Eve sat against the headboard of the big king bed, trying to muster the courage to make a call. Daddy had given her two assignments—eliminate Casanova and exfiltrate Dr. Dejan Brozović. One task had been satisfactorily accomplished and the other almost certainly so. The whole building was a burning tomb. But almost certain was not the same as absolutely certain. Would it be enough for Santoro?

She hoped so. Daddy giving her this mission was a big thing. The final test before he could tell Kuga that she was a completely reliable field operative.

Cain and Abel were outside, watching the elevator and the door. She didn’t want them around when she told Daddy about what happened at the processing plant. She didn’t want them to see her cry.

Her cell phone lay on the pillow next to her. Where Adam’s head should be. Every time she looked at it, she saw his face overlaid as if he were there but made of hollow glass. Twice she’d tried to touch him, and both times, she’d jerked her hand back from the nothingness.

“I love you,” she murmured.

The ghost of Adam smiled at her.

“Love you, too, babe,” he said.

Tears rolled down her cheeks, mingled with snot from her leaking nose, hanging from her cheeks, and fell onto her chest.

“I hate you for leaving me, you selfish prick,” she snarled and pounded her fist down on the mattress. It passed through him, and he dissipated like smoke. The jolt made the cell phone slide off the pillow. Eve took a steadying breath, pawed the tears from nose and mouth and cheeks, and returned the phone to the pillow.

“I’ll always love you, Eve,” Adam said softly. He touched her face, and Eve shivered. Goose bumps rippled along her thighs and up the outsides of her arms.

“Big dummy,” she told Adam. “Going off and leaving me.”

When she spoke to him like this, her voice was ten years younger. The voice of the girl Adam rescued from the home where they’d both been incarcerated. That bothered her.

Eve had swallowed a Xanax, but it hadn’t hit her bloodstream yet. The lag time tempted her to take another, but she didn’t. Not yet. Last thing she needed was slurred speech or, worse, to puke her guts up while giving her report.