Silencing Eve

grave.
    “Trevor?”
    Then he smiled. “Stop worrying. I just realized that I’m not going to be able to have my way with you all the time. I don’t like that bit about taking care sometimes going two ways. I want it all.”
    “Tough.” She slipped her hand into his grasp as she rose to her feet. She wanted to be alone with him, too. She wanted to hold him. She felt heavy and sad and desperately worried that she was making a terrible mistake that could be fatal for Eve.
    And that moment of gravity of Trevor’s had shaken her a little. She’d had the strange feeling that there was something … frightening beneath that flip answer. “But we have an hour for me to show you the error of your thinking.” She didn’t look at either Margaret or Caleb as she and Trevor headed for the door. “Call us if there’s anything we should know, Margaret.”
    “Oh, we will,” Caleb said. “Count on it.”
    10:05 P.M.
    “IT’S ABOUT TIME YOU CALLED ME, Cartland,” Harriet said curtly. “You said it would only take five or six hours to find MacGuire. I’ve been waiting and I—”
    “Be quiet, Harriet,” Cartland said. “I’m not talking to you until you come down to the lobby, and we’re face-to-face.”
    She stiffened. “What do you mean? Are you giving me orders?”
    “I’m trying to keep you from making a fool of yourself,” he said roughly. “But it’s probably too late. Meet me downstairs in the lobby in ten minutes, and we’ll take a walk.”
    “The hell we will. I really would be a fool to go anywhere with you.”
    “Meet me in the lobby,” he repeated.
    “Why are you—”
    But Cartland had hung up.
    Harriet felt a mixture of impatience, anger, and panic as she hung up the phone.
    How dare he call her a fool? Kevin was right to have broken with Cartland.
    She drew a deep breath.
    Think, don’t feel. That’s what she’d always told Kevin.
    Calm down.
    In spite of her precautions, Cartland could be trying to lure her out of the hotel to be taken by his men. They wouldn’t like the idea of a woman’s being in control of the operation.
    Or it could be something else.
    I won’t talk to you until we’re face-to-face.
    She looked down at her phone.
    Had she been the fool Cartland had called her?
    It could be either one.
    She had to know.
    She got to her feet and grabbed her handbag. Leave the detonator in the suite or take it with her? If she left it, Cartland’s men might break in and steal it. She would rather trust herself to protect it. She checked her gun, then put it in her handbag beside the detonator.
    Now she was prepared to face the bastard and any tricks he might be planning.
    She almost hoped Cartland was trying to pull a fast one.
    The alternative was humiliating and unacceptable.

 
    CHAPTER
    15
     
    CARTLAND WAS STANDING a few yards away when the elevator door slid open. His expression was grim.
    “I’m here,” she said coldly. “But I’m not going anywhere with you.” She nodded at the bar across the lobby. “If you want to talk, we’ll talk there.”
    “No. It’s not safe.” He took her arm. “Just walk with me around the lobby. Slowly. It’s not going to take long, then I’m out of here.”
    “Take your hand off me.”
    He dropped his hand. “I’d like to break your neck,” he said through his teeth. “I wouldn’t even be here if I had my way. But I talked to Tehran, and they’re over the moon about the prospect of having the project reinstated. I wouldn’t be forgiven if I had to tell them we’d failed again.”
    She stiffened. “So you’re going to try to take the detonator from me. I won’t let—”
    “No, I’m trying to clear the path for you to make it happen. If it’s still possible. If Jane MacGuire hasn’t blown everything that we’re trying to do.”
    “Jane MacGuire,” Harriet repeated. “What’s she got to—” She inhaled sharply. “Did you find her?”
    “As I told you, no problem. Her phone wasn’t protected, and Samli had her location within four hours.”
    “Good.” Her gaze narrowed on his face. “Then did you have someone—Is that why you didn’t call me sooner? Did you take care of her?”
    “No, it would have taken longer to make a safe kill even if we hadn’t discovered problems.”
    “Problems?”
    “Do you know where Samli first located her?”
    “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
    “She was at a baseball game at Wrigley Field this afternoon.”
    Shock. “No, your Samli made a