by Paula Graves
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
“What?” He pretended ignorance, although he knew exactly what she was asking.
“If I want a Rottweiler, I know where the animal shelter is.” She waved her hand at the door. “I don’t need to be protected from the people I work with.”
“What if you do?” Gabe leaned against the door, folding his arms across his chest. “We don’t know who’s behind these killings.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not Marlon. He would barely have been a teenager when the first killings took place.”
Gabe wasn’t so sure. Teenagers were capable of some fairly heinous things. And besides, they weren’t just talking about one killer here. “You think the alpha killer has picked up a new partner, right?”
She frowned. “Yes, but—”
Gabe pushed away from the door and walked toward her. “Everybody’s a suspect, Alicia.”
“Even you?”
He stopped midstride. “I guess you should consider all possibilities, even that one.”
To his relief, she didn’t even look conflicted by the notion. She’d apparently made up her mind about him. He supposed she’d seen too much of his guilt and grief firsthand last night to even consider him as a possible suspect.
“When do you want to try the hypnosis?” she asked, changing the subject.
A shiver of dread ran through him, but he lifted his chin and steeled his spine. “How about this morning?”
She looked surprised by his answer. “I don’t know—”
“How long will it take?”
“Not long,” she admitted. “At least, not any one session.”
He frowned at the thought. “Exactly how many sessions do you foresee?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know how long it’ll take to break through to your memory of that night. It could happen quickly or it could take multiple sessions. There’s no way to know until we do it.”
His jaw squared. “Then the sooner we start, the better.”
She stared at him a moment, her eyes narrowed as if she were trying to convince herself that hypnotic regression really was a good idea.
Gabe’s gut clenched. If she wasn’t sure, he sure as hell didn’t want to put himself through it. “Have you changed your mind?” he asked, his voice coming out harder and more impatient than he’d intended.
“No,” she said quickly. “I just hadn’t anticipated starting this morning.”
Gabe forced himself not to grab at the open excuse for delay. “Is that a problem? You said you didn’t have to be at work until eleven.”
Alicia’s expression shifted, her features softening as if she’d just come to some sort of realization. “I can do it. But first, I’m going to take a shower and fix us some breakfast.” Her lips curved in a smile that brightened her whole face. “I believe I promised you an omelet.”
He couldn’t muster a smile in return. “I’m not that hungry.”
“Well, at least take a shower. Do you have a change of clothes with you?”
“I have something out in the truck,” he said. “I’ll go get it while you’re showering.” His gaze wandered over her body again, before he could stop himself. For an electric second, he could picture her, as clear as a photograph, naked and slick beneath the spray of the shower.
Her eyes darkened to coal as she returned his gaze. Her voice escaped in a soft rasp. “Okay, you do that.” She backed out of the living room and disappeared into the hallway.
Gabe slumped back against the door. What the hell was he doing? She was eight years his junior, off-limits for about a thousand different reasons and he should have his mind on murders, not a naked grad student.
He forced himself out to his truck for a change of clothes, taking his own sweet time in hopes that the next time he saw Alicia Solano, she’d be fully dressed.
WHILE GABE SHOWERED AND CHANGED into fresh clothes, Alicia distracted herself by preparing a breakfast omelet, searching the recesses of her refrigerator for peppers and onions that hadn’t gone bad due to her neglect. She found a red pepper that didn’t look too wilted and half an onion that still seemed firm. Declaring victory, she grabbed the carton of eggs from the refrigerator door and headed for the stove.
She was flipping the omelet onto a large plate when Gabe came into the kitchen, smelling like herbal shower gel and pear shampoo. Somehow he made the fragrance seem masculine. He had changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a charcoal gray T-shirt that hugged the contours of his broad chest.
“Need any help?” he asked, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching her work. The charcoal shirt had turned his blue eyes smoky, as if something were smoldering deep inside him. She felt an answering flame flickering low in her belly.
She cleared the lump from her throat. “Maybe pour some orange juice? The glasses are in the cabinet over the toaster.”
Gabe retrieved the glasses and opened the refrigerator to find the orange juice. While she divided the omelet, giving him the larger portion, he poured juice for them both.
Toast popped up in the toaster, warm and fragrant. She spread margarine on each slice and laid a piece on each plate.
“This is very good,” Gabe pronounced a few minutes later, after sampling the omelet.
“Anyone can make a good omelet,” she said, a little appalled at how much his praise pleased her. She could imagine her mother’s look of disapproval—cooking for a man!
“Do you like to cook?”
“I’m not very practiced at it,” she admitted. “My mom thought cooking was a sign of male oppression, so she never did any cooking herself. She just hired a live-in cook and housekeeper.”
Gabe’s eyebrows twitched. “A woman?”
Alicia smiled ruefully. “Of course. Anita Gonzales. Made the best fish tacos I’ve ever tasted.”
“Are your parents wealthy?”
“I suppose so, although they’d be appalled to hear themselves described that way.” Alicia poked at her omelet, her appetite receding. The topic of her parents wasn’t one she liked to discuss much, despite the obsessive interest some of her professors and fellow instructors had in her famous parents.
Nothing like being the offspring of infamous radical-chic professors to guarantee your place as the darling of the college faculty lounge.
“What about your family?” Alicia asked.
Gabe picked up his slice of toast and turned it between his fingers. “I guess we’re reasonably well-off. Dad and Mom own their own business and half of us work for them in some capacity. We own our own boats and vehicles, our own homes—we’re doing okay for ourselves.”
“You’re a professional fisherman, right?” She nibbled at her toast. “What does that entail?”
He smiled at her words. “It entails a lot of sitting in a boat, trying to teach people to do in one day what it’s taken me a lifetime to learn how to do. Most of the time, I’m a fishing guide, you see.”
“People pay you to take them fishing?”
“More or less. I know all the spawning areas, all the places where fish find cover, the way the weather and the seasons affect bass patterns—stuff you can’t figure out on your own in a day or two. People pay me for what I know. I also fish tournaments now and then and sometimes win prize money. I don’t do that as much now.”
“I guess it’s more work than it sounds like, huh?”
“No, I get to fish and make money doing it. It’s about the best job in the world.” He grinned at her. “I bet you’ve never been fishing.”
She shook her head. “My parents are vegans.”
He glanced down at the plate of eggs. “But you’re not?”
“Tried a burger once, never could go back to tofu after that.” She smiled. “Call me a rebel.”
His soft laugh was the sexiest thing she’d ever heard. She had to clutch the edge of the table to keep from melting into a puddle on the floor.
“So, what do your parents do? College professors, too?”
His casual question managed to dash a little cold water on her internal heat wave. “Yeah, actually. They’re both professors at UC Berkeley, in the Poli-Sci department.”
Gabe’s eyebrows twitched. “Oh. Those Solanos.”
Her heart sank. He recognized the name now. Everyone did, eventually. Even if her parents hadn’t been famous former radicals who were now friends with half of the Washington establishment, there were her brother Sinclair’s exploits in South America to reckon with. Not many girls could boast both parents who could easily score a visit to a state dinner and a brother who’d spent five years on the FBI’s Most Wanted list before he blew himself up in a botched terrorist attack.
“Sinclair Solano was your brother.” Gabe’s words were low and neutral, making it hard to guess what he was thinking.
Among her academic colleagues, for the most part, her radical connections gave her antiestablishment street cred, even though she had never been a big fan of her parents’ political posturing and certainly not her brother’s crimes.
On the other hand, her relationship to one of the country’s most notorious homegrown radicals made it next to impossible to win the trust of the cops and other law enforcement officers she came into contact with as part of her studies.
“Yes,” she admitted aloud, waiting for his response. If she had to make a prediction, she’d go with mistrust. After all, hadn’t he said he was a part-time deputy?
He just nodded. “That had to hurt, losing him that way.”
She shot another look his way, trying to read his thoughts. “It was bad,” she said carefully.
“It can be tough to love someone who lets you down. Even harder to lose them in the middle of all that. Maybe hurts worse that way.”
She stared at him openly now, surprised by how he really seemed to understand how she’d felt. “I did love him. I wanted him to stop what he was doing.”
“You can’t love someone into doing the right thing. It would be nice if that worked, but it doesn’t.”
“My parents couldn’t decide if they were embarrassed by him or proud of him,” she blurted, her tone more bitter than she had intended. “He took things so much farther than they did—their radicalism never quite reached the ‘plant a bomb’ stage. But they believed in the cause, even if they didn’t approve his methods. Sometimes I wonder if they wished they’d had the guts to go as far as Sin did—” She clamped her mouth shut quickly, horrified at how much of her own anger and hurt she’d revealed to a virtual stranger. “I’m sorry. This isn’t something I should be subjecting you to.”
“We all have our family issues.”
She shot him a skeptical look. “Yeah? What’s the Cooper family secret?”
He smiled faintly. “If I told, it wouldn’t be a secret.”
Before she could protest, a trilling sound interrupted. Gabe shifted in his seat, pulling his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans. “It’s Cissy,” he murmured before he answered. “Hey, kiddo. What’s up?”
His gaze slanted toward Alicia, and he lowered his voice. “Yeah, that’s my truck parked outside.”
Well, hell, Alicia thought, wincing a little. She wasn’t a prude—God knew, you couldn’t grow up a prude in the Solano household—but she certainly didn’t do sleepovers on the first date, much less the first meeting. At least Cissy wasn’t a gossip. She just hoped Marlon was equally discreet.
“Yeah, it has to do with the cases,” Gabe admitted. After a pause, he quickly added, “No, don’t do…that.” With a sigh, Gabe flipped his phone shut. “Cissy’s on her way over.”
“Are you going to tell her about the new murder?”
He nodded. “She’ll read about it anyway. She’s smart enough to put two and two together.”
A knock on the door drew Alicia to her feet. She let Cissy into the apartment.
“What’s happened?” Cissy asked.
Alicia looked at Gabe. He crossed to his niece’s side and put his hand on her shoulder. “There’s been another murder.”
Cissy’s brow wrinkled. “When?”
“Last night, a little before eleven. I found the body.”
The horrified look on Cissy’s face made Alicia’s stomach knot. “Oh, Uncle Gabe—again?”
He squeezed her shoulder. “I stopped at a convenience store to stock up on a few snacks, since I didn’t eat much at dinner. When nobody came to ring me up, I went looking for the clerk. I found her in a back room.”
Cissy looked at Alicia. “Same signature?”
“We think so,” she told the younger woman.
“So, three in the last five months.” Cissy’s tone of voice went grim. “Are they escalating?”
“Hard to say,” Alicia admitted. “We don’t know how many murders we still haven’t connected to the killers.”
“You should have called me last night,” Cissy told Gabe. “Why didn’t you?”
“It was late. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“But you didn’t have a problem waking Alicia?” Cissy looked at Alicia. “What aren’t y’all telling me?”
“What do you mean?” Alicia asked.
“Look, I know the two of you well enough to know you didn’t just hook up for the night, which means Uncle Gabe came here and stayed here for a reason.” Cissy’s green eyes darkened. “Are you in danger, Alicia? We’ve never really talked about it, but you do fit the profile—”
“That’s not why Gabe stayed,” Alicia said firmly.
“Then why?”
Alicia looked at Gabe. Reluctance colored his expression, but when he spoke, he got right to the point. “I’ve asked Alicia to hypnotize me to see if I can remember anything about the night your mother died.”
Cissy’s puzzled expression cleared. “Good. When do we get started?”
“We don’t,” he answered firmly.
Cissy frowned. “She was my mother. I have a right to sit in on this.”
“I don’t want you to,” Gabe replied.
Cissy turned to Alicia. “Tell him it’s okay.”
“It’s his decision,” Alicia answered. “Technically, he’ll be my patient, at least during the duration of the hypnosis.”
“That is such bull!” Cissy turned to her uncle. “You’re trying to protect me. You’re treating me like I’m still a little kid.”
“Damned right I’m trying to protect you,” Gabe answered hotly. “And it has nothing to do with your age. I wouldn’t want your daddy sitting in on this, either. Would you want your daddy to have to relive that night, in extra detail?”
Moisture welled in Cissy’s eyes. “No.”
“Then don’t ask me to subject you to it, either.” Gabe looked at her, pleading in his smoky blue eyes.
Cissy’s tears spilled, but she lifted her chin. “Okay. I should probably go to class this morning anyway. Can’t get by on my good looks and personality forever.”
Gabe cupped her cheek. “Yeah, that Cooper charm will only go so far.”
She wrapped her arms around her uncle’s waist, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. Gabe hugged her close, placing a gentle kiss on top of her head. “I’ll let you know anything new we learn,” he promised.
He walked her to the door, promising a second time to call her later to let her know what happened. He closed the door behind her, leaning heavily against the solid wood panel with his eyes closed for a long moment before opening his eyes to meet Alicia’s gaze.
“Are you ready to do this?” he asked.
She cocked her head. “Are you?”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah. I’m ready. Let’s do this.”
Her heart starting to gallop with trepidation, Alicia went to her room to get what she needed.
Chapter Six
A metronome ticked a slow, steady rhythm on the coffee table that now sat a little to the side of the sofa. Alicia had said the beat would help him relax. He supposed it was a way to occupy his mind and keep it from getting in the way of the hypnosis. H
e wasn’t sure it would work, however. He didn’t think he’d ever relax again.
Alicia sat on the ottoman across from him, so close that her knees almost touched his. She’d moved the coffee table aside so that nothing would separate them during the session. Gabe found the warmth emanating from her body comforting, somehow. He was tempted to open his eyes, just to reassure himself that she was really there. But she’d asked him to close his eyes and shut out everything but her voice, so he squelched the urge and concentrated on listening to her steady breathing.
“Before we get started, let’s talk about how you can control things when you’re under.”
“Control things?”
“We’re going to go places that you’ll find uncomfortable. It’ll be easier for you to take chances if you know you can escape somewhere safe any time you want to.”
He frowned slightly. This whole hypnosis idea sounded like nothing but hokum. But he knew his sister Hannah had found hypnosis helpful a couple of years ago, when she was trying to push through lingering amnesia about an attack that had nearly taken her life. She was a sensible, pragmatic woman. If it had worked for her, maybe it would work for him, too.
“Where do you feel safest, Gabe?”
“My boat,” he answered without thinking.
Alicia went quiet for a moment. He gave into temptation and opened his eyes. She was struggling against a smile.
“You find that funny?” he asked, amused by her amusement.
She got the smile under control. “No. If your boat makes you feel safe—”
“You want to ask why, don’t you?”
“It’s not my place to question—”
“I know who I am when I’m in the boat. I know every inch of her. What makes her go. What makes her stop. I know how to guide her to places almost nobody else in the world knows about on the lake. I know how to ease her into a slip without even brushing against the dock.”
“You’re in complete control?”
He nodded, closing his eyes again. “Yes.”
Her voice softened. “That’s a good safe place. When it gets too crazy, you get in your boat and drive wherever you want. In fact, let’s go there now. Imagine you’re in the boat. What are you doing?”