"She wanted to hurt you." Peabody could still see Farmer's slab of a hand flying out, striking, lifting Eve clear off her feet.
"Yeah, but more, she wanted to psych me out. Shake my confidence. It's personal."
Idly she picked up the alabaster statue Phoebe had given her, turned it in her hand. "Everything's personal with Julianna. She set me up, and she did it fast. So, how did she know when I was leaving Central? She couldn't afford to keep the sleeper and the kid hanging around long. They get bored, she loses them. Couldn't afford to stand around Cop Central herself, or some uniform might make her."
"Not that hard to find out your shift," McNab put in.
"No, but how often do any of us come and go on shift schedule? I didn't yesterday. So, she was watching me. She's been watching me, so she can get a pattern. Getting patterns is one of her best things."
She set the statue down again. "McNab, get me the buildings that face my office at Central. Get me a visual."
"Do you think she's been staking you out?" Peabody asked as McNab hopped up to comply.
"She stakes out her victims, learns all she can about them. Their routines, their habits. Where they go, what they do. Who they are." Eve glanced at Roarke. How much, she wondered, could Julianna Dunne find out about Roarke?
Only as much, she decided, as he allowed any of the public to know. And half of that was fiction.
"She'd see it as an advantage to keep my office under surveillance." Eve turned to the screen as the grid of streets began to come up.
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"Like a game?" Peabody asked.
"No, this isn't a game, not to her. First time around it was business. Now, it's war. And so far, she's taken all the important battles." She picked up a laser pointer from her desk, ran its needle-point light over the screen. "These three buildings would give her the best access to my office window. We need a tenant list."
She caught the look that passed between Feeney and Roarke, then shot Feeney one of her own as Roarke slipped into his own office.
"He'll get it faster." Feeney lifted his coffee cup, but not quite in time to hide the grin.
She let it pass. "We'd be looking for a leased space, short-term. Month-by-month is probable. She wouldn't spend a lot of time there. She'd have surveillance equipment set up, feed it into another location where she could comfortably study and assess. But she was there yesterday, personally, because she'd decided to move on me."
Eve saw herself, standing at her office window, looking out. She put herself back there, behind that narrow glass, and studied the buildings and windows across the street.
"This one gets my vote." She ringed one of the buildings in light. "Or if there wasn't space available on one of these levels ..." She ran a line through five stories. "This building. Those are her best angles. Hold on a minute."
She walked into Roarke's office where he sat at his desk while his equipment hummed with efficiency. "I've got a priority location," she told him. "I want you to list that one so I can run a probability."
"I'm running probabilities, on all three. Though I think that's your location."
She glanced at his screen where he had the same visual up, and the building she'd earmarked highlighted.
"Showoff."
"Come sit on my lap and say that. You'd be looking for short-term leases, I imagine, and would want the run to move from the latest rentals back. How am I doing?"
"You bucking to make that expert consultant, civilian gig permanent?"
"Wouldn't that be fun?" He patted his knee, but she ignored him. "Ah, well, so much for fringe benefits. Your probabilities are coming up. I did these by line of sight. Easy enough to punch her data from your files into the mix and whittle this down considerably."
"Just wait." She scanned the list of names that he ordered on-screen. "Bam! Daily Enterprises. Justine Daily, proprietor. That's our girl."
She wanted to move, fast and hard, but reined herself in. "We'll be sure first. Dump this data onto my unit, would you? Let's try to keep this investigation reasonably official."
"Of course. Lieutenant? I'll be going with you on this bust. Wait," he said as she opened her mouth. "However slim the chance you'll find her there, I'm going to be a part of it. She owes me."
"You can't get whacked out every time I get banged up on the job."
"Can't I?" The easy lilt had gone out of his voice, chilling it. "She's got a mind to come after us both, so I'm in this. I'll be there when you take her down. Whenever, wherever that might be."