Silencing Eve

But you say it, too, and you’re not crazy. At least not in that way.”
    “I’m glad you qualified that.” He tilted his head. “But since you don’t trust either one of us, I believe that there may be another reason. Now who do you trust who has had access to you?” He studied her for a long moment. “Your Bonnie?”
    She didn’t answer.
    He nodded. “Yes, I think Bonnie must have vouched for me.”
    “Don’t joke.”
    “I know better. Did she say I was her grandfather?”
    “No.”
    “Then what did she say?”
    “She said … if I died, you would feel … loss.”
    “Oh, then she agreed with Doane. Angel and devil both coming to the same conclusion.”
    “Yes.”
    “Did she say anything else?”
    “No, she knew I didn’t want to talk about you.”
    “Why?”
    She looked him in the eye. In this moment, when she didn’t know how many moments were left, she would neither evade nor lie. “It hurt me. I shouldn’t care, but I do. There were times when I was a little girl, that I’d see some other child with their father, and I’d feel … lonely. I wondered why I wasn’t good enough, why I wasn’t wanted. That was before I realized that the fault didn’t lie with me but with the man who had walked away. My mother, Sandra, didn’t really want me either, but she stayed with me, and we made it work.” Her voice was suddenly fierce. “And I would have made it work with you, too, if you’d given me the chance. Family is important. You should have given me a chance.”
    “And you would have fought the world and the devil for my soul?”
    “Don’t laugh. Yes, I would have fought, and I would have won.”
    “I’m not laughing,” he said gently. “And I believe every word you’re saying. You know, I saw you once when you were about ten years old. You were tough and full of passion, and I could tell that either Sandra or life had created a very special person.” He grimaced. “I couldn’t claim to have anything to do with it.”
    Her eyes widened. “You saw me?”
    “Only once. Then I turned my back and walked away.” He smiled. “Like the selfish son of a bitch that I am.”
    “You were selfish.” Her eyes were blazing. “You should have given me my chance.”
    “In my twisted psyche, I believe that I thought I might be doing that. Of course, it might have been ego and self-love raising its head.”
    “You walked away. Why?”
    “By that time, I had risen very high in my present profession, and anyone near me could be a target of revenge from crime figures or foreign governments or any number of other individuals. You wouldn’t have been safe.”
    “Bullshit. We could have worked it out.”
    “You keep saying that, but perhaps I didn’t want to make the effort. Perhaps you would have been an inconvenience.”
    “Is that the way you felt?”
    “Yes.”
    She studied him. “You’re lying.”
    “I don’t know how I felt all those years ago,” he said wearily. “I was softer and not as honest with myself as I am now. Every year, I could feel myself getting harder and harder, and sometimes I thought that soon I’d feel completely numb.”
    “I don’t care about your walking away from that ten-year-old girl. I never knew about it, and I’m not that little girl any longer. I want to know about now. I can see that hardness. Everyone can see the hardness. I want to see something else. You look me in the eye and tell me. Was Bonnie right? Do you feel anything for me? Loss. Would you feel loss?”
    He didn’t speak.
    “You answer me, Zander.”
    “Difficult, Eve.”
    “I don’t give a damn. You look deep and tell me the truth.”
    “I feel…” He stopped and when he spoke again his voice was uneven. “What do want me to say? Let’s see, if Doane blew your brains out, would I feel a sense of loss?” He stared intently into her eyes, holding them. “I would feel such a sense of loss that he had robbed this ugly world of such a unique person that I would kill him in the most painful way possible.”
    She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t look away from him. “Why? After all these years, why would it matter to you whether I lived or died?”
    “God only knows. It could be that all during those years, I never permitted you close. It’s only after Doane made me pay attention to you that I began to feel … something.” His lips twisted. “And how I fought it. It was only the night of the fire at that ghost town in Colorado that I realized that you had