careful guy. I’d say he kept weapons, escape documents, in several places around the house, in case he had to get out fast.”

“We’re not going to find him, Dallas. He’s in the wind. It’s what he does.”

“What he did. I’d say he’s finished, so it depends on what he’s decided to do next. Check on the first floor, will you?”

Eve went upstairs to find both Roarke and McNab huddled with the electronics. On a quartet of small monitors she saw various spaces of the house- Peabody walking down the steps, her two men searching, an empty kitchen, the street view from the front of the house. Every ten seconds, the image changed to another location.

“Guy covered his ass double,” McNab told her. “This place is hot-wired, not a trick missed. Motion, heat, light, weight. He’s got bug sensors every fricking where. And check it.”

He flipped a switch and a panel slid open in the wall beside her. She peered in, sca

“Icy. Plus, he could shut and bolt that door from right here.”

“It’s blast-proof,” Roarke added. “He’s got his C and D buried on here, but we’re digging it out. I’d have to say it’s not as well covered as I’d expect when you consider the rest of the security.”

McNab shrugged. “Maybe he figured he didn’t have to worry about anyone getting this far in.”

“Or he didn’t care particularly what they found at this point.”

She glanced back up at the photo. “Possibly. It looks like he’s finished, and with or without the cloak of invisibility, gone. No reason to stay in New York. He eliminated his target. We dig here, hoping we find some link to where he might go. If we don’t find it, we’re going to have to contact HSO.”

Roarke gave her a long, cool look. “I don’t see the value of that.”

“It’s not a matter of value. It’s SOP. He’s their operative. If he’s gone rabbit or rogue, and has a device that’s as dangerous as this one might be, we’ll need their resources.”

“Give us a moment, would you, Ian?”

McNab glanced over at Roarke, then at Eve. He didn’t need a sensor to feel the blips of tension and trouble. “Ah, sure. I’ll… ah, see if I can give She-B ody a hand.”

“This is my job,” she began as soon as they were alone. “When I report in with what we have here, Whitney’s going to order me to contact Homeland and give them what I have.”

“You have nothing,” he said evenly, “but the nebulous co

“I have him getting on the ferry, and not getting off, which secured the warrant more than the source did. I have what we found here.”

“And what have you found here that verifies he’s an operative for HSO, or that he targeted and killed Buckley?”

She felt her stomach muscles quiver even as her spine stiffened. “We know he has a potentially dangerous weapon. He may intend to sell that weapon. In the wrong hands-”

“Homeland’s aren’t the wrong hands?” Roarke demanded. “Can you stand there and tell me they aren’t every bit as ruthless and deadly as any foreign bogeyman you can name? After what they did to you? What they allowed to be done to you when you were a child? Standing by, listening, for Christ’s sake, while your father beat you and raped you, all in the hopes they could use him to catch a bigger monster?”

The quivering in her gut became a roil. “One has nothing to do with the other.”

“Bollocks. You tried to ‘work’ with them before, not so long ago. And when you found murder and corruption, they tried to ruin you. To kill you.”

“I know what they did. Damn it, that wasn’t the organization, as much as I despise it, but individuals inside it. Ivan Draski is probably thousands of miles away by now. I can’t chase him outside New York. I don’t know where he might try to sell this thing.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Roarke-”

“Goddamn it, Eve, you’re not going to ask me to stand by a second time. I did what you asked before. I let it go. I let go the ones who’d had a part in letting you be abused and tormented.”

Now it was her heart, squeezing inside a fist of tension. “I know what you did for me. I know what it cost you to do it. I’m not going to have a choice. It’s national security. For God’s sake, Roarke, I don’t want to bring them in. I don’t want anything to do with them. It makes me sick. But it’s not about me, or you, or what happened when I was eight.”

“You’ll give me twenty-f our hours. I’m not asking,” he said before she could speak. “Not this time. You’ll give me twenty-f our hours to track him.”

Here was the cold and the ruthless that lurked under the civilized. She knew it, understood it, even accepted it. “I can stall that long. At twenty-f our and one minute, I have to turn it over.”

“Then I’ll be in touch.” He started to walk by her, stopped, looked into her eyes. “I’ll be sorry if we’re at odds on this.”