“It seems pretty cut-and-dried to me.”

“Does it?” He was tempted to let Harley contact Catherine and have her interrogate him. If he thought she would become his new best friend, he was going to be sadly disappointed. She was going to want every detail so that she could mull the pros and cons, and she would be firing questions like a machine gun. It wasn’t often that Catherine formed a friendship with anyone, but she genuinely liked Eve Duncan, and she wanted every detail to be absolutely correct. “No, I’ll talk to her.”

Harley looked disappointed, but he shrugged and left the office.

All right, Catherine. Venable took out his phone. Here’s your ammunition to blow Eve out of the water. You may mean well, but it could go either way. I hope to hell both you and Eve manage to survive it.

THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH EVE.

Joe Quinn had glanced casually up to the porch from where he was standing at the barbecue grill near the lake. Eve had been sitting on the porch swing, but was now standing beside Catherine Ling, and Joe could tell that every muscle of her body was taut with tension.

What the hell?

Maybe he was mistaken. The sun was going down, and it was almost dark. Perhaps those nuances of unrest he thought he was seeing weren’t really there. Catherine Ling had become a good friend to Eve, and there was no way that she would deliberately upset her.

Dammit, he wasn’tmistaken.

He had lived with Eve so long that he knew every mood, every flex of her body as if it were his own. Whatever Catherine was saying to Eve, it was disturbing her. He’d better go up to the porch and-

His cell phone rang, and he glanced at the ID.

Venable. CIA.

Joe was tempted to let it go to voice mail and call back later. No, Catherine Ling was also CIA. Joe had an idea it might be a good idea to take the call before he barged up those stairs in protective mode.