She slammed the door behind her and leaned against it.
Damn, she felt helpless.
Get over it.
So she was at a disadvantage. It was to be expected if what Doane had told her was true about the time he’d spent studying her.
She made a face. And there was the small item that she was his prisoner, and he might be nuts. He was most certainly violent if he’d attacked Ben.
Yet he didn’t seem crazy, and he’d been almost gentle in his dealings with her personally.
Because he wanted something from her.
She had a sudden memory of the blackened skull that had been staring at her when she woke.
She was shivering, she realized.
Why? Because that skull could be that of the son of this man who had been responsible for Jane’s shooting?
Stop analyzing. She didn’t want to think of that skull right now.
She drew a deep breath and turned on the lights. No furniture in the bedroom but a rollaway bed that was folded up and pushed against the wall. She went to the bathroom and found it to be equally small, with a single vanity and an enclosed glass shower a few feet away. Pristine white tiles on the floor and inside the shower. No window, as Doane had told her.
But there was a small duffel resting on the closed lid of the toilet.
She slowly unfastened the case and opened the lid.
Underwear, pants, tunic tops. A plastic bag with shampoos, soaps and other personal items.
A chill went through her. And every brand was the same as she used every day at the cottage. For the first time, the claim that Doane had made about those years of long surveillance actually hit home.
She felt … violated.
She zipped the duffel shut and turned and leaned against the vanity. This privacy invasion was such a small thing in the scheme of what Doane had done to her.
No, it wasn’t. The very intimacy of the act loomed large indeed. It made her want to break something, anything. That’s right, do something stupid just to relieve her feelings. Put things in perspective and be a grown-up. It was the only way to—
She had caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror over the sink.
Her face was pale and dirty, her hair tangled. Her clothes were rumpled and mud-stained. She looked like a victim, dammit.
She was not a victim.
All right, pull yourself together and show that bastard he had not done anything to you that couldn’t be overcome, she thought. Use what he gave you and make it your own.
She locked the door and turned on the shower.
* * *
“I’M AFRAID THESE DINNERS ARE cold. You took longer than I thought,” Doane said, when Eve came out of the room forty minutes later. “I wasn’t expecting you to take a shower.”
“No, you probably thought I’d hurry back out and let you make me jump through hoops.” She strode toward the chrome table in front of the kitchenette. “I won’t jump through hoops for you, Doane.” She sat down at the table and gazed at the pot pie on the plate. “You’re right, unappetizing.” She began to eat. “It doesn’t matter. I’m hungry.”
“And you don’t want to become weak,” Doane said quietly as he sat down across from her. “Now I did expect that from you. You’re a strong woman, mentally and physically. You’d have a horror of losing that strength. I just didn’t expect you to bounce back so quickly.”
“Why am I this hungry? How long was I unconscious?”
“It’s been almost twenty-four hours.” He took a bite of his pot pie. “We had a long way to go.”
“And where am I?”
He shook his head.
She hadn’t expected an answer. “I’ll get away from you, Doane. Don’t think you’re going to get away with this.”
“I will, you know.” He smiled. “Things don’t go wrong when you plan as precisely as I do.”
“Evidently, you didn’t plan on Blick’s shooting Jane. That went very wrong, Doane.” She added fiercely, “And you’ll suffer for it, you son of a bitch.”
“I’ll just have to make adjustments.” His smile faded. “And I do regret causing you this upset.”
“Upset? Massive understatement. What adjustment can you make that would make me less upset?”
“I’ve been thinking about that while I waited for you.” He frowned. “You won’t be able to be reasonable until you know that Jane MacGuire and Ben Hudson are not permanently injured. I obviously need you to be put at ease on that score.”
She tensed. “So what are you going to do?”
“It’s difficult. You wouldn’t really believe any hospital or law-enforcement unit, would you? You’d think I managed to rig it.”
“Since you’re so clever about your planning,” she said sarcastically.