“Thank you, sir.”
She used the time it took to clear the room to gather herself. And still, she couldn’t quite manage it. “You son of a bitch,” she said softly. “You son of a bitch, you’d throw that in my face. You’d use what was done to me-by him, by your precious agency-to get your way in this.”
“I apologize.” He seemed nearly as shaken as she. “I apologize, sincerely, Lieutenant, for allowing my temper to cloud my judgment. The incident has no place here.”
“Oh yes, it does. You bet your ass it does. You read the file?”
“I read it.”
“And you stomached it.”
“Actually, Lieutenant Dallas, I couldn’t quite stomach it. I believe in the work we do, and I know that sometimes sacrifices have to be made, that choices are made that seem-that are-cold. However, I could find no rationale, no purpose, no excuse for the lack of intervention in your case. Knowingly leaving a minor in that situation was… inhumane. You should have been removed, and the decision to leave status quo was ill-advised.”
“The HSO was aware of your situation in Texas?” Whitney asked.
“They were surveilling him, due to his connection with Max Ricker. They knew what he did to me, they listened to it. They listened while he raped me, and while I begged. While I begged.”
“Sit down, Dallas.”
She could only shake her head. “Can’t. Sir.”
“Do you know what I’ll do with this information, AD Sparrow?”
“Commander,” Eve began.
“Stand down, Lieutenant.” Whitney pushed to his feet, towered over Sparrow. “Do you, or your superiors, understand what I can and will do with this information if you continue to harass my officer, or in any way attempt to infringe on her duties or smear her reputation? It won’t be leaked to the media. It’ll be flooded to them. You will be washed away in the tidal wave of the public outcry. Your agency will need generations to recover from the legal tangle and the public relations nightmare. You take that back to whoever holds your leash, and you make sure they know who it came from. Then, if you want to take me on, you come ahead.”
“Commander Whitney-”
“You’re going to want to walk away now, Sparrow,” Whitney warned. “Walk away before you end up taking the punch for something that happened when you were still drooling on your bib.”
Sparrow walked over to retrieve his briefcase. “I’ll relay this information,” he said and went out.
“You need to pull yourself together, Dallas.”
“Sir. Yes, sir.” But the pressure in her chest was outrageous. In defense, she dropped into a chair, lowered her head between her knees. “Sorry. Can’t breathe.”
She waited until the worst of the weight eased and air squeezed down her throat, into her lungs.
“Steady it out, Lieutenant, or I’m going to have to call the MTs.” She sat up, had him nodding. “Thought that would do it. Need water?”
She could have swallowed a small ocean of it. “No, sir. Thank you. I understand that Chief Tibble may need to be apprised of-”
“If Tibble needs to be apprised of incidents that took place in another state more than two decades ago, he will be so apprised. But in my judgment this is a personal matter. I think you can rest assured it will stay one. You fired the first volley with the media leak. They’ll have their hands full trying to spin and swim through that. They won’t want to risk a second whirlwind. You’d already calculated all that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you’d better get back to work and close this up. And if you have to fry a few spooks along the way, that’s just a nice bonus.” He showed his teeth in a grin. “A real nice bonus.”
Chapter 17
Eve walked out on the garage level at Central, and laid her hand on her weapon as Quinn Sparrow stepped out from behind a column.
“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 scanner out of her pocket. “They just sit back and watch while a child is brutalized, raped, and tortured, then tidy up after her when she takes a life desperately defending her own. When she’s traumatized and broken. And they leave her alone, to wander the streets.”
“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 scanner, checking her car for devices. “I’m pissed, Sparrow, and I’m tired, and it’s very, very difficult for me to accept that strangers know my private business. Because of that, I’ve got no reason to trust you, or the people you work for.”
“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 connections.”
“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 stunner, a miniblaster, a complex little palm ‘link, a recharger, and the smallest data system she’d ever come across. There was also a number of the same sort of tracking devices she’d taken off her vehicle earlier in the day.
She took one out, held it up, and looked him dead in the eye.
He gave her a winning smile. “I didn’t say the tracker you removed from your vehicle wasn’t HSO, I just said I was unaware of any directive to place said tracker on your vehicle.”
“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 scanner will verify.”