She closed her eyes. Oh, God. Let it be true. Let it all be a nightmarish mistake.

Let Eve still be alive.

*   *   *

CATHERINE ENTERED THE cottage and slammed the door behind her. “Kendra Michaels?”

“Yes.” Kendra was standing at the window, staring down at the mourners moving from group to group on the lawn bordering the lake. “That’s me. And you are?”

“Catherine Ling.” She crossed the room and showed her ID. “Joe told me to come to see you. Apparently it’s your job to tell me what the hell is going on here.”

Kendra nodded. “Joe called me and told me you were coming up to ask questions. I just had to verify your ID. There are too many reporters drifting around here at the memorial service. Eve was very well-known.” She smiled faintly. “Very private, but everyone knew she was phenomenal.”

“You’re damn right she was.” Her lips tightened. “We’re both talking past tense. Yet from what Joe said, I’m guessing she’s probably very much alive.” Her voice was uneven. “Don’t tell me that he’s wrong. I won’t have it.”

“Sorry. Joe didn’t steer you wrong. I’ve just gotten used to playing the sorrowful, regretful friend in the last week,” Kendra said. “I believe the chances are excellent that Eve is alive.”

Catherine felt a wave of relief surge through her. “Thank God.”

“I can’t be absolutely sure, but I’d bet every particle of my experience and judgment that she lived through the explosion at that ghost town in Colorado.”

“And why should I trust your judgment?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.” Kendra tilted her head. “I don’t believe you have much to do with trust.”

Catherine’s eyes narrowed on her face. “Why? Did Eve or Joe tell you about me?”

“No. Just an observation. Did Eve mention me?”

“Yes, Eve told me about you a few months ago. You were born blind, but a surgical procedure gave you your sight just a few years ago, is that right?”

Kendra nodded.

“But while you were blind, you developed your other senses to such a degree that you’ve become quite the detective.”

Kendra shrugged. “Make that a reluctant detective. My profession is music therapy. I’ve helped out on a few cases.”

“You weren’t reluctant as far as Eve was concerned.”

“No, we became friends. You help your friends. Then, when I heard she was abducted, I dropped everything and came right down.” Kendra studied her. “Joe said you were close to Eve, but she never mentioned you to me.”

“Why should she? Our relationship was … confidential.”

“Confidential? That’s an interesting designation for a close—” Kendra stopped. “Oh, you’re CIA, aren’t you?”

Catherine’s eyes widened. “Where did that come from?”

“I don’t expect you to confirm it. I was watching out the window, and I saw you and that CIA guy, Venable, exchange a look when you arrived. He was tense, you were angry. Oh, yes, you know each other. Do you work for him?”

Catherine looked away.

“I don’t expect you to answer that either.” She smiled faintly. “Oh, and you quite often wear a shoulder holster under that black jacket, but not today.”

Catherine nodded. “Out of respect.” She looked under her left arm. “It’s that obvious?”

“It’s a little baggy there. Nothing anyone would notice.”

“Except you?”

“Except me.”

“Or maybe a North Korean assassin. It might be time to invest in a more discreet shoulder holster.”

“I’m sure you’re equipped with other weapons.” Kendra tilted her head. “I’m good with dialects, but I’m having a tough time with yours. You’re clipping your consonants and slightly flattening your vowel sounds. Did the linguistic people at Langley teach you to do that?”

“They may have.”

“It’s very effective. I have no idea where you’re from.”

“Good. I’ve made a few enemies over the years, and the last thing I want is for them to be able to find out anything about me.”

“Then you’ve done a good job.”

Catherine gave her a cool glance. “You’re doing quite an efficient job yourself. You’re laying out your credentials on display to show me just how good that judgment I challenged is.”

Kendra smiled. “I thought it would save time in the long run. I don’t need your trust, but I need an open mind.”

Catherine took a step closer. “So are you going to tell me what happened in Colorado?”

“How much do you know already?”

“Just what I read in the newspaper and the CIA records. Plus Joe’s rather cryptic reassurance that Eve is probably still alive, which makes this entire day rather surreal.”

“That it is.”

“Then talk to me,” Catherine said fiercely. “I don’t have many friends, and I don’t like the idea of losing one. I don’t like it so much that I’m on the edge of violence. I’ve got to know something.”

“I’ll tell you everything I know. When the saloon exploded in that ghost town, the infrared scanners showed two people inside.”

“Those recordings are always very accurate. The explosion was so powerful, it rocked the whole town. There’s no way anyone could have survived that.”

“They didn’t. And we found the skeletal fragments and burned flesh.”

“Am I missing something?”

“Those two people were possibly dead already. But they weren’t Eve and Doane.”

Catherine was silent. Let it be true, she prayed. “Are you sure?”

“We’re still waiting on DNA, but I’m sure. I think each of those bodies was wrapped in thermal-reflective sleeping-bag liners to hold their body heat for the infrared scopes. I went down with the forensic team after they extinguished the fire and found traces of the reflective material at the site.”

“But there were a dozen witnesses who saw Eve and Doane go into that saloon just a few minutes before that blast. How could they have gotten away without someone’s seeing them?”

“Doane obviously knew the area very well. They were in a ghost town in the bottom of a small, bowl-shaped valley. Locals call it the punch bowl. It had been raining heavily, and the street was muddy. The strange thing was that it wasn’t flooded.”

“Why was that strange?”

“With water coming down from every side of the valley, it had no place to go. It should have flooded, unless … it was draining to someplace.”

Catherine thought about it. “Like a cavern?”

“Very good. There were fissures that ran behind the buildings. Water drained through them to a stream in an underground cavern. It feeds an even larger stream that runs down the mountain. We didn’t know about the cavern and the underground stream, but we used the water from that bigger stream to help put out the fire.”

Catherine could feel the excitement surging within her. “You think Doane took Eve out the back and down into this cavern?”

“It’s a twenty-foot drop, but the water is deep enough that it wouldn’t have been a problem. The fissure was so narrow that when Doane first got to the ghost town, it was easy for him to cover it with brush to hide the cavern. And the explosion completely covered up the fissures with debris, so we didn’t even know they were there until I looked for them later. Doane did a good job of covering his tracks.”

“Do we know whose bodies were in there?”

“Not yet. There wasn’t much left of them. We were lucky they weren’t vaporized. But the fact that it was so muddy gave me some interesting tracks outside in front of the saloon. An off-road vehicle arrived, and Terence Blick, a partner of Doane’s, stepped out of it. Then Blick walked around to the back, unloaded something heavy, and walked into the saloon with it.”

“You got all that from footprints?”

“I had a run-in with Blick a couple days before. I stopped to see if I could help a policeman he’d shot down, and I saw Blick’s footprints then. He was wearing different boots, but the stride was unmistakable. He swung his legs in such a way that the right and left prints were directly in front of each other, almost single file. Fairly unique. And the footsteps sunk about three inches deeper after he walked around to the back of the truck.”