«That's Connor's Maggie there, nursing their young Devin.»
«Pleasure.» Maggie sent Eve a slow, shy smile.
«Scattered about on the floor would be Celia and Tom.»
«She's got a blaster.» Since it was the girl who made the whispered observation, Eve assumed it was Celia.
«Police-issue combo.» Instinctively Eve laid her hand over it. «It's on stun. Lowest setting. I… I'll go up and put it away.»
«Somebody punched her face.» Tom didn't bother to whisper.
«Not exactly. I should go up, and…« Hide.
«My mother.» Sinead tugged Eve forward another step. «Alise Brody.»
«Ma'am. I'm just going to—«
But the woman got to her feet. «Let's have a good look at you. Don't you feed her, boy?» she demanded of Roarke.
«I try.»
«Good face, strong jaw. Good thing if you're going to have to take a punch here and there. So you're a cop, are you now? Running about after murderers and the like. Good at it?»
«Yes. I'm good at it.»
«No point in doing something and not doing it well. And your family? Your kin?»
«I don't have any family.»
She laughed, hard and long. «God sake, child, like it or no, you've got one now. Give us a kiss here, then.» She tapped her cheek. «And you can call me Granny.»
She wasn't much of a cheek kisser, but there didn't seem to be any choice.
«I really need to just…« Eve gestured vaguely toward the doorway. «Roarke's told us you're in the middle of an investigation.» Sinead gave her an easy pat. «Don't mind us if you need to be doing something.»
«I just—a couple of things. For a minute.»
She started out, started to take her first easy breath. Roarke caught up with her at the stairs. «How'd you get the bruise this time?»
«Minnesota backhand. I should've done something about it before I got here. I should've locked my weapon in my vehicle.» The fact Roarke looked so ridiculously happy only flustered her more. «And I shouldn't have tried to get the kid—the Sean kid—to stop hammering me with questions by telling him there'd been a murder in Rockefeller Center last year.»
«Certainly not to the last, as you say murder to a young boy, you've only enticed him.» He slid an arm around her waist, rubbed his hand up and down her torso. «You don't have to be what you're not with them. That, at least, I've learned. I appreciate you tolerating this, Eve. I know it's not entirely comfortable for you, and the timing turned out poor.»
«It's okay. It's the number of them that threw me off, especially since so many of them are kids.»
He leaned in, just to brush his lips over her hair. «Would this be the best time to tell you there are several more having a swim?»
She stopped dead. «More?»
«Several. One of the uncles stayed back, along with a scatter of cousins and my grandfather. They're minding the family farm. But that leaves a number of other cousins, and their children.»
Children. More. She wasn't going to panic; what was the point. «We're going to need a turkey the size of Pluto.»
He turned her, drew her in, pressed his lips to the side of her neck.
«How you holding up?» she asked him.
«There are so many feelings coming and going inside me.» He rubbed her arms, stepped back.
Touching her, she realized, keeping contact maybe because both of them needed it.
«I'm so pleased they're here. I never thought to have any blood of mine under my roof.» He gave a quick, baffled laugh. «Never thought I had any I'd care to welcome. And still, I can't catch up with them. I don't know what to make of them, that's God's truth.»
«Well, Jesus, there's so many it'd take you a couple years just to sort through and assign names to faces.»
«No.» But he laughed again, more easily. «That's not what I meant. I'm happy they've come, but at the same time, I can't get used to having them. They… I can't think of the word. Flummox is closest. They flummox me, Eve, with their acceptance, their affection. And there's part of me, part that's still the Dublin street rat, that's waiting for one of them to say: 'Roarke, darling, how about a little of the ready, since you've so much to spare.' It's uncalled for, and unfair.»
«It's natural. And it'd be easier for you if they did. You'd understand that. So would I.» She angled her head. «Am I really supposed to call her Granny? I don't think I can get my mouth around it.»
He brushed a kiss on her brow. «It'd be a great favor to me if you'd try. Just think of it as a kind of nickname, that's what I'm doing yet. Now if you need to work, I'll make your excuses.»
«Nothing much left for me to do but wait. Mostly waiting now for the media to hit, and the feds to scramble. Departmentally, the case is essentially closed. Except, I was going to ask you to get me schematics, blueprints on the Center. If the base isn't at the school, I'm betting it's there. Maybe auxiliaries scattered. But there's got to be an operation center.»
«I can do that. I can get a search started, and check in on it by remote.»
«That'd be good. And maybe we could run another search and match on Deena. Use the image from the discs from Brookhollow. Possibly she's got more ID with that basic appearance. Could get lucky.»
«But the case is essentially closed,» he said dryly.
«Departmentally. But I'm damned if this is getting away from me until I've tried every avenue.»
There were more of them. Eve let names and faces buzz through her brain. It seemed there was at least one of every specimen, from seventy years to less than that many days. Every one of them was inclined to talk.
As Sean seemed determined to shadow her every move, she concluded that young boys were much like cats. They insisted on giving their company to those who most feared or distrusted them.
As for her cat, Galahad made an appearance, regally ignored everyone under four feet until he clued in that this variety of human was more likely to drop food on the floor, or sneak him handouts. He ended in a gluttonous coma, tubby belly up under a table.
She escaped the party Roarke escorted out for what Sean called the city tour, and with her head ringing from endless conversation, slipped up to her office.
The case wasn't closed, she thought, until it was closed.
She sat at her desk, ordered the data from Roarke's unit, and studied the blueprints on record for the Icove Center.
There could be others, and Roarke agreed. His computer would continue to search for unrecordeds. For now, she'd work with these.
God knew it was enough.
«Computer, delete all public areas.»
She crossed back and forth in front of the screens, studying the accesses, the floor space.
Because it was there. She was sure of it now. It was ego as well as convenience. He'd have based his most personal project in the enormous center that bore his name.
That's where he spent his free time. Those days and evenings never booked. Just a quick walk or drive from home.
«Delete patient areas.» Hell of a lot of space yet, for labs, for staff sectors, for administration. «Wasting my time, probably wasting my time,» she muttered. «Feds'll run through the place like ants in another day, two at the most.»
The NYPSD couldn't lock it down. There were civilian patients to consider, privacy laws to wrestle, and the sheer size of the place would make a reasonable search all but impossible.
But the feds would have the juice for it, and the enhanced equipment. Probably should leave this end to them. Let them wrap it up.
«Screw that. Computer, give me lab areas, one at a time, beginning with highest security. Unilab's got some research on this site, some of the mobiles must have pieces of the project,» she said quietly when the new image came up. «But how do you find which ones without slapping a lock on all of them?»
Which meant legal wrangles from every country where they had facilities. Civil suits, undoubtedly, from staff and patients.