Page 74 of Bonded in Death

“Okay, okay, fine.”

She got up, programmed for a sandwich—ham on rye with hot mustard.

Then she sat, took a bite, and answered the text.

It is busy, and I’ll brief on what I know when I get there. I’ll try for about three. Peabody with me to meet the company. I’m sure you’ve seen to everything that needs to be done. And I’m feeding the cop right now.

“There, done.”

And taking another bite of ham on rye, got back to work.

She skimmed through Marjorie Wright’s background. Early years, middle-class upbringing. Acting career got started when she was still in her teens, and continued—long and storied. Lots of awards, critical praise, blah blah. Some kudos for charity work, emphasis on environmental issues.

A couple of husbands, a couple of offspring.

And during the Urbans, volunteered in food banks, shelters, lent her voice and image to calls for peace.

Not a single hint she was or had ever been part of a covert group.

She already knew Ivan Draski, as she’d hunted him down after he’d killed a woman on the Staten Island Ferry. The woman, the HSO assassin, who’d butchered Draski’s wife and twelve-year-old daughter years before.

The mild-eyed, quiet-voiced middle-aged man, the scientist, the inventor of Lost Time—a device he’d destroyed rather than have it fall into HSO’s, or any agency’s, hands.

She’d come home to find him sitting in the parlor, drinking coffee, petting the cat. He’d come to turn himself over to her.

And in the end, she’d let him go. She’d let him go, told him to disappear, because if she’d taken him in—done what the job demanded—he’d have been dead within hours.

She’d told him never to come back to New York, but he would. For Summerset, for Rossi, for The Twelve.

She’d deal with it.

She moved on to Cyril Snowden—Cobra. E-whiz, a young, gifted cyber expert with his own IT company before, and supposedly during, the Urbans. Age six when parents divorced. Two half-siblings, one from each parent’s remarriage.

Beyond aced it academically, she noted, and got himself a scholarship to Oxford, where he also aced it.

Tried to sign up with the military during the Urbans, but was deemed physically ineligible.

“There’s bullshit. Recruited. Big brain, more useful underground.”

His data listed him instead as an ambulance driver during the conflict.

After, he’d expanded his business. He and his husband of thirty-two years maintained a home in London, but primarily lived in Sussex. Two children, son, age twenty-nine, daughter, age twenty-seven. One grandchild, female, age ten months, through the daughter.

So that was the crew, she thought, and sat back. Those who’d survived.She supposed they qualified as motley, and spanned from late fifties to mid-seventies.

Now she had to keep them confined, keep them safe. And find the way to use them to locate Conrad Potter.

She heard Peabody coming, and wished she had a few more minutes to sort out her thinking.

“I think I need a minute,” Peabody said. “Ivan Draski.”

Eve couldn’t claim surprise. She’d trained Peabody herself. If the name hadn’t clicked, Eve wouldn’t have done her job well.

And she damn well had.

“Close the door.” She rose. “Take the chair.”

Clearly distressed, Peabody shut the door.

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