"Who is it who has a personal relationship with Nadine Furst? Who is it who gives regular favoritism to her and Channel 75, with exclusives and tips?"

"That would be me. And you know why? Because I can trust her to think of more than ratings. That relationship is why whoever leaked this saw that the story went to her. That's your kind of maneuver, Chang."

The hand around the throat image was appealing enough that she used it herself. She caught him one-handed, rapped him back into the wall, and lifted him to his toes. "All this spin, all this storm, all this fallout. That's going to keep you a very busy boy for a while, isn't it?"

"Get your hands off me. I'll have you arrested for assault."

"Yeah, you can bet a whole squad of cops is going to rush in here to save your oily ass from me. You're going to get a lot of play out of this-fees, bonuses. Add screwing me over to the pie, and it's real tasty. Did you leak the story, Chang?"

He was turning an interesting shade of puce as he batted and shoved at her hand. "Get away, get away!"

"Did you leak the goddamn story?"

"No! This isn't something you leak until you're prepared. Until the spin is in place. You leaked it."

"No, I didn't." She released him so that he dropped to the flats of his feet with two sharp thuds. "Think about that. Now get the hell out of my office."

"I'm filing a complaint." He yanked at his collar. "You'll read the statement or-"

"Bite me," she suggested and shoved him out bodily.

"That was very entertaining," Roarke commented.

"We're not done yet. Act two should be starting any minute."

"Until it does…" He smoothed his fingers over the ends of her hair, then slid his hand around the back of her neck. She stiffened, looked so mortally embarrassed that he laughed. "What?"

"I'm on duty here. Just back off. Really." She turned away quickly and moved to the AutoChef. Even as she programmed coffee, she heard the fast, hard click of high heels. "That's my cue."

Franco swept in. She looked every bit as furious as Chang had, if more elegant. "Lieutenant Dallas." She bit down on the words as if she could chew them to bits. She gave Roarke a brisk nod. "I'm sorry, but I need to speak with the lieutenant privately."

"Of course."

"You may want to go give Feeney a hand, Conference Room B," Eve told him. "He's working on some tech stuff you'd be interested in. One level down," Eve added. "Sector Five."

"All right. I'll leave you ladies to your business." With one casual glance at Eve, he slipped out, closed the door.

"You've gone too far this time." Unlike Chang, Franco kept her voice down, and controlled.

"In what area?"

"Who are you to decide Mayor Peachtree is guilty, to leak information that will ruin his political career, damage his personal life. And all before you've so much as questioned him. You gave him no chance to defend himself."

"Leaking the story screwed him pretty good, didn't it? Coffee?"

"You dare stand there, so arrogant, so goddamn cocky after what you've done?"

"Yeah. Same as you." Eve leaned back on the AutoChef, sipped her coffee. "You leaked the story, Franco."

"Are you mad?"

"No, neither are you. You're a very smart woman. What I can't figure is if you did all this, formed your organization, killed people, ruined a number of lives because you wanted to smear Peachtree or you really believed in what you were doing. I've thought about that a lot this morning, but I'm just not sure. I think it was both."

"If you think you can save yourself by painting me with the same brush you're using to paint the mayor, you're very wrong."

"He didn't make the transmissions."

"What are you talking about?"

"Peachtree didn't make the transmissions from his office to Dukes. You did. You used his office, you used his 'link. The transmission telling Dukes to skip was sent out, from that unit, at sixteen forty-eight. Peachtree left for the day at sixteen forty-two. We have him on security cam. We have him walking out of the building at the time the transmission was generated. Those six minutes make a difference."

Eve gestured with her mug, then took a long sip. "You were still in the office. Dedicated civil servant that you are. His assistant saw you go in a couple minutes after he left. You were the only one who could have contacted Dukes from that unit at that time."

Franco hitched down the jacket of her slate gray suit. "That's nonsense."

"No, that's just niggling details. The kind that usually trip up the bad guy. You probably didn't think we could trace the source, But why chance it? You'd been using the mayor all along, using him as a front. Politics is a weird area for me, but here's how I see it."

Eve walked over, sat on the edge of her desk. "You want his job. Probably more than that, but Mayor of New York's a good place to start. He's fairly popular. Maybe he'll get another term, and it's a pisser to wait, to play deputy when you can be chief."

"Is that what you think?"

"I think you saw an opportunity to remove an obstacle, even to use that obstacle to further your own ambitions-especially when he makes it easy for you by getting tangled with Nick Greene."

"Mayor Peachtree's sexual leanings should be a private matter."

"Should be. Let's go back awhile before that. You keep up with current events. You keep up with community news, polls, opinions. Kids are being exploited out there-future voters, those kids. Their parents, other parents, other citizens, voters are upset, disillusioned and just plain pissed off. Something should be done, and you're just the gal to do it. A lot of control. A lot of power. You've got a law degree. You know some of that scum is never going to pay. You found a way to make them pay. That's a hell of an accomplishment."

A smile ghosted around Franco's mouth. Her eyes were alive with it-and, Eve noted, with arrogance. "Do you really believe you can make any of this play?"

"I've got Dukes." Eve shrugged a shoulder. "I've got Purity in pieces. You slipping by me isn't so hard to take with more than forty other arrests and a closed case on my record."

"So, this little scenario you're writing here is between us."

"Just you and me. Girl talk. Post-game chatter."

"Then by all means." Franco gestured a go-ahead. "Continue."

"It fell apart on you, Franco, but you still had a button to push. Leak the story. Shove the mayor into the muck. Defend him, but carefully. If he's convicted, you mourn the loss of a man who was corrupted by his own power, his own skewed sense of duty. If he's acquitted, you praise the system for exonerating an innocent man. But either way, you step into his shoes and run the city. Maybe, maybe some of it was about your twisted sense of justice. But under it all, it was just politics."

"You're wrong." Franco wandered over, picked up the second cup of coffee Eve had programmed. "Since it's just the two of us here, since I respect you, I won't say you're wrong about all of it. Purity was a solution. An extermination of a plague. It could be again."

She angled her head. "We could have used someone like you. Pushing to have you as a media symbol wasn't an accident. You have impact, Dallas. With your passion, your skills, your presence, you'd keep the story hot as long as I needed. I think I knew when we met in Tibble's office you'd find a way to break it apart. I had to accept that, deal with that. I always pick my battles."

"Why this one?"

"Every politician needs a platform. This is mine. Dukes wanted to infect you," she added. "But that wasn't the agenda. That wasn't the program. How many innocent children did we save, Dallas?"

"Is that your spin?"

"If I needed one it would be. And it's the truth. Peachtree has good intentions, but he's soft, and he's cautious, politically. And sooner or later he was going to be exposed for his sexuality. Why should I go down with him?"