“If that was Dix and he wasn’t under duress, he’d have opened the door.” McNab drew his weapon from the base of his spine and holstered it at his side.
“Yeah. Take care of the locks,” she told Roarke. “Weapons on stun,” she ordered the team. “I don’t want a hostage taken down. Hold fire until my command. Peabody and I go in first. You take the right. McNab, you’re left. You, you, you, fan out, second wave. I want this door secured behind us. Roarke?”
“Nearly there, Lieutenant.” He was crouched, delicately disarming locks and alarms with tools as thin as threads.
She squatted beside him, lowered her voice. “You’re not going in.”
“Yes, I don’t believe I heard my name in today’s lineup.”
She suspected he was armed-illegally-and that he would-probably-be discreet about it. But she couldn’t justify the risk. “I can’t take a civilian through the door until the suspect is contained. Not with this many cops around.”
He shifted his gaze and those laser blue eyes met hers. “You don’t need to explain or attempt to quell even my infamous ego.”
“Good.”
“And you’re in.”
She nodded. “You’re a handy guy to have around. Now step back so we can take this asshole.”
She knew it was hard for him to do just that, to stand aside while she went through the door. Whittier was almost certainly armed, and he would kill without hesitation. But Roarke straightened, moved away from the team.
She’d remember that, she thought-or she’d try to remember that-when things got heated between them as they tended to do. She’d remind herself that, when it mattered to her, he’d stepped aside so she could do her job.
“Feeney? Emergency evac?”
“It’s down. He’s boxed.”
“We’re on the door. Peabody?”
“Ready, sir.”
With her weapon in her right hand, Eve eased the unsecured door open with her left. With one sharp nod, she booted it, went in low and fast.
“Police!” She swept, eyes and weapon, as Peabody peeled to the right and McNab came in from behind and shot left. “Trevor Whittier, this is the police. This building is surrounded. All exits are blocked. Come out, hands up and in full view.”
She used hand signals to direct her team to other areas, other rooms as she moved forward.
“You’ve got nowhere to go, Trevor.”
“Stay back! I’ll kill him. I have a hostage. I have Dix, and I’ll kill him.”
She held up a closed fist, signaling her team to stop, to hold positions, then eased around the corner.
“I said I’ll kill him.”
“I heard you.” Eve stayed where she was, looking through the open glass doors. Light glittered on the toy-decked shelves and on the blood smeared on the white floor.
Trevor sat in the center of it, the prize he’d killed for beside him. He had an arm hooked around Dix’s neck, and a knife to his throat.
Dix’s eyes were closed, and there was blood on the otherwise spotless floor. But she could see the subtle rise and fall of Dix’s chest. Alive then. Still alive.
They looked like two overgrown boys who’d played just a little too hard and rough.
She kept her weapon trained and steady. “Looks like you already did. Kill him.”
“He’s breathing.” Trevor dug the point of the knife into flesh, carving a shallow slice. Blood dribbled over the blade. “I can change that, and I will. Put down that weapon.”
“That’s my line, Trevor. There are two ways you can leave this room. You can leave it walking, or we can carry you out.”
“I’ll kill him first. Even if you stun me, I’ll have time to slit his throat. You know it, or you’d have hit me already. You want to keep him alive, you back out. You back out now!”
“Kill him and the only thing I put down is you. Do you want to die today, Trevor?”
“You want him to die?” He jerked Dix’s head back, and stirring slightly, Dix moaned. “If you don’t clear this place, that’s what’s going to happen. We start negotiating, and we start now. Back out.”
“You’ve been watching too many vids. You think I’m going to deal with you over a single civilian who’s probably going to die anyway from the looks of things? Grab some reality, Trev.” She smiled when she said it, wide and white. “I got pictures in my head of the two women you killed. It’d just fucking make my day to end you. So go ahead, finish him off.”
“You’re bluffing. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Yeah, actually. You’re sitting there on the floor trying to talk me into negotiating when you’re holding a knife, and I have this handy little thing. You know what they do when they’re on full? It’s not pretty. And I’m getting a little tired of this conversation. You want to die over a toy truck, your choice.”
“You have no idea what I have. Clear the others out. I know there are others out there. Clear them out, and we’ll talk. I’ll make you the deal of a lifetime.”
“You mean the diamonds.” She gave a quick, rude snort. “Jesus, you are stupid. I gave you too much credit. I’ve already got them, Trevor. That’s a plant. Set you up. I set you up and used that clown for bait. Worked like a charm. It’s just an old toy, Trevor, and you fell for it.”
“You’re lying!” There was shock now, and there was anger, clear on his face.
As his head whipped around toward the bright yellow truck, and his knife hand lowered a fraction, Eve shot a stream into his right shoulder. His arm spasmed, and the knife fell from his shaking fingers.
Even as his body jerked back in reaction, she was across the room, with her weapon pressed to his throat. “Gee, you caught me. I was lying.”
She was glad he was conscious, glad she could see it sink in. Tears of rage gathered in the corners of his eyes as she dragged him clear of Dix.
“Suspect’s contained. Get medical in here!” It gave her a dark satisfaction to flip him onto his belly, to drag his hands back for the restraints.
She’d lied about the diamonds, but not about the pictures in her head. “Andrea Jacobs,” she said in a whisper, close to his ear. “Tina Cobb. Think about them, you worthless fuck. Think about them for the rest of your miserable life.”
“I want what’s mine! I want what belongs to me!”
“So did they. You have the right to remain silent,” she began, and flipped him back over so she could watch his face while she read him his rights.
“You got all that?”
“I want a lawyer.”
“There you go, being predictable.” But she wanted a few moments with him first. She looked over her shoulder where the medical techs were readying Dix for transport. “How’s he doing?”
“Got a good chance.”
“Isn’t that happy news, Trev? You may only get an attempted murder hit on this one. That’s no big after the two first degrees. What’s a few years tacked onto two life terms anyway?”
“You can’t prove anything.”
She leaned close. “Yes, I can. Got you with both murder weapons. Really appreciate your bringing them both along today.”
She watched his eye track over to where Peabody was bagging the baton.
Leaning back again, she laid her hand on the bulldozer, rolled it gently back and forth. “You really figure they’re in here? All those shiny stones? Be a joke on you, wouldn’t it, if your grandfather pulled a fast one. Maybe this is just a kid’s toy. Everything you did, all the years you’ll pay for it would be for nothing. You ever consider that?”
“They’re in there. And they’re mine.”
“That’s a matter of debate, isn’t it?” Idly, she worked the lever that brought the blade up and down. “Pretty freaking arrogant of him to pass this to a kid. Guess you take after him.”
“It was brilliant.” There were lawyers, he thought. His father would pay for the best. “Better than a vault. Didn’t they do exactly what he told them? Even after he was dead, they kept it.”
“Got me there. You want me to tell you where you weren’t brilliant? Right from the start. You didn’t do your homework, Trevor, didn’t dot all your i’s. Your grandfather wouldn’t have been so sloppy. He’d have known Samantha Gannon had a house sitter. Those diamonds slipped through your fingers the instant you put that knife to Andrea Jacobs’s throat. Sooner really. Then killing Tina Cobb on your father’s job site.”
She enjoyed watching his face go gray in shock. It was small of her, she admitted, but she enjoyed it. “That was sloppy, too. You just needed a little more forethought. Take her over to New Jersey, say. Romantic picnic in the woods, get what you needed from her, take her out, bury her.” Eve shrugged. “But you didn’t think it through.”
“You can’t trace her back to me. No one ever saw-” He cut himself off.
“No one ever saw you together? Wrong. I got an eye-witness. And when Dix comes out of it, he’ll tell us how he talked to you about Gannon’s book. Your father will fill in the blanks, testifying how he told you about your grandfather, about the diamonds.”
“He’ll never testify against me.”
“Your grandmother’s alive.” She saw his eyes flicker. “He’s with her now, and he knows you left his mother, the woman who spent her life trying to protect him, lying in the dirt like garbage. What would it have cost you? Fifteen minutes, a half hour? You call for help, play the concerned, devoted grandson. Then you slip away. But she wasn’t worth even that much effort from you. When you think about it, she was still protecting her son. Only this time, she protected him from you.”
She lifted the bulldozer, held it between them. “History repeats. You’re going to pay, just the way your grandfather paid. You’re going to know, just the way he knew, that those big, bright diamonds are forever out of his reach. Which is worse? I wonder. The cage or the knowing?”
She got to her feet, stared down at him. “We’ll talk again soon.”
“I want to see them.”
Eve picked up the truck, tucked it under her arm. “I know. Book him,” she ordered, and strolled away while Trevor cursed her.
Epilogue
It wasn’t what she’d call standard procedure, but it seemed right. She could even make a case for logical. Precautions and security measures had to be taken, and paperwork filed. As all parties were cooperative, the red tape was minimal.
She had a room full of civilians in conference room A, Cop Central. Plenty of cops, too. Her investigative team were all present, as was the commander.
It had been his idea to alert the media-that was the political side that irked her, even though she understood the reasoning. Understanding or not, she’d have a damn press conference to deal with afterward.
For now, the media hounds were cooling their heels, and despite the number of people in the room, it was very quiet.
She’d put names to faces. Samantha Gannon, of course, and her grandparents, Laine and Max, who stood holding hands.
