“Until I make arrangements.” He pushed her down in a chair at the table and tied her. “And I’m going to have to leave you for a while to do it.” He chuckled. “I see your eyes light up. Don’t be too eager. You’ll still have my full attention. But now that you’ve finished the reconstruction, you’re not going to be occupied. I’ll have to take care of that problem.”

“I can’t wait to learn how.”

“You won’t have to wait long.” He put the case containing Kevin’s skull on the table beside her. “And I’ll leave Kevin here to keep you company.” He opened the case and gently pulled the reconstruction from the box. “I know how much you like him to be close to you, to watch you.”

She didn’t look at the reconstruction. She knew every line, every curve of that face she’d rebuilt from the burned horror of the skull Doane had given her to re-create. It was a handsome face, but all she could see was the twisted soul beneath it. “If I get loose, the first thing I’ll do will be to light a fire in that fireplace and throw him into it. It’s where you should have left him instead of trying to resurrect him.”

Doane’s lips tightened. “And I’d throw you into the fire after him.”

“Would you? But then your plans to make Zander suffer by killing me would be ruined. Not that he would suffer anyway.” She looked at him. Questions. Find out as much as she could. “Where are you going?”

“I have to make sure that everything is ready and in place.”

“In place? Where is this nuke?”

“It’s safe.” He looked away from her as he straightened the reconstruction on the table. “I don’t have to worry about it. It’s quite safe.”

He was being evasive. Why? “Safe from what? Where is it?” Her gaze narrowed on his face. “If you’re not afraid I’m going to escape from you, why won’t you tell me?”

“You don’t need to know. You’ll find out soon enough.”

A sudden, bizarre thought occurred to her. “Why, you don’t know, do you?” she asked softly. “Your wonderful Kevin didn’t trust you enough to tell you. All this time, you’ve been stringing Venable along and making him think he’d eventually be able to get that info from you, and you never had it.”

“That’s not true,” he said harshly. “My Kevin did trust me. He just died before he could tell me where he stashed those nuclear devices. But I’ll still be able to do it. I just have to talk to a few of Kevin’s contacts here, and we’ll be able to find it.”

She laughed. “Who? His al-Qaeda buddies evidently weren’t able to find those bombs in the last five years. Why should they be able to tell you now? Maybe no one knows where they are.”

“Someone knows,” he said curtly. “Kevin knew. And Kevin wanted me to know. He told me he put it all in his journal. But the message was so well hidden that I couldn’t understand it. I went through the journal a dozen times, but I still couldn’t see what Kevin wanted me to see. So I hid it away until I could spend more time on it.” He added harshly, “Last week, I told Blick to go back to the house to get it and bring it to me when I was afraid things weren’t going so well. But the fool had the journal taken away from him by your friend, Kendra Michaels.”

“Good for Kendra,” Eve said. “And now no journal and no nukes. You’d better take me to Vancouver and go back to plan one, Doane. Two deaths instead of millions.”

“The bombs are still where Kevin put them. Your Kendra won’t be able to figure out their location from the journal any more than I could.” He added sourly, “But there’s another way I can find out where they are.”

“How? By communing with Kevin? I don’t think so.”

“There’s another way,” he repeated.

“I think Kevin lied to you and just wanted to soothe your ego. He didn’t trust you, and he didn’t want to give up the chance to go down in demonic history if you failed him.”

“I haven’t failed him. Everyone else has failed him, but I’ve stood strong and steady.” He looked at the skull on the table. “Even Blick failed you, Kevin. But we took care that he didn’t get a second chance.” He reached in his pocket. “And I’m not going to give you a second chance either, Eve.” He pulled out a hypodermic. “I have to be gone a few hours, and I’m not going to have you becoming troublesome. I think you need a nice long sleep after our trip.” He rolled up her sleeve. “And there will be no opportunity of throwing my Kevin into the fire even if you managed to get free.”

“You appear to like to use drugs.” Eve felt the prick of the needle on her arm. “You must have become used to them to lure Kevin’s victims into his web.”

He shook his head. “He didn’t like them drugged. That’s why I had to use all my skill and persuasion to get them to come with me. I told you, I can be very persuasive.”

And Eve knew that to be true. At first, his kind, trustworthy face and gentle manner had made even Eve believe they mirrored an equally trustworthy soul. “I still find it hard to understand how you could do that just because Kevin—” She broke off. “You must not have any conscience at all, Doane.”

“Kevin says conscience is overrated. He needed release. I gave it to him. Everyone who knew Kevin ended up giving him whatever he wanted. He was special. That’s how it should be.” He bent to look into her eyes. “You’re getting drowsy, aren’t you? I’ll be able to leave you soon.”

She was getting drowsy. The room was swimming around her. “Leave me now. I don’t want to—have to look at you any—longer.”

“Not yet. I want to be quite sure.” He leaned back against the table. “You’ll give Kevin what he wants, too, Eve.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “Your blood, your life … your Bonnie.”

“He can have two—out of three. He’ll never have … Bonnie.”

“You say that, but it means nothing. He already has her, all that’s left is to break her connection with this world. That’s you, Eve. When you die, he takes you both.”

“Then he can’t have me either.” The darkness was weaving in and out around her. “Go away, Doane. Or if you want to stick pins … in me, use the real thing. Your words … are useless. You and Kevin … bluff … only bluff.”

“Are we?” He was suddenly snarling. He jerked her closer to the table and set Kevin’s skull directly in front of her. “Then why are you afraid to look at him? You may not be afraid of me, but you’re afraid of Kevin. And soon you’ll fear both of us.”

He meant when they merged, she thought hazily. When Kevin crossed back and became—

Blue eyes staring at her from the skull only inches away from her.

Cold.

Nausea.

And then the panic.

They were only glass eyeballs, nothing else.

No.

Kevin’s eyes, reaching out for her.

And for Bonnie.

Her chest was tight. She couldn’t breathe. She could feel the perspiration bead her face as she fought the fear.

“Yes, that’s what I wanted,” Doane said softly, his gaze on her face. “I couldn’t do it to you, but Kevin managed, didn’t he? I keep telling you he’s special.” He straightened away from the table. “And now I’ll leave you to him. He’ll be sorry I gave you the shot. He always enjoyed the delicious sharpness of the response to whatever he did.” He paused at the door. “But perhaps you’ll be so afraid that the narcotic won’t take effect, and you’ll have him with you all the time I’m gone. Or maybe he’ll follow you down and bring the nightmare with him. All kinds of interesting possibilities…”

Doane was gone.

But Kevin was here. Eve had carefully mended the ugliness of the burned and blackened skull, but the sight of it was abruptly before her.

Only a memory, she told herself. A memory heightened by the effect of the narcotic Doane had given her. For all she knew, Doane could have given her a hallucinogenic to mentally torture her.

It wasn’t the drug.

It was Kevin.

Hate you. Take you. Take her.

“The hell you will.” Her voice was slurred. “You’re only bone and clay and glass.”