The single shot splintered the night.
Spiro jerked, stumbled, and collapsed to his knees. The knife fell out of his hand.
He looked down in disbelief at his chest, which was bubbling with blood. 'Eve?' She turned to face him. 'Now the game’s over, you son of a bitch.' He touched his chest and brought his hand away. It was smeared with blood.
'Who…'
'Joe.'
'No, I—searched here before I lit the candles. There was nowhere he could hide…'
'He was a sniper in the SEALs. He told me once that he can hit a target from a thousand yards.
It’s not five hundred yards to that tree down the slope. I knew he could get you if he could see The Killing Game – Eve Duncan 02
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you, Spiro.'
His eyes widened. 'You knew…' He collapsed to the ground. She walked over and knelt beside him. 'Where’s Jane?”
“Screw you.'
'You’re going to die, Spiro. What difference does it make?”
“It—makes a difference. How — did you know?'
'You made that anonymous telephone call and had me thrown in jail. I was there for forty-eight hours. For the first twenty-four hours I was a basket case. You would have loved seeing me.
Then I realized I was letting you win. So I spent the second night thinking. I thought I was going to find a way to locate Grunard. I tried to divorce myself the way I do when I work on one of my skulls and just examine the facts and events. I started with something that bothered me at the time I learned about it, but I forgot about when I saw the photo. Charlie said that Sung was excited and talking about shifts and spectrums and that he made a phone call before he said he needed to see me. He could have called Grunard, but if he recognized Grunard as the killer, why call him? No, it had to be someone else. So I asked Logan to check phone records and find out who Sung called. It was to Multiplex, one of the digital imaging companies on the West Coast.
Sung wanted to verify his findings on the photo. It was the middle of the night, but there’s often a crew working at those big companies. You’d sent the photo out to Multiplex to have Grunard’s image implanted in it so I could ‘discover’ it. That was why you stalled giving us the photo.'
'Worked.'
'But you didn’t realize how sharp Sung was. State-of-the-art companies like Multiplex create their own software and the variance of the shifts in the light spectrums are almost like a finger-print. Sung recognized that shift and he knew the picture had been doctored. Multiplex might not have been willing to confirm the specific job, but they would have no reason not to confirm the general technical aspects of the software. Did Charlie call you from the lab after he called me?'
'Of course. I trained him well.'
'And then you killed him. What would you have done if Joe hadn’t climbed down and retrieved that photo? Would that other picture you supposedly sent to Quantico surface?'
He didn’t answer. He was having trouble breathing.
'But it was all guesswork, and I had to verify. Multiplex wouldn’t talk to me. You’d probably told them to keep the job confidential, and everybody obeys the FBI. So I took the photo and did some work myself. I didn’t have the equipment or expertise to do what Sung did, so I did a digital merge of the faces of your brothers.' She smiled grimly. 'And what to my surprise The Killing Game – Eve Duncan 02
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appeared? I came up with you.'
'Lie. We look—nothing like each other.'
'You’re right and that was good. I was much more likely to pull up a completely distinctive face than if your brothers looked alike. I often use older family members’ features for age progression for children. When I was studying at the National Center for Missing Children, I used to play with merging different familial faces and seeing what I could come up with. Even when the family members didn’t look like one another, it was amazing how the similarities appeared when they were combined. The face I came up with didn’t resemble you exactly, but it was close enough, and after I aged the image, it was even closer. It made me go over everything that had happened.'
'I didn’t make—mistakes. I didn’t.'
'No, you were almost perfect. But you were always there beside me or in the background.'
'So was Grunard.'
“Yes, and I stumbled over that conversation with Dom while you were in the same room with me at Joe’s cottage. It was only later that I realized it wasn’t really a conversation. Dom made a brief statement and hung up. A taped alibi set on a timer. Very effective.' She shook her head.
'There were so many things that became clear once I accepted that you were Dom. All the times you misdirected and lied to me and Joe. Why should we have suspected? You were Spiro of the FBI.”
“You’re so proud of yourself.' His expression was full of malice. 'You haven’t won. I won’t die.
I’m feeling stronger all the time. I’ll live and they’ll say I’m insane.'
'You won’t live.'
