Iris Johansen - Quinn

But that would be lying, and she hated to lie to Eve. She would just have to play it by ear.

“You’re frowning.” Gallo looked up from cooking fish over the fire. “You don’t like fish? Or you don’t trust me? I promise I won’t poison you.”

“Why should I trust you? For God’s sake, you shot me after I saved your life.” She made an impatient gesture. “Yes, I know that you didn’t regard that as a favor. You said you were trying to get around your ghostly Bonnie’s interference in your doing away with yourself.” She scowled. “Which is some of the most complete crap I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“My, my, how bad-tempered you are.” He tilted his head. “Not that I blame you. It sounds like crap to me, too.” He took the fish from the fire. “I don’t expect you to believe me.”

“It’s ridiculous.” She glared at him. “And you’re not a man who would imagine that kind of nonsense.”

“Hallucinations. Talk to the doctors who examined me after I broke out of that prison in North Korea.”

“That was a long time ago, and you’re not nuts now, dammit.”

“How do you know?”

She didn’t have any idea why she was so certain. Instinct, again? Lately, she had been thinking long and hard while she had been with him. Carefully sorting out the basic emotion and what her judgment told her was true. But, dammit, she had known him for such a short time that she had to rely on her faith in herself. Yet when had she ever relied on anything else? From the moment she had started the hunt, she had tried to predict his every move, every thought. At times, she had felt as if she could read his mind.

And that mind was clear and sharp and entirely sane.

But this bullshit about Bonnie was a complete contradiction of what she knew was true about him.

“You didn’t even know her. You’d never even talked to your daughter. You admitted that yourself.”

“I knew her.”

“How?”

“Would you like any of this fish?”

“No. How?”

He didn’t look at her as he helped himself to the fish. “She came to see me.”

“What? You said that you’d never met her.”

“Not formally. She never told me her name. But after a while, I knew who she was.” He looked up and met her eyes. “You won’t let it alone, will you? Okay. It doesn’t matter. It will probably convince you that I’m as crazy as I say I am.” He poured coffee into a cup and handed it to her. “But that part of Bonnie I didn’t imagine. She was real. She did come to me.”

“What are you talking about? Came where?”

He picked up his coffee and sat down again before the fire. “In that hellhole of a prison. I was being tortured and starved. I was sure I’d either die or go crazy and after months I didn’t care. Then I started to dream of a little girl. She had curly red hair and a smile that could light up the world, much less that stinking hole where I was being held. She was very young when she first came to me, but then she seemed to grow older. She would sing me songs and tell me about going to school. She saved my life and my sanity. She kept me from hanging myself in that cell.” He took a drink of coffee. “She never told me about her mother, but I knew it was Eve. And I knew her name was Bonnie.”

Catherine stared at him, stunned. She hadn’t expected this, and she didn’t know how to deal with it.

His lips twisted as he looked up and saw her expression. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe me. But that was no hallucination. Bonnie was more real to me than the whip or the knife or all the other little toys they used on me. I thought she was a dream in the beginning, but later I knew she was somehow there. How else could I know…” He shook his head. “She was real.”

He believed it, Catherine realized. Nothing could be more certain than his belief that Bonnie had visited him in that prison. She was silent, then shook her head. “How can I believe you? Have I heard of tales like that? Of course. Astral projection and all kinds of weird stuff. But I’ve never encountered it in any plausible form. I think perhaps your mind was distorted by what you were going through.”

“My distortion gave me a name-Bonnie. At that time, I didn’t even know she existed.”

“Then it had to be something else.” She moistened her lips. “Bonnie was alive when you were having those visions. Did you have them after she died?”

He nodded. “Not often. And then I did think they were dreams. Until recently.” He paused. “When Eve told me that she had them, too, and that they weren’t dreams.”

“What?”

“I thought that would shake you. Your friend, Eve, who is definitely sane and not prone to imaginary visits from a spirit. Yet she was the one who told me that she had gone through years telling herself that her visits from Bonnie were hallucinations or dreams.” He lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “Until she realized that it wasn’t true. She wanted to prepare me for the same painful rejection process.”

“She told you that Bonnie-”

“Ask her.” He took another sip of coffee. “Or not. She might not want to discuss it with you. It’s difficult to admit to believing in spirits when the world around you is so pragmatic.” He lifted his cup in a half toast. “Like you, Catherine.”

“I’ve had to be pragmatic. I wouldn’t have lived to get out of my teens if I hadn’t been practical and rejected things that go bump in the night.”

“Bonnie doesn’t go bump in the night. She smiles. She lifts the heart.”

“And won’t let you kill yourself.” She shook her head. “Can’t you see how weird that sounds, dammit? If you killed her, wouldn’t she want you to throw yourself headfirst into a volcano? It’s what any sensible ghost would want.” She lifted her hand and rubbed her forehead. “What am I saying? I’m actually going along with you on this.”

“I thought of that,” he said quietly. “Maybe Bonnie wants it to be Quinn and Eve who end it. They’ve been searching for so long…” He added wearily, “I don’t know. I just want it over. I don’t understand any of it. I don’t know how I could love her so much and still take her life. If I could do that, I don’t deserve to live one more hour, one more minute.”

“If you killed Eve’s daughter, I couldn’t agree more.” She finished her coffee and threw the last drops into the flames. “And I’d be glad to help you along if you could tell me where you buried Bonnie. How can you be so sure that you killed her and not know anything else? Because that slimeball said it was true? I don’t understand why both you and Eve believed him.”

“If you’d been there, you’d understand. Black believed every word he was saying,” he said hoarsely. “I’d swear it.”

She gazed at him in frustration. So much pain. So much bewilderment. She couldn’t imagine the insecurity that the blackouts had given him. How would it feel to come around and not know what violence you’d committed? He had been an Army Ranger and violence had been inherent in the job and the opportunity was always present. In every other way he was such a confident, complete person, and yet this crack was going to widen until it destroyed him.

But both he and Eve believed Black had been telling the truth. As Gallo had said, Catherine hadn’t been there. She could not judge.

But why was it bothering her so much?

Because she didn’t want it to be true? Because even at this moment, she was feeling drawn to him and was looking for an excuse to take off her clothes and go to him and-

She wouldn’t accept that reason. She wasn’t a mindless animal in heat.

Though, God knows, she felt like one right now. Hot and aching and ready. Why couldn’t she have picked someone with no baggage before she let herself fall into this trap? But there had been no picking and choosing. It had been Gallo since that first moment of the hunt. She didn’t know where it was going to take her, but she had to accept that she had to deal with it.