Joe sat on a concrete bench in the cemetery, staring at the newly tamped ground. He was alone; he needed to be. The funeral had been far too huge; he’d felt that he needed to take a step back, so this afternoon he’d come back on his own. So many good people had loved her. Adam. Nikki, who had been with Leslie when she’d discovered the street-level entrance to the tunnels, the route by which Robert had escaped the night Joe had chased him. Nikki and Adam had been there when the paramedics had desperately tried to save Leslie. They had been there when she was pronounced dead. They had suffered. As had Brad Verdun, who had cried like a baby. Even Dryer had broken down when he had to go on TV to talk about what had happened.
But that was over now. Just as the torture Robert Adair had inflicted on his victims was over. Genevieve had been able to shed some light on what had made the man crack, based on his lunatic ramblings when he came to visit her in her makeshift prison. He’d never had much of a social life, so he’d turned to hookers, then finally turned on them. In his opinion, prostitutes deserved whatever happened to them. Genevieve hadn’t been alone there when he first grabbed her and he had hurt them all, she said. When he tired of a girl, when she angered him…he killed her. Joe was there when she stoically informed the police that she’d done what she had to do to live. She’d also informed them that she thought he’d gone psychotic because he was impotent. A powerful respected man with no one to come home to—because, in his way, he was powerless.
Joe’s astonishment was fading. Despite the fact that he had listed the man as a suspect himself, he had never been on top of the list, even at the end. It was still almost inconceivable. And yet, and in retrospect, someone should have figured it out before. Except that Robert Adair had been the lead detective on the case.
The pain of Leslie’s death seemed dulled now, but sometimes it struck him like a knife. He went over and over the series of events in his head, trying to create a scenario in which everything worked out differently. In which she lived.
He was carrying a single rose, and now he tossed it gently onto the grave. “I failed you,” he said softly. She had no tombstone yet, but Matt’s was there, a handsome, simple memorial in white marble. He’d chosen it himself. “I failed you, too,” he said.
He closed his eyes. It had been an oddly beautiful day, pure blue sky, soft breeze. He had waited, though, until it was late afternoon to come back. A time when the sun was gentle, when the air was balmy, and he’d sat there until the colors of sunset had washed the sky, as if the pastel shades of the coming evening could somehow make sense of everything that had happened.
Why had he come?
Did he think one of them would talk to him? Maybe, he admitted.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned.
Genevieve O’Brien stood there. She was almost shockingly beautiful, with her eyes the color of the sky, her hair a muted flame color that seemed to promise an inner wildness. She was slim and very pale—hell, she’d spent two months as a terrified prisoner in an underground cell—but other than that, she looked good. Her gaze was steady. But then, she’d been strong from the beginning. Strong enough to survive.
She’d spoken at the funeral. It had been an outstanding tribute to the woman who had died. For her. It had stirred every heart. For a while, at least, Joe had thought skeptically, it might improve man’s behavior to his fellow man. Leslie had been a true heroine.
Earlier that day, Genevieve had been standing at the grave, ready to set her flowers on the casket, when a reporter had come up to her. That had been too much for Joe. He’d interposed himself between the two of them, and he wasn’t exactly sure what he’d said, but the reporter had run, and Genevieve had looked at him with her immense blue eyes filled with tears, and she had said simply, “Thank you.”
Now she joined him on the bench.
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
He stared at her. “I’m good. You…?”
She stared down at the graves. “I’m good. Grateful. More determined than ever to make my life count.”
She was amazing, he thought, then looked back at the graves. “I tried so hard,” he murmured.
She set a hand on his shoulder. “You two saved my life. And you stopped a monster.”
He shook his head. He hadn’t been able to save Leslie.
“I could use a drink,” she said.
“What?”
“Would you please take me somewhere—O’Malley’s, maybe. I could really use a drink.”
“I…yeah. Sure.” What good did it do, sitting in a graveyard?
She stood first and offered him a hand. He accepted it, rising. They started out of the graveyard, down a gentle slope.
She stopped, turning back. “She’s with him now,” Genevieve said softly.
“Pardon?”
“Look.”
He turned.
“Look over there. Right where we were sitting.”
He did, and blinked. It was the fading sunlight. It was the wishful thinking of his numb and tangled mind.
And yet…
There they were. Matt. Tall, broad-shouldered, hair gleaming gold, smiling at the slender beauty standing beside him. Leslie. Leslie, elegant face lifted, eyes sparkling as she looked up at the man she loved. Matt caught her hand, laughed, took a seat on the bench and pulled her against him, cradling her there in the last rays of the setting sun.