"I wasn't, now I am. As they didn't need me, particularly, in EDD, I did some remote work. Now I'm back. How can I help you?"

"I don't- Actually, you could bring up a map on the other screen, focus on a place called Divine on the East Side."

"I know it. So do you at least their products."

"I've never been there."

"Because we stock it at home. One of the perks of owning it."

"Your place?"

"Actually, it's in your name."

Even with her mind full of cop details, she stopped cold, blinked at him. "I own an ice cream joint?"

"You own what many consider to be the premier ice cream parlor in the city," he told her as he worked.

"No one can ever know."

"Sorry?" Distracted, he glanced over and saw her eyebrows drawn together. "What?"

"Especially Peabody. No one can ever know my name's on some big-deal ice cream joint."

"I see we'll be canceling our plans for the Lieutenant Dallas Frosted, but as you like."

"You- That's a joke. Ha-ha. Why is my name on- No, later. I'm losing my focus."

"Then tell me: How does Divine play into this?"

"They go there the Mackies. It's their celebration place. They went there after each strike."

The amusement, the slight curve of his lips faded away. "Kill people, enjoy a banana split?"

"Something like that."

"You've dealt with some monsters in our time together, but these... They're a separate breed. Father and daughter, celebrating death over ice cream while families mourn."

"He rewards her. He trained her, helped make her, so he rewards her for a job well done. I'm looking for their hole. If they went to Divine having stowed the weapons first I lean toward them holing up in a place within reasonable walking distance of the ice cream joint. According to my information, Divine has been their place since she was a kid."

Others began to file in as she spoke. "I'm going to ask you to take a deep dive into Mackie's finances, but even considering pension, death benefits from the wife, he's paying rent on two places. He's had to acquire all the weapons, the false IDs. That's got to stretch his income. So the hole's likely low rent, maybe a month-to-month. It's doubtful he's had it more than six months."

"Dallas, Uniform Carmichael and Officer Shelby are on their way in," Peabody told her. "They won't be here for at least fifteen."

"Loop them in remotely. They don't need to come in."

"Loop Chief Tibble," Whitney ordered as he stepped in.

"I've got them." Feeney moved to the comp.

"Everybody else, give your attention to screen one. Note the buildings highlighted. These are potential nests for today's attack on Times Square. Note your sectors," Eve added.

"In the first strike, the suspects used a hotel room, a conventional check-in. They may have done the same here. You'll search your sectors hotels, flops, office buildings, studios. The program used to determine these probabilities also, as you see, lists probable angle and direction of strike. You have the most likely floors and angles.

"Hit all, hit thoroughly. Talk to clerks, supers, beat cops, LCs, merchants, dog walkers, residents, cleaning crews. They didn't pick the nest at random, so at least one of them cased it previously. Find it."

She turned to the other screen.

"Divine," she began.

"Best Rocky Road in the city," Jenkinson commented, then shrugged. "Just saying."

"Your endorsement's so noted. Apparently the suspects agree although she prefers the caramel sundae. We've learned the suspects indulged themselves after both strikes."

"Fucking cold," Feeney muttered. "And I ain't talking ice cream."

"Zoe Younger, Willow Mackie's mother, states Mackie has taken his daughter to Divine regularly, as a reward. That pattern remains here. The Wollman strike took place at fifteen-fifteen. Times Square at thirteen-twenty-one. The Mackies were caught on Divine security feed today at fourteen-twenty-five. And witnesses state they came in at approximately fifteen-forty-five after the Wollman attack. In both cases, Mackie carried nothing, and the daughter only had a backpack."

"So they left the nest, went to wherever they're holed up, stowed the weapons. Then went out for dessert," Baxter concluded.

"And consider the timing. On the afternoon of the Central Park attack. They packed up the weapons, left the East Side hotel, and were ordering ice cream about thirty minutes after the first TOD. Today, the time between the attack and the wits' statement of their arrival at Divine is more than an hour. It's a full thirty minutes longer for them to travel from where we project they used a downtown nest for the strike on Times Square, to the East Side location of Divine for their celebration."

"Takes longer to get there from downtown," Santiago began, "that's a factor. But both times they ditched the weapons, the bags. Could they have their own transportation?"

"He didn't," Lowenbaum said. "Never knew Mackie to have his own vehicle."

"East Side Hotel has garage parking for guests," Eve added. "The Mackies didn't check a vehicle there."

"And unless he's bought one that's as secure as our Tactical units," Lowenbaum added, "there's no way he'd leave weapons inside a vehicle, garaged or on the street. If he has transpo, he'd still stow his weapons in a secured location."

"He may have recently acquired a vehicle, as he plans to settle with his daughter in Alaska when he's finished here, but I agree a trained officer isn't going to leave a laser rifle in a parking lot while he gets ice cream."

Once more, Eve gestured to the screen. "It takes longer to travel from any of the highlighted locations downtown to the parlor add that thirty minutes. But after the first strike, they arrive at the counter, according to the wits, thirty minutes after the first vic's TOD."

"Their hole's on the East Side," Jenkinson said. "Probably within walking distance of the parlor. You said it's their place, a father/daughter deal?"

"That's right, and that's right. So we focus on this area. First Avenue to Lex, Fifty-Fifth to Fifteenth. That puts the parlor in the center of that quadrant. They could easily have walked from their nest on Second Avenue to any location in that area."

"That's a lot of doors to knock on," Carmichael calculated.

"Which is why the e-geeks will eliminate the unlikelies while the rest of you find the nest.

"We have potential targets in protective custody. You should all familiarize yourselves with the interview recordings conducted today. To summarize, it became clear during the interview with Zoe Younger, Willow Mackie displays psychopathic tendencies, which include offing her brother's puppy, threatening her stepfather with a knife."

"The brother, too, sir." Trueheart flushed as she stopped, turned to him. "I'm sorry to interrupt."

"Forget that. Go."

"The kid broke down during Interview."

"I call it opening up," Baxter corrected. "He felt safe, and he hasn't. He felt like he could talk to Trueheart, and Trueheart would believe him."

"That, and I think he felt like she his half sister couldn't get to him." Trueheart glanced at the board. "The kid's been terrorized, Lieutenant. He said sometimes he'd wake up in the middle of the night and she'd be in his room, just sitting there, staring at him. Once she held a knife to his throat, dared him to call for help."

"He never told his parents?"

"He was afraid to." After a moment, Trueheart hissed out a breath. "I could see how scared he was, Lieutenant. She said maybe he'd end up going out the window, going splat on the sidewalk like his puppy. Or maybe his father would end up with his throat slit some night if he didn't keep his mouth shut. Or how his mother might fall down the stairs one day, and when the cops came, one of his toy trucks would be there. They'd put him in jail for that. She'd make sure of it. He's just a kid, sir. He believed her."

"He was right to. She planned to kill all of them once she completed the assignment for her father. Anybody here thinking of her as a child, stop. Until she's in a cage, she's deadly. Anyone thinking of Mackie as a fellow cop, stop. He and his daughter are cold-blooded killers. Find the nest, compile all data and evidence when you do. Anyone assigned to the field, dismissed.

"Feeney, do whatever you can to lower the number of locations for the hole."

"You got that. You wanna play?" he asked Roarke.

"I do, yes."

"Come up when you're ready." Rising, Feeney stuck his hands in his baggy pockets. "Any sense there's anything weird going on with these two?"

"I think being LDSKs- Oh." Eve's hands slithered into her own pockets. "No, nothing like that."

"Okay then, he's going to want a place with two bedrooms. She's nearly sixteen, so they maybe share a nest, short term, but for longer term, probably two bedrooms. Guy wants to go to Alaska, he's probably trying to save money where he can, so like you said, nothing upscale. Yeah, we can knock the number down some. McNab, let's get started."

"I was just thinking."

"He does that."

With a half grin, McNab rubbed his earlobe and part of the forest of silver hoops riding on it. "You gotta eat, right? Single dad right off, and you add they're huddled in to work out how to kill a whole bunch of people. Probably not a lot of cooking, even stocking an AutoChef with much more than your basic grab-and-gos."

"Takeouts, deliveries," Eve said with a nod. "Pizza, Chinese, subs, those would rank high. And 24/7s, carts."

"Even thinking with his stomach, that's not bad." Feeney gave McNab a light punch. "We'll add it in."

"Lowenbaum, do you have Officer Patroni on tap?"

"I brought him back with me. Do me a solid, Dallas, don't talk to him in Interview."

In his place, Eve thought, she'd have asked for the same for any of her men. "We'll talk in the lounge. The three of us. Why don't you go get us a table?"

"I appreciate it."

"Peabody, I want you to check that all the civilians we brought in are now secure. And it's that needle-in-the-hay-pile thing -"

"Stack."

"Whatever. Run the initials of the yet to be identified against every fricking lawyer in the city. Start with ones who advertise, who specialize in personal injury and wrongful-death suits."

"That's a teeny little needle in a lot of haystacks, but I'm on it."

With only Eve and Roarke left in the room, Whitney rose. "Lieutenant, HSO is inquiring about your investigation."

She actually felt her spine turn to a rod of steel at the mention of the Homeland Security Organization. "Inquiring, sir, or looking to take it over?"

"Inquiring with the concept, we'll say, of taking it over."

"It's a murder investigation, Commander."

"That could be considered domestic terrorism. And, in fact, is being labeled that by much of the media."

Part of her brain might have been raging Politics, fucking politics, but her tone held cool and even. "That may be, sir, but the evidence clearly indicates the motive here is murder, and targeted murder. The rest is, or was, nothing but an attempt to cover the specific target."

"It may be possible to tap some HSO resources without them taking the lead."

"Respectfully, sir, I feel we don't have time to jump through those hoops. If I come to believe those resources are more valuable than that time, or that we are unable to move the investigation forward, I would welcome the assistance."

"Agreed. It's your case, Lieutenant. And you're clear for as much overtime as you deem necessary. The proper paperwork on same will have to be submitted in a timely manner."

"Yes, sir."

"Shut them down, Dallas. Shut them down."

When he walked out, Eve pressed her fingers to her eyes. "Fucking HSO. Fucking paperwork. Fucking fuck."

"Have you eaten anything since this morning?"

"For Christ's sake."

He pulled a nutribar out of his pocket. "Eat this and I won't add fucking nagging to your list."

"Fine, fine." She ripped off the wrapper, took an annoyed bite. Maybe the fact that something that bland tasted delicious meant she needed the damn nutri part of it.

"And since you won't actually want cop coffee, you could drink a bottle of water during this next meeting. I'm with Feeney, but I'd like to know if you go into the field."

He caught her face in his hands, kissed her, firm and hard, then left her.

On a sigh, she polished off the nutribar half wished she had another as she gave the board one more study.

In the lounge, she saw Lowenbaum at one of the tables with another cop.

Vince Patroni mid-forties, dark hair cut high and tight over a sharp-boned face brooded into a cup of cop coffee. Since Roarke had it right, she went for water, and was almost disappointed when Vending burped out the bottle without a hitch.

"Lieutenant Dallas," Lowenbaum began as Eve and Patroni eyed each other. "Tactical Officer Patroni."

"The lieutenant says you're sure, a hundred percent, on Mac."

"That's right."

"And his kid, his girl."

"Right again. Do you need me to run it down for you?"