A Dark Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

shirt and slacks despite the suffocating heat to the misery that showed on his face. Reaching a quick decision, he didn’t try to hide his emotion. “No,” he replied. “Caroline’s not there.”
    Lindsay stopped bobbing and raised both eyebrows. “Where’d she go?”
    Satisfied that Lindsay was already on the right track, Porter drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly before he made a reply. “God only knows.” Slowly, he slid his hands into his pockets and looked down at the sidewalk. “After last time…” He shook his head.
    “Is she all right?” Lindsay’s accent, combined with the emphasis she placed on the second syllable, caused the words to come out sounding like all raaht .
    Which clearly indicated that Lindsay had already made up her mind that things were not all right, a fact Porter intended to use to his full advantage. “Not really. She stopped taking her medication. She’s done it before.” Porter allowed his sorrow to show in his eyes. “People think because I’m a psychoanalyst, that I can control things, but there’s only so much I can do.”
    Lindsay Crowley’s eyes grew round, questioning. She settled on the simplest one. Saving the biggest ones for later, Porter thought. “So, she just up and left?”
    Porter nodded. “She could be anywhere.” He pulled his hands from his pocket and spread them in front, palms out, in slow motion. “Her passport’s gone.”
    There was silence as they all considered this fact.
    Porter waited a beat before seizing the moment. “Now we just have to wait and hope.” He snuck a glance at John Crowley, who was frowning at a point in the darkness.
    Crowley cleared his throat, which Porter took to be an encouraging sign. He waited, hardly daring to breathe, keeping his eyes on Crowley’s face in a silent plea.
    But it was Lindsay who spoke next. “When did she go?”
    Lindsay was digging for information, not yet ready to assist him. Porter evaluated her question before settling on the truth. If Crowley did take the bait, he’d need to know which flights to scan. “This morning, around nine.”
    He watched Crowley, silently urging him to speak. Like all of Porter’s patients, John Crowley had risen tothe top of his field. Not without doing favors when it suited him, Porter reflected.
    Crowley perked up at this bit of information, turning his gaze on Porter. Interested now. “You mean, she left at nine o’clock today?”
    Porter nodded as Crowley threw his wife a questioning glance.
    At which point Lindsay Crowley resumed bobbing up and down on the balls of her feet. But not before raising one laced cross-trainer and dragging it down the back of her husband’s heel.
    Crowley did a quick about-face. “That’s a shame.”
    Porter’s single ray of hope sputtered and died. Caroline could be on a flight to Heathrow at this very moment, or Charles de Gaulle or fucking Beijing for that matter. And his neighbor, who headed up a special post-9/11 agency to oversee airline security, and his busybody wife were not going to lift a collective finger to help.
    Porter watched Crowley work to maintain his footing, shifting his stance so the toes of his brand-new cross-trainers were now pointing squarely across the street at his own front door, signaling this get-together had come to an end.
    Lindsay murmured something about keeping Porter and Caroline in her prayers. She did not ask if there was anything she could do to help.
     
    “What was that about? You nearly took my ankle off.” John Crowley basked in the air-conditioning as he locked their townhouse door behind them and kicked off his costly new exercise shoes.
    “That man,” Lindsay muttered, bending down tountie her laces before removing her exercise shoes one at a time.
    “He’s worried about his wife, who seems to have taken off,” he pointed out. He had met Caroline just once and she had seemed shy and ill at ease. The memory tugged at him. He made a mental note to call their daughter