Read Online Blood Trust by Eric Van Lustbader - Free Book Online

What did his killer or killers want from him? What information did he possess that they needed to go to such extreme lengths to get from him?”
    He regarded her steadily. Clearly, he was looking for an answer from her. She shook her head. “I can’t say. I really didn’t know him that well.”
    “Come on, Alli, you two were carrying on a love affair for five months.”
    “That’s just it,” Alli said, “it wasn’t a love affair.”
    “No, what was it then?”
    “I was…” Her eyes darted away for a moment. “I was trying to regain a sense of myself, to, I don’t know, feel my body again, to be in control of it again.”
    Jenkins sat studying her for a while, or perhaps he was pondering her words. At last, he said, “Did you care about Mr. Warren?”
    “Of course I did.” She hesitated, but it was clear she had more to say. “But not … just not in the way you think.”
    “What do you think I meant?”
    “We weren’t lovers in the classical sense—like Romeo and Juliet.”
    “If memory serves, Romeo dies.”
    She snorted in derision.
    “About the psychopharmacologist,” Jenkins went on. “One of the things he said about you in his report is that, in his opinion, you’re lacking in affect.”
    “I think he ’s lacking in affect.”
    Jenkins gave her a tight smile. “What his diagnosis means is that, basically, you have difficulty locating your emotions. Sometimes you can’t find them at all. In other words, there are times when you just don’t care about anything … or anyone.”
    She looked away again.
    “His evaluation will hold a great deal of weight in the course of the investigation. Typically, people who can’t feel—”
    “I told you,” she flared. “No fucking drugs!”
    “You’re not listening to me,” he continued doggedly. “Your reaction to your boyfriend’s death—or rather your lack of one—was duly noted by everyone at the crime scene, including those sympathetic to you.”
    “You can’t possibly understand.”
    He spread his hands. “Now is your chance to enlighten me.”
    She stared at him, stone-faced.
    Jenkins sighed heavily. “In return for you being held in your uncle’s recognizance instead of in a federal holding cell, the judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation.” He took another breath and let it out slowly, as if anticipating the coming storm. “You must comply with the psychopharmacologist’s diagnosis, which, of course, includes your taking whatever psychotropic medications he prescribes.”
    Alli leapt up again and retreated behind the chair back, as if he were a lion from which she needed saving. “I can’t! I fucking won’t!”
    “I’m sorry.” Jenkins regarded her with what seemed to be genuine pity. “I’m afraid you have no choice.”
    *   *   *
    D AYLIGHT SEEPED into the grove of trees with the blue-white flicker of a television screen. Jack, exhausted and frightened for Alli, had been scrutinizing the crime scene for hours. The detectives had made their reluctant exit, but Naomi Wilde and Peter McKinsey remained, along with Fearington’s commander, Brice Fellows, who had had sandwiches and thermoses of strong black coffee brought out from the academy’s commissary. Fellows, to his credit, stood back, sipping coffee, silently observing him as he worked. Jack was unfamiliar with McKinsey, but he had gotten to know Naomi well enough when she was guarding the FLOTUS. Carson had plucked Naomi out of her daily assignments specifically to guard his wife. That was how Edward Carson did things—by instinct. In thinking of Lyn Carson, Jack realized that no one had informed Alli that her mother was dead. On reflection, Jack supposed such news was better left undelivered for the time being.
    Jack had spent his time wisely. As soon as there was sufficient natural light he switched off the spots and got to work. He had learned to distrust spotlights, which tended to distort perspective and played havoc with the impressions received