Iris Johansen - Quinn

“Swimming. Tennis. Golf. I don’t like golf. It’s too slow,” he said quickly. “You’re going to tell me that golf is like Midsummer’s Night Dream. I might learn something.”

“You might. There are a lot of golf pros out there who don’t think it’s slow.”

He was silent. “Why did you call me in the middle of the night? Are you in trouble?”

“No.” She paused. “Can’t I call you without being in trouble?”

“Maybe I said it wrong.” He didn’t speak again, and she could almost hear the cogs turning. “I meant you think that I might worry about you being in trouble.”

“And would you worry, Luke?”

“You’re very strong and smart. It wouldn’t be reasonable for me to worry. Everyone says that you’re very good at what you do.”

“I didn’t ask if it was reasonable. I asked if you’d worry.”

He was silent, then said slowly, “I’d worry.”

She felt a warm rush of love and joy. Every admission from him of a growing affection between them was a triumph. When she had rescued him, she’d had to start at the beginning in earning his love. After his emotional deprivation, she could not push him, but slowly he was learning that there was a bond between them.

“I don’t mean to insult you,” Luke said. “But I’d be willing to come and help you if you need me. I’ve been taught very well.”

Taught the skills of weapons and guerrilla fighting, taught violence and cruelty, taught to bear pain without flinching. All the things a child should never have to face. Lessons that Rakovac had known would torture Catherine when he told her about them. And it had been torture, it had nearly broken her heart. “I know you have. But I’d like you to forget that now.”

“But how can I do that?” he asked in wonder.

She had responded instinctively. She wanted to block out all that ugliness, but she knew she had to deal with her own horror and accept what Luke had become through those experiences. “That was stupid of me. Of course, you can’t forget it. And thank you for the offer. If I find I need you, I’ll be sure to call.” She added lightly, “But I’d rather think of you having a good time with Sam. You like him?”

“I think so,” he said cautiously. “He knows a lot.” Another silence. “He smiles quite a bit. But I don’t think he’s laughing at me.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t dare. Maybe he’s just enjoying his job. He always wanted to go back to teaching.”

“I guess that could be why.”

“Did I tell you that Kelly was coming to visit you this week?”

“No, but she called me,” he said shortly. “She told me to get ahead in my studies so that we could have some time together. She’s very bossy.”

“But you like her.” It was true that fourteen-year-old Kelly Winters could be very domineering with Luke and had been from the start of their relationship. But he seemed to accept it from her as he would not have taken it from an adult. They struck sparks from each other, but it didn’t stop them from getting along. Kelly was as mature and scarred in her own way as Luke. She had come into Catherine’s life because Catherine had been sent to rescue her and her father when they’d been prisoners in the camp of a drug lord in Colombia. Kelly had survived, but her father had been killed before her eyes. She was a genius on the scale of a young Einstein, and that had led her down another rocky path. Perhaps that was why she and Luke understood each other. “I hoped to have her with us before this, but she has to attend that think tank at that college in Virginia.”

“I didn’t miss her. Well, maybe a little. She’s kind of… interesting.”

“I’m sure she’d appreciate it if you’d tell her.”

“No, she wouldn’t. She doesn’t need me to tell her stuff.” He paused. “She won’t like it that you aren’t here. She likes you better than anyone. She told me you saved her life.”

“We’re friends. But she likes you, too. So enjoy yourselves and don’t argue too much. Okay?”

“Okay.” He added haltingly, “You know, I think I’d like it better if you were here, too.” Then he added quickly, “But I’m not like Kelly. I don’t need- You go do what you have to do.”

He would never say he missed her, but this was so close it brought tears to her eyes. “I want to be there with you, too. You know I wouldn’t have left you right now if it hadn’t been to help Eve. I can’t ever repay her for helping me find you, but maybe this is a start. Do you understand?”

“I think I do. It’s like the honor thing in all those Knights of the Round Table books. Sometimes it’s hard to connect the ideas in books with real life.”

And books were all Luke had had to go by in that barren world Rakovac had made for him. “Yeah, it’s like the honor thing. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She cleared her throat. “In the meantime get back to Midsummer Night’s Dream. And talk to Kelly about it. Maybe she’ll have an opinion that will make you see something worthwhile in it.”

“Nah, she’ll only tell me to look for the patterns in the story. That’s all she thinks about.”

Catherine chuckled. “Probably. Good night, Luke.”

“Good night, Catherine.” He hung up.

He never called her “Mother,” and she would never insist on that intimacy. Perhaps it would never happen. It was enough that he looked upon her as a friend. They were just learning each other, taking small, halting steps.

But this step tonight had been bigger and might lead her closer to him. Lord, she hoped that it would. Sometimes she ached with the need to tell him how much she loved him, how desperately she had loved him all through the years they’d been separated.

Play it cool. Don’t blow it. Let him come to you.

She shoved her phone in her jacket pocket and started the car.

But for now put him out of your thoughts and go do your job. One of the big reasons she had her Luke back was the risk Eve and Joe had taken to rescue him. Now, as she’d told Luke, it was payback time and Catherine had an agenda.

Give Eve what she wanted most in the world.

Keep Joe from injuring himself more by trying to get out of that hospital bed and going after Bonnie’s killer.

Find Bonnie’s body and the man who killed her.

Where are you, John Gallo?

CATHERINE HEADED NORTH TOWARD the vast woodland acreage Gallo owned about seventy miles north of Milwaukee. It wasn’t an easy area to search: thick woods and shrubbery, hills to the north that plunged to a huge lake hundreds of feet below. She had told Eve she believed in instinct, and she would go with it until proved mistaken. Gallo knew those woods, they were familiar, almost home to him. He even had a cabin on the property.

Not that he would be at the cabin. With the sheriff and his deputies crawling all over the property, it would be stupid for him to stay anywhere but in the wild. Gallo wasn’t stupid. She had only met him face-to-face once, when they’d been on the hunt for Paul Black. It had been a fleeting encounter and barbed with antagonism on her part, but she’d become accustomed to making quick judgments. It had often been necessary to save her neck. She had grown up on the streets of Hong Kong, and that ability had developed in those first years of childhood. Her first impression of John Gallo was of sharp, lethal capability.

Definitely not stupid.

But she had to know more than that about him, dredge her memory of every single inkling she’d had of Gallo in that moment. Not only in that moment, but what she knew of him in general from Eve and her own research. She would take time as soon as she reached the property to go over everything that she knew and felt about John Gallo.