People were a hazard to the damn human race.
Though her face throbbed, she swung by the Icove residence. She wanted another shot at Avril.
One of the police droids opened the door after verifying her ID.
"Where are they?"
"Two are on the second level with the minors and my counterpart. One is in the kitchen. They've made no attempt to leave, and have made no outside contact."
"Stand by," she ordered, and walked through the house to the kitchen.
Avril was at the stove pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven. She was dressed casually in a blue sweater and black pants, and her hair was pulled back in a shining tail.
"Ms. Icove."
"Oh, you startled us." She set the tray down on the stovetop. "We enjoy baking on occasion, and the children love when we have fresh cookies."
"There's only one of you in here, so why don't you drop the trio bit? Why didn't you tell me about the surgeries, the subliminal control programs performed on minors routinely at Brookhollow?"
"They're all part of the process, the training. We assumed you already knew." She began to move the cookies from baking tray to cooling rack. "Is this an official, recorded interview?"
"No. No record. I'm off duty."
Avril turned fully, and concern moved into her eyes. "Your face is bruised."
Eve poked a tongue at the inside of her cheek, relieved she didn't taste blood. "It's a jungle out there."
"I'll get the med kit."
"Don't worry about it. When's Deena due to contact you, Avril?"
"We thought she would by now. We're starting to worry. Lieutenant, she's our sister. That relationship is as true for us as if we were blood. We don't want anything to happen to her because of something we did."
"What about something you didn't do? Like telling me where to find her?"
"We can't, unless she tells us."
"Is she working with the others? The others who got away?" Avril carefully removed her apron. "There are some who formed an underground. There are some who simply wanted to disappear, to live a normal life. Deena's had help, but what she's done-what we've done," she corrected, "is what she, and you, I imagine, would call un-sanctioned. Deena felt something had to be done, now. Something strong and permanent. We felt, because of what we'd learned about our children, that she was right."
"By this time tomorrow, Quiet Birth will be all over the media. You want it stopped? Public outrage is going to go a long way to making sure it is. Help me clean up the rest of it. Where are the nurseries, Avril?"
"What will happen to the children, the babies, the yet born?" "I don't know. But I suspect there'll be a lot of loud voices calling for their rights, their protection. That's part of human makeup, too, isn't it? Protecting and defending the innocent and the defenseless." "Not everyone will see it that way."
"Enough will. I can give you my word I know how this story'll be broken, the tone that's going to be set. The odds of Deena going to prison for her crimes to date are slim to none. Those odds start climbing if she continues her mission now that we've taken steps to stop the project, to shut down the training area." "We'll tell her, as soon as we can."
"What about the data removed from the private office upstairs?" "She has it. We gave it to her."
"And the data she removed from Samuels's quarters?" Surprise flickered. "You're very good at your work." "That's right, I am. What was in the files she took from Samuels?" "We don't know. There wasn't time for her to share it with us." "You tell her if she gets me the data, the locations, I can slam the door on this. She doesn't have to do any more."
"We will, when we can. We're grateful." She lifted a platter already loaded with cookies. "Would you like a cookie?" "Why not?" Eve said, and took one for the road.
There were kids in the yard. It gave Eve a jolt, especially when one dropped out of a tree like a monkey. He seemed to be of the male variety, and let out war whoops as he raced her car to the house.
"Afternoon!" he said, with an accent much broader and somehow greener than Roarke's. "We're in New York City."
"Okay." He didn't appear to consider it godforsaken.
"We've never been before, but we're having an American holiday. I'm Scan, and we've come to visit our cousin, Roarke. This is his grand house here. Me da said it's big enough to have its own postal code. If you're after seeing Roarke, he's inside. I can show you the way."
"I know the way. I'm Dallas. I live here, too."
The boy cocked his head. She was bad with ages when it came to the underaged, but she figured maybe eight. He had a lot of hair the color of the syrup she liked to drown pancakes in, and enormous green eyes. His face exploded with freckles.
"I thought the lady who lived in the grand house with cousin Roarke was Eve. She's with the garda, and wears a weapon."
"Dallas, Lieutenant Eve." She shoved back her coat so he could see her sidearm.
"Oh, brilliant! Can I-"
"No." She flapped the coat back before his reaching fingers made contact with her weapon.
"Well, that's all right, then. Have you blasted many people with it?"
"Only my share."
He fell into step with her. "Were you in a fight, then?"
"No. Not exactly."
"It looks like someone planted a right one on you. Will you be going with us on the city tour?"
Did the kid do anything but ask questions? "I don't know." Did she have to? "Probably not. I've got. .. things."
"We're after going skating at the place, the outside place. Have you done that already?"
"No." She glanced down, and with hopes of discouraging his inexplicable attachment to her, gave him her flat-eyed cop stare. "There was a murder there last year."
Instead of shock and terror, his face registered delicious excitement. "A murder? Who was it? Who killed him? Did the body freeze onto the ice so it had to be scraped off? Was there blood? I bet that froze so it was like red ice."
His questions slapped at her ears like gnats as she quickened her pace to, hopefully, escape into the house.
She opened the door to voices, a great many voices.
And there was a small, human creature of undetermined sex crawling over the foyer tiles. It moved like lightning, and it was heading her way.
"Oh my God."
"That's my cousin Cassie. Quick as a snake, she is. Best close the door."
Eve not only closed it, but backed up against it as the crawling thin;: made a series of unintelligible noises, quickened the pace, and cornered her.
"What does it want?"
"Oh, just to say hello. You can pick her up. She's the sociable sort. Aren't you, Cassie darling?"
It grinned, showing a couple of little white teeth, then to Eve's horror, got a grip on the bottom of her coat and hauled itself up on its chubby legs. It said: "Da!"
"What does that mean?"
"It means most anything."
A man dashed out of the parlor. He was tall, beanpole thin, with a messy thatch of dense brown hair. He grinned and in other circumstances Eve might have found him charming.
"There she is. I'm on watch, and I take my eyes off the monkey for a split second and she's off to the races. No need to mention this to your aunt Reenie," he said to Scan. Then to Eve's vast relief, scooped the baby up to bounce her casually on his hip.
"You'd be Eve. I'm your cousin Eemon, Sinead's son. It's lovely meeting you at last."
Before she could speak, he'd wrapped his free arm around her, pulled her into a hug, and into intimate proximity with what was on his hip. Tiny fingers shot out, grabbed her hair.
Eemon laughed. "She's a fascination with hair, as she has so little of it yet herself." Competently, he tugged the fingers free.
"Um" was all Eve could think of, but Eemon flashed that smile once more.
"And here you are, barely in your own door and we've got you surrounded. We're already scattered about the place, and sure a beauty of a place it is.
Roarke and some of us are in the parlor there. Can I help you with your coat?"
"Coat? No. Thanks." She was able to ease away, peel it off, toss it over the newel post.
"Gran!" Scan raced forward, and some of Eve's tension faded when she saw Sinead step into the foyer. At least this was someone she'd already met.
"You'll never guess it." Brimming with excitement, Scan danced in a circle. "Cousin Eve said there was a murder at the skating place. A dead body."
"Murder usually involves a dead body."
It occurred to Eve, quite suddenly, that murder probably hadn't been an appropriate point of conversation. "It was last year. It's okay now."
"I'm relieved to hear it, as there's a considerable horde who's looking forward to taking a spin on the ice." She grinned, stepped forward.
She was slim and lovely. Delicate white skin and fine features, golden red hair and sea green eyes. The same face, Eve thought, her twin-Roarke's mother-would have had if she'd lived.
She kissed Eve's cheek. "Thank you for having us in your home."
"Oh. Sure, but it's Roarke's-"
"Whatever he built, it's the home you've made together. How is it you manage such a place?" She hooked an arm through Eve's as she walked back toward the parlor. "Sure I'd be lost half the time."
"I don't, really. Manage it. Summerset."
"Competent, he looks it. A bit intimidating as well."
"I'll say."
But she'd have handled him better than the sight in the parlor. There were so many of them. Had he said there were so many? They were all talking and eating. More kids-the couple others she'd seen outside. They must have come around the side, she thought. Or just whizzed through, invisibly.
Roarke was in the process of serving an older woman a cup of something. She sat in one of the high-backed chairs, her head crowned with white hair, her eyes strong and blue.
There was another man standing by the fireplace having a conversation with yet another who might have been his twin if you carved way the twenty-odd years she judged came between them. They appeared to have no problem ignoring the two kids who sat at their feet and poked viciously at each other.
Another woman, early twenties, sat in the windowseat, looking dreamily out wile a baby of some kind sucked heroically at her breast.
Jeez.
"Our Eve's home," Sinead announced, and conversation trailed off. “Meet the family, won’t you?” Sinead’s arm tightened like a shackle, and moved Eve forward. "My brother Ned, and his oldest Connor."
"Ah, nice to meet you." She started to extend a hand, and was enveloped in a bear hug by the older, passed to the younger for the same treatment.
"Thanks for having us."
"That's Connor's Maggie there, nursing their young Devin."
"Pleasure." Maggie sent Eve a slow, shy smile.
"Scattered about on the floor would be Celia and Tom."
"She's got a blaster." Since it was the girl who made the whispered observation, Eve assumed it was Celia.
"Police-issue combo." Instinctively Eve laid her hand over it. "It's on stun. Lowest setting. I ... I'll go up and put it away."
"Somebody punched her face." Tom didn't bother to whisper.
"Not exactly. I should go up, and ..." Hide.
"My mother." Sinead tugged Eve forward another step. "Alise Brody."
"Ma'am. I'm just going to-"
But the woman got to her feet. "Let's have a good look at you. Don't you feed her, boy?" she demanded of Roarke.
"I try."
"Good face, strong jaw. Good thing if you're going to have to take a punch here and there. So you're a cop, are you now? Running about after murderers and the like. Good at it?"
"Yes. I'm good at it."
"No point in doing something and not doing it well. And your family? Your kin?"
"I don't have any family."
She laughed, hard and long. "God sake, child, like it or no, you've got one now. Give us a kiss here, then." She tapped her cheek. "And you can call me Granny."
She wasn't much of a cheek kisser, but there didn't seem to be any choice.
"I really need to just..." Eve gestured vaguely toward the doorway. "Roarke's told us you're in the middle of an investigation." Sinead gave her an easy pat. "Don't mind us if you need to be doing something."
"I just-a couple of things. For a minute."
She started out, started to take her first easy breath. Roarke caught up with her at the stairs. "How'd you get the bruise this time?"
"Minnesota backhand. I should've done something about it before I got here. I should've locked my weapon in my vehicle." The fact Roarke looked so ridiculously happy only flustered her more. "And I shouldn't have tried to get the kid-the Scan kid-to stop hammering me with questions by telling him there'd been a murder in Rockefeller Center last year."
"Certainly not to the last, as you say murder to a young boy, you've only enticed him." He slid an arm around her waist, rubbed his hand up and down her torso. "You don't have to be what you're not with them. That, at least, I've learned. I appreciate you tolerating this, Eve. I know it's not entirely comfortable for you, and the timing turned out poor."
"It's okay. It's the number of them that threw me off, especially since so many of them are kids."
He leaned in, just to brush his lips over her hair. "Would this be the best time to tell you there are several more having a swim?"
She stopped dead. "More?"
"Several. One of the uncles stayed back, along with a scatter of cousins and my grandfather. They're minding the family farm. But that leaves a number of other cousins, and their children."
Children. More. She wasn't going to panic; what was the point. "We're going to need a turkey the size of Pluto."
He turned her, drew her in, pressed his lips to the side of her neck.
"How you holding up?" she asked him.
"There are so many feelings coming and going inside me." He rubbed her arms, stepped back.
Touching her, she realized, keeping contact maybe because both of them needed it.
"I'm so pleased they're here. I never thought to have any blood of mine under my roof." He gave a quick, baffled laugh. "Never thought I had any I'd care to welcome. And still, I can't catch up with them. I don't know what to make of them, that's God's truth."
"Well, Jesus, there's so many it'd take you a couple years just to sort through and assign names to faces."
"No." But he laughed again, more easily. "That's not what I meant. I'm happy they've come, but at the same time, I can't get used to having them. They ... I can't think of the word. Flummox is closest. They flummox me, Eve, with their acceptance, their affection. And there's part of me, part that's still the Dublin street rat, that's waiting for one of them to say: 'Roarke, darling, how about a little of the ready, since you've so much to spare.' It's uncalled for, and unfair."
"It's natural. And it'd be easier for you if they did. You'd understand that. So would I." She angled her head. "Am I really supposed to call her Granny? I don't think I can get my mouth around it."
He brushed a kiss on her brow. "It'd be a great favor to me if you'd try. Just think of it as a kind of nickname, that's what I'm doing yet. Now if you need to work, I'll make your excuses."
"Nothing much left for me to do but wait. Mostly waiting now for the media to hit, and the feds to scramble. Departmentally, the case is essentially closed. Except, I was going to ask you to get me schematics, blueprints on the Center. If the base isn't at the school, I'm betting it's there. Maybe auxiliaries scattered. But there's got to be an operation center."
"I can do that. I can get a search started, and check in on it by remote."
"That'd be good. And maybe we could run another search and match on Deena. Use the image from the discs from Brookhollow. Possibly she's got more ID with that basic appearance. Could get lucky."
"But the case is essentially closed," he said dryly.
"Departmentally. But I'm da
mned if this is getting away from me until I've tried every avenue."
T
here were more of them. Eve let names and faces buzz through her brain. It seemed there was at least one of every specimen, from seventy years to less than that many days. Every one of them was inclined to talk.
As Scan seemed determined to shadow her every move, she concluded that young boys were much like cats. They insisted on giving their company to those who most feared or distrusted them.
As for her cat, Galahad made an appearance, regally ignored everyone under four feet until he clued in that this variety of human was more likely to drop food on the floor, or sneak him handouts. He ended in a gluttonous coma, tubby belly up under a table.
She escaped the party Roarke escorted out for what Scan called the city tour, and with her head ringing from endless conversation, slipped up to her office.
The case wasn't closed, she thought, until it was closed.
She sat at her desk, ordered the data from Roarke's unit, and studied the blueprints on record for the Icove Center.
There could be others, and Roarke agreed. His computer would continue to search for unrecordeds. For now, she'd work with these.
God knew it was enough.
"Computer, delete all public areas."
She crossed back and forth in front of the screens, studying the accesses, the floor space.
Because it was there. She was sure of it now. It was ego as well as convenience. He'd have based his most personal project in the enormous center that bore his name.
That's where he spent his free time. Those days and evenings never booked. Just a quick walk or drive from home.
"Delete patient areas. Hell of a lot of space yet, for labs, for staff sectors, for administration. Wasting my time, probably wasting my time," she muttered. "Feds'll run through the place like ants in another day, two at the most."
The NYPSD couldn't lock it down. There were civilian patients to consider, privacy laws to wrestle, and the sheer size of the place would make a reasonable search all but impossible.
But the feds would have the juice for it, and the enhanced equipment. Probably should leave this end to them. Let them wrap it up.