Eve pushed him down in a kitchen chair. “You didn’t hear that from me. I’m a Joe Quinn fan.”
“Are you?” He watched her unwind the bloody shirt from around his arm. “That’s nice.”
“Are you being sarcastic?” She examined the wound. “It’s a flesh wound, but it’s not pretty. I’ll clean it up as best I can, but I want a doctor to give you an antibiotic.” She went to the sink, filled a bowl of water, then searched for and found the first-aid kit. “We’ll get out of here as soon as we can and find a hospital.”
“After I take a look at the documents in those boxes,” Joe said. “Though I’m not sure it will do me any good. Gallo’s cook-slash-majordomo was being very careless about throwing everything in those drawers into the to-go stacks. No selectivity. She may have been telling the truth.” His gaze was on Eve’s fingers as she carefully washed the wound. “But money is important to most people. Maybe I can use those records as bait for Gallo.”
She opened the first-aid kit. “No.”
His gaze lifted to her face. “You object?”
“I’m just telling you it wouldn’t work. It would hurt him, but it wouldn’t bring him back.”
His eyes narrowed. “How do you know? Have you become an expert on Gallo in such a short time?”
“He has a purpose. He wouldn’t let himself be distracted.” She put antiseptic on the wound and flinched as he inhaled sharply. “Sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter.” His gaze was on her face. “What purpose, Eve?”
She was silent as she began to wrap the wound.
“Eve.”
“You won’t believe me any more than Catherine did.”
“What purpose?”
“He’s trying to find Bonnie’s killer,” she said quietly.
Joe began to curse beneath his breath. “He gave you that bull, and you-”
“There are two cars coming up the mountain.” Catherine was standing in the doorway. “Hanks got a call on his phone from one of the perimeter guards, and I let him take it. Hanks thinks it may be MI. He said Gallo warned him to expect a call from Army Intelligence if anything disrupted the status quo.” Her lips twisted. “I think we may constitute a disruption. They may not know Gallo has flown the coop, but they must know we’re here and are using it as an excuse to invade the property.”
“Queen.”
Catherine nodded. “That’s my bet. He’s sent out the troops.” She looked at Joe. “So what do we do? Stand our ground and take whatever they want to throw at us? Or take off and avoid the confrontation until we’re on our own turf?”
“How much time do we have?” Joe asked.
“Hanks says ten minutes.” She paused. “He said Gallo told him it wouldn’t be pretty. There would be interrogations. He gave him orders to take off and have everyone at the compound spread to the four winds.”
Joe thought about it. “Where is Hanks now?”
“Living room. I left him tied up.” She paused. “I talked to him, Joe. I believe him when he said he wasn’t trying to kill you. He was just trying to do his job and protect Gallo.”
“He may know where Gallo is.”
She shook her head. “He might, but I don’t think so.”
Joe glanced at Eve. “Do you know where he is?”
Her eyes widened. “No, I do not .”
He shrugged. “It was a possibility.” He pushed back the chair. “Let Hanks go. Tell him to get the hell out of here and take Judy and anyone else in the house with him. We’ll take that passage back down the mountain and circle down to where we parked the car.” He stood up. “You get Eve down the mountain, Catherine. I’m going to go take a quick look at those records in the library, and I’ll follow.”
“Right.” Catherine turned on her heel and hurried out of the kitchen.
Eve hesitated. She didn’t want to leave him. Joe was on edge and still in battle mode. There had already been one violent encounter tonight, and she wanted him away and safe.
“Get going, Eve.” Joe didn’t look at her as he strode out of the kitchen. Anger, frustration, and tension were in every line of his body. And who could blame him?
And she could do nothing about it now but trust that he’d control the impulse to let loose an emotional flood.
She turned and moved out of the kitchen in search of Catherine.
CHAPTER 14
“THE PLACE IS DESERTED, COLONEL Queen,” Lieutenant Sagalin said. “The house was lit up like a Christmas tree. Hot coffee in the kitchen, the office looked like a tornado had hit it. But no one is around.”
“No sign of Gallo? Or Eve Duncan?”
“A woman’s jeans and shirt in the bathroom of one of the upper bedrooms. Gallo’s clothes were in his bedroom. Our informant said that Gallo took off before Catherine Ling and Joe Quinn got here.”
Queen’s hand tightened on the phone. What the hell? He hadn’t expected Gallo to go on the run. If anything, he’d expected his men to find Quinn’s and Ling’s bodies, along with Eve Duncan’s in the house. Why had Gallo run?
Paul Black? Black had had time to get there from San Francisco. Queen knew how terrifying he could be. Yes, that might be it. Perhaps Gallo wasn’t as invulnerable as Queen had thought. He felt a rush of relief. Black had made his choice, and that choice wasn’t Queen.
And if Gallo had gone on the run, there was no chance that he would have left the ledger at the house. He would have taken it with him. He could only hope that Black was on Gallo’s trail.
“What do we do now?”
It was probably too late to do more than cover all the bases. “Go to the library and take every file you find and load the computers in your vans and bring them back here.”
“Anything else?”
Queen had a sudden memory of Gallo sitting in that luxurious library, taunting him. He’d acted like some kind of snooty English lord of the manor instead of the vicious, murdering bastard Queen knew him to be. And Queen had been forced to listen and choke on his fury.
But the situation had changed, and that meant the rules had changed. Screw Gallo.
“Burn the damn house down to the ground.”
JOE, EVE, AND CATHERINE HAD reached their car and were on their way down the mountain when Catherine looked up at the rearview mirror. “My God.”
Eve glanced at the mirror, then quickly over her shoulder. Gallo’s beautiful mountain house was burning, the flames licking the surrounding trees and leaping for the sky. “Why?” she whispered. “It was such a lovely house.”
“Frustration,” Joe said. “Revenge. It was evident that Queen hates Gallo.”
Yet it seemed strange to Eve that Gallo, who had been the clear victim of Army Intelligence, would be so hated. “They wanted to hurt him. I wonder what they would have done if they’d found Hanks or Judy in that house.”
“Queen isn’t stupid. He’d be careful of any move that might draw attention.”
Eve shook her head. “And that fire doesn’t draw attention?”
“They’d find a way to do it so that it looked like an accident,” Catherine said. “It’s not difficult.”
And Catherine would be adept in those methods of destruction, Eve knew.
“You’re upset.” Joe’s gaze was on her face. “It’s just a house, Eve.”
“No, it was a home. I think it meant something to John. He told me he’d had it for ten years. How would you feel if someone burned down the lake cottage?”
“Mad as hell.”
“And I’d be sad.”
“And you think Gallo would feel as you do. You’re identifying with him.”
She shrugged. “I think it would mean something to him. I think he’s been hurt enough.”
“You’ll forgive me if I’m a little lacking in sympathy. I went through hell imagining everything he could be doing to you. I can’t identify with him at all.”