“I’ll be glad to call Agent Ling and give her the information on this report for you,” Harley offered.
“I bet you would,” Venable murmured. “But I think I’d better handle this myself. You can’t expect a straightforward response from Catherine on this particular matter.”
“It seems pretty cut-and-dried to me.”
“Does it?” He was tempted to let Harley contact Catherine and have her interrogate him. If he thought she would become his new best friend, he was going to be sadly disappointed. She was going to want every detail so that she could mull the pros and cons, and she would be firing questions like a machine gun. It wasn’t often that Catherine formed a friendship with anyone, but she genuinely liked Eve Duncan, and she wanted every detail to be absolutely correct. “No, I’ll talk to her.”
Harley looked disappointed, but he shrugged and left the office.
All right, Catherine. Venable took out his phone. Here’s your ammunition to blow Eve out of the water. You may mean well, but it could go either way. I hope to hell both you and Eve manage to survive it.
* * *
THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH EVE.
Joe Quinn had glanced casually up to the porch from where he was standing at the barbecue grill near the lake. Eve had been sitting on the porch swing, but was now standing beside Catherine Ling, and Joe could tell that every muscle of her body was taut with tension.
What the hell?
Maybe he was mistaken. The sun was going down, and it was almost dark. Perhaps those nuances of unrest he thought he was seeing weren’t really there. Catherine Ling had become a good friend to Eve, and there was no way that she would deliberately upset her.
Dammit, he wasn’t mistaken.
He had lived with Eve so long that he knew every mood, every flex of her body as if it were his own. Whatever Catherine was saying to Eve, it was disturbing her. He’d better go up to the porch and—
His cell phone rang, and he glanced at the ID.
Venable. CIA.
Joe was tempted to let it go to voice mail and call back later. No, Catherine Ling was also CIA. Joe had an idea it might be a good idea to take the call before he barged up those stairs in protective mode.
“What do you want, Venable?” he asked as he pressed the button.
“Is Catherine Ling there? She’s not answering her phone.”
“She’s here. She’s been here all afternoon. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you. The jobs you send Catherine on aren’t always pleasant. It could be that she wants a vacation.”
“Catherine?” He added testily, “I told her to take a vacation after Russia, but she dove right into this inquiry and pulled me in with her.”
“What investigation?”
“Just an inquiry. Tell Catherine I need her to call me. I have the final report.”
“Venable, what’s this all about?”
“Ask Catherine. I’m supposed to be discreet. You’d think that she was my superior.” He hung up.
Joe gazed up at the porch. It was fully dark, and they hadn’t turned on the porch light. He could barely discern the two women standing by the rail. But what he couldn’t see, he could feel. His instincts toward Eve had been honed to sharpness, and he could sense the emotional disturbance that was swirling about her.
Ask Catherine.
There was no doubt that he’d ask Catherine. He didn’t like any of this. He felt closed out.
He started toward the porch, then stopped.
What could he do? His instinct was to join them, become part of whatever was going on between them. But Eve wouldn’t appreciate his interfering. She was an independent woman. It wasn’t as if Catherine was a threat. She was Eve’s friend.
But even a friend could become a threat if circumstances warranted.
Not Catherine. He trusted Catherine.
He slowly turned and went back to the barbecue pit.
Keep cool. Eve would tell him what was going on eventually.
Ignore that uneasiness.
Until he couldn’t stand it any longer.
* * *
EVE ASKED CATHERINE, “BUT why not leave in the morning?”
“… I don’t want to inconvenience you any more than I have to. You’ve done enough for me, Eve.” Catherine’s gaze was on Joe standing below them at the barbecue pit. “We’ve done nothing but talk about my problems. Let’s talk about you and Joe. Is everything all right between you?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I just thought I caught some vibes from him today.” Her gaze was still on Joe. “You’re very lucky, you know. He’s pretty fantastic.”
“Yes, he is.” Eve added, “And I know you think he’s special. You’ve told me.”
“Yes, I’ve always been honest with you.” She paused. “I always will be.” She turned to face her. “I’m no threat to you, Eve.”
“You could be if you wanted to be. You’re an incredibly magnetic woman, Catherine.” She gazed steadily at her. “But in the end, the threat would come only from Joe. He’s the only one who can hurt me.”
“I’d never hurt you.” Catherine’s voice was passionate. “I’ve never had a friend like you before. At first, I was only concerned about what you could do for me, but that changed. You changed my life. I felt … close to you.”
“And I feel close to you.” Eve smiled. “So stop agonizing about it, Catherine.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Eve’s smile faded. “Are we still talking about Joe?”
“No. Yes. I guess in a way we are.”
“Speak up. It’s not like you to be inarticulate.”
Catherine turned back to look down at Joe. “Did you finish the reconstruction on Cindy?”
Cindy was the reconstruction that Eve had been working on weeks ago before she had gone to Russia at Catherine’s request. It had been very difficult, and Catherine had been a great help. “Of course, she was done a week after I came home from Russia. It wasn’t that difficult.” She smiled. “Not after I had a little help from my friends during the initial prep work.”
“Was she a pretty little girl?”
“Yes.”
“Like your Bonnie?”
A tiny disturbance rippled through Eve. She didn’t look at all like Bonnie. “Why are you talking about Bonnie, Catherine?”
“Because I think Joe is jealous of your obsession with Bonnie. Not of your daughter. Just of your feelings for her. He’d have to be a saint not to feel a little put in the shade by the way you feel. Isn’t that true?”
She didn’t speak for a moment. “Yes. But friend or not, I don’t want to discuss this with you, Catherine.”
“I have to discuss it with you. Do you think I want to do it? I was even thinking of walking away and forgetting about it. But I can’t do that, Eve.”
Eve frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You and Joe have a giant problem, and I don’t want to make it any bigger.”
“How could you do that?”
“Easily.” Her lips twisted. “I’m good at what I do. I’m an expert. I just set my mind to it and cause the sky to fall.”
Eve slowly rose from the swing and went to stand beside Catherine. “Talk to me.”
Catherine looked away from her again. “I told you I’d pay you back, remember? I was so grateful I wanted to give you what you wanted most in the world.”
Eve gazed at her with exasperation. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t convince Catherine to accept what Eve had done as a gesture of friendship and let it go. Catherine had come to her to ask her to do an age progression on her son Luke, who had been kidnapped when he was two and had been missing for nine years. Eve had been inevitably drawn into the search for Luke that had culminated in a deadly race to save him from his kidnapper in Russia. “And I told you to forget it.”
“That’s not in my makeup.” She was silent for a minute. “What you want most in the world is to bring your Bonnie home. To do that you have to find her killer. When I came home from Hong Kong, I had lots of time to concentrate on thinking about your problem. I tried to look at the crime from an objective and fresh point of view. Then I started to dig. I used every contact and information-gathering unit I had at my disposal and at Venable’s disposal. We even tapped the NSA.”