"And we know how to get around that."

"Reineke, Jenkinson, Santiago, Carmichael, you're on takedown. Baxter, Trueheart, you're on data and interviews. Trueheart will soften the mother up," Eve added before Baxter could object. "We're going to need her cooperation. Baxter, you're going to sit hard on Patroni, put the fear of God into him, if necessary. Fuck his loyalty, if any, to Reginald Mackie. I want three officers, soft clothes, to check out the minor suspect's school."

"School would be over for the day, Lieutenant," Peabody told her.

"There may be staff still there, after-school shit going on. We may be able to determine if she has any particular hangout. If we can take her outside the apartment, we take her. We're not just taking down serial killers, we're taking down a veteran police officer and his teenage daughter. We need it clean.

"We need a warrant to search the mother's residence, get into the kid's room there."

"Consider it done," Whitney told her.

"Peabody and I will handle that search before or after the takedown, depending on timing. The mother's residence is on First. Anyone not on takedown, get started now."

"One moment." Tibble rose, tall and lean and, under the control, Eve noted, furious. "I'd like to add to Lieutenant Dallas's statement. Reginald Mackie served the city and its people for twenty years. But he has broken his oath, his faith, his duty. He is responsible for the death of another police officer and six other citizens, one a minor. He has done this for his own purposes, and has disgraced himself, has made his own child an accessory at best, a killer at worst. Knock him down, take him out, bring him in. I would prefer he still be breathing at the end of this operation, but I want no other good cops killed today. Serve and protect, not just the citizenry, but each other. Lieutenant Dallas, good work. Commander, we have work of our own to do to support those who are going out into harm's way."

Eve let out a breath when Tibble walked out with Whitney. "He is pissed."

"So am I." Lowenbaum pushed to his feet. "I never saw it. You asked me, dead on, who I knew who could make these strikes. Mackie never blipped on my screen."

"Let me ask you now: Could he have executed these strikes?"

"Possibly. He wouldn't have been high on my list, but possibly. The thing is, he's been off my screen for close to a year. I never pushed to see how he was doing. If I had, I might have had a better sense where his head was at."

"You said you tagged him."

"I didn't push."

"Were you pals?"

"No, not really. But we were comrades. I was his supervising officer when he broke."

"And you did what you could for him. Don't go there, Lowenbaum. If you have to go there, save it for later. Get me a SWAT team, one that knows how to take a suspect of this caliber alive, and can keep a lid on it."

On a brisk nod, he left the room.

"Feeney."

"Just hold it, your man's working on something."

"I've got something," Roarke corrected, "again that might be useful. Can I use the screen there?" Without waiting, he rose, walked over, and interfaced his PPC with the room comp.

"Your suspect's building," he began, when the image came on. "We'll draw in on his apartment. It's apartment 612, according to my data."

"Okay."

"And my building, just diagonal from the target. We have an unoccupied apartment actually three altogether, but this one on the seventh floor provides a good location to set up. We could do a heat sensor search from there, and potentially set up ears at least, depending on the target's shielding."

"Do that," Eve said.

"How about we add this?" Feeney scratched his chin. "People move in, move out. We use a small moving van. We get McNab here, maybe another boy to cart in some boxes, or furniture, and our equipment moves in without sending up any flags."

"How soon can you have it set up?"

"Fifteen, maybe twenty."

"Roll it. Baxter, Trueheart, start compiling data, and check with Uniform Carmichael. Start the interview process as soon as we've got some of these people in the house. See if you can get the name of the lawyer Mackie talked to. We need to bring him in. He may be a target."

"Protecting a lawyer." Baxter shook his head. "What the hell. Come on, partner, let's get this started."

With only her takedown team in the room, Eve turned to the screen. "Okay, here's how I see it going."

Within thirty minutes, as data continued to stream in, Eve had her team in a police van, outfitted not only with body armor, but helmets. Which meant she had to do the same. While the coat took care of the body armor, the helmet bugged the crap out of her.

But a head shot would do worse.

Inside the van, on screen, she watched the feed Feeney sent her. She watched McNab and Callendar, looking every bit like a happy couple moving into a new place, haul boxes into Roarke's building.

"No heat source in suspect's apartment," Feeney told her. "We're running that from the van for now. They're not in there."

"When you're ready, McNab and Callendar can run that from inside, and you move off."

"Your man has a garage about a block away. We'll go in there, sit awhile. Lowenbaum's team is moving into position. One of them will use the apartment, two on the roof, and another two in another empty apartment in Roarke's building. See the window of the suspect's apartment?"

"Yeah, yeah. Privacy screened. I'm going to hit the mother's place now. Jenkinson, you're in charge here till I get back sit tight. Peabody, I want constant reports. Roarke, you're with me. I'll be heading east, then south, on foot. I can be back here inside five minutes, so I need to know the first sighting on either suspect."

She stepped out of the van, moved fast. The suspects could be back any minute or not for hours. Any data she could dig up might pinpoint their next target. Even now they might be holed up in some hotel room, some flop, some empty office space, preparing to strike again.

Nothing fell out of the sky now as the ugly day headed toward a bitter evening. Streetlights shimmered on, cutting the gloom with chilly white pools of light. As she walked, she studied faces. Pedestrians hurrying home, or to meet up for drinks, to get in more shopping. Others huddled at a cart that smelled of soy dogs and really terrible coffee.

They could walk here, she thought, father and daughter, back to the apartment, out to grab a slice. They would have walked here at some point, from the townhouse to the apartment.

Had they plotted along the way? Who to kill and when?

A block and a half from Zoe Younger's townhouse, Roarke stepped up beside her. "Lieutenant."

"I want to hit the kid's room. Whitney got the warrant for the whole place, but we're going to focus on the girl's room. It's unlikely the rest of this family are involved, or she'd leave handy clues in the living area."

"Understood."

When he took her hand, she linked her fingers with his. On duty, yeah, but no cops around to see.

"We will take a pass at any and all electronics and flag them for EDD."

"I expect I'll be entirely more useful there than tossing a teenage girl's room."

She frowned up at him as they swam across the crosswalk with the tide of people. "You were a teenage boy there can't be that much difference between male and female at that age."

"Oh, only worlds, I imagine." With her, he made the turn, walked up the five steps to the front right door of the pretty duplex. As he spoke, he took out his tools quicker than her master, she thought, eyeing the security.

"You were a teenage girl."

"Not so much, or only sort of."

"As I was not so much, or only sort of a teenage boy, how well we suit. They have excellent security," he added, sliding through it like a knife through warmed butter.

"We clear it first." Eve drew her weapon. "Just in case."

After his nod, they went through the door together.

"NYPSD," she called out, sweeping left. "We've entered the premises duly warranted."

"No one's here you can feel an empty house," Roarke said. "Ah, there was a day when a B and E into an empty house was my favorite thing."

"Now you get to do it legally."

"Not nearly the same."

While she agreed with the empty, she cleared the first level living area, kitchen, dining, a home office, and a kind of family entertainment area.

The house smelled of the spicy rust-and-pumpkin-colored flowers on the dining room table. Some sort of board on the kitchen wall held kid art weird stick figures, trees with blobs of green representing leaves. A kind of chart that listed duties chores, she corrected like clearing the table, setting it, making beds.

Beside the chart someone had pinned a Christmas photo. Zoe Younger, Lincoln Stuben, Zach Stuben, and Willow Mackie in a group in front of a festive tree, presents stacked beneath.

All smiled but Willow, who stared into the camera with hard green eyes and the faintest hint of a smirk.

"Arms folded." Eve tapped the picture. "There's defiance there. The boy? He looks happy enough to do handsprings for a few hours, and the parents look happy, content. Her? That's a fuck-you stare."

"Indeed it is, and I suspect Mira would add she's separated herself the folded arms, the bit of distance while the other three are all touching. Then again, fifteen? It's an age, isn't it, to consider your parents the enemy."

"Hard for us to say. The ones we had were the enemy. But, on the surface anyway, it looks like these two worked to give happy and stable. The house is clean, but it's not sterile or perfect. Kid-type cereal box on the counter, a couple dishes in the sink, the boy's skids under a chair in the living area, somebody's sweater on the back of a chair over there."

He glanced over hadn't noticed. "You're a wonder."

"I'm a cop," she corrected. "You've got this task chart everybody does their share, and that's probably a good thing. Kid's weird drawings displayed. The family Christmas picture."

She took one more look around. "Reads normal, except it isn't. Under the surface, it isn't."

They went upstairs to the second floor, cleared that: the master suite, the attached office, the boy's room a minor disaster area with strewn toys, vid games, clothes. A guest room identified as such by its pristine, unlived-in feel, then the girl's.

And there was a third floor, a kind of casual family area for watching screen, hanging out which the scatter of games proved they did with a small kitchenette and a half bath.

Eve headed straight back down to Willow's room.

Bed, sloppily made, and with none of the fussy pillows or weird stuffed animals Eve had encountered in other teenagers' rooms. A desk and comp under the window, a lounge chair, some shelves.

Posters on the walls. Some music group all in black with snarling faces and lots of tats. The rest were weapons, or someone holding weapons. Knives, banned guns, blasters.

"Clear where her interests are," Eve commented, moving to the closet.

A few girlie dresses some with the tags still on them. Most of the clothes ran to black or dark colors, rougher styles.

"There's an order in here," she observed. "She knows where she puts her things, wants everything in its place. And if her mother or her brother poke around in here, she knows it."

Roarke had already started on the computer. "She has this passcoded, and fail-safed. A very intricate job for someone her age." He pulled out the desk chair and sat to work.

Eve started on the dresser. Plain underwear, winter socks, sweaters, sweats, all organized without looking overly so.

Purposely, she thought. Yes, she'd know if her mother shifted a pair of socks in the drawer.

"Keep going on that, but she wouldn't leave anything in here she didn't want her mother to find."

"You're sure of that?"

"She put a slide lock on the inside of the door they took it off." Eve nodded toward the door and the telltale marks. "Everything in here is arranged in a kind of system. I always did the same in foster care, in state. You want to know where your things are so, if necessary, you can grab what matters most, is needed most, and run. Or so you know when they've done the look-through. I'm betting her mother does the regular look-through. Mother swallows the posters," Eve continued as she kept searching. "Making the girl take them down only entrenches the interest, drives it deeper under. So she swallows that. But she's had the room painted in this pale, pretty blue, buys dresses that aren't worn unless she forces that issue. She comes in, looking for something, anything, to give her more insight into her daughter. Or more and because she's worried she'll find illegals or weapons or a journal full of ugly thoughts."

"Did you have one? A journal."

"No, I kept my ugly thoughts to myself because they always... The brother's room!"

When Eve walked out, Roarke arched his eyebrows. He finished bypassing the fail-safe, then rose to see what his cop was up to.

She sat at the boy's comp in the middle of his boy mess.

"I didn't always keep my thoughts ugly or otherwise to myself. That's learned behavior, that's experience. Sometimes you're just writing a paper for school, and they get into your comp, and you get punished for writing how you like riding an airboard. So you start doing those papers in school, mostly. Or you're bored and unhappy and you write down some stupid wish list, and they find that, and you get your ass kicked over it."

Roarke brushed a kiss over the top of her head, said nothing which said everything.

"It's not about me, it's just about... A couple of times when I needed to write something down when you just need that tangible act I figured out how to sort of hide it on another comp. One they didn't bother with. You've got a real kid I mean the foster's real kid in the house, and he's gold in their eyes, you can use that. The thing is, if she used that method, she's probably a hell of a lot better at it than I was than I am."

"Let me."

When she rose, he took her by her shoulders, looked into her eyes. "What did you need to write down?"

"I kept a calendar almost always, wherever I was marking time till I could get out. For good. How many years, months, weeks, days, hours sometimes, before I could. How I was going to get out, go to New York. New York seemed so big and full, so I focused on New York pretty early. And the Academy. How I was going to be a cop because cops took care of themselves, and everyone else. Good cops, anyway, and I was going to be a good cop, and no one was ever going to tell me what and when to eat, what to wear -"

"And now I do."

She shook her head. "Not the same. Not close to the same. No one loved me, and maybe along the way that became my fault as much as the system's, but no one loved me. No one said eat something because I love you, because you matter. I was just another number until I earned the badge. I was just a badge, mostly just a badge, until I earned you."

She took a breath. "I could have been this girl, Roarke."

"No."

"Yes, or at least something like her. If Feeney had been a different kind of cop, a different kind of man. If he'd been like Mackie, broken and twisted like Mackie. He saw me. Really saw me, and he pulled me out of the rest, paid attention, gave me time, gave me him. No one had, ever, offered me what he did. No one, ever, saw me like he did. I wanted to make him proud of me, wanted to be the kind of cop he'd be proud of. It drove me.

"And doesn't it look like she wants to be what her father wants? That is part, a big part, of what drives her."

"If the last part of that's true, it means she's turned her back on everything else she has. A mother, a brother. A good home from the looks of it."