Missing in Death by J. D. Robb Page B

keys. “There are all sorts of tricks,” he continued as the codes zipped by on the screens. “Realignments, firewalls, fail-safes, trapdoors and back-doors. But we keep updating along with them.”
    “Why? Seriously, why do you need access to this stuff?”
    “Everyone needs a hobby. What we want here are eyes-only personnel files, their black ops consultants. And verification if the device rumored to exist does indeed exist. Eyes-only again, but the trick would be to find where it might be tucked and by whom. Ah well, bugger it. Let’s try this way.”
    Assuming from the oath and his increased tapping that he’d hit a snag, Eve wiggled away. “I’m getting coffee, and I’m going to run some data of my own.”
    When his answer was a grunt, she knew playtime was over. It was time for serious work.
    Seven
    Using an auxiliary computer, Eve initiated her own search for any mention of a device such as Roarke had described. She found several articles on medical sites detailing the memory suppressive drugs and tools used during routine surgeries, others edging toward hypnotherapy in both medical studies and gaming.
    She also found a scattering of fringe blogs raging about government mind control, enslaving of the masses and the ever-popular doomsday warnings. A nation of human droids, forced experimentation, personality theft and human breeding farms were on their top-ten list of predicted abominations. This led her to others claiming to have been abducted by aliens in league with the shadow forces of government.
    “I’m surprised the government has time to, you know, govern, when they’re so busy working with aliens and their anal probes or pursuing their mission to turn the global population into mindless sex droids.”
    “Hmm,” Roarke said, “there’s government, then there’s government.”
    She glanced over to where he sat, fingers flying, eyes intent. “You don’t actually believe this crap? Alien invasions, secret bunkers in Antarctica for experimentation on human guinea pigs.”
    He flicked his glance up. “Icove.”
    “That was . . . Okay.” Hard to argue when they’d both nearly been killed when dismantling a subversive and illegal human cloning organization. “But aliens?”
    “It’s a big universe. You should get out in it more often.”
    “I like one planet just fine.”
    “In any case, I have your victim. No, don’t get up.” He waved her back. “I’ll put it onscreen. Data, wall screen one. This is from HSO, but the data matches what I’ve got from the other sources.”
    “Dana Buckley,” Eve read. “With her three most common aliases. Same age as her current ID. But with the biographical data you had.”
    “Now it lists her assets. The languages she spoke, her e-skill level, the weaponry she was cleared for. Included in her dossier is this list.” He scrolled down. “Names, nationalities, ranks if applicable, dates.”
    “Her hit list,” Eve mumbled. “They know or believe she’s killed these people, but they let her walk around.”
    “Undoubtedly she killed some of those people for these agencies. They let her walk around until now because she’s useful to them.”
    Eve dealt with murder every day, yet this offended and disturbed her on some core level she wasn’t sure she could articulate.
    “That’s not how it’s supposed to be. You can’t just kill or order someone’s death because it’s expedient. We’ve managed to virtually outlaw torture and executions; if a cop terminates in the line, he has to go through testing to ensure it was ultimate force that was necessary. But there are still people, supposedly on our side, who would use someone like her to do their dirty work.”
    “People who use someone like her rarely, if ever, get their hands dirty.”
    “She was a psychopath. Look at her psych profile, for God’s sake.” Eve swung an arm at the screen. “She should’ve been put away, just like the person who did her needs to be put away.”
    He watched