Eight Days to Live Read Online Free PDF

that—”
    “Listen, Venable. I’m not willing to cooperate with you on any level. I’m pissed off, and I can’t see that changing in the foreseeable future. I’ll call the prime minister because I don’t want to have to run the gauntlet when I get to Paris. I should be there within two hours. I have a plane standing by.” His voice lowered to velvet softness. “And after I finish the call, I’m going to phone you back, and you’re going to tell me everything you know or guess or even vaguely speculate. Is that understood?”
    “Of course.”
    “I mean it, Venable,” MacDuff said. “I don’t like the idea of your manipulating one of my people. It’s not going to happen again.” He hung up.

    “I MADE YOU COFFEE .” Jock crossed to where Jane was sitting on the brocade Louis XV couch and handed her the tiny flowered cup and saucer. “But this is all I could find to put it in. It’s hardly worth bothering.”
    “Celine loved dainty cups. She said she felt like a princess when she—” Jane drew a deep, shaky breath. “I argued with her. I was used to cups that were more like pitchers. Eve never liked to run to the kitchen for a refill while she was working on her reconstructions, and she always started out with a big cup. When I’m painting, I do the same thing. But Celine said that coffee should be an experience and should be savored and—I’m babbling, aren’t I?” She took a sip of the coffee. “Thanks, Jock. Thanks for everything.” The hot coffee tasted good and some of the chill that she was feeling ebbed away. It would be back, she knew. Every time she thought of Celine, it attacked like an enemy in hiding.
    But for this moment Jock had managed to lessen that terrible hollowness. He was smiling gently at her, and it warmed her. Gentleness, strength, and yet that sense of underlying loneliness.
    Strength. Yes, she always thought of him as the boy she had first met, but he was older now, in his early twenties. Just as stunningly handsome, with those silver-gray eyes and wonderful features, just as quietly contained, but the years had taken away that almost breakable quality and replaced it with a sort of subtle power.
    “I’m sorry your friend was killed.” He sat down in the chair across from her. “She was a beautiful woman.”
    “How could you tell?” She shivered. “That expression was—”
    “Entirely natural considering the circumstances,” he said gently. “But I could still tell she had a flair for living.”
    “Yes.” She moistened her lips. “I’m sorry that you—I didn’t want you to kill again, Jock. Particularly not for me.”
    He smiled. “You’re suffering more than I am. You and MacDuff are always worrying about my immortal soul. Since I’m virtually sure that it’s lost already, I don’t let it trouble me.”
    “It wasn’t your fault. You were sick. You didn’t know what you were doing.”
    “Shh.” He lifted his cup. “Drink your coffee. It’s not important right now.”
    “It’s important. You’re important.” She rubbed her temple. “What happened, Jock? Why was she killed? Celine didn’t have an enemy in the world. Was he crazy?”
    “In a way, I suppose.”
    “And why were you here?” Though heaven knows she had been grateful to have him. Not only because he had probably saved her life but for staying with her during those two excruciating hours of police questioning. The inspector had at first been brusque, then had turned amazingly kind and respectful. He had not even made them go down to the police station to give their statements.
    But perhaps leaving the gallery would have been better. She would not have been so aware of what the police forensic team had been doing to Celine. She quickly veered away from that memory.
    Now that the first shock was over, she had to fight her way through the horror and try to make some kind of sense out of that act, which had no resemblance to reason. “Why are you here? I haven’t seen you for a