But she knew what she was looking at was a great number of man-hours and a large dose of brain power.
"You'll kill the worm."
"We will, yes. It's already failing." Roarke glanced at the lines of code and commands on one of the screens. "It's a clever bug that can look more dangerous than it is."
"You can say that makes it plenty dangerous."
"You could," he agreed. "Its limitations don't negate the fact that it can and would play hell with most home units. We're tracking it back to Sparrow, and its origin."
"Tokimoto's largely responsible for that," Reva put in.
"I'm hardly working alone. And," Tokimoto added, "wouldn't have researched or explored that possibility of origin without the data supplied to me."
"Which is what Sparrow counted on. He creates the worm, then assigns Bissel to play double agent. Our side believes Doomsday has the worm, they believe our side has it. Both sides, due to his planted intel, believe the worm is more powerful than it actually is, and shell out a lot of money. Bissel funnels the money, or most of it, back to Sparrow through Kade."
"A good con," Roarke commented. "And might've been a tidy one in the short haul. He'd have been wiser to keep it on a smaller scale, induce a couple of corporations to haggle over it rather than involving the HSO and the like."
"Ambitious guy. And greedy," Eve added. "He supplies the data on the progress Securecomp's making on the worm, and in that way can cover himself anytime the direction the R and D's taking gets too close. Good setup for him."
"But his thinking was narrow." Roarke watched the codes whiz by, noted the progress. "He believed he could control it all, without getting his own hands bloody, and keep Bissel on a leash until he was of no more use."
"Coward." Eve remembered how he'd wept and wailed in the hospital. "Bissel's getting blackmailed and wants more. Kade wants more. And Securecomp's getting close to ending his nice, profitable enterprise."
"He gives Bissel a new assignment that solves all those problems." Peabody shook her head. "It's way over the top, and Bissel's too dim to see the frame going up. Sorry," she said to Reva.
"No problem."
"Not just too dim," Eve added. "Too egocentric. He's living his fantasy. He's got his license to kill."
"Sir!" Peabody beamed. "You've been boning up on Bond."
"I do my homework. But now he's in hip-deep. He can't go to the HSO. He can't go to the other side. He waited too long to run, so his accounts have been located and frozen. He killed to stay dead, but that cover's been blown. He took a hit at Sparrow, but he missed. Instead of being dead, Sparrow's in custody, and he'll use whatever juice he can to cut a deal and bury Bissel. He's lost his fantasy job, and all the glory and polish he garnered from his art."
"If you can call that crap art." Reva grinned when everyone looked at her. "Hey, Blair isn't the only one who can fake it. I never liked his stuff." She rolled her shoulders as if shedding weight. "Feels good to be able to say that. It's starting to feel good all around."
"Don't get too happy yet," Eve warned. "He needs to make a statement, but first he needs to lick his wounds, to reassert himself and find some satisfaction. Reva, you said his art was his genuine passion."
"Yeah. I don't see how that could've been faked. He's worked for years, studied, pursued. He'd sweat days over a piece, hardly sleep or eat when he was in full mode. I might not have liked the shit he turned out, but he put heart and soul into it-his black, withered and rotting heart and soul. I'm going to be bitter for a while," she continued, "and take as many cheap shots at him as humanly possible." She grinned again. "Just FYI."
"I think it's healthy," Tokimoto said. "And human."
"So his art, such as it is, is the real deal to him. They can take away his fantasy job, but he's still an artist." Eve nodded. "He can still create. He has to create. McNab, do a tenant search, look for any connection to Bissel. Target the Flatiron."
"Of course," Roarke murmured. "I can help you with that, Ian," he said to McNab, but he continued to look at Eve. "He'd want to be close to his work, to where he'd felt powerful, and in charge. If he had another place in the building, it's possible Chloe McCoy knew of it."
"Guy like that, he'd want to take her there, to ball her, sure, but also to show her how important he was. Look, I've got this secret place. Nobody knows about it but you."
"And then things went wrong and he needed the place," Peabody finished. "She had to die, just because she knew it was there."
"Lieutenant." Roarke tapped the screen where he worked with McNab. "LeBiss Consultants. LeBiss is an anagram for Bissel."
"Yeah, he'd want his own name. Another ego thing." She leaned over Roarke's shoulder. "Where is it?"
He gave a command and a diagram of the Flatiron came on screen, revolved, then magnified a highlighted sector. "One floor below his gallery. He'd have enough skill to be able to go between floors with minimal risk should he want to access his studio."
"Fully soundproofed, right?"
"Of course."
"And privacy shades on the windows. Monitors. Add another level of security and he'd be able to know if anyone tried to get on the elevator or through the door. He could muck that up, the way Sparrow did on the night of the first murders. Then clear out before anybody got in.
"Probably work at night," she said half to herself. "Probably work mostly at night when the building's shut down, offices closed, nobody's going to bother him. Cops've already been through, and there's nothing in there that applies to the investigation. Lease is paid up. So until the estate's settled, he can use it without much risk of detection."
"He loved that studio." Reva stepped forward, studying the diagram herself. "I'd bring up the possibility of him building one at home, and he wouldn't consider it. I know it could've been because he wanted the freedom of being away, having accessibility to the women he was sleeping with, but I know, at the core, he just loved that place. Damn it, I'm slipping. I didn't think to put it on the list you wanted of his habits and hangouts."
"Why would you? It was already on my list."
"Yeah, but this was his place, and if I'd had my head on straight, I'd have put it together. He always said he needed the stimulation, the energy of the city, of that spot, just as he needed the serenity and privacy of our house. One to charge him up, the other to relax him."
"We need to go in," Eve said.
"Dallas," Reva added. "He wouldn't just work at night, not if some piece had him. He wouldn't be able to step away from it. I think, unless I've misjudged everything about him, that the risk wouldn't factor into it. Or maybe it would, in some way, fuel the creative drive."
"Good. Good point. We need to assume he's in there, just as we need to assume he's armed and dangerous. The building's full of civilians. We need to move them out."
Feeney, who'd continued to work on McCoy's data unit throughout the briefing, finally glanced up. "You want to clear out a twenty-two-story building?"
"Yeah. Without Bissel knowing it. Which means first we should verify he's in there. Don't want to clear it out while he's around the corner picking up a sandwich at the deli. So let's figure out how to verify, then how to clear out the civilians."
Feeney puffed out a breath. "She don't ask for much. Side note: I've got some data out of this. Reads like a diary. Enough sex stuff with who she calls BB to make a seasoned LC blush." He colored a bit himself when he glanced toward Reva. "Sorry."
"It's not a problem. Not a problem," she repeated in three viciously bitten off words. "He lied to me, screwed around on me, he tried to frame me for murder. Why should knowing some poor little twit romped around naked-"
She paused, breathed deep when the room remained silent but for the machine. "Okay, I'm making it a problem by trying to prove it's not. Let me put it this way." She looked at Tokimoto now. Directly. "Love can die. It can be killed, no matter how alive it was, it's not invulnerable. Mine's dead. It's dead and it's buried. I just want one thing more, and that's the chance to look him in the face and tell him he's nothing. If I can do that one thing, it'll be enough."
"I'll make sure you have the chance," Eve promised. "Now, how do we get him?"
"A bomb scare would clear it, but there'd be injuries," Peabody decided. "People panic, especially when you tell them not to. And even soundproofed, he'd get wind of it."
"Not if you go floor by floor." Eve paced as she thought it through. "Not a bomb scare. An electrical problem? Something that irritates but doesn't panic."
"A potential leak-hazardous waste, chemicals. And keep it vague," Roarke suggested. "Floor-by-floor evac will take considerable time, and a great many cops."
"I don't want to pull any more into this than necessary. A small, tight unit of the Crisis Team for backup. Move fast, keep it smooth, and we can evac in under an hour. We box him in, that's what we do. We box him in." She stopped, studied the diagram again. "Three exits on the studio?"
"That's correct. Main corridor, elevator to lobby, and the cargo elevator to the roof."
"No glides on the Flatiron, that's a plus."
"And more aesthetically pleasing," Roarke added.
"We block off the elevators. We can bring in a unit from CT on the roof. And we come in from the corridor after he's boxed. If we can get him in this end, the narrow end, he won't have much room to maneuver. We work out the tacticals on this space, and we work out tacticals on the studio. And on the space below. He might be in there. But we need to know where he is when we go in, and we need to blindfold him to the fact we're coming."
"We can do that."
She angled her head, looked down at Roarke. "Can we?"
"Mmm." He took her hand and, watching her horrified expression, brought it smoothly to his lips before she could jerk it free. "The lieutenant doesn't like me to nibble on her when she's coordinating an op. So I can never resist."
"There's just too much sex around here," Feeney grumbled from his station.
"How can we verify his position inside the building and blindfold him?" Eve demanded with what she considered admirable patience.
"Why don't you work out your tacticals and leave those pesky details to me. Reva, how much time do you need to shut down the security and undermine the monitors in this sector of the building?"
Brow creased, Reva fisted her hands on her hips. "I'll let you know after I study the specs."
"You'll have them in a minute. I'll need a few things from Securecomp," Roarke said to Tokimoto. "Would you mind getting them?"
"Not at all." His lips curved. "I think I know what you have in mind."
"Let's leave the geeks to it, then." Eve started out, turned back. "I meant the civilian geeks," she said when Feeney and McNab stayed in place.
***
It took her an hour to work out an approach that minimized risk to civilians and her team, and longer to push through the red tape for clearance to evacuate an entire building.
"We know he's got a short-range launcher. We don't know what other toys he has in there. Boomers, chemical weapons, flash grenades. He won't hesitate to use them to protect himself or to expedite an escape. He's more dangerous because he's not trained in weaponry. Guy who doesn't know what the hell he's doing with a few flash grenades will do more damage than one who does."
"We clear the building, we could pump some gas in the vents, put him to sleep," McNab suggested.
"We can't be sure he doesn't have filters or a mask. He likes the secret agent toys. Once we verify where he is, we box in that sector. We close off alternate exits, take down the door. We go in fast, and we get him under control. There's nothing in his dossier that indicates any training or skill in hand-to-hand beyond the basics. That doesn't mean he's not dangerous."
"He's going to panic." Feeney pulled on his bottom lip. "First kills were incapacitated when he took them out. He drugs the McCoy girl, does Powell while he's zoned. Tried to hit Sparrow from a distance. This is face-to-face, so if he isn't taken quick, he's going to panic. More dangerous that way."
"Agreed. He's an amateur who thinks he's a pro. His life's screwed. He's pissed off and scared, with no place to go and nothing much to lose. Civilians are our first priority because he won't think twice about taking any out, and we don't know what kind of firepower he's got in there. We remove the civilians, box him in. Take him out. And we want him breathing. He's a key to the case against Sparrow. I don't want to lose him."
"You're going to end up fighting the spooks for him," McNab said. "They're going to want him."
"Exactly. I need Bissel to lock down the case on conspiracy to murder. I want to win this one. Feeney, I need you working with the geeks-with Ewing and Tokimoto," she corrected. "However much Roarke trusts them, I want you at the helm on whatever electronics go into this op. Ewing's tough, and she's pulling her weight, but she might lose it in the crunch."
