Bonnie

Is he alive, Bo

But there were no answers from the darkness.

*   *   *

“YOU WERE TALKING TO VENABLE for a long time.” Eve turned to Catherine, who had just started the car and was driving away from the house. “Were you right? Did he want something from you?”

Catherine nodded. “A job in South America. The director is pressuring him. Venable doesn’t take pressure well. He tends to explode like that BP well that caused all the havoc down here. It surprised me that he even bothered to come. He knows I won’t go back there now that I have Luke home. He was just feeling me out to see if there was any way he could manipulate me.”

“You don’t resent that?”

“Why should I? It’s what he does. It’s what makes him valuable to the Company. You just have to learn how to ignore it and do your own thing.” She shot Eve a glance. “But we may be able to use him. He knows he doesn’t have a chance with me until I find Bo

“I don’t know if manpower will do it,” Eve said. “We need information first.”

“I’ve already told him I need to know when, where, and if Ted Da

She should have known that Catherine would already have been on top of things. “Yes, that’s a start.”

Catherine’s gaze narrowed on Eve’s face. “You’ve been very quiet. Are you okay?”

Eve nodded. “I’m having a few problems with the idea of its being Ted Da

“I don’t have that disadvantage,” Catherine said. “I only know the bastard who wanted to cut my throat. You say he looked like him, and he had Ranger training. Gallo had trouble putting him down, and there has to be a reason for that. That’s enough for me to go on.”

It should be enough for Eve, too. Why wasn’t it?

Because there was something else bothering her, nagging at her.

The darkness, looming, impenetrable.

I may need your help.

Help with Gallo. It was Gallo whom Bo

Why?

He’s hurting too much.

What could she do? She thought in frustration. For some reason Bo

What the hell do you want from me, Bo

“You’re scowling,” Catherine said. “I’m sorry, I can’t feel the same way you do, Eve. I have to go with reason, and Da

Catherine thought Eve was still brooding about Ted Da

Not with the darkness closing in around her.

And the begi

CHAPTER

6

New Orleans

“PULL OVER HERE,” EVE SAID suddenly. “Now, Catherine.”

Catherine looked at her in bewilderment, but she slowed the car. “Why? This is only Canal Street. We’re in the French Quarter. I thought you wanted to go downtown to the police department to meet Joe.”

“Pull over.” Eve put her hand on the knob. “I have to get out. Now.”

Catherine muttered a curse as she pulled to the curb, ignoring the blaring of horns of the cars behind her. “Dammit, what’s happening?”

Eve grabbed her suitcase and jumped out of the car. “I have to go after Gallo. You try to work through Venable, but I think Gallo is the key.”

“Then we’ll both go after him. Don’t you leave Joe and me out of this, Eve.”

“I won’t. I’ll be in touch.” She moved toward the alley beside a souvenir shop, ducking past a mime who was performing on the street. “But I have to contact Gallo on my own. He’s on the run, and Joe and you aren’t going to be able to make him stop and listen. He’s on guard. If he knows that you’re with me, he may not listen to me either.”

“And you’re sure he’ll stop and listen to you?”

“No, I’m not sure.” She looked over her shoulder. “But he may decide to listen to me. I have a weapon that you don’t have, a card that I can play. I’ll call you.” She vanished into the alley and headed for the door of a restaurant with a wrought-iron balcony on the far end of the street.

Would Catherine follow her? She wouldn’t have been surprised if Catherine abandoned the car and ran after her. But Catherine was smart and would know that if she did try to intercept Eve, she’d just find another way to handle this on her own.

Eve ducked into the restaurant and moved past a jazz quartet on the small stage to the left of the door. Move fast. Weave in and out of the stores of the Quarter until she was sure Catherine had decided not to search for her. Then stop and make the call.

Fifteen minutes later, she had left the Quarter and was in the coffee shop of the Marriott Hotel. She dropped down in a booth and took out her phone.

Would Gallo answer her? He would know from the ID that it was her, and he might choose to ignore it. And, for all she knew, he might be on an airplane. He had driven away from the house hours before she and Catherine left.

Stop wondering and make the call.

She quickly dialed the number.

It rang three times before he picked up.

“I don’t want to talk to you, Eve.”

“Yes you do, or you wouldn’t have picked up the call. You might not want to make explanations or answer accusations, but you do want to talk to me. Even if you don’t, you’ll do it anyway. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to lose Catherine and Joe so that you’ll feel comfortable about this. I’m not going to let you turn away from me.”

“I’ve already done that. I turned away from you a long time ago, when you were only sixteen.”

“But before you did that, I conceived Bo

“The hell you can’t. You don’t have a choice,” he said roughly. “Everything has changed. Look, there’s been nothing but trouble for you since I came back into your life. I never meant that to happen. I did enough damage to you when I was a nineteen-year-old kid who didn’t care about anything but getting you into bed.”

“You tried to protect me then.”

“Not hard enough.”

“I’m not going to argue with you about the past.” She added, “But you’re wrong: I do have a choice. Because I won’t accept it any other way. It has to be you and me, John. Joe and Catherine will try to help, they’ll support and do everything they can. But in the end, it goes back to what we did together when we were those kids back in Atlanta. Everything else that happened had to have rippled out from that time like a rock thrown into a lake.” She hesitated, then said quietly, “And one of those ripples was Ted Da

Silence. “You finished that damn sketch. I thought it would take you longer.”

“Or hoped I’d do a lousy job.”

“No, that wasn’t a possibility. Not you.”

“You told me he was dead.”

“I thought I was telling you the truth. That’s what I was told when I got out of the hospital in Tokyo. I even saw the death certificate signed by the doctor at the VA hospital.”

“He looked pretty healthy to me when he was ru