Silencing Eve (8 page)

Venable looked up warily as she strode purposely across the bank toward him.

*   *   *

“I WAS WORRIED ABOUT YOU.”
Mark Trevor watched Jane coming down the porch steps. “Particularly since I saw Caleb practically push you up those stairs. Are you okay?”

“Fine.” She looked around the almost deserted grounds. “Better than fine now that I see everyone has gone home. I need to talk to Joe. I just needed a little stress-free rest.”

“On Caleb’s recommendation?” Trevor’s lips twisted. “It’s not like him to be a caregiver. You have to be careful of his motives.”

“I’m always careful with Caleb.”

“I know. And it makes me uneasy that you’re so aware of him.” He shrugged. “But that’s the way things stand. I should never have left you for so long. I thought it was wise to give you space, but I’m not sure now. But now I’m back, and I’m closing that space down to inches.” He reached out and took her hand. “And I’m an excellent caregiver. It’s what I want to do. I want to be there to protect you in darkness and sunlight.” He said softly, “Lately, I’ve been realizing that’s maybe what I’m meant to do. I’ve even had a couple dreams about it. Crazy, huh? All the passion and the laughter was good, but in the end it comes down to what’s really important. What role we’re meant to play in each other’s lives.”

She didn’t know what to say. This was completely unlike Trevor. He was sophisticated, sometimes dry, sometimes mischievous, never given to soul-searching. She searched his face for some hint of the Trevor she knew. No mockery. He meant what he said. She had known him since she was seventeen, but she had never seen him more sincere about anything. She laughed shakily. “Yes, pretty crazy. And I don’t want anyone to take care of me. You should know that by now, Trevor.”

“That doesn’t seem to matter any longer.” He added simply, “It’s my role. I’ll try not to let it get in our way.” He linked his fingers with hers and pulled her toward Joe. “He’s still talking to that police captain from Chicago. I’ll distract him and get him out of your way while you talk to Quinn.”

“How? You don’t have any background in police—” She stopped and smiled. “Never mind. What am I thinking? You never have trouble with accomplishing distraction and sleight of hand. It’s a product of your shady past. I forget occasionally what a checkered life you’ve led.”

“Right.” He smiled. “And it comes in handy to furnish you with what you need at any given time.” He gestured as she opened her lips to speak. “And you’ll take this little service from me because it could start the move toward helping Eve.” They had reached Joe and the police captain, and Trevor’s smile was suddenly brilliant, that powerful magnetism reaching out to envelop them. “Hello, Quinn, Captain Larimer, I just wanted to repeat my sincere condolences before I left.” He turned to Larimer. “I know you must deal with this kind of tragedy on a daily basis, but you have to admit that this is far beyond—”

For the next five minutes, Jane watched Trevor with bemusement. In that time, he’d smoothly moved the police captain to the buffet and was pouring him a cup of coffee while he continued to ask him questions.

“Trevor’s very good.” Joe smiled faintly as he watched the two men. “And I owe him. I tried twice to send Larimer on his way without being blatantly rude.” He turned to Jane. “Margaret said you weren’t feeling well. Should I be worried?”

“No, I was only tired.” She grimaced. “Yet everyone immediately assumes I’m on death’s door.” She changed the subject as she turned and led him away from the cottage to the edge of the lake. “But I would have come down sooner except that I was talking to Kendra. And then, after she left, I was reading the journal.”

He went still. “Journal?”

She quickly filled him in on her conversation with Kendra. “The stuff in the journal was sickening. Kevin was a monster. He was an egomaniac with a complete lack of conscience. The descriptions of what he did to those little girls were hideous.”

“Anything else?”

“It’s hard to get beyond the atrocities.” She tried to think. “There were a few references to Pakistan, but no names that might have been valuable to al-Qaeda.” She paused. “But there was a mention of his dealings with the CIA. Double dealings, according to him. A lot of money exchanging hands.”

“That’s not unusual. An embedded agent would pretend to be on the take.”

“I don’t believe he was talking about the embedded agents. He was talking about a specific CIA agent. And he was confident he’d persuaded the agent to go rogue. He was very happy about that. He said that he needed someone in a trusted position to pave the way to the project.”

“Project? What project?”

“He never spelled it out. I assumed it had something to do with Bin Laden. That’s who Venable told us was the target.”

“Maybe.” Joe frowned. “Maybe not.”

Jane’s gaze narrowed on his face. “Kendra didn’t want me to give the journal to Venable. Now you have doubts about him?”

“I don’t want to have doubts. I’ve worked with him a long time.” He nodded curtly. “Hell, yes, I have doubts. He’s not been listening to anything I’ve been telling him since this started. And I don’t like the way he gave the okay for that attack team to tear down the mountain and start shooting up that saloon.”

She could see his mind turning over, working through the facts and theories. “Anything else?”

“Venable was in the Middle East at the time. He knew what was happening in Pakistan. He was the connection to General Tarther and Kevin’s assassination. But he was also the agent who offered Kevin’s father sanctuary and provided him with a safe house and an income for five years.” He paused. “And Venable told us that it was a disk that was the blackmail that Doane was holding over everyone’s head.”

“The disk may still be out there.”

“But we have a journal mentioning CIA corruption.” His lips tightened. “No, I don’t believe we’ll turn the journal over to Venable just yet.”

“And there may be something in it that we can use. What if it’s invisible ink or something?”

“Invisible ink? I doubt if even a madman would be quite that amateurish, Jane.”

“You know what I mean. Things aren’t always what they seem.”

“No, they’re not. But we don’t have to rely on the labs at Langley. The labs at Quantico are just as sophisticated, and I have friends at the FBI.”

“Then let’s get it to them right away.” She moistened her lips. “I feel as if we’re spinning our wheels. We’ve been relying on Venable to keep up the search for Eve. If Venable is crooked, then what—It’s been five days, Joe. Where is she?”

“I haven’t totally relied on Venable. I’ve made him give me copies of every report from his guys in the field.” Joe put his arm around her shoulders. “Could they be faked? Sure. I don’t think they were. He’s exploring every avenue that I would have ordered explored and done it with much less chance for leaks.” He added, “And Venable’s actions at that ghost town indicated he wanted Doane. Maybe too much for Eve’s safety. But if we find Doane, we find Eve.” He kissed her on the forehead. “After tonight, I’m going to go into seclusion, as would be natural in a grief-stricken man. I’ll be in touch.”

She had known this was coming. She had just hoped that they would have had something more to go on before the hunt began again. “Where are you going?”

“Vancouver. Venable is going to give me false papers and have me flown into a small airport north of the city. According to Venable, Zander’s place appears to be deserted, but I’m hoping to contact Howard Stang, his assistant. He disappeared at the same time as Zander, but he may be the weak link.” He shook his head. “Though I’m not sure how weak Stang will prove to be. He’s something of an enigma.”

“So is Zander,” Jane said. “I can’t forgive him for not saving Eve when he had the chance up in the mountains.”

“Neither can I. He doesn’t care about our forgiveness.”

“He’s her father, dammit.”

“Neither one of them would say that had anything to do with their relationship. He never acknowledged her during her entire life. She doesn’t want or need a father at this stage.”

“Unless he can do something to save Doane from killing her. She needs him for that.”

“And she’ll have him as soon as I find the bastard,” he said grimly. “Believe me, I’ll serve Zander up to Doane on a silver platter if it will keep her alive.”

She did believe him, and she was going to be as worried about Joe as she was about Eve. Zander was one of the most expert assassins on the planet. It wouldn’t be easy even for a man as tough as Joe to overcome that skill. “I’m going to go with you.”

He shook his head. “Not now. A mass exodus from here would definitely be suspicious. I’ll call you as soon as I find Stang.”

“You expect me to stay here and wait? It’s not going to happen, Joe. I’m through with waiting.”

“It would be suspicious,” he repeated. “I’m not going to blow everything we’ve done to keep Doane off guard.”

His jaw was set, and she knew he wasn’t going to be persuaded. Frustration seared through her. “I won’t blow anything, dammit. Do you think I’d do anything that might hurt Eve? Okay, I’ll give you one day. Then I’m going to come after you. I’ll ask Caleb to file a flight plan to London, and we’ll leave Atlanta for Vancouver tomorrow afternoon instead. It will seem perfectly natural that I go back to London where I came from before this nightmare started.”

“I’m not going to let Venable give you papers.”

She smiled recklessly. “Screw Venable. I’m going, Joe. I won’t risk Eve, but I won’t sit here and do nothing. You go after Stang. I won’t get in your way. I’ll find my own way to Zander.”

Joe muttered a curse.

“It’s not the way I wanted it.” Jane could feel the tears sting her eyes as she turned and started back toward the cottage. “I’ve put the journal in the last drawer of Eve’s worktable. You’ll want to get that up to Quantico before you leave. Keep safe, Joe.”

Her eyes were so blurred, she almost ran into Margaret when she stepped out of the trees.

“Too bad that all the photographers have left,” Margaret said quietly. “They’d get some wonderful shots. You’re looking completely … lost.” She gazed past her to Joe, still standing by the lake. “I was wondering if he’d try to keep you here.” She shrugged. “When you’re losing everything important to you, it’s not unusual to try to salvage what you can.”

“He’s telling himself that he’s being perfectly logical. I’m not needed; therefore, I should stay out of the way.”

“And it hurts.”

“I need to find her,” she said. “I
have
to find her.” She drew a long breath and tried to pull herself together. “Kendra left. Did she tell you she was leaving?”

“Yes, she tried to tell me that I should leave, too. That I wasn’t needed and could be a liability.” She smiled. “I told her that I was never a liability.” She raised her hand as Jane started to speak. “But you’re probably going to say the same things that Kendra said. That’s fine, but it’s not going to change anything. I’ll just have to convince you how valuable I am and that you can’t do without me.” She tilted her head. “You read the journal, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” She shuddered. “It was terrible.”

She nodded. “I read it, too. And I may have picked up some things that Kendra and you missed. We all look at life from different viewpoints, and with a man like Kevin, the horror of his actions sometimes blur the intent and the reason for what he did. That can be important.”

“And it doesn’t blur it for you?”

“Of course it does. But I virtually grew up in the forests. Nature is brimming with horror as well as joy. I learned to accept both and try to make them work to help me to survive.” She cast another glance at Joe. “He’s right about your not going immediately after Zander. But there may be other paths.”

“What paths? Why didn’t you say something before this?”

“It wasn’t the time. I was going to speak to Kendra as soon as this brouhaha was over.” She lifted her shoulders. “But now she’s gone. Logical to the end.”

“And probably right.”

“I’ve never argued about that. It was a joy to watch her work.” She chuckled. “And it was even more of a joy to watch her try to cope with the fact that I’m not at all logical and still manage not to screw things up.”

“You’re sorry she’s gone.”

She nodded. “You’re always sorry when a friend leaves. But it’s not as if it will be forever. I never let a friend be lost for long. They’re too rare, particularly when I work so hard to get them to accept me as I am.” She smiled. “Like you, Jane.”

“It took a while,” she said dryly. She had first met Margaret at an experimental animal clinic on an island in the Caribbean. Jane’s dog, Toby, had been gravely ill, and no one could diagnose the cause. Until Margaret, a tech, had strode into the exam room full of love and empathy and that strange gift that allowed her to dive deep below the surface and decipher the dog’s “impressions.” Though it sounded to Jane that impressions meant memories. Anyway, she had diagnosed Toby’s illness as poisoning and, to Jane’s deep gratitude, had set him on the way to recovery. “And the circumstances aren’t always in place to display that it’s not the method but the result that matters.”

“That’s true. That’s why I used the word ‘rare.’” She changed the subject. “Kendra made several copies of that journal. Did she give you one?”

“Yes, and the original that I’m turning over to Joe.”

Margaret’s gaze narrowed on her face. “And judging by how upset you are at Joe, I don’t think you’re going to stick around the cottage for long.”

She shook her head. “I’m packing up and leaving the cottage tonight. I’ll check into an airport hotel. He’s heading for Vancouver sometime after midnight anyway, but I don’t want to be here to argue with him again.” She paused, then said unsteadily, “It hurts too much.”

“And you’ll be traveling with Trevor and Caleb?”

“I don’t know about Mark Trevor. I’ll have to ask Caleb to fly me to Canada.”

“I know about Trevor. He’s crazy about you. He won’t let you out of his sight.” She tilted her head. “Caleb? I’ve never been able to read him. I don’t know what he’s thinking most of the time. But I keep trying because it could be either terrible or wonderful, and I wouldn’t want to miss it.” She turned away. “I’ll go change and get my suitcase. Be sure to bring that extra copy of the journal. I need to go through it again. Do you want to take me to the hotel, or are you going to make me show up on my own?”