"Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, possible priority homicide, 5151 Riverside Drive. Victim identified as Mary Ellen George. See uniformed officer on-scene."

"Acknowledged." Her face was blank again when she looked back at Tibble. "Things just got more complicated, or more simple, depending on your point of view."

He sighed. "Go."

Tibble pushed to his feet as she strode out. "Fifty that she uses this to ditch the press conference."

"I look like a sucker?" Whitney shook his head. "I'll see she's there. One way or another."

CHAPTER TEN

It had been a long time since Roarke had worked a con as basic as the coin toss. Still all it took was quick fingers and a bit of misdirection.

That boyhood skill had come back to him, smoothly, when Feeney had called heads.

A snatch, a light rub of the thumb over the engraving of the coin to determine which end you needed up, and tails slapped onto the back of his hand.

It was all done fast, and if he did say so himself, very well indeed. Feeney might have been annoyed and suspicious at the results, but a deal was a deal.

Even when the game was fixed.

"We could give it another pass or two," Feeney said when they all stood in the temporary lab with Roarke holding the filter disc. "Could be we'd-"

"Don't be such a mother," Roarke said mildly.

"My life won't be worth piss something happens to you on my watch."

"Well now, cheer up. Had the toss gone the other way, I could say just the same. She'd have my bones for breakfast."

"About that toss…" Feeney hadn't seen anything hinky about it, but you could never be sure with Roarke. "I say we do it again, but let Baxter here do the flip."

"I could take that to mean you're calling me a cheat-though you examined the coin yourself, made the choice of heads without prompting. But, seeing as we've a long and friendly history between us, I'll just take it as concern. The deed's done, Feeney, and no Irishman welshes on a bet."

"Don't put me in the middle of this." Baxter kept his hands safely in his pockets. "Whatever the hell happens, Dallas is going to be pissed. So let's do it before she starts busting our balls."

"We get the diagnostic run, we keep our balls." Jamie was in heaven. Not only were they about to do something beyond chilled, but he was standing around talking the trash with cops. "Infected unit's a snail, and the filter program's complex. It's going to take ninety-three seconds to download the shield," he said to Roarke. "If you start the diagnostic while it's loading, you'd-"

"Jamie, are you under the impression that this is, so to speak, my first day on the job?"

"No, but while the diagnostic's running, you want to upload the results onto-"

"Go away."

"Yeah, but-"

"Jamie, lad." Feeney laid a hand on his shoulder. "We'll be monitoring from outside. You can badger the man from there. Ten minutes," Feeney said to Roarke. "Not a second more."

"I'll be running a time sequence."

"No, ten minutes, not a second more." His jaw went firm as stone. "I want your word on it."

"All right. You have it."

As satisfied as he could get, Feeney nodded. "If we see anything worrying in the medical readouts, you'll shut it down."

"If you're thinking I'm willing to have my brains come spilling out my ears, let me reassure you." Then he flashed a grin. "But if such a thing should happen, I'll have the satisfaction of knowing Eve will be sending the lot of you to hell right behind me."

"She'll go easy on me." McNab worked up a smile. "I'm handicapped."

"Don't count on it. Now if you'd all get out, we could get this done before we're all old and gray."

"You'll wait until I give you the go-ahead. I want a check of your medicals first." Feeney stopped at the door, glanced back. "Slainte."

"You can say that again, over a couple of Guinness in just a bit."

When they'd gone out, Roarke engaged the door locks. He didn't want his associates to panic and burst in on him again. Alone, he unbuttoned his shirt, then attached the sensors that would monitor him.

Lost your mind, haven't you?he thought.Not just working for cops, which is bad enough, but risking your bloody brains for them.

Life was a damn strange business.

He wouldn't lose his brains, or his life, like a lab rat, if it came to that.

He sat, faced Cogburn's machine, and felt under the work counter, let his fingers play lightly over the weapon he'd secured there.

He'd chosen the nine-millimeter Beretta semiautomatic from his collection. It had been his first gun, acquired at the age of nineteen from the man who'd been pointing it at his head. A banned weapon, of course, even then. But smugglers weren't so picky about such things.

It seemed to him, should things go wrong, a properly ironic cycle if he ended it all by doing himself with the very weapon that had started his collection, and had helped him on the road to riches.

He didn't anticipate anything going wrong. They'd taken all possible precautions, and those who had taken them were some of the best e-men-and boy-available. But there was always a chance, however slim.

If push came to shove, he would decide his own fate.

Then he took his hand away from the cold steel, and put it out of his mind.

"Going to run a check on your vital signs."

Roarke glanced up at the wall screen, nodded at Feeney. "Fine. Cut the audio in there when you're done. I don't want all of you nattering at me when I'm working."

He slid his hand into his pocket, rubbed a small gray button between his fingers for luck. For love. It had fallen off the jacket of the very unflattering suit Eve had worn the first time he'd seen her.

"You're good to go," Feeney told him.

"Booting up then. Start the clock."

Mary Ellen George had, thanks to the royalties on the book she'd written on her arrest, trial, and acquittal, and the speaking fees she commanded, lived a very comfortable life in her West Side apartment.

She'd died there, as well, but it hadn't been comfortable.

Unlike Cogburn and Fitzhugh, the signs of her illness weren't violent nor were they destructive. It was apparent she'd taken herself off to bed, dosed herself with over-the-counter medication for several days-then with strong, street versions-during which time she had blocked her 'link calls and had refused to answer her door.

She'd taken a laptop unit into bed with her, essentially destroying herself, Eve thought, as she tried to heal.

One of her last acts had been to place a hysterical transmission to a former lover, begging him for help, weeping about the screaming in her head.

Her last act had been to fashion her silk sheets into a noose and hang herself.

She wore only a white nightgown, obscenely soiled. Her hair was matted, her nails bitten down below the quick. There were tissues and washcloths, stained with blood, littering the bedside table.

Trying to stop the nosebleeds, Eve concluded, and picked up a medication bottle with sealed fingers. Trying to treat a brain on the point of exploding with ten-dollar blockers.

The laptop was still on the bed, its stark message filling the screen.

ABSOLUTE PURITY ACHIEVED

"Get this screen on record, Peabody. Victim: George, Mary Ellen, female, Caucasian, age forty-two. Body discovered in victim's apartment at fourteen hundred hours, sixteen minutes by building manager, Officer Debrah Banker and Hippel, Jay, who placed the nine-eleven."

"Record of scene and body complete, Lieutenant."

"Okay, Peabody, let's get her down."