The October List

close.
    This was absurd under the circumstances. Yet, for the moment, the feeling of desire – and the possibility of a deeper, searingly hot connection – enveloped her.
    It was then that he pulled her closer, his right hand easing like a silk scarf around her neck. She resisted but only for the briefest of moments. Lips yielding and surging, tastes joining, heat rolling from skin to skin. The more she relaxed, the harder her gripped her.
    And she sensed that irresistible uncoiling within her.
    Another embrace, bordering on pain. Then he was backing away. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.’ Though he didn’t seem the least bit contrite.
    Despite virtually seeing the name Sarah emblazoned in her mind, Gabriela said softly, ‘Yes, you should have.’ And she kissed him once more.
    ‘Let’s get breakfast and keep going through our homework.’ A glance at the documents. ‘We’ve got a half million dollars to find.’
    She nodded but found herself tempted once more to pull him down on the bed next to her. She easily pictured what would follow. Daniel was sensual, with a taut body – she’d seen and felt enough of it already. A firm, unyielding grip. Lips the right combination of firm and soft. He’d have a playful tongue and he’d use it frequently; he was a man who would enjoy taste as well as touch. He would press her down on the bed, pinioning her, which despite her obsession with control she curiously enjoyed – never been able to figure that one out – and then he’d devour her, one hand on her thigh, one on her breast. He’d be unrelenting, possessive, domineering.
    And the warmth and pleasure, like drugs, would continue, growing and growing until the end would be pretty quick for her.
    God, she wanted that.
    A string of mismatched lovers stretched out behind her.
    Mismatched and worse.
    But, as tempted as she was, she forced the fantasy away and ignored the warm sheets, the scents of him, the memory of his hands and mouth.
    Priorities.
    Goals.
    The name ‘Sarah.’

CHAPTER
21
     

8:30 a.m., Sunday
1 hour earlier
     

 

 
     
    He had a sense that somebody was watching him.
    Frank Walsh was walking toward his apartment in the West Village, aware of a man in his forties, large, with curly blond hair sticking out from beneath a baseball cap, wearing a dark overcoat. The man was on the opposite side of Hudson Street, walking in the same direction. But it was odd, the way this guy was walking. Anybody else would have been looking down at his feet or ahead or at the windows to his left. This guy, though, was glancing pretty frequently at the sparse Sunday-morning traffic. Like he was worried about cars following him.
    Worried why? That cops were after him, a mugger? A killer?
    Or was Mr Overcoat studiously avoiding looking at his own target: Franklin Walsh himself?
    The thirty-year-old knew about stalking up on prey, about fighting, about attacking. About survival.
    About blood.
    His instincts told him this guy was trouble.
    A fast glance but the man seemed to anticipate this and looked away. Frank got only a look at a round face and that creepy hair – tight blond curls, slick. But this was the Village and weird was the order of the day.
    Then Mr Overcoat paused to look in a window, head cocked with what seemed to be legitimate curiosity. So maybe he was just another local. Frank told himself to stop being paranoid. Besides, he knew how to take care of himself. He felt the knife in his pocket, tapped it for reassurance.
    Soon his thoughts drifted away from Mr Overcoat. They even skipped over what was coming a half hour from now: the knife work he’d been obsessing over for days.
    And they settled on … what else? Shit. The weekend visit with his mother. She’d overfed him. She’d made him take her shopping to the most crowded mall on Long Island. And there hadn’t been much to talk about with her, of course – there never was – though the woman had managed to bring up Frank’s sister’s marriage at least a half-dozen times.
    Part of that topic included the fact that Barbara and her husband would ‘surely have a baby in the next year or so.’
    Which involuntarily had conjured an unpleasant image of his sister having sex, which put him off dinner last night, at least until dessert.
    ‘Brobbie and Steve want four, you know. Ideally one year apart.’
    What was his mother’s point? Did she think he could wave his wand (hmm, bad choice of word, that) and, poof, there was a