“Reeve was only on the phone for a minute.” Bennett peeled down the drive, with the royal guards close behind. “She got another call, something was said about a bomb—about them not finding a bomb, and …” But he couldn’t say the rest, not when his brother was so white and stiff.

“And?”

“And they realized the caller meant a bomb in the theater. The police were there within minutes, five, ten at the most. They heard it go off.”

Alexander pressed his lips together. “Where?”

“In her office. Alexander,” he continued quickly, “she wouldn’t have been in there. Eve’s too smart for that.”

“She worried for me, for all of us. But not for herself.” He wouldn’t let go, though there was a pain burning between his eyes and another eating slowly through his gut. “Why is it we never thought of her?”

“If you want to blame yourself, blame all of us,” Bennett said grimly. “None of us ever realized Eve would be drawn into this. There’s no purpose in it. Goddamn it, Alex, there’s no purpose in it.”

“You said yourself she’s part of the family.” He looked blindly out the window. They were a half block from the theater. His muscles began to tremble. It was fear, stark, raging fear. Before Bennett had fully stopped at the curb he was out.

By the stage door, Reeve stopped talking to two of his men and stepped forward to ward Alexander off. At his signal a handful of police shifted over as a shield. “She’s not in there. Alex, she’s in the grove around back. She’s all right.” When the grip of Alexander’s fingers on his arms didn’t lessen, Reeve repeated. “She’s all right, Alex. She wasn’t in the office. She was nearly out of the building altogether.”

He didn’t feel relief. Not until he had seen for himself would he feel relief. Pulling away from Reeve, Alexander rushed around the side of the building. His eyes were drawn to the blown-out window, the blackened bricks. Pieces of jagged glass littered the grass beyond. What might have been a lamp lay in a tangle of bent metal on the path to the grove. Inside was what remained of Eve’s office.

If he had looked through the space in the wall where her window had been, he would have seen pieces of her desk. Some of the wood, torn into lethal spears, had arrowed into the walls. He would have seen the soaked ashes of what had been her files and papers, correspondence and notations. He would have seen the hole in the inside wall that was big enough for a man to walk through. But he didn’t look.