Venable shook his head. “The neighbors and a couple deputies are searching the woods now.”
“No one saw the thief?”
“I would have told you if they had.”
“Would you?” Joe asked bitterly as he started to dial the precinct. “I’m not sure that—” His phone signaled an incoming call. He glanced impatiently down at the ID.
Unknown.
He punched the access. “Quinn.”
“Joe.”
“Eve.” He froze. “My God.”
“Yes, listen, Joe, he’s only giving me a minute.” Eve was talking softly, urgently. “And I’m having to pay for that.”
“Where are you?”
“I can’t talk about that now. Jane. He says Jane is still alive? Is it true?”
“Yes, she’s at a hospital in San Juan. The wound wasn’t serious. How are you? Did he hurt you?”
“No. Drugs. He appears to be good at drugs. Ben? He said he dropped Ben at an urgent-care clinic. How is he?”
“Concussion. He’s as good as can be expected considering that he also suffered from exposure because the clinic didn’t find him for several hours.”
“But he’ll live?”
“He’ll live. What can you tell me about that bastard? Is he going to—Tell him if he hurts you, I’ll kill him … slowly.”
“He can hear you. I’m not in immediate danger, Joe. He wants something from me.”
“What?”
“The usual. What most people want from me. He’s trying to convince me that he has a heart of gold. I’m not buying it. But he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I can’t talk about that right now. If you want to keep me safe, make sure that there’s no way anyone can touch Jane. Because my cozy little deal with the bastard is off if they do. I’d kill him myself.”
“No, you won’t. My privilege. I’ll hunt him down and castrate him before I cut him into small pieces. Do you hear me, you son of a bitch?”
“He hears you. And he’s not pleased,” Eve said quickly. “I have to go now.”
“Listen, Eve. Don’t let him use us to make you do anything. I’ll take care of Jane and myself. You do what you have to do to get away from him.”
“And he didn’t like that either. My time is up. I love you.”
“And I love—” But she had already hung up. He pressed the disconnect and turned to Venable. “Call up one of your whiz-kid satellite units and see if you can trace that call.”
“I’m already on it,” Venable said. “I started when you picked up the call. I’ve just gotten through to the department. I don’t know if we can do it. She didn’t give us much time.”
“She didn’t have any choice,” Joe said. “Try, dammit.” He turned and started back toward the car.
She was alive.
Relief was zinging through him with a force that was making him dizzy. Why? He had been certain she was alive. He would have somehow known, felt it, if she had been taken from him. But what if fate had played one of her macabre tricks? Life wasn’t always kind, and all he knew was that he had wanted to fall to his knees when he heard her voice.
Now the certainty was confirmed, and all he had to do was find her.
He felt a sudden explosion of hope and ferocity.
And he would find her. He would pull out all the stops, bring in all the help he needed, tap every source.
Nothing would keep her from him.
He started dialing headquarters again to set up that APB on the truck.
* * *
“QUINN’S ANGRY WITH ME,” Doane said. “That threat was both crude and violent.”
“And heartfelt,” Eve said. “Joe always keeps his word.”
“So do I. You were hoping to disarm any threat to Jane MacGuire by having Quinn set up extra protection around her. That would free you from the obligation of doing Kevin’s reconstruction.”
“It would help to push away that gun you have pressed to my head.”
He smiled. “But I’ve no gun aimed at you, Eve. I’ve handled you in the gentlest way possible. Anything else would be totally unreasonable. I want you to be free to express yourself without coercion.”
She shook her head. “You actually sound as if you believed that lie.”
“No lie.” He stepped forward with the blindfold he’d taken off her when he’d stopped the truck and given the telephone to her. “It’s important that you and Kevin become one with each other. I’ve heard that’s how you turn out such wonderful sculptures.”
“I’m not going to become one with your son. The idea appalls me.”
“But how will you help yourself?” he asked quietly. “It’s part of your particular magic.”
“Not magic. I’m a professional.” Yet she felt a frisson of unease. She couldn’t deny in the last stages of a reconstruction that she felt as if the soul of the skull on which she was working was whispering, helping her bring that vision to life again. “And I’ll behave as a professional.”
“We’ll see. Give me that phone.”
She reluctantly handed it back to him.
“Time to bid good-bye to this one.” He dropped the phone on the ground, stomped on it with his boot, then ground it into the earth. “That should take care of any signal. I hear those things are real spy machines. I’m not real good with all those fancy gadgets. I don’t like all that technology. I don’t think that Kevin would like it either. Things have changed a lot in the world since I lost him.” His expression was suddenly full of pain. “He made life exciting and right. They shouldn’t have taken him.”
“Who?”
He ignored the question. “Time to put the blindfold back on you.”
She took a quick last look at her surroundings. She hadn’t been able to give Joe a hint other than that vague reference to Doane’s heart of gold, which Joe probably had not caught, but there might be another time. Waterfall cascading to the rocks below. Mountains in the distance. An observation area enclosed in gray rails across the chasm.
Then everything went dark as he replaced the blindfold.
“There we are.” He lifted her back in the truck. “Now we go back and start the reconstruction.” The next moment, she heard the truck engine ignite. “Kevin is waiting for you.”
San Juan, Puerto Rico
“GO AWAY, TREVOR,” JANE SAID. “I don’t need you. We tried a few times to make it work, and it never did. Now you pop up and ignore everything that’s gone before?”
“Now that would make me a fool. I’ve always made a practice of building on the past.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “And we have quite a past to build on. Sometimes I’d lie in bed and think about it. Did you?”
“No.” He was looking at her, and she changed the answer. She had always been honest with him, and she wouldn’t change now. “Yes. So we were fantastic in bed together. In the end, it didn’t matter. Sex isn’t why we couldn’t make it together. It was more complicated than that.”
“You were more complicated. I’m just a simple man with all the usual instincts.”
“The hell you are.”
He smiled. “You’re right, I have my own complexities, but I fought to keep them in check when you came into my life. I wanted you enough to do anything to get you. For the first time, I thought that I’d found a woman I wanted to spend my life with. For a while I thought that I’d managed to pull it off.” He stroked her cheek. “Oh, how good we were together. Remember?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t help but remember. Whenever he touched her, spoke to her, it brought back a thousand memories that were both fiery and seductive. He had always held that power over her emotions. Even when she’d been angry with him, she’d known they were only a shade away from passion. “But we agreed to disagree. I haven’t seen you for a long time. I don’t even know why you’re here. How did you know I was hurt?”
“I’d heard you left London with one Seth Caleb.” His smile faded. “That stirred me to action. I didn’t like it.”