In Death 18 - Divided in Death

me get my camera, set up an on-the-spot. Take me less than—”
    “Sit down, Nadine.”
    “Dallas, Ewing’s huge. The former American hero gone bad and now about to be exonerated? Add in the handsome artist and gorgeous socialite, the sex, the passion.”
    “It’s bigger than Ewing, and it’s not about sex and passion.”
    Nadine sat again. “What could be bigger than that?”
    “I’m going to tell you what you can go on-air with, and what you can’t.”
    Nadine’s expression went sharp as a blade. “Wait just a minute.”
    “Or I’m going to tell you nothing.”
    “You know, Dallas, one of these days you’re going to trust me to know what can go on-air and what can’t.”
    “If I didn’t trust you, you and your cookies wouldn’t be here.” She rose as she spoke, and took the scanner EDD had provided her—one Roarke and Feeney had upgraded—to check the office space for any new electronics.
    “What are you doing with that?”
    “Just being anal. But as I was saying,” she continued, when she was satisfied the room was clean, “the fact is, if you hadn’t been sitting here playing with your pretty face when I walked in, I was going to contact you. I’ve got reasons for wanting some of this to go public, Nadine, and they’re not all professional.”
    “I’m listening.”
    Eve shook her head. “I have to clear every word of the story, and any follow-ups, before you go out with them. I need your word on it. I trust your word, but I have to have it. You have to say it.”
    Nadine’s fingers itched for her recorder, but she curled them into her palm. “This must be big. You’ve got my word, on all of it.”
    “Bissel and Kade were HSO.”
    “You are shitting me.”
    “This information comes from an unnamed source, and it’s gold. Bissel’s marriage to Ewing was part of an op, and it was without her knowledge or consent. She was used and was framed for the murder of Bissel and Kade to cover up the op, and potentially more.”
    “Something this hot from an unnamed—gold or not—I need hard facts.”
    “I’m going to give them to you. No recorder,” she said and dug into her desk drawers until she unearthed a stingy pad of recycled paper and an ancient pencil. “Write it down, and keep it and any transcribed discs from your notes in a secure location until you’re cleared to air.”
    Nadine made a few testing squiggles with the pencil. “Let’s see how much of that shorthand my mother made me learn is still in my head. Go.”
    It took an hour, then Nadine flew out of the office to lock herself in at Channel 75 to write the story.
    It would explode, Eve knew, even when the initial pieces she cleared hit the airwaves. It deserved to explode. Innocent lives taken or ruined in the name of what? Global security? The sexiness of espionage?
    It didn’t matter, not when those lives, those innocent lives, looked to her.
    Eve finished up most of the grunt work she’d once dumped on Peabody. She had to admit, having an aide the last year or so had come in handy.
    Not that she’d gotten spoiled, she assured herself.
    She could, of course, pull rank, and continue to dump most of the grunt work on Peabody. And really, it was a learning experience. In the long run, she’d be doing Peabody a favor.
    She checked the time and decided to close up shop for the day. She could get considerably more work done at home. With the remaining cookies safe in her jacket pocket, she headed out.
    She squeezed into an overburdened elevator, which reminded her why she rarely left at change of shifts. Before the door closed, a hand shot through, yanking it open again to a chorus of groans and nasty curses from the occupants.
    “Always room for one more.” Detective Baxter elbowed his way on. “You never call, you never write,” he said to Eve.
    “If you can leave on the dot of COS, you must not have enough paperwork.”
    “I got a trainee.” He flashed his grin. “Trueheart likes paperwork, and it’s good for him.”
    Since she’d had the same thoughts about Peabody, it was hard to argue.
    “We got a manual strangulation, Upper East Side,” he told her. “Corpse had enough money to choke a herd of wild horses.”
    “Do horses come in herds or packs?”
    “I don’t know, but I think herds. Anyway, she had a miserable disposition, a mile-wide mean streak, and a dozen heirs who are all glad to see her dead. I’m letting Trueheart act as primary.”
    “He ready for it?”
    “It’s a good