Chasing the Night by Iris Johansen Read Free Book Online Page B

would do the same. There was always hope, and you could bear the torture as long as the faintest chance existed that it would bring a child home. “Why didn’t you tell me this when you first asked me to do the age progression?”
    “I didn’t want you to do it,” he said bluntly. “I was only paying lip service to a bargain I made with Catherine. The current files on Rakovac are top secret, and we made sure they were kept away from Catherine. They contain surveillance as well as contacts that she had no knowledge about from her previous assignment in Moscow. She wanted those files.” He paused. “And she wanted your help. To get them, she risked her neck going after Ned Winters and his daughter, who were being held hostage in Colombia. You may have heard of them. They’ve been all over the TV.”
    “Who hasn’t? The father was murdered, you saved the girl.”
    “Catherine saved the girl.”
    “And you gave her the file?”
    “I kept my word. The director was more concerned with getting the Winters father and daughter free. The Rakovac connection has been disintegrating lately.” He paused. “He’s becoming unstable.”
    “And where does that leave that poor kid?”
    “I gave Catherine the file. I can’t do anything else at the moment. We haven’t entirely distanced ourselves from Rakovac yet. Although we know that he’s left his penthouse apartment in Moscow and gone undercover. It would be better if Catherine stayed out of it until we see fit to make a final break.”
    “Better for you. Not better for Luke or Catherine. I can’t blame her for being frantic to move now.”
    “Neither can I. But I can’t help her to do it. I have to act for the good of the big picture.”
    “Screw the big picture.”
    He was silent a moment. “You’re going to help her?”
    “I haven’t made up my mind. Though for heaven’s sake someone should be helping her.”
    “That was aimed at me,” he said. “If you decide to help her, limit it, Eve. Rakovac is an ugly customer, and he won’t take kindly to you getting in his way.”
    Getting in the way of the viciousness of a man who would kidnap a two-year-old and keep him prisoner for nine years? “She only wants me to do an age progression. She doesn’t trust your people.”
    “Imagine that,” he said wearily. “Not that I blame her. But she’s a desperate woman, and she’ll take whatever from you she has to take to find her son. Watch yourself, Eve.” He hung up.
    She slowly pressed the disconnect button and stood gazing out at the sunlight glittering on the lake.
    If she’d hoped to find a reason to throw Catherine out of the cottage, Venable had not given it to her. He’d only shown her a woman surrounded by an ideology where almost everything and everyone was expendable. She had told Eve the truth, and every action she had taken was perfectly reasonable. Eve would have done the same thing in Catherine’s place. Any mother would give up whatever she had to surrender to protect her child.
    But Eve had her own life, her own priorities. She didn’t even know if she could help Catherine. Should she become involved in trying to—

    “Of course, you can help her. Why are you fretting like this, Mama?”
    Bonnie.
    She glanced at the porch swing and saw her little girl in the Bugs Bunny T-shirt curled up with her legs beneath her. The sun was shining on her mop of red curls, and her smile was brilliant as that sun. Eve felt her heart warming as it always did when Bonnie came to her. She was always as real to Eve as the last day she had seen her.
    “You don’t know that I can help her, Miss Smarty. I’m not that good on age progression.”
    “No, but she has the right idea. You do make a connection.” She suddenly chuckled. “It was funny that she was so quick to say that she didn’t mean anything weird. People are so afraid that others are going to think they’re not totally grounded in reality.”
    “It’s always so strange to hear you talking