“Eve, what is it you want me to do that you’d prefer not wanting me to do?”
“People are dying, right now. They don’t know it, but they’re infected, and for some it’s already too late. It’s going to keep spreading. A good cop is dead. Another . . . another who’s a friend of mine—and Jesus, I can’t believe I’m friends with such an idiot—may not walk again under his own power. Some of the answers to who’s doing this are in those sealed files.”
“Then we’ll break the seal.”
She stared at him, then cursing, spun away. “And what makes me any different from them? I’m willing to slide around the law because I think I’m right.”
“Because they’re killing people.”
“I can tell myself that. But it’s just a matter of degrees.”
“The hell it is. You’ll always have a conscience, and you’ll always question the right and wrong of it. Worry it to death, and yourself with it. You know how far to push the line before it breaks, Eve. You’ll never break it. You can’t.”
She closed her eyes. “I said something similar to Baxter. They’re using the law to slow me down. I can’t let them.”
“It would be best if we used the unregistered.”
She nodded. “Let’s get it done.”
The room was accessible only by voice- and palmprints. Only three people were cleared for entry.
There was a single window, wide and uncovered to the dying evening. But she knew it was privacy treated to prevent anyone nervy enough to try a flyby from seeing in.
The room itself was designed almost rigidly. This was work space. Serious space. There was a wide, U-shaped console in sleek black that commanded all the research, retrieval, communication, and data systems. Systems unregistered with CompuGuard, and therefore illegal.
The first time she’d seen it, well over a year before, even she’d recognized the level of equipment as superior to anything in Central. Since then, some units had been upgraded.
She imagined there were some toys in here not yet on the market.
There were comp stations with monitors, a holo unit, a smaller auxiliary station, which now boasted its own miniholo.
Crossing the glassed black tile, she studied the new addition. “Never seen one like this.”
“Prototype. I wanted to run some tests on it without documenting them. It seems to be working out nicely.”
“It’s really small.”
“We’re working on smaller yet. Palm-sized.”
She glanced up. “Get out. Palms with full holofunction?”
“Three years, maybe less, and you’ll be slipping one into your pocket just like your ’link.” He placed his palm on the console’s identi-screen. “Roarke. Open operations.”
The console came to life with lights. Eve walked over to join him, laid down her palm. “Dallas.”
Identification verified, Darling Eve.
She hissed. “Why do you do that? It’s embarrassing.”
“Darling Eve, the computer, however brilliant, is an inanimate object and can’t embarrass anyone. Where would you like to start?”
“Start with Cogburn. He was their first. You can pull the data off my unit.” She gave Roarke the case number and the file number for her notes.
He had them accessed, copied, and displayed in almost less time than it had taken her to give him the numbers.
“You see his sheet? I’ve made notations of the case files that connect him to the other victims through arresting officers, social workers, legal, medical. Baxter’s started interviews where we have vic ID, but he hasn’t gotten a bump.”
“Bump.”