Page 86 of The Children of Eve (Charlie Parker #22)

CHAPTER LXXXVI

Seeley took the child. We didn’t try to stop him. Neither did Zetta. By then, something had broken inside her that would never be repaired. The last we saw of Seeley was his shape silhouetted against the burning house, cradling the child, a gunman trailing behind. They paused only to stare into the flames, and we, like them, glimpsed the figure of a woman standing unmoving in the doorway, though her whole body was afire. Then the ceiling came down on her and she was gone.

I FACED NO INTERROGATION in the aftermath, or none that presented any legal difficulties. It was an unusual position in which to find myself, and I might have grown to like it had I not recognized that it was unlikely to be repeated often.

Zetta Nadeau left the state of Maine. It was rumored that she lived in New Mexico for a month before crossing the border and journeying south through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina—the former territories of the Inca Empire.

Whatever she’s searching for, I hope she never finds it.