Silencing Eve

that Doane was still alive and here, so that she could personally send him straight to hell.
    But Venable had cheated her out of that pleasure, too, by not bringing her into the picture when Eve needed her most.
    Damn him.
    She grabbed her bag as it went around the carousel and headed for the door.
    *   *   *
    GOD, LING WAS GORGEOUS, Bradford thought as he pulled his car close to the curb where Catherine Ling was waiting impatiently. She was sleek and sexy, with shoulder-length dark hair and eyes tilted slightly, increasing the exotic magnetism she radiated. He knew she was the illegitimate daughter of an American soldier and a Korean whore who was half-Russian. She’d been born in Saigon but had grown up on the streets of Hong Kong. He’d heard stories about her from other agents, but he’d never met her. The stories had been interesting but very, very lethal. She was sharp and independent and likely to run her own show when she was on a mission. Something Venable definitely didn’t like but evidently tolerated because she got the job done. She’d been CIA since Venable had picked her up in Hong Kong when she was only fourteen. What was she now? Late twenties?
    “Got everything?” He leaned over and opened the passenger door for her. “I’ll have you at Quinn’s lake cottage in thirty minutes. I just called Venable, and he said the service had just ended.”
    “Dammit, I missed it? I’m surprised you got through to him,” she said sarcastically. “How nice. He’s not been answering my calls.”
    Oops. “I’m sure that’s just a technical error. He was very concerned about you.” He hurriedly handed her his computer. “I’ve pulled up the files on Doane and the catastrophe at the ghost town. Venable was sure you’d want to look them over.”
    “I would have liked to look them over before the son of a bitch blew her up.” She gazed blindly down at the computer. “You’ve read it. Fill me in.”
    “Eve Duncan was kidnapped from her lake cottage home in north Atlanta several days ago. Because she’s one of the foremost forensic sculptors in the world, it was assumed at the time that the kidnapper might be one of the nuts or serial killers she’d targeted by her work.”
    “But if Venable is involved, then that’s not why she was killed,” Catherine said grimly. “I’m surprised Eve let him pull her into a CIA mission.”
    “She didn’t. James Doane had been in a safe house in Goldfork, Colorado, and slipped away from the agent guarding him. When Venable realized he was gone, he thought there might be a possibility of his heading toward Eve Duncan, but he couldn’t be sure that—”
    “Why? Why would he go after Eve?”
    “That’s not in the report. You’ll have to ask Venable.”
    “You can bet I will. Venable fouled up and didn’t protect Eve. Is that the truth?”
    “I’m sure there is an explanation. As I said, he wasn’t sure Eve Duncan would be a target.”
    She drew a deep breath. “Let’s go down another path. Why was Jim Doane in that safe house? Was he a foreign agent? A witness?”
    He shook his head. “He was the father of Kevin Relling, who was assassinated five years ago. His son was in Special Forces in the Army and turned very dirty. He was working with al-Qaeda in Pakistan and blocking the hunt for Bin Laden. He also indulged his penchant for raping and killing little girls in whatever city he found himself. He killed the five-year-old daughter of General Tarther in Marseilles because the general was trying to zero in on the al-Qaeda group.”
    “Very dirty. Scum.”
    “The general went crazy and eventually hired a hit man, Lee Zander, to find and go after Doane’s son. Zander killed him and hired a funeral director to cremate the remains. Doane arrived too late to grab anything but his son’s skull from the furnace.”
    “Okay, then that would be a reason for his kidnapping Eve. Doane wanted Eve to do a reconstruction on the son’s skull. Right?”
    “I understand that she was doing just that while she was his captive.”
    “Then why would the crazy bastard kill her? She was smart. If that job was the ransom he wanted, she wouldn’t risk her life by refusing to do a reconstruction.”
    “You’ll have to ask Venable,” he said again. “All I know is that Doane took her to a ghost town in the Rio Grande Forest in Colorado. We traced him to an abandoned saloon there. When our units, Quinn, and Jane MacGuire were closing in on him, he set