Iris Johansen - Eve

“And John’s Jeep might have gone off the road and tumbled down to the valley,” Hanks said as he sat up and scooted quickly away from Joe.

“I was aiming at the right tire. Gallo could have controlled the Jeep if he didn’t lose his head. I didn’t want him dead… yet.” He turned to Catherine. “You said you’d take care of him. Get him out of my sight. My arm’s hurting like hell, and I want to make him hurt, too.”

Catherine gestured with the gun. “Move, Hanks. I need to get you away from here.”

Hanks didn’t move. “Did you kill Brock, Quinn?”

“Brock?” Joe gave him a cold glance. “He’s the other one with you? No, I had to work quickly, and I didn’t want to shoot and give away my position. He’ll be waking up soon.”

Hanks felt a rush of relief. He had had an idea that they had barely tapped the skilled savagery in Quinn, and they’d been lucky. Damn lucky. “Then I want to take him back with me.”

“You’re pushing your luck, Hanks,” Joe said. “Get out of here.”

Eve was standing next to Quinn. “You should be the one getting out of here. I need to take a look at that wound as soon as we get back to the house.”

Joe nodded absently, his gaze still on Hanks. “Don’t let him go anywhere until I can talk to him, Catherine. He might know where Gallo was going.”

“I don’t have any idea,” Hanks said roughly. “Do you think John would tell me? Not likely. Not that I’d tell you if he did.”

“Go,” Catherine said. “You’re being stupid, and I’m through with dealing with stupid, macho men tonight.”

Hanks hesitated, then strode up the path.

“HOW BAD IS IT?” EVE ASKED, as Catherine and Hanks disappeared in the trees.

“I could function,” Joe said. “Probably not too bad.”

But he wasn’t sure, Eve thought, and she’d seen Joe close out pain and focus efficiently many times before. It was part of the discipline and experience of his SEAL training.

And the instinct of the warrior in battle. “Is it still bleeding?”

He impatiently shook his head. “Stop fussing. I need to get back to the house and search it. We may be able to find something there that will lead us to Gallo.”

“I’m not fussing.” She felt a ripple of irritation that overcame the concern and worry she had been feeling. “By all means, let’s go back and search. I want to find Gallo as much as you do.”

He shook his head. “No you don’t.”

“You listen to me, Joe,” Eve said fiercely. “No one wants to talk to Gallo more than I do. I know nothing about Paul Black, and John seems to be the only one who can tell me anything about him. I might have had a chance of persuading him to talk to me, but you put him on the run. Do you think I won’t do anything on earth to find him and make him tell me everything he knows? Bill Hanks isn’t going to be able to help. He as much as told me when I first met him that John didn’t often confide in him. And Hanks preferred not to know.”

“He could have been lying.”

“I don’t believe he was.” She took his elbow and nudged him forward. “You and Catherine are both working and analyzing this as if it were an objective problem. Well, I’m not objective. So you do your thing, and I’ll do mine. But don’t expect me to approve when you go running down a mountain and get yourself shot and then-” She drew a deep breath. “To hell with it. Let’s get back to the house and take care of your arm.”

JACOBS WAS SCARED, NATE Queen realized, as he held the phone a few inches away and listened to the spate of curses and questions. He should have expected it. Thomas Jacobs always fell apart when the going got tough. Queen sometimes wondered why he still kept Jacobs on as a minor partner instead of ridding himself of the coward. But Jacobs had been with him a long time, even at the initial recruitment of Gallo. He knew more than was comfortable for Queen. Besides, he was willing to set up all the little deals with which Queen didn’t want to bother.

“I know all that,” Queen said. “I didn’t handle it well. But are you telling me you would have been able to handle Catherine Ling and Quinn? They were nasty as hell, and there was no way I was going to end up dead.”

“Of course not. But there should have been a way to stop them.”

“It’s done. I only told them what I had to tell them.”

“You said you gave them the map.” Jacobs paused. “What are the chances they’ll get into the compound?”

“I wouldn’t bet against them. They disabled my security system, and it’s fairly sophisticated. They’re both tops in their fields, and they work well together. After they get in, it’s a different proposition. They’ll have to deal with Gallo.”

“But you said Quinn is lethal. That could be a problem. We can’t afford to have Gallo dead before we get our hands on the ledger.”

“I’m sending a team to Utah to move into the compound if we hear Gallo has been killed.”

“It may not even be in the compound. Gallo warned us it would go straight to the Washington Post if you moved against him. It may be in a damn lawyer’s office somewhere. You blundered big-time, Queen.”

The prick. He was getting pissed. “How was I to know that he’d go after Eve Duncan after all these years? He kept talking about Ling. Who the hell could tell what he was thinking? Ling is CIA. Duncan was no threat.”

“Then why did he take her?” Jacobs was silent, thinking. “Was it to frighten her into keeping silent that he was still alive and might be a suspect? Or was it something else? As you say, he’s unstable. Who knows what’s going on in his head?”

“Frighten? Gallo doesn’t bluff. She may be dead by the time Quinn gets to her. Serve the bastard right.”

“And if she is dead, we’ll have to do a cleanup for Gallo. You’d better hope that she’s still alive. So what do we do?”

“We find out what’s going on in the compound. Who’s our man on the payroll there?”

“Lon Davarak. He’s a perimeter guard. It’s as close as we could get to Gallo. Hanks is damn careful of the guards for the house.”

“Then call Davarak and get him to scout around and see if he can find out what the hell is happening.” He was silent again. “Eve Duncan…”

“What are you thinking?”

“He had a kid with Eve Duncan. When he made no attempt to approach her after Korea, we assumed that she was nothing to him, just a good lay. Even the reports on her he demanded could have been just to protect himself.” He paused again. “But we know he’s emotionally disturbed. What if those emotions are focused on Eve Duncan? It could be an Achilles’ heel.”

“I don’t think so. He’s not vulnerable in that way. He’s cold as ice.”

“You have no imagination. We have to accept that Gallo’s temperament can change like a weather vane and take advantage of it.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?”

“Why, if Gallo hasn’t already cut her throat, we might do well to look deeper into the possibility of Eve Duncan.”

JUDY WAS IN THE STUDY, emptying the contents of desk drawers into boxes, when Eve and Joe came into the house.

“What are you doing?” Joe asked.

“What I’ve been told to do.” Judy glanced at his blood-soaked arm. “Got yourself hurt, didn’t you? It wasn’t Hanks’s fault. He was only protecting John.”

“Where are Catherine and Hanks?” Eve asked.

“In the living room. She tried to stop me from packing up, but I told her she’d have to shoot me. I do my job, and Gallo told me he wanted these out of the house before those military guys decided they’d come calling.” She straightened her gaze on Joe’s arm as she added grudgingly, “But I guess I could bandage that up for you first. There’s a first-aid kit in the kitchen cabinet.”