Work it out.
She turned back to the skull. “I don’t have to name you, do I?” she whispered. “You have a name and a history and a father who loves you. How are we going to get along, Kevin?”
No answer, of course.
The skull stared back at her with gaping eyes and bared teeth in its black visage.
He looked fierce, savage, as if he were about to attack her.
She instinctively stiffened.
Ignore it. It was only imagination. Kevin was a man, when she was accustomed to sculpting children. There were so many lost children, and she had a passion for trying to bring them home to give solace to their parents.
But she had done reconstructions of adults before without a reaction like this.
Not when she had been kidnapped and Jane shot to bring her to this point, this work.
Go to work, get it done.
She started to measure the midtherum area beneath the nasal cavity.
* * *
“THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE I’m going to break my word,” Venable told Zander bluntly. “Everything’s gone to hell. My agent, Tad Dukes, can’t be found on the property. The description Ben Hudson gave us matches Doane, and Blick was almost certainly Jane’s shooter. Eve called Joe Quinn, and Doane wants her to do a reconstruction. Unless my team can pull in Doane within the next few hours, I’m going to tell Quinn what he has to contend with.”
“That would be awkward for me.”
“Screw you. I don’t like where this is going. I’m not going to let Eve be sacrificed because of you. I won’t do it for you, and I won’t do it for General Tarther, whom I like as much as I dislike you.” He paused. “You were right. Doane had everything planned out step by step, and he has to think that she can lead him to you.”
“I could avoid him if I chose.”
“And he could kill her.”
“But that’s your problem.”
“No, it’s yours, dammit.” He drew a deep breath. “You’re so sure that you could go after Doane and take him out if you decide to do it. If you can find Doane, you can find her.”
“But if I did, I’d be playing into his hands. I won’t do that, Venable.”
“Why? Would it prove you’re not a complete—”
“Our conversation is finished. You’ve told me what you wanted to say. I really don’t know why you felt obligated to tell me you were going to break your promise. No one keeps their word these days.”
“I do. And if I locate Eve in the next few hours, I’ll still keep it. I owed you and General Tarther a warning in case that doesn’t happen.” He hung up.
And the odds were that they wouldn’t find her, he thought. The satellite GPS trace had come back with nothing. The agents he had searching the house in Goldfork had been stymied, too.
Which meant that he’d have to betray Zander.
And Zander wasn’t a man it was safe to betray.
He went out on the porch and watched as Joe came back down the road from the place where the forensic team was checking the shrubbery for trace evidence and possible DNA. Joe was hanging up his phone as he came even with the cottage. “Jane just arrived in Atlanta. I’m going to meet her at the hospital in Rome.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No, I don’t want to see you again until I hear what I want to hear from you,” he said coldly. “I’m afraid I’ll break your neck before I choke it out of you.”
“Just inquiring. The last I heard, you didn’t want me out of your sight.”
“If you disappear, I’ll find you.”
“I won’t disappear,” Venable said quietly. “Not until after we find Eve. I promise you.”
Joe gazed at him a moment. “Are you weakening, Venable?”
Venable didn’t reply directly. “Maybe. I’m not going to let anything happen to Eve. Since she’s going to do that reconstruction, she has time. We have time, Joe.”
“If I didn’t believe that, you’d be in an even tighter spot than you are now.” Joe got into the car. “I’ll find out who took Eve by Jane’s doing this sketch. But it will take time to identify him by going through data bases. I’m not going to take that time. Once I have a sketch, you’re going to tell me who he is and how to get to him.”
“If I knew how to get the man who took Eve, I would have already done it,” he said wearily. “Bring me the sketch, and we’ll talk.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Yes.” He turned back to go into the house. “It’s all I can offer you right now, dammit.”
* * *
THE TINY METAL JET IN THE sunken socket above Eve’s bed gleamed in the darkness.