"You'd be sorry later. Hello, Peabody, you look a bit windblown. Very attractive."
Flushing, she brushed at her straight black hair. "Well, I put the sky roof down for a minute on the XX."
"Sexy little ride, isn't it? Well, shall we discuss how to lay the trap now, or wait for the coffee?"
Resigned, Eve shoved her weapon back in its harness.
"We'll wait for the coffee."
*** CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ***
"We're nearly set up here, Commander. If he calls, we'll be ready."
"If he calls, Lieutenant, and if he follows the same pattern he used to abduct O'Leary."
"He used the same pattern when he contacted Brian Kelly this morning." Beneath the range of the 'link monitor, she jerked a hand so that McNab would stop the chatter. Christ, the man ran his mouth at light speed. "We can take him down here, Commander. All he has to do is move in this direction."
"You better hope he does, and quickly, Dallas, or both of us are going to get our butts singed."
"I planted the bait. He'll take it."
"Contact me the minute you hear from him."
"You'll be the first," she murmured as the screen went blank. "You guys want to keep it down? This isn't the damn party suite."
McNab and two EDD drones were chirping away as they set up equipment in the bedroom that was the temporary command center. Eve worried that she'd thrown this task force together too quickly, but time was the enemy. There were tracers and bypass units, three sets of porta-links, all with headsets and voice mufflers. Recorders were set to clock on with the first beep of the first 'link. McNab had already interfaced it with her office unit.
She'd had all the equipment brought from Central in a delivery van. If her man had the hotel under surveillance, all he would have seen was yet another commercial vehicle pulling into the hotel's rear dock.
No uniforms, no black and whites.
Six cops were on surveillance in the lobby posing as bellstaff, clerks, maintenance. A detective from her squad had taken over for the doorman. She had two more in the kitchen as line chefs, another two covering the penthouse floor as housekeeping staff.
The man power and equipment were eating a moon-sized hole in the departmental budget. If it went wrong, there would be hell to pay, and she'd be the one to pay it.
She wasn't going to let it go wrong.
Restless, she moved out into the spacious parlor. The bank of windows was privacy screened there, as were the bedroom windows. Only Roarke, as owner of the hotel, and his manager were aware of the infiltration of police. At two p.m., one hour after the flight from Dublin landed at Kennedy, another cop would check in to the hotel as Brian Kelly.
It was going to work. All he had to do was call Eve's 'link.
Why the hell didn't he call?
Roarke came in from the second bedroom and saw her frowning at the screened windows. "You've covered all the details, Eve."
"I've gone over it and over it. He can't wait long to move on Brian. He won't risk Brian contacting you on his own and finding out it's all a scam. On his call to Jennie he got her to promise she wouldn't try to contact anyone, that she wouldn't speak to anyone unless it came through you. But Brian wouldn't commit, wouldn't promise anything."
"And if our man knows him at all, he'd know Brian tends to do as he chooses."
"That's right, so he'll arrange for the meet quickly. He's already got the place where he'll kill him set up. And he's not going to want to take chances. Brian's a tough, muscular man in his prime. And he's street smart. He'd put up a hell of a fight."
"He'd have to be taken by surprise," Roarke agreed, "caught off guard."
"Exactly. My guess is he plans to do it all right here. Brian'll be expecting a driver, a messenger, a liaison for you, so he'll open the door. He would have to get a tranq in him then and there, quick, quiet."
"Lieutenant," Roarke said and held out a hand, and when Eve automatically put hers in it, he smiled and squeezed. "If I'd had a minipopper in my hand, you'd be tranqed just that fast and easy. They were popular in certain unsettled areas during the twenties, only they were most often laced with strychnine rather than a dozer. Shaking hands became quite unfashionable for several years."
"You're a fount of the most disturbing trivia."