Page 111 of The Search

“For God’s sake, why?”

“He killed Chen Li.”

“What?”

“He went into her hospital room and he broke her neck. He called it a mercy killing.”

“And what did you call it?”

“Murder. She was in remission and the remission could have lasted.” His lips tightened. “He didn’t give her that chance.”

“Did he know she was in remission?”

“I told him. He didn’t believe me. He didn’t want to believe me. He’d lost her and he didn’t want her to live if he couldn’t have her.”

“Lost her?”

“He loved her. He wanted to go to bed with her.”

She gasped.

“That’s why he tried to draw her into the Egyptian mystique. It was common then to go to bed with close relatives. He wooed her like a lover and never took a wrong step. But I think she guessed it toward the end and he sensed her revulsion. He couldn’t accept it, so she had to die.”

“And you sent him to prison?”

“If I’d caught him before he ran off to Bangkok, I would have killed him. Instead, I told the authorities in Bangkok when and where they could find the drugs he’d smuggled into the country. Then I bribed the judge at his trial to give him a life sentence in one of the worst prisons in the world. Galen assured me that even the cockroaches bailed out of that place after they got a look around.” His smile was chilling. “That made me very happy.”

“Rudzak smuggled drugs?”

“His father owned an import-export house in Tokyo. Rudzak began by taking advantage of his father’s contacts to do a little art smuggling. That’s where Galen met him and introduced him to me. We did a few runs together and he brought us home to meet his family . . . and Chen Li.”

“You were a smuggler too?”

“I told you my life hasn’t been squeaky clean. I was broke and trying to make a stake. I stopped when I married Chen Li. Rudzak told me he was quitting too, but he just shifted his focus. Galen came to me two years later and told me Rudzak had started smuggling drugs throughout Asia. It was much more profitable but a hell of a lot more dangerous. I knew it would kill Chen Li if she found out, so I tried to convince him to quit. He assured me he’d do it right after the next run.”

“But he didn’t.”

Logan shook his head. “He was making money hand over fist and there was no way he’d stop. So I turned a blind eye and just tried to protect Chen Li. Everything I did at that time was aimed at protecting Chen Li. I’d just found out that she had cancer and I was searching desperately for a cure for her. I was so young, I didn’t believe anything could beat me.”

No, Logan wouldn’t believe anything could beat him, she thought. And as a younger man he must have been even more willful and determined to get his own way.

“So now you know what a bastard Rudzak is and you have a better picture of me too. Why don’t you bow out and let me go after him?”

She shook her head.

“You’re being a fool,” he said roughly. “You’re not equipped to go up against him. He’s studied you. He knows your weakness.”

“What weakness?”

“Humanity. If you’re needed, you’ll go to help. Just as you did at Apache Lake.”

“And what am I supposed to do? Just sit here?”

“Would that be so bad? It won’t be for long. He’s evidently done his homework and he’ll be on the move now. Things will be moving fast.”

“What homework?”

“We think he’s found out about Dodsworth. Galen planted a man at the courthouse and he says someone’s been nosing around the records.”