In Death 18 - Divided in Death

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    She joined the others in the lab as Roarke demonstrated equipment for Feeney.
    She frowned at the screen, and the colors moving on it. “I assume this is not a new vid game.”
    “Sensor. Configured to body heat. You’re looking at Summerset puttering around in the kitchen downstairs. You input the coordinates of the location you want to scan, and the nature of the object you want to track. It’ll read through solid objects like walls, doors, glass, and so on. Steel. Flatiron’s a steel skeleton. The distance it will work depends on basic interference. Other objects with similar makeup will, of course, interfere. But once you’ve homed in on your target, you can lock and follow.”
    “What’s this?” She tapped the screen where a red-and-orange blob circled. “Is that—”
    “The cat.” Roarke grinned at her. “Hoping for a handout, I’d say. Got ears, Tokimoto?”
    “Nearly. Another moment.”
    “We’re locked on,” Roarke explained. “Interface the audio sensor, and find the right combination of filters, and we should be able to pick up sound.”
    “Two floors down? Without direct linking or satellite bounce?”
    “We’re utilizing satellite. With equipment we’ve got in the lab, we’d be able to see and count Galahad’s whiskers. But with this portable ‘link, we’ll make do with body heat image.” Roarke glanced up. “It should be enough for your purposes.”
    “Yeah. It’ll work just fine.” She pursed her lips when she heard what might have been violins coming from the equipment, then the unmistakable sound of Galahad’s most persuasive meows.
    “This,” McNab said with an avaricious sigh, “kicks solid ass.”
    “How about his security and monitors?” Eve asked.
    “I can shut them down by remote. We can bypass his building audio so he won’t hear the evacuation orders. We can have this equipment set up, on site, in twenty minutes, have him scanned and locked within thirty.”
    “We start boxing and locking him first, then evacuate. We’ll need to clear out a space on the floor below his for base. Keep that quick and quiet, then set up this equipment there. Feeney?”
    “On that.”
    “Peabody, break out the body armor for the takedown team. Load up. Roarke, with me.”
    “Always,” he said and followed her out.
    She said nothing until they were back in her office. She checked her weapon, her clutch piece, then opened a drawer in her workstation and took out a stunner. “You’ll need this. I want you to go in with me.”
    He turned the weapon over in his hand. He had more powerful and certainly more efficient weapons of his own. But it was, he decided, the thought that counted. “You’re not going to make me ask.”
    “No. You’ve earned it. I want you going through the door with me. More than that, I don’t know what he’s got in there. When we go in, I need you to focus on the weaponry. Leave him to me. Leave him to me, Roarke.”
    “Understood, Lieutenant.”
    “There’s something else. I’ve given Nadine a head’s-up. When this is over, if you wanted to say something to the media about how Bissel and Sparrow screwed over an employee and attempted to steal data from Securecomp, to sabotage a Code Red and so on, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings.”
    “You’re feeding them to the dogs.” His lips twitched as he skimmed a finger down the dent in her chin. “Why, Lieutenant. You excite me.”
    “I figure they’ll be cleaning up the blood and bones for some time. And a lot of the blood and bones are going to be scattered throughout HSO. There’s all kinds of payback, Roarke.”
    “Yes.” He slipped the weapon into his pocket so he could take her face in his hands, lay his lips on her brow. “There is. If this satisfies you, it’ll do me as well.”
    “Then let’s go kick some righteous ass.”
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    It made it stickier, and just a little nerve-racking, to have Commander Whitney and Chief Tibble step into the operation as observers. She did her best to ignore them as she coordinated her personnel.
    “Both protocol and courtesy demand that the HSO be informed if and when we verify the location of Blair Bissel,” Tibble commented.
    “I’m not immediately concerned with protocol or courtesy, sir, but with the locating, restraining, and capture of a multiple-murder suspect. It’s entirely possible that other members of the HSO were involved