Calculated in Death (In Death #36)(86)

“How do you know? You haven’t looked at it.”

“Because it’s your work.”

He flipped a finger down her hair. “You’re trying to soften me up so I won’t make an issue of your . . . incentive to a murderer.”

“That doesn’t make it less true.”

He sat in her miserably uncomfortable visitor’s chair. “I suppose you’d best eat your soup and tell me what you have in mind.”

Eve took off the lid, sniffed. “What kind of soup is it?”

“It was billed as minestrone, but it’s your Vending.”

“It won’t be magic.” But she sampled it. “It’s not horrible. So, Nadine should be here before too long to do a quick interview with me about—woo-hoo—fun and excitement, glamour and glitter at the premiere tomorrow night. A premiere of the vid that’s based on the case I cracked like a rotten walnut. Though modesty will prevent me from playing my own fiddle—”

“Tooting your own horn.”

“What’s the difference? They both make noise.”

“I stand, if not corrected, forced to agree.” In a futile attempt to find comfort in the chair, Roarke stretched out his legs. “You want to manipulate a confrontation with a violent killer at a public event?”

“I’m going to manipulate a killer into the open at an event he won’t be able to resist because not only am I attending, I’m getting media play from it. It’s splashy, and it comes right on the heels of his own media humiliation in the form of flying baby.”

“And you see no downside to rubbing his face in it.”

“I see that as a side benefit. Listen,” she continued, knowing his reservations, “how’s he going to lure me into an ambush? Maybe he tries to hit me when I’ve driving home, or into Central, or when Peabody and I are in the field. We can take precautions on all that, but for how long? Or he goes at Peabody first when she’s walking to the subway, or in the market for a bag of chips.”

“All right, it’s too open, too unpredictable.”

“Exactly, and this narrows it down to a point. Tomorrow night, when I’m raking in the attention, he shows me—shows everyone, and more himself if Mira’s on it—he can do the job.”

He couldn’t argue with her logic, or her strategy to ambush the ambusher. “And there’ll be cops at the event, covering the event.”

“Lousy with cops,” she assured him. “And we should have a better description of him by then. It may be we’ll be able to get him prior, but if not, we’ll throw the net over him tomorrow.”

And he’d be beside her, start to finish, Roarke thought.

“And when you have him, you believe you’ll get him to turn on Alexander?”

“I will turn him, and they both go away.”

“Well then, it promises to be an interesting evening.”

“I need to clear it with Whitney, brief the men.”

“And you can put any fine points on it, adjust as need be, consider more angles while Trina’s dealing with your hair and makeup tomorrow evening.”

“What? What? Why?”

“Lieutenant, for someone so clever, you really should have known that was coming.”

“I know how to put the face gunk on.”

“You’ll have Mavis and Peabody for moral support. Not my doing,” he added, holding up his hands. “And really, darling, if you can so courageously face down a killer, you should be able to tough out an at-home salon treatment with friends.”

“Just another ambush,” she muttered. “What kind of friends ambush you?”

“Your kind. And think how much more irresistible you’ll be to your quarry when you’ve been glamorized.”

She opened her mouth, shut it. Hummed. “That doesn’t make up for it, but it’s a point.”

She glanced toward the door when she heard the sound of footsteps. “Prancing. McNab,” she said moments before he bounced to her doorway.

“Lieutenant. I think I’ve got your hacker.”

She forgot the misery of hair and face by Trina. “Who is he? Where is he?”

“His name’s Milo Easton aka Mole. Milo the Mole, he’s pretty famous in hacking circles. Have you heard of him?” McNab asked Roarke.

“As a matter of fact, yes. Young, isn’t he, not twenty-five, and responsible for hacking into the NSA mainframe—still a teenager then. Draining the bank account of an Internet magnate he considered a rival, manipulating the odds boards before the Kentucky Derby.”

“That’s Milo,” McNab confirmed. “He’s only been caught once, and that was early on. He was only about fourteen, so they went easy on him. Big mistake as he stopped doing it for fun, and started doing it for profit. He burrows,” he told Eve. “Himself—which is why he’s hard to pin—and his work. He lost a lot of his shine in the community when it got out he’d tapped into retirement accounts. Going after big money from big companies or people, that’s one thing. Sucking from regular joes? No frost on that. It’s his fingerprint on the first vic’s unit, and on the safe at the accounting firm. I’m sure of it.”

“Where do we find him?”