Leslie shrugged. “I…I hope not. Genevieve did know whoever picked her up,” she said with conviction, looking at Joe.
Didi sniffed. “I could have told you that. He had to be a friend.”
“No, that’s just it. He was someone she knew, but not a friend. Someone she did business with, worked with somehow. She was annoyed when she saw him.”
“She got right into the car,” Didi said.
“Right—because she knew him. Because even though she didn’t like him, he was respectable, someone people trusted, but she wanted something from him that she wasn’t getting.”
“Ain’t that life,” Didi murmured.
“Any chance you can tell where they went?” Joe asked.
Leslie hesitated, then shook her head. “All I know is that they drove for a while before he drugged her. That’s what he did, he drugged her.”
“Drugged her or killed her?” Joe asked quietly.
Leslie frowned then. “I…”
“What?” Joe asked anxiously.
“Listen, I’m not a psychic. I really—” She broke off. No way was she ready to explain that her real talent lay in talking to ghosts.
“What were you going to say?” Joe demanded.
Leslie stared at him, letting out a long sigh. “I…don’t think she’s dead. She was abducted, she was drugged…but I don’t think she’s dead.”
Joe stared back at her. He didn’t seem to doubt her, didn’t question her. He looked thoughtful.
“I mean…I don’t know anything,” she said. “I just…I don’t know. I can’t help but think I would have…felt it if she’d died. I think she might be alive.”
Joe folded his arms over his chest. “Then it’s imperative that we find her. Quickly.”
11
Iam with you. All is well….
Leslie didn’t fall asleep easily that night, despite her desire to dream. She lay awake for hours, certain that the answer was there, but seeing it was like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, the haystack being New York with its millions of denizens, and the needle being a single woman who was there somewhere.
So she had lain awake with the television on, keeping her company. Joe had somehow been loathe to leave her, despite the alarm system, and though she had absolutely insisted that he go home, she had the feeling he was sleeping in his car again. She should have suggested that he at least sleep in one of the other bedrooms, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to make the offer.
She wasn’t afraid of her dreams. Quite the opposite: she welcomed them. She argued with herself that she had to be alone, that Matt was trying to reach her, and the presence of any other human being might keep him away.
That was true.
But equally true was the fact that she couldn’t let go. Not yet…
And then, when she finally slept, he was there.
First, the tenderness.
The sensation that she wasn’t alone, that the past hadn’t been lost to tragedy, that what should have been forever hadn’t been ripped away from her. The sweetness of lying down on a soft mattress after a long day, of being held, the comfort of another human being, loved and cherished, at her side. Then…
Flesh against flesh. The feathery brush of his lips on hers, the weight of him on top of her. Light, teasing kisses that quickly filled with passion. Blankets tossed and discarded. The slide of cotton against her body as the nightgown was tossed aside. The whisper of his breath against her skin, moving from the valley between her breasts, over her abdomen and down to her thighs.
I knew you would come, she said.
And his very simple answer.
I love you so much…
In her dreams she stroked his flesh, was seduced and aroused by the fire of his lips and tongue moving intimately and along the length of her. She looked into his eyes, blue like the sky. She saw his smile, the single dimple in his cheek. Caressed his jaw, hard and squared, almost as if it had been formed by the determination and sense of justice with which he had lived his life, rather than the lottery of genetics. She reached out and, with both hands, she cupped his face and drew his mouth to hers again. She initiated the ferocity of the kiss, so rapt herself that she needed to return each stroke and caress, needed to seduce as she was seduced, needed to tease and arouse.