Silencing Eve

the time now. You hurl those barbed remarks at him, and they sting. He’s beginning to get reckless.”
    Eve was feeling a little reckless herself. “At least it brought you to me.”
    “Mama…” She shook her head. “Yes, it brought me to you. Now, we’ll sit here and take what’s been given.”
    “And you’ll tell me how you erased Kevin’s reconstruction from my mind. I know he’s right in front of me. Why can’t I see him?”
    “He doesn’t exist right now. I can hold him at bay as long as we’re joined together. I can feel his anger, but he can’t do anything.”
    “You said you were getting stronger fighting him.”
    “I am. Because of you,” she said. “And these hours with you are going to make me even stronger. As I said, Doane may have done us a favor.”
    “And Kevin will be angry with him. What a pity.”
    Bonnie threw back her head and laughed. Her red curls were gleaming, and her face glowed with vitality that seemed to light up the room.
    Eve gazed at her and felt a surge of pure love. Spirit or not, this was her little girl, who had been born with a very special soul. She had been able to reach out and touch, gather, and inspire love in everyone who met her. Eve had been lucky to have been able to keep her for those seven years, and she had given up bitterness long ago.
    “I love you, Bonnie.” She was suddenly afraid. “And don’t let that bastard get too close to you. I like you just fine unsilenced.”
    “Is that a correct word? You always used to correct me if I didn’t use correct English.”
    “That was then, this is now. I don’t care. You know what I mean.”
    “I’ll keep Kevin away. You go after Doane.” She smiled. “Don’t be afraid, can’t you feel the strength flowing between us? It will get stronger and stronger all the time we’re together. It’s like a deep river, and it will keep everything afloat. Can’t you feel it?”
    “No.” Was love strength? If it was, then she knew the river Bonnie was talking about. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll get through it.” She gazed at Bonnie, and the warmth filled the world. “And I’m not afraid any longer.”

 
    CHAPTER
    10
    Stanley, Illinois
    “SHE’S HEADING FOR CHICAGO,” Trevor said as he glanced at the GPS. They picked up Harriet’s signal almost immediately after they had gotten on the road, and had been traveling at a safe distance behind her for the past hours. “Now why would she be heading for the big city…?”
    “A good place to get lost…” Jane said as she accessed the dossier that Catherine Ling had e-mailed to her. “But there’s no indication that she has friends or a connection here. I’m going to check with Catherine and see if there’s something I’m missing.”
    “Good idea,” Caleb said. “Of course, she could be going to the airport. Chicago has connections to everywhere in the world. It would be logical for her to leave Muncie and go to an airline hub. We should have gone back to Muncie Airport and picked up my plane.”
    “But we don’t know that she wants to leave Chicago,” Trevor said. “Maybe there’s something she wants to do there.”
    “The nuke,” Jane said. “You believe she knows where it is?”
    “I don’t believe anything,” Trevor said. “Except that Harriet Weber has displayed a discipline and strength in these last years that makes Doane’s appear weak in comparison. Yet there is a similarity if you look for it. Doane pretended to be a heartbroken but innocent father for the last five years. She was evidently in masquerade mode for far longer and was so good that Venable didn’t even bother to have her watched. But both were controlled by their son, Kevin.”
    “The question is whether Harriet was so influenced by Kevin that she became involved in the hiding of the nuclear devices,” Jane said. “Muncie is fairly close to Chicago, and it would have been convenient for Kevin to have brought his mother into his scheme to destroy that city.”
    “Now that’s true corruption,” Caleb said. “She’d have to know how dangerous mass murder would be for him. Perhaps she tried to talk him out of doing it as she did the child killings.”
    “Or tried to make it safer for him by making sure he wouldn’t be caught,” Jane said grimly.
    Trevor’s brows rose. “You’re leaning toward thinking that she would go that far?”
    “You should have seen her face. She was proud that he’d taught her to defend herself. She liked the idea