As she does, I stare at her. There is no sense of déjà vu. I’m not the teenager who made love with her in the woods. I try not to get lost in her eyes, but in her eyes, it’s all there—the history, the what-ifs, the sliding doors. In her eyes I see you, Leo. I see the life I once knew and have always missed.
Maura tells me about where she’s been since the night you died. It is hard to hear what her life has been like, but I listen without interrupting. I don’t know what I’m feeling anymore. It’s like I’m one exposed nerve ending. It’s three in the morning when she finishes.
“We need some rest,” she says.
I nod. She heads into the bathroom and takes a shower. She comes out in a terry cloth robe with her hair wrapped in a towel. The moonlight hits her in just the right way, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more magnificent sight. I head into the bathroom, strip down, shower. When I come out, I have a towel wrapped around my waist. The lights are out except for a low-wattage lamp on the night table. Maura stands there. The towel is gone from her wet hair. She still wears the bathrobe. She looks at me. No pretense anymore. I cross the room fast. We both know it. Neither says it. I take her in my arms and kiss her hard. She kisses me back, her tongue snaking into my mouth. She pulls the towel off me. I yank open her robe.
This is like nothing I have ever experienced before. It is a hunger, a tearing, a ripping, a healing. It is rough and loving. It is gentle, it is harsh. It is a dance, it is an attack. It is ravenous and intense and ferocious and almost unbearably tender.
When it’s over, we collapse on the bed, staggered, shattered, like we’ll never be exactly the same, and maybe we won’t. Eventually she moves so as to lay her head on my chest, her hand on my stomach. We don’t speak. We stare at the ceiling until our eyes close.
My last thought before I pass out is a primitive one: Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me ever again.
Chapter Thirty
We make love again at dawn.
Maura rolls on top of me. Our eyes meet and stay locked. It’s slower this time, more soulful, comfortable, vulnerable. Later, when we are lying back and staring up into the silence, my mobile dings a text. It’s from Muse and it’s short: Don’t forget. 9AM sharp.
I show it to Maura. “My boss.”
“Could be a setup.”
I shake my head. “Muse told me about it before I met up with Reeves.”
I am still on my back. Maura flips around so that her chin is on my chest. “Do you think they found Andy Reeves yet?”
It is something I’ve been wondering too. I know how that will play out: Someone notices the yellow car first, maybe they call the cops right then and there, maybe they search the premises. Whatever. They find the body. Did Reeves have ID on him? Probably. If not, they’ll figure out his name from the car’s license plate, they’ll get his schedule, they’ll see he worked that night at the Hunk-A-Hunk-A. A club like that will have CCTV cameras in the lot.
I’ll be on them.
So will my car. The CCTV will show me getting into Reeves’s yellow Ford Mustang with the victim.
I’ll be the last person to see him alive.
“We can drive by the scene on the way,” I say. “See if the cops are there yet.”
Maura rolls off me and stands. I’m about to do the same, but I can’t help pausing in something approaching sheer awe to admire her first.
“So why did your boss call this meeting?”
“I’d rather not speculate,” I say. “But I don’t think it’s good.”
“Then don’t go,” she says.
“What do you suggest I do?”
“Run away with me instead.”
That could be the greatest suggestion ever made by anyone ever. But I’m not running. Not now, anyway. I shake my head. “We need to see this through.”
Her reply is to get dressed. I do the same. We head outside. Maura leads the way back to the parking lot of the no-tell motel. We scout the area, see no nearby surveillance, and decide to risk it. We get in the same car we used last night and start toward Route 280.
“You remember how to get there?” I ask.
Maura nods. “The warehouse was in Irvington, not far from that graveyard off the parkway.”
She takes 280 to the Garden State Parkway and veers off at the next exit, for South Orange Avenue. We pass by an aging strip mall and turn into an industrial area that, like many such areas in New Jersey, has seen better days. Industry leaves; manufacturing plants close. That’s just the way it is. Most times, progress comes in and builds something new. But sometimes, like here, the warehouses and factories are simply left to decay and disintegrate into bitter ruins that hint at past glory.
There are no people around, no cars, no activity at all. It looks like the set from some dystopian movie after the bombs hit. We cruise past the yellow Mustang without so much as slowing down.
No one has been here yet. We are safe. For now.
Maura swings the car back onto the parkway. “Where is your meeting?”
“Newark,” I tell her. “But I better shower and change first.”
She gives me a crooked smile. “I think you look great.”
“I look satiated,” I say. “There’s a difference.”
“Fair enough.”
“The meeting will be serious.” I point at my face. “So I need to figure a way to wipe this grin from my face.”
“Go ahead and try.”
We both smile like two lovestruck dopes. She puts her hand on mine and keeps it there. “So where to?” she asks.
“The Hunk-A-Hunk-A,” I say. “I’ll grab my car and take it home.”
“Okay.”
We enjoy the quiet for a few moments. Then in a soft voice Maura says, “I can’t tell you how many times I picked up the phone to call you.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Where would it have led, Nap? One year later, five years later, ten years later. If I had called you and told you the truth, where would you be right now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me neither. So I’d sit there with the phone in my hand and I’d play it all out again. If I told you, what would you do? Where would you be? I wanted to keep you safe. And if I came home and told the truth, who’d believe me? No one. If someone did—if the police took me seriously—then those guys at the base would have to silence me, right? And then I started thinking about it this way: I was alone in the woods that night. I ran away and hid for years. So maybe the guys at the base would pin Leo and Diana on me. How hard would that be to do?”
I study her profile. Then I say, “What aren’t you telling me?”
She puts on the turn signal with a little too much care, puts her hand back on the wheel, keeps her eyes too focused on the road. “It’s a little hard to explain.”
“Try.”
“I was on the road for a long time. Moving, hiding, being on edge. Pretty much my entire adult life. That’s the only life I knew. That constant rush. I was so used to it, to running and hiding, I didn’t get being relaxed. It wasn’t my baseline. In my own way, I’d been okay like that, under threat, trying to survive. But then when I slowed down, when I could see clearly . . .”
“What?”
She shrugs. “It was empty. I had nothing, no one. It felt like maybe that was my fate, you know. I was okay if I kept moving—it hurt more when I thought about what could have been.” Her grip on the wheel tightens. “How about you, Nap?”
“How about me what?”
“How has your life been?”
I want to say, It would have been better if you stayed, but I don’t. Instead I tell her to drop me off two blocks away, so I can walk to the club without anyone seeing her on CCTV. Sure, there is a chance we’ll be picked up by another camera in the area, but by then, this will all be played out, whatever way it ends up going.
Before I get out of the car, Maura again shows me the new app I should use to contact her. It’s supposedly untraceable, and the messages are permanently deleted five minutes after they arrive. When she’s done, she hands me the phone. I reach for the door handle. I’m about to ask her to make me a promise that she won’t run, that no matter what happens, she won’t just disappear on me again. But that’s not me. I kiss her instead. It’s a gentle kiss that lingers.
“There are so many things I’m feeling,” she says.
“Me too.”