Page 224 of Chandelier Sin
I pressed my palm to my chest, feeling the tug on my heartstrings, thinking of my daughter as we flew toward her. This moment, this chance, had consumed me entirely.
As we banked over the clouds, my heart sang with a joy I couldn’t suppress.
Roper wanted Eve to suffer even more than she already had by creating a vast separation between her and Eloise and dragging out the agony—not only for the mother but for the daughter as well. He wasn’t content with mass destruction on a global level. He also warned to cause grief closer to home.
Perhaps he’d detected my presence during Lance’s murder. Maybe my disguise had failed. Or maybe he’d observed Eve assisting with our extraction of Stella from the sixth floor after that debacle of a staged orgy.
Either way, something triggered him to remove Eloise from Cornwall and fly her here, to Thailand. According to our sources, Eloise had been placed on a plane with an escort and flown halfway around the globe to a foreign country.
As much as I tried to get Eve to eat a light supper before we landed in Bangkok, her appetite was off,understandably so. I admired her fortitude, her courage, and how she could remain calm during the midst of a tumultuous storm.
But I hated seeing her suffer in silence. She was trying to be strong for her daughter, I knew that.
We’d deactivated any possible tracking in Eve’s phone. Persuading her to turn it off for most of the flight was a challenge. She’d feared that not answering a call from Roper could ignite his fury—but he’d already had Eloise on a plane by then.
Roper had expected her home yesterday.
Maybe it appeared that she’d left him, giving up on her daughter.
But he didn’t know Eve or understand the bond between a mother and a daughter. He had no idea the lengths she’d take to save her.
I let Eve have some quiet time, moving down the aisle to spend some time with Shay and his team, listening to their tales of tours abroad serving during times of war and peace.
Shay filled me in on how A.J.’s rescue went, sharing how they’d orchestrated his extraction from Lance’s yacht—on the same night Merrill had died.
I imagined Stella and A.J.’s reunion would have been something to behold—brother and sister finally reunited with days and months of recovery ahead.
I’d taken the news of Dean Hersey’s death hard. The journalist had made a fatal mistake by not walking away that night. The details of his death were still unfolding from the LAPD.
I managed to grab some sleep.
Eve slept beside me, dozing for a few hours here and there.
Our plane landed just after six o’clock, and jetlag began affecting all of us in one way or another.
Shay and his men rallied from the long flight and disembarked first.
Eve and I followed, descending the metal steps of the plane. We were hit by a wave of misty heat, that familiar humidity wrapping around you like a vice. Beyond the tarmac rose the lush landscapeof tropical trees. The area was fairly quiet, proving we’d taxied to a more discreet part of the airport.
Shay met us at the bottom of the ramp and escorted us over to a couple of waiting cars. “We’ll meet you at the Four Seasons,” he told us.
Eve looked panicked. “We can’t go find her now?”
“We need to complete our recon of the property,” Shay told her. “We have a man in there, but we need more time to confirm an exit strategy.”
“You know where she is?” she asked, relief showing on her face.
He gave a nod. “We have confirmed Eloise’s current location.”
“I can’t wait one more second.” She gripped my arm. “Please, Atticus.”
“Look,” said Shay, “this is how it’s done. We do a risk assessment. He’s an arms dealer, so…”
“But this isn’t a war,” she said, exasperated. “This is about a child. My child.”
Shay’s concerned expression grew more intense. “I didn’t want to have to say this until we had more intel, but Aemon Roper flew out of LAX an hour before you.”
Eve turned pale. “On his private jet?”
