“Is he?” Joe asked, as they followed her into the plane. “You seem to be confident of your Kelsov.”
“Dorsey’s safer than on other jobs I’ve asked him to do,” Catherine said as she sat down and fastened her seat belt. “Sit down. I’ve printed out copies of the skeleton photo. After we take off, we can go over them and see if we can identify Rakovac’s so-called clue he planted in it.”
“If there is a clue,” Joe said.
“I think that there will be,” Eve said as she sat down beside Catherine. “He was too smug, too excited. He was proud of himself.”
“Call me when you’re ready.” Joe moved up the aisle. “I think I’ll go up to the cockpit and get to know Hodges better. You never know when you’re going to need a little airpower.”
Eve watched him go up the aisle. Trust Joe to try to delve into the alluring mechanical world of this jet. He always liked to take things apart and put them back together again. It was a part of that insatiable curiosity.
“You can still back out,” Catherine said quietly. “Just walk off the plane.”
Eve shook her head. “I can’t do that.” She smiled. “Luke’s waiting.”
“Is he?” Catherine asked. “I hope so.”
So did Eve. But Catherine didn’t need her to be anything but positive right now. She would close out all her own fears as long as it was possible. “Luke is waiting for us,” she said firmly. “Now dig out those prints of the photo, and let’s see if they can tell us what carrot Rakovac is dangling in front of us.”
It was difficult analyzing the photo of the skeleton, Eve thought. She had to close out the thought of the child and concentrate on the surroundings, and that was almost impossible for her. Seeing the skeleton filled her with such a wild combination of anger and sadness that it interfered with any type of logical reasoning.
“Okay?” Joe asked quietly.
She nodded jerkily. “There’s nothing okay about this, but I can’t let it get to me.” She glanced at Catherine, who was across the aisle from them. “I can imagine what she’s going through right now.”
“The photo,” Joe prompted.
Concentrate.
“The skeleton is almost certainly that of a five-year-old male. I can’t judge how long he’s been buried without examining the actual bones.” She added, “Or if he was actually buried in that grave. Perhaps Rakovac staged it. But if he did, then he still would have had to plant some kind of clue to draw us into the web.”
His gaze narrowed on the photo and began to take it apart. “A pile of dirt that resembles a makeshift grave. The dirt is moist, lumpy, and appears to have a slight green cast. There are trees in the background. Pines?”
Eve nodded. “No help there. Pines are everywhere.”
“Then the skeleton itself.” He turned to Catherine. “Rakovac said he shot him in the head?”
“Yes.” She moistened her lips. “But he lied. This isn’t Luke.”
“But that shattered entry is consistent with a bullet wound,” Eve said gently. “I got a preliminary report from the St. Louis Institute just before I left the cottage. They blew up the shot and examined the pixels under the microscope. It had to be a large-caliber bullet that would cause that much damage on such a small skull.”
Catherine flinched. “It’s not Luke.”
“It was a helpless, five-year-old boy,” Eve said tightly. “At the moment, that’s all that I can see; everything else is blurred.”
“I’m sorry,” Catherine said. “I’d be as angry as you under ordinary circumstances. The killing of any child is terrible. But there’s nothing blurred about my thinking right now. It’s clear and sharp and all about Luke.”
Eve nodded. “Then try to focus some of that sharpness on the photo. Is there anything about it that’s in the least familiar?”
Catherine looked down at the photo. “Nothing. It’s just…horrible.”
“What is this patch of earth on his thigh?” Joe was examining the skeleton more closely.
“I think it’s moss,” Eve said. “It’s clumpy and moist like the rest of the dirt. I guess that’s why it clung to the skeleton when it was exhumed.”
“Did you e-mail it to your friends at the St. Louis Institute and see if they can identify it and place it at a specific location?”
Eve nodded. “It seems to be an odd color, but I can’t determine much about it without putting it under intense magnification.”
“Maybe that’s Rakovac’s carrot,” Joe said.
“That’s what I thought. Long shot.” Eve flipped open her computer and began typing in the message to go with the e-mail. “But it’s all we have. I’ll ask them to put a rush on it.”
“How long?” Catherine asked.
Eve shrugged. “It depends on how close they can come to identifying that soil sample from the photo. In the meantime, we’d probably better keep looking for any other leads.”
Catherine nodded. “It’s not as if we have Langley.” She made a face. “I’ve seen them call in a satellite to measure the angle of the moonlight and come up with a probable location.”
“Were they right?”
“Yes, but it took them four days. We don’t have four days. And if I asked Venable to do it, I couldn’t be sure that he’d feed me the right information. It would depend on the state of their negotiations with Rakovac. We’ll try your St. Louis Institute first.” She pulled up the Rakovac surveillance file. “And while we’re waiting, I’ll see if I can glean anything from this report.”
“Akron, Ohio.” Venable punched a yellow pin on the city on the map of the U.S. on the wall. “Are we sure, Bradley?”
“Hell, no.” Agent Eric Bradley scowled as he stared at the map. “We’re not sure of anything. It could be another red herring. But my informant says that Akron is a possibility.” He shook his head. “But we still don’t know who the contact is.” He cursed. “Or if there is one in Akron. It’s another damn blank. If they’re getting ready for a hit, why can’t we get someone to talk?”
“Because whoever is handling the money trail is smart and has the manpower to cover his tracks.”
“Rakovac?”
“I’d bet on it.”
“Then find him and get rid of him.”
It was the solution Venable had been considering, but it might be too dangerous. “And what if everything is in place and goes forward even after we kill him? We don’t know how far along he’s come with Ali Dabala. No, we have to know names, dates, cities.”
“I’ve tried, Venable.”
Venable knew Bradley had tried, and he was a good man. He had used every resource available and had gathered an amazing amount of information.
But not enough.
Venable felt a tightness in his chest as he gazed at the map. So many colorful tacks. It looked like a cell-phone commercial. Yellow tacks for possibles. Red tacks for probables. So many cities. So many people…
Damn Rakovac.
“What next?” Bradley asked.
“What do you think? Go back and get the information.”
Bradley hesitated. “The last timeline we have is between four and seven days. There may not be enough time.”
“Then stop wasting it.”
Bradley shrugged and strode out of Venable’s office.
Venable’s gaze returned to the map.
Four to seven days.
And the chances were that Bradley wasn’t going to be able to find out anything more than he had already.
Dammit, he had to
Stop hesitating. Do what had to be done. He couldn’t afford to be soft. He had to balance the good of the majority against the good of a few. He had lived all his adult life making decisions like this one. This would only be one more.
