“How do you know?”
“Something would have been said, someone would have noticed. That kind of thing…the girls on the street, the other girls, would have taken a closer look if it had been a woman. The place was teeming with cops, including our good friend Robert Adair, and the ever-in-front-of-the-camera Ken Dryer. And then there’s Hank Smith.”
He really didn’t like Hank Smith, she thought, burrowing deeper into his arms.
“Did you ever meet Genevieve O’Brien?” she asked sleepily.
“Yes.”
“Is she everything they say? Passionate, selfless, generous?”
“I met her at the paper once. She was being interviewed by one of our reporters for the local section—she was furious with the slumlords. She was lovely, vivacious, charming…and, yes, passionate. She really did care about other people. You think she’s alive, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Maybe,” he murmured. She heard such a terrible note of frustration in his voice. If I could just change something, she heard beneath his words. If I could just make life right for someone else, then…then it would make sense.
She turned and held him fiercely. “I love you so much.”
He was quiet.
“Don’t go,” she pleaded, then spoke no more. She didn’t want to awaken; she didn’t want to interrupt the vision that came to her by night.
In her dream, she drifted and, half asleep, felt him again. She turned in his arms. God, the dream was so vivid. She could feel his heat, the dampness of sweat on his skin, the strength of his muscles beneath her hands, the hardness of his body and his erection. The hot-lava stroke of his tongue over her flesh. Inside and out…his being, his essence, around her, within her. Lips on her breasts, intimately between her thighs. The pulse and beat and hunger of melding together, striving and writhing…climbing, rising, exploding into the moment of climax with a strange mixture of tenderness and violence, all so vividly real…
She felt his touch on her hair, his cheek against hers. “Leslie, I’m afraid for you. I try, and sometimes, I find the strength to actually touch this world. But then I’m drained and you’re alone, and I’m so afraid for you….”
“It’s all right,” she assured him, then cuddled close and fell asleep in his arms.
She awoke suddenly, certain she could hear the sound of sobs coming from below, from the basement below the dead room.
14
Alone and awake in his car, parked just far enough away not to be conspicuous, Joe read over the list. He wished he’d been there that night, and he tried to envision the scene in his mind’s eye.
He kept coming back to a place where he froze, afraid.
For Leslie.
Accident in the crypt, accident in the subway…accident in this house?
Like hell.
So if the first two weren’t accidents and everything was connected, then he needed to look at the people around them now and compare those names to the list from the night of the gala. Professor Laymon? Absurd. He had no interest in anything but his work. Still, tomorrow he would assure himself that Laymon had been at the site all day.
Brad? But why?
Jealousy?
Robert Adair had been the one to put him on the case, which seemed to rule him out. Hank Smith? He hated the guy, but that was no reason to suspect him.
And no reason not to.
Was Genevieve the connecting factor?
Or was it Leslie herself? What if someone had actually been trying to kill Leslie, not Matt?
It made no sense. But the idea continued to plague him.
What about Ken Dryer? He was at the site far more often than a police spokesman needed to be, even with Laymon making demands and everyone trying to bow to his wishes, since the women behind him and the Historical Society were some of the wealthiest in the state.
Hank Smith. Ken Dryer. Brad Verdun. Laymon. Robert Adair. They’d all been at the gala. and now they were all revolving in the same social circle again.
He set down his list, startled, as he saw lights go on in the house. He sat for a moment, then hurriedly turned off his dome light and exited his car. As he did so, he noticed something that he hadn’t seen before.
A man.
He had blended with a lamppost at first. But now, with the car light off…
The guy had been standing there all along, watching the house.
He’d thought himself completely hidden. Maybe he’d seen the lights go on, too, and shifted his position, the movement attracting Joe’s attention.
Joe raced toward the lamppost, but the man heard him coming and shot down the street like greased lightning. Joe could run, but the guy had a head start on him. Joe chased him down one street, around the block and toward the site, where he saw a uniformed cop striding along the fence.
“Hey!” he called out.
“Yes?” the officer said, watching calmly as Joe headed toward him.