Free Silencing Eve by Iris Johansen Page A

product of your shady past. I forget occasionally what a checkered life you’ve led.”
    “Right.” He smiled. “And it comes in handy to furnish you with what you need at any given time.” He gestured as she opened her lips to speak. “And you’ll take this little service from me because it could start the move toward helping Eve.” They had reached Joe and the police captain, and Trevor’s smile was suddenly brilliant, that powerful magnetism reaching out to envelop them. “Hello, Quinn, Captain Larimer, I just wanted to repeat my sincere condolences before I left.” He turned to Larimer. “I know you must deal with this kind of tragedy on a daily basis, but you have to admit that this is far beyond—”
    For the next five minutes, Jane watched Trevor with bemusement. In that time, he’d smoothly moved the police captain to the buffet and was pouring him a cup of coffee while he continued to ask him questions.
    “Trevor’s very good.” Joe smiled faintly as he watched the two men. “And I owe him. I tried twice to send Larimer on his way without being blatantly rude.” He turned to Jane. “Margaret said you weren’t feeling well. Should I be worried?”
    “No, I was only tired.” She grimaced. “Yet everyone immediately assumes I’m on death’s door.” She changed the subject as she turned and led him away from the cottage to the edge of the lake. “But I would have come down sooner except that I was talking to Kendra. And then, after she left, I was reading the journal.”
    He went still. “Journal?”
    She quickly filled him in on her conversation with Kendra. “The stuff in the journal was sickening. Kevin was a monster. He was an egomaniac with a complete lack of conscience. The descriptions of what he did to those little girls were hideous.”
    “Anything else?”
    “It’s hard to get beyond the atrocities.” She tried to think. “There were a few references to Pakistan, but no names that might have been valuable to al-Qaeda.” She paused. “But there was a mention of his dealings with the CIA. Double dealings, according to him. A lot of money exchanging hands.”
    “That’s not unusual. An embedded agent would pretend to be on the take.”
    “I don’t believe he was talking about the embedded agents. He was talking about a specific CIA agent. And he was confident he’d persuaded the agent to go rogue. He was very happy about that. He said that he needed someone in a trusted position to pave the way to the project.”
    “Project? What project?”
    “He never spelled it out. I assumed it had something to do with Bin Laden. That’s who Venable told us was the target.”
    “Maybe.” Joe frowned. “Maybe not.”
    Jane’s gaze narrowed on his face. “Kendra didn’t want me to give the journal to Venable. Now you have doubts about him?”
    “I don’t want to have doubts. I’ve worked with him a long time.” He nodded curtly. “Hell, yes, I have doubts. He’s not been listening to anything I’ve been telling him since this started. And I don’t like the way he gave the okay for that attack team to tear down the mountain and start shooting up that saloon.”
    She could see his mind turning over, working through the facts and theories. “Anything else?”
    “Venable was in the Middle East at the time. He knew what was happening in Pakistan. He was the connection to General Tarther and Kevin’s assassination. But he was also the agent who offered Kevin’s father sanctuary and provided him with a safe house and an income for five years.” He paused. “And Venable told us that it was a disk that was the blackmail that Doane was holding over everyone’s head.”
    “The disk may still be out there.”
    “But we have a journal mentioning CIA corruption.” His lips tightened. “No, I don’t believe we’ll turn the journal over to Venable just yet.”
    “And there may be something in it that we can use. What if it’s invisible ink or something?”
    “Invisible