could accept it. But she couldn’t stop wishing that the search would end.
And she couldn’t stop wishing that Eve would release Bonnie.
Or, dear God, that Bonnie would release Eve.
EVE WALKED SLOWLY DOWN the corridor toward the ICU.
Soon she would be able to see Joe again. He’d be pale and drawn, his features appearing as cleanly carved and beautiful as the visage on a tomb. It would scare her to death as it always did.
But it scared her more not to see him and to imagine him slipping away with her not by his side.
That was where she should always be. Next to Joe.
If God would let him stay with her. And if Joe still wanted her if he did come back. The memory of that last day at the lake house was suddenly before her. His eyes looking down at her as she sat in the swing.
And it was her nature to love Joe.
Please be better, Joe. Be awake. At least, have more color.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Duncan.” The ICU nurse was coming out of the unit. “May I get you anything?”
“Yes, permission to go sit with him.”
She shook her head. “Not yet.” She hesitated. “But the doctor said that maybe we should let you go to him soon.”
She stiffened, her heart leaping. “He’s better.”
The nurse shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said quickly. “Dr. Jarlin will talk to you.”
Fear surged through her. “You talk to me, dammit. He’s worse?”
The nurse was looking at Eve with that same sympathy and kindness that had struck terror in her heart since she’d brought Joe to the hospital. “Dr. Jarlin will talk to you. I’ll call him and tell him that you’re concerned.” She hurried back toward the nurses’ station.
Concerned? She was sick with fear.
Joe was dying, and they weren’t going to be able to save him. That was why they were going to let Eve go to him. To say good-bye.
She couldn’t say good-bye. He had to stay with her.
She leaned her head on the plate-glass window and closed her eyes. She felt the tears running down her cheeks as the agony flowed through her.
Look at him. Surely she’d be able to know, to sense some change. Maybe they were wrong. Doctors didn’t know everything.
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She stiffened in shock.
Through the years she had often had visions and dreams of her daughter. Then she had come to believe they weren’t visions at all. It didn’t matter. Real or not, having Bonnie come to her had made life worth living and let her come alive in so many ways.
But now something was different.
SWIRLING darkness.
Someone calling.
“Joe!”
Calling him…
But he didn’t want to leave the darkness. There was comfort here and yet also a strange excitement and anticipation.
Was this death?
He had never been afraid of it. He wasn’t now.
But that voice calling…
Eve.
She was hurting, needing him. He should go back.
And there was someone else…
Bonnie.
She was there in the darkness. Always before she had been the stranger, the one apart; but now she was close, as familiar to him as Eve, and much of the comfort was coming from her. Did she want him to stay in the darkness?
But he could feel Eve’s terror and sadness.
He had to stop them both and try to make Eve happy.
As she made him happy…
He had known from the first moment he had seen her all those years ago that he could not be happy if he was not with her.
Strange… He had not believed that love could come out of nowhere and stay forever. He had been such a cynical son of a bitch. Smart, young FBI agent, sure of himself and everything around him, ready to take on the world.
He’d been certain the Bonnie Duncan kidnapping wasn’t going to be a problem. The local Atlanta police were
