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Liaht She didn’t have her purse with her She must have dropped it in the courthouse, and of course he hadn’t been worrying about that then He returned his gaze to the road and said, “I doubt that will be a proble we need will be at the safe house, including clothes”
“Hoill they know my size?”
Liaency had provided hiiven the SUV and new cell phone Ammo clips that were a perfect ency knows”
A long silence followed All of a sudden, Cate said, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Liam was instantly on alert Cody had told him not to mention it “Who?”
“The other witness” Her voice was soft, and he caught the faintest trace of an accent that reuard he’d been for six lish was less formal than the princess’s, ht of the past nine years in the US And despite the softness, there was a layer of steel beneath it, just like the princess This woman was no pushover, either
When Lia to back up my testimony She’s dead That’s why the trial was delayed That’s why the prosecutors were so insistent thisI needed to come in for another prep session with theh we’d already spent solast week I was sick of it That’s why your brother said, ‘She dies, this case dies, too’ So the other witness must be dead”
It was the longest speech Liament call, then ado”
“Vishenko murdered her” A flat, cold statement
“Maybe There’s no proof of that Not yet”
“There ainst her breastbone “I know it here Just as I know he’s the one who tried to have me killed He is ruthless A to prevent ”
“But you’re going to testify anyway Why?” he asked, curious to understand what drove her to take the risk when so many men had refused to flip on Vishenko in the past
“Because Alec and Angelina are right He is evil, and he must be stopped No matter the cost” Her voice dropped to a whisper as if she was reciting an oft-repeated mantra, so that Liam had to strain to hear her next words “‘I a, but I can do so And I will not let what I cannot do interfere hat I can do’”
He recognized the quotation with a sense of shock, race of God, I will” The entire thing was carved in wood over the fireplace mantel at home, a maxim his parents had instilled in all their children fro force that had led his into the US Marine Corps and then into public service “Edward Everett Hale,” he said blankly “How do you know that quotation?”
She drew a deep breath, then exhaled slowly “Your brother said that to me I was afraid—so terribly afraid I ran and hid for six years Then Alec found ood man, your brother—I could not let him down He made me realize I have a duty to do whatever I can do to stop Vishenko ‘I aether, we can defeat him”
Liam was shaken Cate had divined the kernel of wisdom out of the quotation, had pinpointed his own raison d’être—his reason for being Yes, he was only one But sometimes one person could make a difference
Right and wrong Good and evil He couldn’t res weren’t important to his Maybe it was old-fashioned nowadays Maybe the dividing lines had become blurred for many Not for him But that didn’t mean he saw the world only in black-and-white It didn’tcould be both right and wrong
He’d killed aNot in his book There was a higher right—saving lives—that trulanced away fro so still and quiet, looking even younger in reposeuntil one looked in her eyes