Eve

where I start to skip a few years, if you don’t mind.”

She shook her head. No, she didn’t want to hear about the years of torture and starvation. It hurt her to think of them. “But you didn’t tell them where to find the ledger?”

“No, first I thought I was being a patriot. Then I was angry; and then I just endured.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I told you about escaping and the Tokyo hospital and going to Atlanta.”

“Queen visited you in the hospital. He told Joe and Catherine that you were raving and that Army Intelligence was afraid you might give away top secret information.”

He shrugged. “I was raving at the time. And I was probably even more unbalanced than I was later. I’d completely blocked out most of the things that happened. The only thing I remember about Queen’s visits were his questions about the ledger. He kept at me.”

“You’d forgotten that, too?”

“It was the one question they kept asking in the prison. I blocked it so thoroughly that there was no way it was going to come back without a hell of a lot of time and therapy. That was why Queen got me dismissed from the hospital. He didn’t want me talking to any therapist.”

She shook her head. “You must have been in terrible shape.”

He nodded. “I didn’t work my way through the worst of it for years after Queen sent me off to try to get me killed.”

“You knew they were suicide missions?”

“Not at first. I was still in a haze for a long while. I was operating on automatic.”

And that automatic had clearly been lethal if it had kept him alive. “You said you came back to the U.S. some years later.”

He nodded. “Because I’d become clearheaded enough to realize that I was a target. I started to wonder why Queen was so determined to rid himself of me in a way that wouldn’t be questioned. Oh, they were very determined.” He paused. “And it all came back to the ledger.”

“Which you couldn’t remember.”

“By that time I’d worked my way through the haze enough to start to remember some details.” His lips tightened. “And I’d realized that it probably wasn’t dedication to home and country that had driven Queen. Some of the missions they sent me on were a revelation. They appeared to have nothing to do with protecting home and country. Dirty. Queen was definitely dirty. So I decided to go back to Korea and retrieve the ledger.”

“That must have been-I’d think that you’d have avoided that place like the plague.”

“It wasn’t easy. The North Koreans had become even more belligerent, and I was on their most wanted list. I was in a cold sweat most of the time I was there.” He paused. “But I found the ledger and I took it to Tokyo and had it translated.”

She tilted her head. “No nuclear secrets?”

“Drugs and stolen ancient artifacts. General Tai Sen was a joint partner with Queen. He received the merchandise and saw that it was sent to Tokyo to Queen for distribution and sale. The ledger belonged to the general and listed all the transactions in detail, naming names. The most prominent of which were Queen and Jacobs. The general was trying to cut them out of the business and threatening to send the ledger to their superiors if they caused any trouble.”

“So they had to have the ledger.”

“And didn’t mind throwing me into a hellhole and killing two of my buddies to get it.” His hand tightened on his cup. “You might say I was a little angry. If I’d found out a year earlier, I would have set up a prison like the one I called home for all those years and done a few experiments on Queen. Maybe I would have hired a North Korean to help. They know the way it’s done.”

There was such savagery in his face that Eve inhaled sharply. “But you didn’t do it. Why not?”

“I found out Queen’s connection to Paul Black.”

She stiffened. “What?”

“For years, Paul Black has been engaged as an assassin by Queen. When I left the hospital in Tokyo, they hired Black to follow me and to terminate me at the earliest opportunity.” He looked down into his cup. “He must have been following me when I came that day to see you and Bonnie. It had to have been obvious as hell what I was feeling when I was staring at Bonnie and you. It was one of the most powerful moments of my life. From what I’ve learned about him, Black appears to be very thorough and takes his time. Evidently, he didn’t find the right time and place to kill me while I was in Atlanta.”

“Bonnie,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “Queen sent me to Pakistan, and Black followed me. He attacked at the same time I was dealing with the terrorists Queen had assigned me to get. I didn’t even realize that Black wasn’t one of them.” He smiled tightly. “He didn’t find me an easy target. As I told you, I was really crazy during those days. He went after me with a knife, and I took it away from him and stabbed him in the belly. At the time I thought he was dead, but he crawled away.”

“To recover and go after Bonnie,” she said dully.

“Do you think I haven’t thought about that every day since I found out Bonnie had been murdered?” he said harshly. “I’d found after searching through his pockets after I stabbed him that he had a U.S. passport under the name of Paul Black. I was lucky he wasn’t traveling under an assumed name. I found out later that was common with him. He was so arrogant he thought no one could touch him. But that was all I knew about him. Nothing more. Maybe I should have tried to find out something else, but it didn’t seem to matter to me at the time. Hell, I didn’t realize that it would concern anyone but me, and most of the time I didn’t give a damn whether I lived or died. I didn’t know what a monster the son of a bitch was.”

“And when did you find that out?” Eve asked jerkily.

“Drink your coffee,” Gallo said. “You’re too pale.”

“I shouldn’t be. I’ve dealt with monsters before.” She took a sip of coffee. It was hot and strong and braced her a little. “But it never does any good. Not when I think about those monsters with Bonnie.”

“The time Bonnie was taken was too shortly after I came to Atlanta. Just one month. I tried to see if I could find any connection. God knows I didn’t want to find one.”

“But you did.”

“I was already suspecting Queen of trying to kill me. That led me back to Paul Black. Hired by Queen? Maybe. But what connection to Bonnie’s kidnapping? I started to work on finding out much more about Paul Black. I bribed and threatened and stole records. It took me over a year, but I put together his picture. He was born in Metaire, Louisiana, and he was in a mental hospital by the time he was twelve. He’d stabbed one of his classmates. The kid lived, and they released Black a year later. After that, Black was more careful and began to move about the country doing what he liked best.”

“Montalvo told me the records show he was born in Macon, Georgia.”

“Queen altered the records. He was protecting his pet cobra. It was part of the arrangement they had together. Queen protected, and Black did all his killings.” He held her eyes. “But he didn’t only do Queen’s killings. There are all kinds of indications that he was a serial killer before Queen took him under his wing. Very clever, very bloodthirsty. He liked it, and he wanted to keep on doing it. The only way he could see himself staying alive to appease his appetite was to find someone like Queen, who didn’t care what he did as long as he performed well for him. According to all the books and reports I’ve read, a serial killer of that magnitude has a tremendous ego. He has to be all-powerful.”

“The terrible thing is that they usually are,” Eve said. “They don’t stop. They just keep on killing.”

“I must have damaged Black’s ego badly when I managed to escape him and stabbed him in the belly. I told you that he had a tremendous opinion of himself. He would have wanted to hurt me. In any way he could.”

A little red-haired girl in a Bugs Bunny T-shirt.

Eve nodded slowly. “But why didn’t he go after you again?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know how he thinks. It might be that ego. He might have felt vulnerable after I almost killed him and convinced himself that he didn’t have to murder me to inflict the most hurt. He may not have known she was my daughter. Though it would not surprise me that he’d found that out. But anyone looking at me the day I came to see her would know how much I loved her.”