After about an hour and a half, Josh Flynn appeared, stepping out of the lift and walking across reception and out to the big revolving doors. He was a good-looking man, if your tastes ran that way. Powerful. Sexy. A real silverback of a guy. Lesley hopped to her feet when she was out of his line of sight, chucked the paper down and hurried after him. Outside, the doorman pulled over a cab and she heard Josh say an address on East 76th Street to the Indian driver.

She flagged down her own cab and gave the man the same address. When they got there, haring through the teeming streets, she paid the driver and got out and looked around, hoping to spot Josh.

He was nowhere in sight.

‘Fuck,’ she muttered, and walked over to the building he’d asked for. She peered into a brightly lit hallway. It was clean, and empty. She pushed the door lightly, but of course it wouldn’t give. There was an intercom system on a brass side panel beside the door. She looked at the names there, pulled out her notebook and jotted them down. W. Humbert, I. Patton, J. Cleeve, F. Barlow, C. Milo, P. Schuster.

Six large apartments in there. It was a smallish brownstone building, not tall but old and lavish. There was a bell for the doorman but she didn’t want to risk him being the protective type who would alert anyone. So now all she could do was wait until Josh came back out. She found a diner over the road where she could keep an eye on the street, ordered fruit juice and a hamburger with fries – she was famished and feeling stuffy-headed, the precursor of a cold. You fed a cold, right? And starved a fever.

Eventually, she got tired of hanging around and gave it up. It didn’t look like Josh was going to come out. Whoever lived there, whichever apartment he was visiting, it was clear he was going to stay the evening, and probably the night too.

So why bother with the hotel?

Simple. Shauna Flynn was the possessive sort who would be phoning, keeping tabs on him. Lesley bet she was one of those emotionally blackmailing bitches who put those twee little notes in the poor bastard’s suitcase, that sort of thing. Reminding him of who he belonged to. Yeah, like a dog.

Hey, Rover! Heel!

Yawning, sneezing, she went back into the street and hailed a cab, thinking that it wasn’t very likely that Josh would stay overnight visiting a male friend, unless he was that way inclined. She was starting to think that Shauna was right. One of the residents in that building was a woman, and Josh Flynn was fucking her.

Big surprise.