“I don’t give them life. I’d have to be God to be able to do that. I give them a chance to bring solace to the people they’ve left behind and perhaps to get vengeance for what’s been done to them.”
“Vengeance. Yes, that’s an important part of what you’re able to do.” His expression was suddenly shadowed. “It’s sad that those victims all cry out for vengeance. It causes me pain.”
She stared at him skeptically. “And you’re saying you don’t want some form of vengeance for the death of your Kevin? I find that hard to believe.”
“And rightly so. But I prefer to call it justice.” He turned away. “Let me make you a cup of coffee while you examine the lab I created for you. You take it black, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She again felt that chill at the evidence of the extent of his knowledge about her. “How did you find out so much about me?”
“Articles. TV documentaries. You’re very famous, Eve. I collected an entire scrapbook devoted to you. I like scrapbooks. They bring back memories that warm the heart.”
“Touching. But that’s not all, is it? What else did you do?”
He put coffee in the coffeemaker. “No, that’s not all. When I found out about you, I had an insatiable thirst for information. I managed to put a few bugs in your cottage when you were away searching for your Bonnie. They’re still there.”
Her eyes widened. “How did you get around the security alarm?”
“With great difficulty—it’s a fine system. Blick knew a few experts. I felt it necessary to have more details than those I could gather from public means.” He took down a large mug from the cabinet. “I found out a great deal about you.” He added soberly, “I did try to ignore the more intimate transmissions between you and Quinn. It really had nothing to do with what I needed to know and wouldn’t be fair to you.”
Eve felt the heat rise to her face at the thought of him eavesdropping while she and Joe made love. Not embarrassment. Sheer rage. “You’re damn right it wasn’t fair,” she said through clenched teeth. “Nothing you’ve done is fair or right, you sick Peeping Tom.”
“You’re perfectly right to be indignant.” He looked over his shoulder. “I could have lied to you. It would have been easier for me. I admit I was tempted. But that would have been wrong when I want our relationship to be as open and aboveboard as possible.”
“Why?” Her fists clenched at her sides. “Why did you have to know so much about me?”
“It’s part of my character, part of how I guide my life. I plan every move.” He held out his palms. “See how rough and scarred my hands are? Every line and crease could tell you how hard I’ve worked. I’m not real smart, but I learned that if I worked hard and always planned the next step, I could make a living. I was a farmer most of my life until Kevin was born. Then I got work in the city as a carpenter so that Kevin could have a better chance for an education. Planning helped me there, too.”
“Are you trying to make me feel sorry for you? No way.”
“I’m trying to make you understand that I won’t do anything to hurt you. Why would I want to do that when I’ve gone to so much trouble to make sure you were the right one to help my Kevin?” He nodded at the dais. “Would you like me to put the skull on your worktable?”
“What if I won’t do it? You say you don’t want me hurt. You’d hurt me terribly if anything happened to Jane. You’re holding that out as a threat, which makes you a liar.”
He flinched. “I try not to lie. But I want this for Kevin so badly that I might bend the truth. You have to do this, Eve.”
She stared at him in anger and frustration. That face was so kind and troubled that it was difficult not to believe him. One moment, she thought his kindness and concern were actually genuine, and the next she was sure it had to be a sort of bizarre masquerade.
“Just do it,” he said softly. “We both know that you won’t take a chance that Jane might pay for your stubbornness.”
He might seem rough and simple, but he read her very well. Why not, she thought bitterly. He had been studying her for a long time.
“Bastard.” She turned on her heel and strode toward the worktable in the corner. “Bring me the skull and set him up on the dais.”
“This isn’t a defeat.” He went toward the chair where the skull rested. “You’re just being sensible, Eve.”
“Am I?” She was trying to be sensible, if not in the way he meant. If she was going to do this reconstruction, she had to use it as a barrier behind which she could explore everything about Doane and this place. He was very big on finding out all about his targets so that his damned plans would work. Since she had no weapons, it might be possible to turn those methods against him. At any rate, she seemed to have no other option. She glanced at the window by the worktable. She could see the mountains in the distance and pine trees.
And above the window sash one of those empty sockets that were also in the ceiling.
Of course, in case she tried to open that window.
Doane was standing beside her, his gaze following Eve’s. “Enough light?”
“Plenty,” she said curtly. “Set him on the dais.”
She watched him carefully set the skull with loving hands.
Love. She couldn’t deny the affection she could see in Doane’s expression, in his touch. She was unable to determine if anything else about him was genuine, but he had truly loved this son who was staring back at them like a blackened, ugly skull from a horror movie.
She felt a ripple of shock at the thought. There it was again. Why couldn’t she feel the usual empathy with this lost one? The threat to Jane? The terrible lengths to which Doane had gone in order to force her to do this reconstruction?
“You’re looking at him with revulsion.” Doane frowned. “Don’t take it out on him. You have to give him a chance. Once you start work, it will be like all the others.”
And it wasn’t wise to antagonize Doane by revealing that revulsion. Kevin was the center of Doane’s life. Eve would have to circle and avoid any direct confrontation. “Perhaps you’re right.” She hoped she was telling the truth. She didn’t want to think she was shallow enough to blame a son for the sins of the father. “Go away. I want to get to work. The sooner I’m done, the sooner this is over. Isn’t that what you said?”
“That’s what I said.” His frown had deepened. “I don’t want to go away. I want to watch you.”
“No.” She began to go through the measuring tools. “You’ll bother me. You want a good job, don’t you?”
“You’re a professional. You’ll give me a good job regardless if I distract you or not.”
“But you’re not sure if your presence will bother me. Why do you want to be here?”
“I’ve always been with him during the important events in his life. You’re bringing him back to me. That’s very important.”
She turned away from the skull to look at Doane. “Then it’s important that I not be distracted. Suppose we make a deal.”
“Deal?” he repeated warily.
“What do you know about forensic sculpting?”
“What I’ve read in those articles.”
“But that’s not always how I work. First, I take precise measurements, then I set depth markers, then I begin the actual sculpting. The measuring would be very boring for you. It’s essential to the process, but it might even be painful for you. There’s one point when Kevin would look like a voodoo doll stuck with pins. Not pretty. Let me do that by myself. Then when the actual sculpting begins, you can watch, and I won’t argue.”
“That won’t bother you?”
“Not in the first stages.” She paused. “And not if you furnish me with a little distraction, too.”
“And that’s your deal? What distraction?”
Her gaze swung back to the skull. “I want you to tell me how he got this way. You know, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He paused. “But why do you want to know? Curiosity?”
“Curi
osity?” She looked at him in astonishment. “He’s the reason why all this is happening. I want to know why I’m being forced to do this reconstruction. Who knows? It might even make the sculpting go smoother and faster.”
He didn’t speak for a long moment. “I’m not going to promise to tell you everything.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, and it may be more than you think.” Her gaze narrowed on his face. “And I believe you’ll tell me what you feel is safe. You want to tell someone about Kevin.”
“How smart you are, Eve.” He paused again. “I don’t want to tell just anyone, Eve. I want to tell you. We share so many things that no one else could dream.”
“Then tell me now.”
He smiled. “No, you have to earn it.” He moved back from the dais. “You start your work, and I’ll start mine. I’ll go outside and sit in the truck with my computer. I have a few more plans to put in place. Though I really would prefer to sit in that chair over there and watch you.”
She watched him unlock a file cabinet next to the desk and take out his Dell computer. Then he locked it back up again and nodded at the empty ceiling socket. “As I said, don’t waste time,” he said gently. “Start to work, Eve.”
She didn’t move for a moment after the door shut behind him.
Okay, that file cabinet might have information. Or perhaps the desk next to it. She probably wouldn’t be able to get her hands on that computer, but she’d try.
The truck had been where he kept that phone he’d rigged to avoid tracing, he might have other electronic gadgets.
He had mentioned his fondness for albums. Who knew what else he might have collected to “warm the heart.”
But the main project would have to be a way to disable those gas sockets. They were his principal weapon against her.
How was she going to do that? It would take time and opportunity that she’d have to squeeze from the reconstruction and—
Mull it over. Don’t be negative. There had to be a way.
Work it out.
She turned back to the skull. “I don’t have to name you, do I?” she whispered. “You have a name and a history and a father who loves you. How are we going to get along, Kevin?”
No answer, of course.
The skull stared back at her with gaping eyes and bared teeth in its black visage.
He looked fierce, savage, as if he were about to attack her.
She instinctively stiffened.
Ignore it. It was only imagination. Kevin was a man, when she was accustomed to sculpting children. There were so many lost children, and she had a passion for trying to bring them home to give solace to their parents.
But she had done reconstructions of adults before without a reaction like this.
Not when she had been kidnapped and Jane shot to bring her to this point, this work.
Go to work, get it done.
She started to measure the midtherum area beneath the nasal cavity.
* * *
“THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE I’m going to break my word,” Venable told Zander bluntly. “Everything’s gone to hell. My agent, Tad Dukes, can’t be found on the property. The description Ben Hudson gave us matches Doane, and Blick was almost certainly Jane’s shooter. Eve called Joe Quinn, and Doane wants her to do a reconstruction. Unless my team can pull in Doane within the next few hours, I’m going to tell Quinn what he has to contend with.”
“That would be awkward for me.”
“Screw you. I don’t like where this is going. I’m not going to let Eve be sacrificed because of you. I won’t do it for you, and I won’t do it for General Tarther, whom I like as much as I dislike you.” He paused. “You were right. Doane had everything planned out step by step, and he has to think that she can lead him to you.”
“I could avoid him if I chose.”
“And he could kill her.”
“But that’s your problem.”
“No, it’s yours, dammit.” He drew a deep breath. “You’re so sure that you could go after Doane and take him out if you decide to do it. If you can find Doane, you can find her.”
“But if I did, I’d be playing into his hands. I won’t do that, Venable.”
“Why? Would it prove you’re not a complete—”
“Our conversation is finished. You’ve told me what you wanted to say. I really don’t know why you felt obligated to tell me you were going to break your promise. No one keeps their word these days.”
“I do. And if I locate Eve in the next few hours, I’ll still keep it. I owed you and General Tarther a warning in case that doesn’t happen.” He hung up.
And the odds were that they wouldn’t find her, he thought. The satellite GPS trace had come back with nothing. The agents he had searching the house in Goldfork had been stymied, too.
Which meant that he’d have to betray Zander.
And Zander wasn’t a man it was safe to betray.
He went out on the porch and watched as Joe came back down the road from the place where the forensic team was checking the shrubbery for trace evidence and possible DNA. Joe was hanging up his phone as he came even with the cottage. “Jane just arrived in Atlanta. I’m going to meet her at the hospital in Rome.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No, I don’t want to see you again until I hear what I want to hear from you,” he said coldly. “I’m afraid I’ll break your neck before I choke it out of you.”
“Just inquiring. The last I heard, you didn’t want me out of your sight.”
“If you disappear, I’ll find you.”
“I won’t disappear,” Venable said quietly. “Not until after we find Eve. I promise you.”
Joe gazed at him a moment. “Are you weakening, Venable?”
Venable didn’t reply directly. “Maybe. I’m not going to let anything happen to Eve. Since she’s going to do that reconstruction, she has time. We have time, Joe.”
“If I didn’t believe that, you’d be in an even tighter spot than you are now.” Joe got into the car. “I’ll find out who took Eve by Jane’s doing this sketch. But it will take time to identify him by going through data bases. I’m not going to take that time. Once I have a sketch, you’re going to tell me who he is and how to get to him.”
“If I knew how to get the man who took Eve, I would have already done it,” he said wearily. “Bring me the sketch, and we’ll talk.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Yes.” He turned back to go into the house. “It’s all I can offer you right now, dammit.”
* * *
THE TINY METAL JET IN THE sunken socket above Eve’s bed gleamed in the darkness.
She was exhausted after hours of work on the reconstruction, but she was too on edge to sleep. She had been lying on this cot for the last thirty minutes and gazing up at that gas jet.
So clever. Doane had boasted of his skill at planning, and this silent threat certainly added weight to his claim. It kept her immobile but still allowed him to use her skills. It was infuriating and damn frustrating and totally—
She suddenly straightened on the cot. But maybe not foolproof. Maybe she could beat it.
I was able to become accustomed to the gas by gradually exposing myself to the fumes.
If Doane had been able to do that, she might be able to do the same thing. She wouldn’t be able to become totally immune, but perhaps she could make herself less sensitive to the gas.
If the gas could be triggered by hand at the source in each of those sockets. If she could find a way to get up to the socket, which must be ten feet above the cot. If she could control the flow to give her a whiff without completely knocking her out.
Lots of ifs.
Hell, she didn’t have a better plan, did she? It was the one way that she had a chance of escaping. It was the only way she would be on partially even terms with Doane.
Move. Try.
She listened for Doane. He was sleeping on the couch in the living area. As he’d told her, t
hese walls were paper-thin, and she could hear everything that was happening beyond them.
And now she could hear the steady sound of his breathing. He had claimed to be a light sleeper, but he was asleep now. If she was quiet, she might keep him that way.
She slid off the cot, and her bare feet touched the floor.
Don’t squeak, she prayed. Please don’t squeak.
She stood there looking up at the ceiling. It was at least ten feet above her. How could she reach it?
Stand on the cot?
Not high enough.
Or was it? The cot was one of those rollaway wire beds that folded up to store. If she folded it up, then climbed on top, it would give her at least another three feet.
No squeaks …
Her heart was beating hard as she slowly, carefully folded up the cot. She pushed it against the wall, then propped the nightstand against it to steady it. The next minute she was climbing up on the folded edge.
Slowly.
Painstakingly silent.
With utmost care.
The socket was right above her now.
Press on the side?
No, there was a closure in the center that she could unscrew. There might be some gas trapped in the line that she could release.
Open it just a little …
Carnations.
She jerked her hand back. Then she hurriedly screwed the closure shut again.
Her head was spinning.
Too much.
Get down.
No noise.
No noise.
She was off the bed.
On the floor.
Curled up in a ball.
Sick … Doane hadn’t told her it made you sick.
Had he heard her?
He hadn’t come running. She might be safe.
Carnations.
Dizzy … sick.
She’d be all right. As soon as she got over this first bout of sickness, she’d rest, then try it again.
Two more times during this rest period ingesting the gas should be enough to start the path toward immunity. She’d be able to judge better after she recovered a little.