Survivor In Death (In Death #20)(45)

“They didn't tell me. The cop took her. Against procedure, but she had weight.”

“As her caseworker, you must be informed of her location. You must supervise her.”

“Over my head. Under the table. I don't know. Cop took her. Police protection.”

She lost track of the pain now, of the times it ripped through her like burning arrows. Lost track of the times they brought her back from the edge of oblivion, pounded her with questions.

“Very well, Meredith. I'll need the address of every safe house you know. Every hidey-hole the system digs.”

“I can't-- I'll try,” she screamed against the next wave of agony. “I'll try to remember.” She blurted out addresses between sobs and whimpers. “I don't know all of them, I don't know all. Only what they tell me. I'm not in charge.”

“Just a cog in the wheel. Who took Nixie Swisher?”

“The cop. Homicide cop. Dallas. Lieutenant Dallas.”

“Yes, of course. Lieutenant Dallas. That's very good, Meredith.”

“I've told you everything. Everything I know. Are you going to let me go?”

“Yes, we are. Very soon.”

“Water, please. Could I have some water?”

“Did Lieutenant Dallas indicate where she could take Nixie Swisher?”

“No, no. I swear, I swear. Into her custody. Not regs, but she pushed it through. I wanted to get home. It was a bad place to be. I wanted to get out. Supposed to check into the safe house with the subject, but Dallas overrode me. I let her.”

“Have you been in contact with Lieutenant Dallas since that night?”

“No. The bosses took it over. They don't tell me. It's high-profile. It's sensitive. I'm just--”

“A cog on the wheel.”

“I don't know anything. Will you let me go now?”

“Yes. You can go now.”

The knife slashed so fast, so cleanly across her throat, she never felt it.

9

EVE WALKED INTO HER OWN HOME AS IF SHE were walking into an op. “No one comes in, no one goes out,” she snapped to Summerset, “without my clearance. Savvy?”

“Certainly.”

“Where's the kid?”

“In the game room with Officer Trueheart.” Summerset hitched back the cuff of his black jacket to reveal a wrist unit. Not a time piece, Eve noted, but a monitor. On it, she saw Trueheart and Nixie battling it out on one of Roarke's classic pinball machines.

“I took the precaution of pinning a homer on her sweater,” he added. “If she moves from one location to another, it signals.”

Despite herself, Eve was impressed. “Sweet.”

“They will not lay a hand on that child.”

She looked at him. He'd lost a child, a daughter, not that much older, really, than this one. Whatever else she thought of him, she understood he would stand as Nixie's shield.

“No, they won't. Roarke?”

“He's here. In his private office.”

“Right.” The office where he kept his unregistered--and therefore illegal--equipment. However much she trusted Peabody, there were lines. “Head up, will you,” she said to Peabody. “Give Baxter the current. I'm going to update Roarke, then we'll conference. My office.”

As her partner started up the steps, Eve moved out of the foyer and to the elevator. There she paused. “I need them alive,” she said to Summerset. “Best-case scenario.”

“One of them alive would do.”

She turned back. “She will be protected. Extreme measures, including termination, will be employed if necessary. But consider this before you get your juices up. Two men grabbed Meredith Newman off the street--and one to drive, so that makes three. There may be more. I don't get one healthy, that I can sweat, she may never be safe. The more of them I get healthy, the better chance I have to get them all. To get the why. Without the why, she may never be safe. And she'll never know. You don't know the why, you don't always heal.”

Though his face remained unreadable, Summerset nodded. “You're quite right, Lieutenant.”

She stepped into the elevator, ordered Roarke's private office.

He knew when she came through the gates, and that she'd come up before much longer. So he closed the file, went back to evaluating his security.

He didn't think it was appropriate right at the moment to tell her one of the tasks he'd chosen for the unregisters was indepth--and technically illegal--background checks on all of Nixie's family connections.

The grandmother was out. She'd had a few misdemeaner illegals charges, any number of cohabs, and had a part-time licensed companion standing.

Perhaps the moral judgment was ironic as he was currently an official guardian for the child and had done worse. Considerably worse.

But he was making it nonetheless. He wouldn't see a child turned over to a woman of that sort. She deserved better.

He'd found Grant Swisher's biological father. It had taken a bit of time, but the moral judgment there had come swiftly.

The man was rarely employed, had done a short stint for petty theft, and another for jacking vehicles.

The step-sister looked more promising. She was married, a corporate lawyer out of Philadelphia. Childless. No criminal on record, and financially solvent. She'd been married, to another lawyer, for seven years.