Baltimore 03 - Did You Miss Me?

down Clay’s spine. ‘Get me the information. I’ll give Carter a call. He can get a sketch artist out to those two homes. If they saw Doug, they can provide a description. Hopefully we can get a likeness of this guy that’s more helpful than we’ve had so far. Good work, Alec.’
    ‘Thanks. How will you hide that I got information through . . . inventive means?’
    ‘I’ll think of something. Don’t worry.’
    Wheeling, West Virginia, Wednesday, December 4, 3.30 P.M.
    After Deacon had left with the locals, Joseph returned to Ford’s room. Daphne sat still as a statue in the plastic chair, her hand over Ford’s. He knew she wouldn’t leave her son to sleep in a proper bed, so he mentally urged the boy to wake up fast.
    Standing behind her, he rubbed her shoulders, satisfied when she dropped her head, elongating her neck. In minutes her tight muscles began to loosen.
    ‘You need to sleep, Daphne.’
    ‘I need him to see me when he wakes up. Then I’ll sleep.’
    ‘I was in the hospital for three days once, unconscious,’ he said. ‘My mother talked to me. I remember just wanting to hear more, to get closer, and I woke up. So maybe you should talk to him.’
    She looked back at him, eyes wide. ‘What happened to make you unconscious for three days?’
    ‘Skateboard accident when I was a kid. Once I finally woke up and Mom knew I wasn’t going to die, she ripped me a new one. I wasn’t wearing a helmet.’
    ‘I would have ripped you one, too.’
    He grinned. ‘Yeah, but I didn’t fall until after I’d popped an Ollie and ridden the rail all the way down the middle school steps. Totally worth it.’ His grin faded. ‘Except for how much I scared my mom. I always hated that I’d done that.’
    ‘I suspect she’s forgiven you,’ she said with a smile, then turned back to her son. ‘With Ford it was always the horses, which I suppose was my fault. I took him to the stable with me from the time he was an infant. When he was five he saw a jumping competition and he was hooked. My heart would routinely stop, watching him compete.’ She stroked the boy’s hand. ‘He loves to fly.’
    ‘Talk to him about the horses or Simone’s gigantic Christmas tree. Just talk to him.’
    She did, but the topic she chose was the women’s center that she and Paige were building, the one for which she hosted all those fundraisers. At first he listened with half an ear, thinking instead about all the colors she’d worn to those charity events, how bold she’d looked among the sea of little black dresses. How alive .
    And then he remembered all those hours he’d watched her from across the room, imagining peeling those bright dresses off her body. Imagining all the things he’d do to her if she were only going home with him. To his bed. If she were his.
    She could be his. Mine . He liked the sound of that.
    And then he realized she wasn’t talking to Ford. She’s talking to me . She was telling him how scared the women were, how hard the treatments were on their bodies. And spirits. How devastating it was for the women she served to lose their hair, their curves. Their femininity. How terrified they were to think they might leave their children motherless. And how hard it was to take care of their children when they could barely take care of themselves.
    And Joseph knew she was really telling him how it had been for her, helping him to understand all the things he’d need to know. If she decides to belong to me .
    ‘I was lucky,’ she murmured. ‘I had Mama and Maggie. I always knew that if anything ever happened to me that they’d take care of you. So many aren’t so lucky, and I always said, “Someday I’ll do something about that.” Then Paige started talking about starting her school, offering self-defense classes to the women in Holly’s social center. It brought her back from a dark place where she was afraid all the time. I’d been there too, in that dark place. For a long time I just held my breath, waiting for the doctor to give me bad news. But he didn’t and then he didn’t again, and then years had gone by. I knew the time had come to give back.’ She exhaled on a sigh. ‘When I get to the end of my life, I want to be able to look back and know that my being here made things better.’
    And in that moment he knew. I have to have her . Nobody’d better stand in his way. Or threaten to take her away from me . She is the one made only for me .
    ‘I think you already have made