by Cynthia Eden
I don’t have time for this.
“If we don’t recover those bodies before the storm hits—”
“Have you ever been through a tropical storm, Agent Granger?” Trey shouldered his way inside the condo’s lobby. When the guard tensed, Trey flashed his ID. Seriously, Rick knew him. The guard should be waving him right through, not looking all dumbass suspicious.
“Uh, no. I haven’t,” Granger replied.
“Right. Didn’t think so. I’ve been through dozens, and you know what happens? Evacuation orders come through. They are probably already on the way. Parts of the island will flood. The power company will cut our connection long before the storm reaches land, so we’ll all be in the dark. There won’t be time to find those bodies—there’s only going to be time to board up and get the hell out.” Because even a weak tropical storm could wreck the place.
He marched toward the elevator. Jabbed the button.
“Those bodies could be lost!” Granger said.
“If they weren’t lost in the last storm, then maybe they’ll just keep staying right where they are.” He knew he sounded like a cold bastard, but his priority was the living, not the dead. With a storm coming, all of his already meager resources would be strained to the limit. “Now I’ll be back at the station as fast as I can. You want advice?” Probably not since the jerk had taken over the investigation. My investigation. “Secure the evidence that you have and get off my island while you can.”
He shoved the phone back into his pocket just as the elevator doors opened. Trey came face-to-face with Pierce Montgomery. Hell.
Once upon a time, he and Pierce had been friends.
Once.
Those days were long gone.
As soon as he saw him, Pierce stiffened. The guy didn’t march out of the elevator, instead he seemed to take root in there. “What are you doing here?” Pierce asked him.
“Going to see Jessica.” He jumped into the elevator. Pierce didn’t get off. So Trey held the doors for him. I don’t have time for this.
“I told you to stay away from my sister! She has nothing to say to you!”
He really wanted to take a swing at him, but a cop wasn’t supposed to do that. A cop wasn’t supposed to do a lot of things. But I do them anyway. “I’m not here to question her. I’m here to help her.”
He gave up on ditching Pierce and let the doors close.
But Pierce lunged forward and stopped the elevator, freezing them between floors. “Bullshit,” Pierce growled at him. “I know what you’ve been doing to her. For years.”
Trey shook his head.
“You used Jessica. Took advantage of her.”
The hell he did.
“I know you cheated on her. The stories about you and that blonde reached me . . . all the way up in Birmingham.”
Trey’s jaw locked. “We’d broken up then.” And he’d been drunk. The woman had meant nothing. None of the other women had ever meant anything, just Jessica.
“You don’t get a second chance with her.”
“Look, Montgomery, I get that you think I’m not good enough for your sister, that I never was. But my job is to protect the people on this island, and that includes her.” With a jab of his fingers, he had the elevator rising again. “She’s in danger, and I’m not going to stand back and let her get hurt.”
“How did you ever help her before?’
The question pissed him off. “Maybe you didn’t know your sister as well as you thought.” Jessica hadn’t been a perfect angel. Hell, no one was. They all had plenty of sins on their souls.
“I knew everything about her.”
The elevator opened. Good. He marched out, not waiting to see if Pierce followed him. He headed for Jessica’s condo and pounded on the door. “Jessica! Jessica, open up!”
And he had a flash of himself at Clay Thompson’s home, pounding.
The images of Jessica on that wall . . . naked . . . smiling.
His fist pounded into the door once more. “Open the fuck—”
The door swung open. Only Jessica wasn’t standing there. Gabe Spencer was. He was just wearing a pair of faded jeans, and the hard lines on his face clearly said the man was pissed.
He was about to become even more furious.
Trey started to shoulder past him.
Gabe grabbed him, surprising Trey with his strength as he was shoved back.
“I need to see Jessica.”
“Why?” Gabe Spencer was a freaking immoveable object in front of him.
And Pierce was behind Trey. Crowding in close. “I told him to stay away from my sister!” Pierce was nearly snarling.
Too bad. “I’m here because someone’s been watching her.” He held Gabe’s stare. “Someone has been watching you both.”
A line of confusion appeared between Gabe’s brows.
“Let me show you,” Trey said. “Give me two minutes. Just two.” That would be all he needed.
Gabe backed up. Trey stormed inside, and then he saw Jessica. She was standing in front of the bedroom. Her hair tousled. Her cheeks flushed. She was wearing a pair of sweats and a loose T-shirt.
Jessica always wore—
He cut off the thought. “You’re not safe here.”
She’d been having sex with Spencer. He knew it. He could see it in her gleaming cheeks. Smell the faint scent in the air. His hands fisted.
She tensed, but he walked right by her. Headed into the bedroom. The bed was wrecked.
He jerked his gaze away from it. Whirled around the room. Checked the angle. Figured out—
There.
The smoke detector. He grabbed a chair and yanked it toward the detector, the one placed in the far left corner of the room.
“What are you doing?” she asked, sounding worried.
She should be worried, Trey thought. That guy had been watching her nearly twenty-four seven. For how long?
He yanked down the smoke detector, and when he did, the fake cover fell off, revealing the small camera that was there.
“What the hell?” That was Pierce’s shocked voice.
Trey stared down at the camera because he didn’t want to look at Jessica or at Gabe. “We searched Clay Thompson’s house a bit ago. The guy has a freaking shrine to you in there. Dozens of pictures. Old and . . . new.” Now he did look at Gabe, who had moved close to Jessica. Protectively close. He had his arm around her side.
I fucking hate him.
“One of those pictures . . . you were in bed, Jessica. And you—you were naked.”
Spencer swore.
“I saw the scar on your neck, and I knew the photo was recent. Had to be . . . it was a picture of you and Spencer. The guy was watching you, even when you had a guard right next to you.” A guard who’d been screwing her.
Rage pumped through him, but he held it back. I lost her long before Gabe Spencer appeared. He knew that truth, even if she didn’t.
“The guy’s in the wind,” Trey said, because they all needed to know that. “His place is empty. He must have sent his nephew after you both. It figures Johnny would do anything that the uncle he idolized said to do.”
Pierce was trying to grab for the camera. Trey held it out of his reach.
“He’s still out there, and he’s obsessed with you.” You didn’t have to be a shrink with fancy diplomas to know that. “So you,” he said, talking to Gabe now, “need to get her the hell out of here.” Because he was starting to think there might not be any safe place for Jessica.
HE’D BEEN WATCHING her.
Eve stared at all of the pictures in Clay Thompson’s house. Pictures of her. A woman she barely recognized. A woman who looked so happy in some of them and so sad in others.
“I don’t know him.” She turned toward Sarah. The other woman had also been studying the pictures in silence. “If we met before, I don’t remember him.”
“Your brother says that you and Clay were lovers, years ago.”
How was she supposed to respond to
that? Eve threw her hands up in the air. “And a spurned lover does what—starts killing women who look like me because he can’t let go? Attacks me?”
“It would appear that way, yes.” But Sarah’s voice was carefully controlled. “This is almost textbook what you’d expect to find at a scene of this nature. Pictures, mementos of you.”
But it wasn’t just pictures. There were videos, too. They had been discovered by FBI Agent Granger and were stored on Clay’s computer.
How long was that camera in my bedroom? She was afraid to ask just how many videos had been recovered. Eve didn’t think that she wanted to know.
Violated. Yes, that was exactly how she felt.
“Textbook,” Sarah murmured again.
Eve shivered. FBI Agent Granger had wanted her at the scene, to see if anything jogged her memory there. Nothing was jogging her memory, but the place was creeping her out. All of those pictures . . .
She turned away. Hurried outside. Thunder was rumbling in the distance. It always seemed to be thundering now. An alert had been issued on the island. Tropical Storm Henry was heading for them, with an expected arrival just before daybreak. Everyone was being asked to leave the island, for their safety.
When she rushed down the narrow steps that led back to the ground, she saw Pierce waiting for her. His expression was tormented. He hadn’t wanted her in Clay Thompson’s house. He wanted to protect her.
And the man she seemed to need protecting from?
Where is Clay Thompson? He appeared to have vanished.
“FIVE MINUTES,” AGENT Avery Granger told Gabe with a hard nod. “That’s all you get with him. And I’m breaking the rules just by giving you that.”
Yes, the guy was, and Gabe was real grateful for that rule breaking because he had to get in there with Johnny Thompson. He had to find out just what the hell that kid knew.
Where is your uncle, Johnny? Where is he?
Gabe reached for the door. He was choking back his fury, using all of the self-control that he possessed. To know that he and Eve had been watched, during their most intimate time . . . I am going to destroy that bastard.
“Is that such a good idea?” Wade asked softly.
His head turned. Agent Granger had walked away a few steps, and Wade had closed in.
Wade crept closer. “Why don’t you let me go in and ask him the questions?”
He knew Wade had been out with the other FBI agent, Douglas Stonebridge, and that they’d recovered the remains of another woman near the Nature Preserve.
How many more will we find?
“You’re too close on this one,” Wade murmured, his expression intent. “I don’t want you going over the edge—”
Like you did before.
Gabe lifted his chin. “I’m not going to walk into this room and discover my sister’s brutalized body, so I think I’ll be fine with my control.”
“Gabe—”
“I need to find out what he knows. The agents can’t get jack from him, but I can.” He knew it with certainty. Why?
Because Johnny feared him.
Fear could be a very powerful motivator.
“I won’t cross the line,” he promised his best friend. But I will get close. This was too important—he had to learn the truth for Eve’s sake. Everything he did now . . . it was all for Eve. Because she mattered more than anything else to him.
Wade stepped back, and Gabe went in to face his prey.
Agent Granger had left Johnny in a small interrogation room. The guy was cuffed to the table, though Gabe didn’t really think those cuffs were necessary. The kid looked a bit pale, and, when Johnny’s gaze centered on him, Gabe could see the man’s fear.
“Johnny . . .” He sighed out the guy’s name as he settled across from him. “You’re in a mess here.”
“I told them—I ain’t talking without my lawyer!”
“Yes, well, since a tropical storm has forced an evacuation of the island, that’s not happening.” Johnny would be evacuated soon, too. Transferred to the jail over in Mobile for holding.
So we don’t have a lot of time here.
“Where’s your uncle?”
Johnny’s lips thinned. “Guessing you didn’t find him at home.”
“No, but we found the pictures.”
The guy’s angry gaze slid away.
“We know your uncle was quite . . . obsessed with Jessica Montgomery.”
“Was he?” Now Johnny was looking at him again.
Gabe leaned forward. “I’m not a cop.”
“I know—”
“I’m not an FBI agent. I’m not some D.A. who has to play by the rules.” He smiled at Johnny. “I’m her lover—the lover of the woman that your uncle tried to kill.” He knew his eyes would show his rage.
Johnny’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
“So how do you think I’m feeling about you, right now, Johnny? You set that explosion on the island. She could have been killed out there.” He hated thinking of those moments. He never wanted Eve to be threatened or to be afraid. Never again.
Johnny was starting to sweat.
“I know how to kill,” Gabe said. “I know how to make a man scream for mercy.”
Johnny’s chin jutted up. “I won’t be screaming for you.”
“I’m just trying to figure out how you fit into all this. Why would you protect the guy? Is it because he took you in? When your mother died?”
Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know nothin’ about me.”
“And you know too little about me.” He leapt up then and grabbed Johnny. He hauled the guy across the table toward him. “I won’t have her hurt. I’m not going to let her be the victim—”
Johnny laughed. “That woman isn’t a victim. You’ve got her all wrong.”
The hell he did. He knew Eve, inside and out.
“She was sleeping with him, pushing him to kill,” and, just like that, Johnny was talking plenty. With no force, just with glee. “She was the one who wanted him to do it. She was the one always in his head, telling him to do it. She screwed him, over and over—”
Gabe drove his fist into Johnny’s face. Johnny jerked back, then the cuffs jerked him down. And Gabe slammed the guy’s face into the table. Blood spilled across its worn surface at the same instant the door behind Gabe flew open.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Trey demanded.
Gabe thought the answer to that was rather obvious.
“He doesn’t like hearing the truth,” Johnny yelled. “He doesn’t like hearing that bitch is the one who pushed Clay! Who made him hurt those other girls!”
Trey pulled Gabe away from Johnny. For the moment, Gabe let the cop pull him.
“She’s messed up,” Johnny said, as the blood dripped from his busted lip. “Fucked in the head.”
Gabe tensed, but Trey still had a too tight hold on him. The little prick will pay for talking about Eve that way.
“He knows,” Johnny said, nodding toward the cop. “He has to know, as close as they were, and he’s just protecting her. Trying to make sure his piece of ass doesn’t get thrown in jail.”
Gabe yanked back on his rage and studied the man with new eyes. Despite the blood and the fear, Johnny was meeting his stare directly.
Why isn’t he afraid? A young guy like him, tossed into jail, he shot a cop . . .
Johnny should have been terrified and trying to work a deal.
“Clay didn’t deserve what happened.” Johnny’s chin jutted up again as he said that. “He never did anything—he didn’t deserve this.”
And those words held the ring of truth.
“Are you going to attack again?” Trey asked Gabe in a low whisper.
“Not yet.” But he would be making another move, sooner or later.
Trey let him go.
And Gabe studied Johnny with new eyes. “Where’s Clay?”
Johnny stiffened. “In the wind. Long gone and—”
“You don’t know, do you?”
/> Johnny’s eyelids flickered, just a bit.
“You love your uncle.” That was obvious. The guy was going to jail for him.
“He always protected me. Wouldn’t let anyone talk about my mom.” Johnny licked his lips. “She tried her best, dammit. She didn’t take the easy way out.”
He was so pale.
And Gabe knew he was missing . . . something.
But what?
SARAH JACOBS WALKED slowly through the interior of Clay Thompson’s home. FBI Agent Douglas Stonebridge was there, talking to a tech, muttering about how they had to move fast with their evidence collection.
Because a storm was coming. A powerful storm.
Sarah stood in Clay’s bedroom, right in the doorway, watching the scene before her. It just didn’t . . . feel the way it should.
All of the photos of Jessica Montgomery were there, hanging on that wall, photos that had obviously been collected over time, but . . .
He just had them out in the open? Not even hidden? What if someone had walked into his bedroom? There wasn’t even a lock on the bedroom door.
And the files on his computer hadn’t been password protected. They’d just been right there, for anyone to access. It was the same computer that the guy used for his work, and she knew dozens of people were in and out of that marina every day.
“Your profile was dead on,” Douglas said as he came to stand near her. “A Caucasian, early thirties, one who could fit in wealthy circles. Hell, he was always chartering out fancy boats for rich parties. The guy had plenty of knowledge of the area and of boats.”
Yes, Clay fit, but . . . the scene didn’t.
“It feels staged.” That was the problem. There was no emotion there. Just pictures. Spread out for her. She’d read the background info that the PD had on Clay Thompson. The guy didn’t have any past history of trouble with the law. He’d been on the island, running his marina, ever since his father had retired and he’d taken over the business.
That marina gave him access. He could pick up the women, use any boat that he wanted and take them out.