CHAPTER 6
New Orleans
“PULL OVER HERE,” EVE SAID suddenly. “Now, Catherine.”
Catherine looked at her in bewilderment, but she slowed the car. “Why? This is only Canal Street. We’re in the French Quarter. I thought you wanted to go downtown to the police department to meet Joe.”
“Pull over.” Eve put her hand on the knob. “I have to get out. Now.”
Catherine muttered a curse as she pulled to the curb, ignoring the blaring of horns of the cars behind her. “Dammit, what’s happening?”
Eve grabbed her suitcase and jumped out of the car. “I have to go after Gallo. You try to work through Venable, but I think Gallo is the key.”
“Then we’ll both go after him. Don’t you leave Joe and me out of this, Eve.”
“I won’t. I’ll be in touch.” She moved toward the alley beside a souvenir shop, ducking past a mime who was performing on the street. “But I have to contact Gallo on my own. He’s on the run, and Joe and you aren’t going to be able to make him stop and listen. He’s on guard. If he knows that you’re with me, he may not listen to me either.”
“And you’re sure he’ll stop and listen to you?”
“No, I’m not sure.” She looked over her shoulder. “But he may decide to listen to me. I have a weapon that you don’t have, a card that I can play. I’ll call you.” She vanished into the alley and headed for the door of a restaurant with a wrought-iron balcony on the far end of the street.
Would Catherine follow her? She wouldn’t have been surprised if Catherine abandoned the car and ran after her. But Catherine was smart and would know that if she did try to intercept Eve, she’d just find another way to handle this on her own.
Eve ducked into the restaurant and moved past a jazz quartet on the small stage to the left of the door. Move fast. Weave in and out of the stores of the Quarter until she was sure Catherine had decided not to search for her. Then stop and make the call.
Fifteen minutes later, she had left the Quarter and was in the coffee shop of the Marriott Hotel. She dropped down in a booth and took out her phone.
Would Gallo answer her? He would know from the ID that it was her, and he might choose to ignore it. And, for all she knew, he might be on an airplane. He had driven away from the house hours before she and Catherine left.
Stop wondering and make the call.
She quickly dialed the number.
It rang three times before he picked up.
“I don’t want to talk to you, Eve.”
“Yes you do, or you wouldn’t have picked up the call. You might not want to make explanations or answer accusations, but you do want to talk to me. Even if you don’t, you’ll do it anyway. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to lose Catherine and Joe so that you’ll feel comfortable about this. I’m not going to let you turn away from me.”
“I’ve already done that. I turned away from you a long time ago, when you were only sixteen.”
“But before you did that, I conceived Bonnie. That changed everything between us. You told me once that no matter what happened, there would always be a bond we couldn’t break. Bonnie. Neither of us can get away from that, John.” She paused. “You ran away, and whatever you’re going to do now you want to do it alone. I can’t let you do that.”
“The hell you can’t. You don’t have a choice,” he said roughly. “Everything has changed. Look, there’s been nothing but trouble for you since I came back into your life. I never meant that to happen. I did enough damage to you when I was a nineteen-year-old kid who didn’t care about anything but getting you into bed.”
“You tried to protect me then.”
“Not hard enough.”
“I’m not going to argue with you about the past.” She added, “But you’re wrong: I do have a choice. Because I won’t accept it any other way. It has to be you and me, John. Joe and Catherine will try to help, they’ll support and do everything they can. But in the end, it goes back to what we did together when we were those kids back in Atlanta. Everything else that happened had to have rippled out from that time like a rock thrown into a lake.” She hesitated, then said quietly, “And one of those ripples was Ted Danner.”
Silence. “You finished that damn sketch. I thought it would take you longer.”
“Or hoped I’d do a lousy job.”
“No, that wasn’t a possibility. Not you.”
“You told me he was dead.”
“I thought I was telling you the truth. That’s what I was told when I got out of the hospital in Tokyo. I even saw the death certificate signed by the doctor at the VA hospital.”
“He looked pretty healthy to me when he was running to jump into that bayou. He’s not a young man, and I remembered him to be almost crippled.”
“He had a bad back injury that he got in Syria.” He added impatiently, “Look, it might not have been him. I have to find out.”
“So do I.”
“No,” he said sharply. “My uncle is my business. I’ll take care of it.”
“It stopped being your business when he killed Jacobs because he didn’t want Jacobs to talk to us. If what he was trying to hide had to do with Bonnie’s death, then it’s my business.” Her voice was steely. “And that means
Silence. “Oh, God, I don’t know, Eve.”
The agony in his voice hurt her, but she had to push it away. “Then we have to find out. Where do we start?”
He was silent, then finally said, “The death certificate. I’m going to Atlanta to see the doctor who signed it.”
“Then I’m going with you. Where are you now?”
“New Orleans airport.”
“If I join you there, I run the chance of Catherine or Joe being there to intercept us. Get a car and pick me up. I’m at the Marriott in the French Quarter. We’ll leave from Mobile.”
“You’re avoiding Catherine and Joe?”
“Only for the time being. I don’t know what’s coming down with all this business, and I don’t want to deal with conflict. How soon can you get here?”
“I didn’t say I’d take you with me.”
“No, you didn’t. But if you think about it, you’ll know I’m right. How soon?”
Silence. “Thirty minutes. Be outside the entrance on Canal Street.” He hung up.
It was done. She had isolated herself from everyone but Gallo, and she couldn’t be sure that his allegiance would ever be as strong toward her as it was to the uncle who had been his savior as a child. Eve slowly pressed the disconnect and leaned back in the seat.
Are you happy, Bonnie? This is going to cause me all kinds of turmoil with Joe and Catherine. Is this what you wanted?
No answer. No feeling either way that Eve had done the right or wrong thing. She would have to rely on herself… and John Gallo. But Gallo wasn’t Joe, who had never failed her. There had never been trust between her and Gallo. All they had shared was sex.
No, they had also shared Bonnie.
She would just have to trust in Bonnie.
But she would not run away and leave Joe without talking to him.
She braced herself and quickly dialed Joe’s number.
“I was waiting for your call,” Joe said when he picked up the phone. His voice was tight and she could sense
