Loyalty in Death (In Death #9)(47)

The blood simply drained out of her head and left it buzzing. And she discovered she wasn’t paralyzed after all, when her arms locked around him, and her mouth began to meet his assault with one of her own.

They grappled, groping and biting. Somebody moaned. Somebody swore. Then they were staring at each other, panting.

“What the — what the hell was that?” Her voice came out in a squeak.

“I don’t know.” He managed to suck in air, release it. “But let’s do it again.”

“Jesus Christ, McNab!” Feeney exploded from the doorway and watched the pair of them jump apart like rabbits. “What the sweet hell are you doing?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” He wheezed, coughed, tried to blink his vision clear. “Nothing,” he said for a third time. “At all. Captain.”

“Holy Mary McGuire.” Feeney rubbed his hands over his face, kept them there. “We’ll all just pretend I didn’t see that. I didn’t see a goddamn thing. I’ve just now this second walked into this room. Is that understood?”

“Sir,” Peabody said snappily, and prayed the blush she could feel burning her face would fade sometime before the end of the decade.

“Yes, sir.” McNab took a long sideways step away from Peabody.

Feeney lowered his hands, studied the two of them. He’d locked less guilty-looking pairs in cages, he thought with an inner sigh. “Target’s been located. It’s Radio City.”

CHAPTER TEN

They had time. They still had time, was all Eve allowed herself to think. She wore riot gear: the full anti-flak jacket, the assault helmet, and face visor. All of which, she knew, would prove as useless as fresh, pink skin if they didn’t have time.

So they did. That was the only choice for her, for the E and B team, and for the civilians they were working feverishly to evacuate.

The Great Stage at Radio City had pulled in a full house: tourists, locals, preschoolers with parents or caretakers, classroom groups with teachers and chaperons. The noise level was huge, and the natives weren’t just restless, they were pissed.

“Seats run between one hundred and two hundred and fifty.” The six-foot blonde, who’d identified herself as the theater manager, galloped beside Eve like a Viking warhorse. Outrage and distress had gone to battle in her voice. “Do you have any idea how complicated it’s going to be to arrange alternate dates or refunds? We’re sold out through the run of the show.”

“Look, sister, you’ll be holding your run of the show in pieces blown over to Hoboken if you don’t let us do our job.” She elbowed the woman aside and pulled out her communicator. “Malloy? Status.”

“Multiple devices detected. We’ve located and neutralized two. Scan indicates six more. Teams already deployed. The stage has four elevators, every one of them can go down twenty-seven feet into the basement of this place. We got hot ones in all of them. Working as fast as we can here.”

“Work faster,” Eve suggested. She jammed the communicator back in her pocket and turned to the woman beside her. “Get out.”

“I certainly will not. I’m the manager.”

“That doesn’t make you captain of this sinking ship.” Because the woman outweighed her by a good fifty pounds and looked frazzled enough to put up a good, entertaining fight, Eve was tempted to haul her along personally. It was too bad she couldn’t spare the time. Instead, she signaled to a couple of beefy uniforms, indicated the woman with a jerk of her thumb.

“Move this,” was all she said and pushed her way through the noisy, complaining crowd of evacuees.

She could see the impressive block-long expanse of stage. A full dozen cops in riot gear were posted on it to keep any ticket holders from scrambling in that direction. The heavy red curtain was raised, the stage lights brilliant. No one, she thought dryly, would mistake the helmeted figures onstage for The Rockettes.

Babies wailed, the elderly griped, and a half dozen schoolgirls clutching their souvenir Rockette dolls wept silently.

The cover story of a water main leak had staved off panic, but it didn’t make for cheerful cooperation from the civilians.

The evacuation teams were making progress, but it was no easy task to move several thousand annoyed ticket holders out of a warm theater and into the cold. The main lobby area was jammed shoulder to shoulder.

And there were countless other rooms, lounges, lobbies. Beyond the public areas there were dressing rooms, control centers, offices. Each one had to be searched, emptied, secured.

Add panic to annoyance, Eve mused, and you’d have several hundred casualties before they hit the doors. She slapped on her headset and climbed onto a wide Art Deco table to look down on the grumbling horde being pushed along through the grandiose lobby with its stylized glass and chrome.

She switched on her mike. “This is the NYPSD,” she announced over the echoing din. “Your cooperation is appreciated. Please don’t block the exits. Continue to move outside.” She ignored the shouts and questions thrown at her and repeated her statement twice more.

A woman in her matinee pearls curled a hand around Eve’s booted ankle. “I know the mayor. He’s going to hear about this.”

Eve nodded pleasantly. “Give him my best. Please proceed in an orderly fashion. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

The word inconvenience pushed the bitch button. The shouts increased even as uniforms firmly led people through the doors. Eve had just swiveled her mouthpiece aside, pulled out her communicator for another status check when she saw someone come in instead of out.