Delusion in Death

mother was an abductee, and it set something off. But how did a four-year-old kid get the formula, or have knowledge? Maybe Hubbard was in on the raid that took Menzini down, or in on interrogations. They have something—or had it—and Callaway kept going back to find it, to find everything he could, or interrogate his mother. I need to talk to her.”
    “Are we going to Arkansas?”
    “No, my turf. Teasdale’s got the HSO muscles to get the mother here. She told Callaway what she knows. Now she’s going to tell us.”

    “You need to sleep. I’ll put the run on the half-sister on auto. We’ll both catch a few hours. You’ve done what you set out to do tonight,” he told her when she hesitated. “You’ll want to gear up for tomorrow.”
    “You’re not wrong. I want to get this data to Whitney, get a couple men on Callaway tonight. I don’t want him hitting some twenty-four/seven while I’m sleeping.”
    “Fair enough. Get it done, and I’ll put what I have together for your briefing tomorrow. Then we’ll go to bed.”
    “That’s a deal.”

14
    In the dream she knew for a dream, the world exploded. Fire plumes of murderous reds, virulent orange, greasy black lit the night sky to the east as blasts shook the ground and punched like fists through the smoke-stung air.
    She heard the boom of explosives, the crack, crack, crack of what she recognized as gunfire. There’d been a time, too long a time, she thought, when people had lived and died by guns.
    Now they found other ways to kill. But she wasn’t in the now.
    The canyons and towers of New York thundered with the sounds of war. The Urbans.
    A dream, she thought, just a dream. Still, she made her way carefully, weapon drawn, down the deserted street. Maybe dreams couldn’t kill, but they could damn sure hurt. She’d woken far too often with phantom pain screaming to travel unarmed, even in her own subconscious.

    But sometimes dreams showed you what you needed to know and didn’t recognize in the busy business of the day.
    So she’d look, she’d listen.
    She stopped by a body sprawled over the sidewalk, crouched to check for a pulse. And found the bloody slice across his throat. Barely more than a boy, she judged. They’d taken his shoes, and likely his jacket if he’d had one—and not long before as his body still held some warmth.
    She left him where he was—no choice, just a dream. But checked her weapon. And saw it wasn’t her police issue but a .38 automatic. She recognized the style from Roarke’s gun collection, checked to make certain it was loaded, tested the weight.
    Moved on.
    She passed windows and doors, dark and boarded, burned out husks of cars her subconscious must have fashioned out of memories of vids from the period.
    Chained fences barred the entrance to a subway station. Uptown train, she noted and skirted its black maw carefully. Streetlights—those that weren’t broken stood dark. Traffic lights blinked red, red, red, and made her think of the room in Dallas where she’d killed Richard Troy.
    It’s not about that, she reminded herself. It wasn’t about the child she’d been, but who she was now. What she did now.
    She came to a street sign, Leonard and Worth, and realized she wasn’t far from the first crime scene.
    Maybe the answer lurked there.
    She started to cross, heard the gunfire—closer now—the screams. She changed directions, ran toward the sounds.
    She saw the truck—military, armored, and the man at the machine gun on the roof. She heard more gunfire from inside thebuilding the truck guarded, and the cries and screams. Children, she realized. They’d come for the children.
    She didn’t hesitate, but took her stance, took aim at the man on the truck. He’d be wearing body armor, she calculated, and aimed higher. Took the head shot.
    As he fell she raced forward, ducked into shadows as two men and two women dragged out struggling, screaming children. She sucked in her breath, held it. Fired.
    She took both men out, credited either the target shooting she did with Roarke or the luck of dreams. The women fled, one with a wailing baby in her arms.
    No, Eve thought, not even one, not even in dreams. She ran in pursuit, barely pausing at the huddle of terrified children.
    “Get back inside, block the door. Wait for me.”
    And ran on.
    The women split up, so she ran after the one with the baby.
    “NYPSD! Halt! Halt, goddamn it or I’ll shoot you in the fucking back. I swear to