Desperate to Touch

I can’t believe he remembered. Men never remember details like this.

I leave the vase in the center of my coffee table, and when I’m done cleaning up, I lie down on the sofa, still in my robe, and question everything I thought up until yesterday.

What am I doing? The question nags at me. More importantly, I hear Seth’s voice in my head from only weeks ago, asking me how I thought this would end.

Seth

“The notebooks are mostly ramblings. But there are drawings of where Marcus took her.” The woman, Delilah, likes to sketch. I wondered how accurate they were until I drove past one of the streets she referred to. She’d drawn a park, specifically Lincoln Park. It was the first place she’d met Marcus according to the notebooks. It’s the place that started it all. It was like she’d taken a photograph. It was that detailed and that accurate.

“Drawings?” Jase questions from where he sits behind his desk. Declan’s occupying the chair next to mine, on the opposite side of the desk. I answer, although Declan knows just as well as I do.

“Some in New York, where she’s from, but she came down here years ago for a case and that’s apparently where she met Marcus. She drew the locations.”

“Maybe it’s something she did back when she was a lawyer?” Jase surmises.

“More like she learned it from a cop,” Declan speaks up and steals our attention. “I’ve been going through Walsh’s computer. He’s uploaded his old cases and in his files, he drew the sites. Quick sketches.”

“Maybe she learned it from him? She was a lawyer, right? Did they work a case together?” This is the first time Declan’s telling me this.

“Could be,” he says then shrugs and sits back in his seat. The leather groans and with the turn of the clouds, Jase’s office darkens. He has to get up to turn on the lights as the day shifts to night behind the large window to the back of him.

“She was with Walsh and Marcus. She has information on both of them. She met Walsh first.”

Sitting forward, I nod as I clasp my hands in my lap. My thumb runs along my knuckles as I tell him, “There’s a lot in these notebooks that could be useful if the information is still accurate. Like how Walsh used PO Boxes to communicate with informants. He used them to send her letters too. It’s a safe place for an information exchange. Or at least he considers it to be since they’re purchased and paid for by an LLC that’s run through the Cayman Islands.”

“Our surveillance shows he’s still using them,” Declan adds.

“Good, let’s see who he’s still talking to and if there’s something sensitive we can use to our advantage.”

It shouldn’t surprise me that the information Laura gave us is already paying off.

“Do you think he’s still seeing her?” Jase asks and I look to my right, waiting for Declan to speak up. I gave him the latter half and the first one I’d already read, and I took the earlier portion. “Declan has the most recent entries of her diaries.”

“It appears she still occasionally has contact with him and she’s made it clear she isn’t over him. What they went through, it certainly changed her career path and mental state.”

“An up-and-coming lawyer, to an in-and-out resident at a mental institution… I’d say so.”

“Anything in there about Walsh?” Jase questions.

I thumb through the pile of papers in front of me as I shake my head. “Not anything after the first year of entries. She hasn’t written anything about him recently.”

“It’s possible that she may not know Walsh is looking for her?” Jase says and I can feel the steady tapping of the heel of his foot under the desk. His ass is riding on this just as much as mine is.

“Is he?” Declan asks.

“He mentioned her at the very least. So she’s on his mind.”

“As far as we know,” Declan answers, “he hasn’t contacted her.”

I add in my thoughts. “It’s odd that he hasn’t. He’s obviously not over what happened years ago and it involves her. She was a key piece in whatever happened in New York that led to him leaving the FBI.”

“He has to know where she is. It’s only a matter of time before he contacts her.” Jase sounds confident and I’m confident he will as well.

“Maybe he’s waiting for something,” I suggest and that gets Jase’s gaze pinned to mine, eager to know what I think after reading the diary entries.

“For what?”

“For Marcus to be out of the way.” Declan nods in agreement with me.

It’s quiet for a moment, the room still and the only sound the click of the HVAC system and the low hum of air as the heater’s engaged.

“We wanted something to barter with. I don’t think information on Delilah is enough. If it was, Walsh would be there already.”