Faithless in Death (In Death, #52)(101)

“Those work. Let’s have it.”

He set the bags on her desk. “Can I get in on that?” he asked, and gestured to her coffee.

“Go.” She rose, unsealed the first bag.

“Trueheart’s writing it up, but I figured you’d want to see this part of it. That’s a copy of recordings we found on the comp in her home office. Audio and video. They go back ten months, and some of them are, we’ll say, intimate. My young partner may have a permanent blush.”

“From Gwen Huffman’s phone.”

“She labeled them, date, time, content—very organized. We got recordings of the originals for the record, since we couldn’t bring anything in. The last one’s dated the night of Byrd’s murder. It’s got the romance, the sex, the texts from Merit Caine, and the ensuing argument—pretty heated—between Byrd and Huffman. You’ve got Huffman storming out, and subsequently calling for a Rapid to pick her up. Pickup a couple blocks from Byrd’s residence.”

Since he’d previously experienced the bite of her visitor’s chair, he stood and drank his coffee.

“She wiped her security feed for the night in question, from twenty-two hundred to twenty-three-forty-five.”

“Covering her leaving to kill Byrd, returning to clean herself up, then leaving again to get to the compound for cover. We need EDD on that.”

“Done. Trueheart took the original disc straight up. We had to risk she wouldn’t look at that if she goes back to that location.”

“That’s the right call. Feeney will find the wiped data.”

“She kept the key card, LT. We left it, but recorded it. She had it in her desk drawer. We found data on Byrd on her comp—copied that, disc in the next bag. Her background, her financials, her contacts. And a recording of Byrd’s apartment, inside, room by room.”

“She plans. Wanted to study the space in case.”

“Dallas, it looks to me like she was working out a way to snatch Byrd up, transport her to Realignment.”

“Huh. Sure, of course she was. Money in the bank.”

“It looks like she planned to keep Byrd on the island. There’s a lot more in the other bags on Natural Order, procedure, finances. And financially, we probably need an accountant but it looks to me like they’re not exactly hemorrhaging money, but they’re oozing it.”

Eve nodded. “Jibes with Roarke’s take.”

“And Mirium felt the same. She’s got calculations on how to generate more income. Gwen Huffman’s a big factor—blackmail.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’m not telling you anything you hadn’t figured there.”

“It’s money. It’s planning for the next stage. Blackmail’s more insurance.”

“Then there’s the senior Huffmans—and she has a copy of their will. She’s got documentation on her recruitment angles, names, locations. She pins Po and a Michael J. Harstead at the halfway house as feeders. And there’s a Denise Wexford at the Good Samaritan Shelter as another of her feeders.”

“We’ll pick them up, all of them. A few hours yet, but we’ll get them all.”

“On the family front? She’s got files on her brothers. Evidence the older one dips into the membership fund, and the next one has a taste for LCs. She calls the youngest one Mommy’s Fake Boy, so she knows he’s her half brother, and she’s stockpiling evidence he’s gay.”

“She’s planning. Laying groundwork for a coup.”

“She’s got a supply of sleep meds. Heavy meds, liquid form, big supply. All prescribed by Oliver Huffman.”

“Recruitment tool.”

“Fuckers.”

“Yeah, we’ve got the fuckers, Baxter.”

He glanced at her screen and the display of the compound with its hot spots. “We’re going tonight?”

“We’re going tonight. I’m going to take our end of the op for a spin in a holoroom, just tighten it up where I can. Be ready.”

“Oh, born that way, Loo.”





21


She took her spin, programmed in the other teams, the backups, the takedown, the timing. By scaling Roarke’s four-minute lag to four seconds, she could run it through quickly—then have the computer calculate reality time.

She ordered and reordered priorities on each run-through.

Satisfied she’d closed any apparent holes, she briefed Whitney, and with his go, pulled in Lowenbaum and his SWAT team to handle Tribeca.

The first phase.

With Lowenbaum, she worked on the timing and movements of that area of the operation.

“A lot of kids, Lowenbaum.”

He nodded as they stood in the mock-up holo of the block. She’d programmed the names of the residents and number of minors on each house.

“Understood. We’ll have the Child Services reps you selected behind the line, and we’ll get the kids to safety. You’re sure about those reps?”

“I got them from the head of An Didean. Rochelle’s solid, and she’s worked with these three people. Some of the women on the block will be like the two we have at Dochas, and some will be like Barbara Poole. Even the ones who don’t want to be there may resist or run. Some may not be able to run if they have the shockers on, or their kids do.”