Countdown - Iris Johansen [99]
“Eve.”
Eve looked back at Jane.
“You shouldn’t have done it.” She moistened her lips. “But it doesn’t change how I feel about you. Nothing could do that.” She stood up, walked across the room, and stopped before her. “How do I know what I would have done in the same circumstances?” She tried to smile. “We’re so much alike.”
“Not really.” Eve reached out and gently caressed her cheek. “But enough to make me proud and fill me with content. Ever since you came to us, you spread a sort of . . . light over Joe and me. I just couldn’t stand the thought of that light dimming.”
Jane felt the tears stinging her eyes as she wrapped her arms around Eve. “What the hell can I say to that?” She hugged her quickly and stepped back. “Okay, let’s get out of here. May I tell Trevor?”
“Why not? He’s probably playing all kinds of scenarios in his mind right now.” She started to close the door. “He might as well get the right one.”
“Wait.” Jane took one last look at the reconstruction on the worktable. “She’s close, isn’t she? But it’s not close enough. There were so many statues sculpted of Cira and they didn’t have this . . . crudeness. She could—” She turned to Eve. “The measurements have to be so precise in your work. Could you possibly have made a mistake?”
“Do you think I didn’t want this to be Cira? An absolute match to the statues would have solved everything. You would have been convinced you’d found her at last and it would have been over. I was very careful. I did the reconstruction over three times and it came out this way every time.” She paused. “Have you considered the possibility that the sculptors who did those statues glorified her, that the real Cira was less than their artistry?”
“I suppose that could—” She shook her head. “It’s not—” She turned back to the main exhibition room and let Eve shut the work-room door. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“But you’ve lived with the mental image of Cira for so long that any change would seem wrong. Isn’t that true?”
Jane nodded slowly. “But I’m too confused now to decide what’s truth or fantasy.” She started through the exhibit hall. “Maybe it’s all fantasy. Except the gold. The gold is real. That’s what I have to concentrate on.”
“That’s why I asked you to come here,” Eve said quietly.
“You say no more gold was found in the recovery at the marina?”
“Not with these victims’ skeletons.”
“No, I mean no chests hidden in any nearby houses?”
Eve shook her head. “But there’s so much of Herculaneum still under that layer of rock. I only hoped to give you a starting place or an alternate place to look.”
“Thank you. I know you did.” Jane sighed. “I only hope the gold isn’t buried under that lava flow.”
“You have to face the possibility that it could very well be there.”
“I won’t face it, dammit. If that was Cira, maybe she was trying to get the gold out of town. Maybe she managed to do it.” Her hands clenched into fists. “But it isn’t her. I know it.”
“You don’t know it. And the gold is too important to stopping those bastards for us to gamble on instinct.” Eve started toward the door. “This could stop us cold. The gold was never a sure thing. I wish to hell it was. But we’d better start looking for another solution to pull out of the hat.”
The marina,” Trevor murmured as they watched Eve’s plane take off. “Even if it’s there, it will be difficult as hell to find and get to it. We’d be a lot luckier if it’s in Julius’s tunnel.”
“But we know she was trying to get the gold out of the tunnel. Perhaps she managed to do it.”
“And took it to the marina? Maybe that was just an escape attempt. Maybe she grabbed a pouch from wherever she hid it and ran toward the sea.”
“What was she doing at the marina? Julius would have kept watch on her. It wouldn’t have been safe for her to—”
“You’re talking as if that was Cira.” He was silent a moment. “You have to admit the chances are pretty strong it might be. Eve was right. Those statues could have been meant to flatter either her or Julius’s taste in women.”
“I admit it.” Her