Origin in Death (In Death #21)(103)

"They ... encoded her ..." Roarke said, for lack of a better term, "... to do exactly what she did."

"That's the point, and the point Legal will use if and when she goes to trial. See here? They shifted training with Diana somewhat. Trying to prevent her from repeating the same pattern. Add in more of the domestic sciences, push art appreciation, theater, music. Blah, blah. Maybe, maybe it would've worked. But here comes the intangible. She sees the person she considers her mother."

He was working on the center, manually now, his sleeves rolled up, his hair tied back. "If they've based anything here, they've covered themselves brilliantly. Every area is fully accounted for."

"Okay, forget that, forget it." She pressed her fingers to her temples as if to clear her brain. "This is your place, your base. Where do you put it?"

He pushed back, considered. "Well, you go under. This isn't the sort of thing you can run cleverly in plain sight. That's the most fun, of course, but you can't mix this-or not all of it, not the core of it-in with the work-a-day. Some of the lab business, yes. With the setup they've got, you've plenty of checkpoints there. Certainly you could do alterations, sculpting, the subliminals, whatever you liked in any number of locations. But for the creating, the-for lack of a better word- the gestating. You'd need maximum cover."

"Sublevel, then." She leaned over him, studied the screen. "How do we get in?"

"Are we breaking and entering, darling? You'll get me stirred up."

"Cut it out. Nobody's stirring anything with a houseful of relatives. It's too distracting."

"I'd point out they're all tucked up neatly in bed now, but the idea of breaking into the Center has me distracted. First you walk in."

"One of the public areas. Emergency care, maybe. Most vulnerable to security, right?"

"Most likely. And as good as any. Let's have a look."

"You look. I have to think. Would she take her along? Take the kid?"

Because she felt a certain kinship with Deena, she asked herself what she'd do.

"Doesn't seem to follow. You pull her out of what you consider a dangerous situation, you don't dump her into another. But she'd keep her close. She'd put her where she feels it's safe. With Avril, or where Avril can get to her. If so, she has to contact Avril. Already has," she said, nodding to herself. "No move on Diana's legal guardians in Argentina. I'm betting Avril got word to her, and Deena caught another flight back, or aborted the flight she was on."

"Or never went at all," Roarke suggested. "Tossed you a red herring."

"Maybe, yeah, maybe. If she's had contact with Avril, she knows or will know that this whole thing's about to go public. What does she do?"

She paced. "She's got her mission. Most of what she wants is going to come down. But..." Case is basically closed, she thought, but was that stopping her from pursuing it, from doing what she could to finish it out herself?

"She'll try to finish it. Hell, they trained her for this kind of work. They imprinted her to succeed. She's already gone rogue from her own underground. She's been in the Center once already that we know of. To kill Icove. But she doesn't attempt to do anything else there."

"She's focused."

"So far," Eve agreed. "Icove to Icove to Samuels. Because even if she does get in, compromises their database, their equipment.. . Hell, even if she blows the place up, key members are still around to put it back together. Take out the human factor first, then the system."

She paced some more. "Don't take the chance on the government getting the system, covertly continuing the program. I put the clock on her with Nadine. She's got to move on it tonight."

She stopped when Feeney came in. He was, if possible, more rumpled than usual.

"I need that tracking."

"I got the data from Samuels's records on the type of implant." He looked at Roarke. "You got anything in here that'll track an internal?"

"I've got a few things we can put together in the computer lab. There's-"

"Go do that," Eve interrupted, sensing a compu-geek mode coming on. "I'm going to outline the op."

"What op?" Feeney wanted to know.

"I'll catch you up." Roarke started out with him. "Have you ever worked with an Alpha-5? The XDX version?"

"Only in my dreams."

"Your dream's about to come true."

Eve gave them twenty minutes. It was all she believed they could spare.

"Got her?"

"Got something," Feeney told her. "It's being jammed, and it's weak, but it matches the codes of the implant listed for Diana Rodriguez. We wouldn't be getting anything, I can tell you, if we weren't working with the Alpha, 'cause the jam is choice. Might not even get what we got with the Alpha, except the implant's within a mile of our location."

"Where?"

"Moving north. West of here. Got that map ready?" he asked Roarke.

"Just coming. And on."

A city map flashed under the fuzzy blip on-screen. "The Center." Eve set her jaw. "She's less than a block from the Center. She's taking the kid and going in. Feeney, don't lose her. Contact Whitney. You're going to have to convince him to let you break Code Blue on communications. Then you've got to convince him to get us a warrant and a team. Use the kid. Minor civilian, suspected abduction, imminent jeopardy. With or without, I'm going in. I'm changing to Delta frequency on my communicator. Use it only if you get affirmative."