“No way.” He hesitated, then told the truth. “She thinks she has a debt to pay. Eve Duncan and Joe Quinn helped her to save her son, Luke. Now she’s trying to give Duncan what she wants most in life. She’s trying to find Bonnie Duncan’s body and the man who killed her. Nothing is going to budge her until she does it.”

Dickson muttered a curse. “Dammit, don’t you have any influence on her?”

“Not enough to stop her from doing this.”

“There has to be a way. Eve Duncan. Can you appeal to her?”

“No, you don’t understand.”

“Then make me understand, dammit. Why can’t this wait?”

“Because she’d tell me it’s waited too long already.” He might as well fill him in though it probably wouldn’t help. “Eve Duncan had this child when she was sixteen, the father was a Ranger in the Army and was reported dead. She didn’t have an abortion or give the kid up for adoption. She kept her. Part of the time, her mother helped take care of her, sometimes Bonnie was in a United Fund nursery while Eve worked. She did correspondence courses at night. She was almost finished when her daughter, Bonnie, disappeared. The police became certain that she was a victim of a serial killer. In fact, they’d thought they’d caught and executed him. Ralph Fraser. He’d killed other children, but he hadn’t killed Bonnie. Which meant Eve had no closure. She had to find her daughter’s killer. She had to bring her daughter home. It’s been the guiding obsession of her life. She has a long-term relationship with Joe Quinn, a police detective, who has helped her search for her daughter. She has an adopted daughter, Jane MacGuire, who is now an artist. But it’s the search for Bonnie that’s the center of her universe.”

“And she’s drawn Catherine Ling into that universe as a satellite,” Dickson said harshly. “Let her find her own kid.”

“She never asked Catherine to help her.” To hell with diplomacy. He’d known Eve Duncan for years, and she’d done favors both for him and the agency. She deserved better than Dickson’s condemnation. “Look, Eve Duncan pulls her own weight, and she’d keep Catherine out of it if she could.”