Silencing Eve

become … necessary. It stunned me.” He paused before he added hoarsely, “And it broke me.”
    “Nothing could break you.”
    “No?”
    “And I don’t want you to kill for me, Zander. I only wanted you to care. ” She gestured with frustrated impatience. “Or for you, it could be the same thing. I don’t know why it matters to me anyway. But it does. It does. Maybe there’s a reason that we came together. I don’t want anything here unresolved when I go to Bonnie.”
    “I’ve given you the only answer I can, Eve.” The intensity suddenly left his face. “And don’t be in too much of a hurry to tie up loose ends. I have no intention of letting you go to Bonnie anytime soon.”
    “You’d be more convincing if you weren’t cuffed hand and foot, one arm in a cast, and with no weapons and—” She frowned. “I can’t believe you let Doane catch you.”
    “I appreciate your faith in my prowess, but he counted on the fact that he’d catch me off guard.”
    “And he did it?”
    “What do you think? No man is perfect. Though I do come close.”
    “You’re better than Doane. You ran rings around him in that forest in Colorado.” She paused, gazing at him in despair. And this Zander was the same man she had met in that forest. Even though he appeared helpless, as Doane had claimed, there was an aura of confidence and power that had been there when she was his prisoner. “I could wish that if you were going to get yourself caught, you’d choose a time when there wasn’t so much in the balance.”
    “Your life? No, you’re talking about those nukes that Doane wants to set off to honor his idiot son.”
    “You know about them?”
    He sighed. “I’ve heard nothing but how irresponsible it is that I don’t give my full cooperation and sacrifice personal will to the CIA, Homeland Security, and a zillion other bureaucrats. Catherine Ling is very vocal on the subject.”
    “Catherine? What does she have to do with this?”
    “What doesn’t she have to do with it?” he said dryly. “She barged into my life and announced I had to be kept alive so that I’d be a decent barter for you. She even had the nerve to appoint herself my bodyguard. I had a hell of a time slipping away from her tonight.”
    “I can imagine you would.” But she had trouble with the concept that even Catherine had been bold enough to confront Zander in his lair. It was both bizarre and humorous. “But she’d want more than me in that barter if she knew about those nukes.”
    “Yes, but you were the primary prize.” He inclined his head toward her. “You’re the primary prize for all of us, Eve. Except, perhaps, Venable.”
    “Then Venable is the one who is right,” she said soberly. “And you should have paid attention to what Catherine was saying.”
    “I paid attention. But every one of those organizations would take me down if they could. I have problems working with anyone that I know will turn on me after they get what they want.” He smiled faintly, “And it would happen, Eve. They would make promises, then find it convenient to forget. That’s the world as I know it. It’s the world you know, too.”
    “That doesn’t matter.”
    “Then what does matter?”
    “The children.”
    “Ah, but of course.”
    “And the parents who gave them life. I’m not important at all when you put those on the scale.”
    “I beg to differ. But, then, I’m far more callous than you’d ever dream of being. After decades, I’ve only managed to care about one individual, and you mustn’t expect me to suddenly throw open the gates to anyone else. It’s not going to happen.”
    “I don’t expect anything from you. You bewilder me.” He had said he cared about her but she didn’t know how she felt about him. He was completely out of her experience. Perhaps he was out of everyone’s experience.
    But she wanted to know him, she realized suddenly. He had been an emptiness within her, and she had put that emptiness aside and tried to forget it existed. How long had she lived with that secret bitterness she would not admit even to herself?
    Release it. It would only corrode and hurt her if she held it close. But she had to know one thing more than he had told her.
    “Did you … love my mother?”
    “Sandra?” He slowly shook his head. “Sex. Pure sex. And she cared nothing for me. We met in Florida when we were just teenagers. We were both wild and hungry for life. After high school, I’d gotten a job