by Paula Graves
Suddenly, the silhouette disappeared.
Gabe muttered a profanity, wheeling and heading for the front door.
“What is it?” Alicia caught up with him at the door.
“Go with Cissy to her place—your roommates are all there, right?” He unlocked the door and threw it open.
“At least two of them,” Cissy confirmed.
“What did you see?” Alicia asked.
“Someone hiding across the street in the trees,” he said.
Chapter Ten
“I should go with you,” Alicia insisted as Gabe ran down the steps.
“No.” Gabe turned at the bottom of the steps. “I don’t have time to argue. Go with Cissy.”
He could see she was spoiling for a fight, and he might enjoy going toe-to-toe with her under any other circumstances. But for now, he just turned and raced across the street, seeking the last place he’d seen the dark figure before it disappeared.
It didn’t take long to figure out where he’d gone. There was a river-stone and concrete retaining wall at the top of a shallow incline, separating the stand of willows from a narrow alley that ran behind the gas station on the corner of Dogwood and University. Gazing down the shadowy alley, Gabe spotted a figure turn the corner and disappear behind a house near the end of the alley.
He was too far away to catch, but that didn’t keep Gabe from racing toward the next cross street to see if he could spot the dark figure emerging from between the houses. But by the time he reached the next street, there was nothing to see. No movement, not even people out in their yards or arriving home late from work.
Muttering a low, frustrated profanity, he headed back for the alley and followed it down to the house where he’d seen the dark figure disappear around the corner. It was an older house, probably built around the same time as Belleview Manor, a comfortably shabby two-story home with a large screened-in back porch. There were lights on inside the house and the sound of loud music with a heavy bass beat.
Gabe circled the house and knocked on the front door. A few seconds later, it opened and a bleary-eyed guy in his late teens stared at him.
Drunk or stoned, Gabe diagnosed as the kid swayed toward him, catching the door frame to keep from falling. “Yeah? What do you want?”
Gabe was tempted to identify himself as a cop, just to see the kid’s reaction. Instead, he got to the point. “Did you see anyone cross your side yard a few minutes ago?”
The kid just started laughing and closed the door in Gabe’s face. Gabe released a frustrated chuckle himself and started trudging back toward Alicia’s apartment.
He spotted Alicia and Cissy, along with three other girls, sitting on the front porch. They’d turned on all the porch lights, lighting up the apartment building like an airport runway.
Cissy and Alicia broke away from the others and met him halfway up the sidewalk. “Did you find anything?” Alicia asked.
“There was someone running down the alley. I’m pretty sure it was a male. He had a big head start and I couldn’t catch up.” Gabe walked with them back to where his truck was parked by the curb. He gestured toward the willows. “I think he might have been watching the apartment from under those trees.”
“Watching us?” Alicia asked as he unlocked the truck.
He glanced at her, knowing what she was asking. They’d been standing in the window when they kissed. The curtains had been closed, but he could tell at a glance that their silhouettes would have been readily visible to anyone watching from across the street.
“Probably.” He opened the truck’s glove compartment and retrieved a large flashlight. “Y’all go back inside. I’ll be just a minute.”
“Go inside with the others,” Alicia told Cissy. “I’ll help Gabe look around.”
He started to protest, but the set of her chin told him arguing would be pointless. He gestured with his head for Cissy to do as Alicia asked. Fire flickered in her green eyes but she gathered up the other girls and went back into her apartment without putting up an argument.
“So, do you suppose it was the beta or the alpha?” Alicia asked when they reached the other side of the street.
“Might have been your run-of-the-mill Peeping Tom.”
“You don’t believe that.”
Not answering, he ran the beam of the flashlight across the ground beneath the willows. Fallen leaves from previous autumns still littered the area beneath the trees like a loamy carpet. He couldn’t see any signs of footprints or anything else that might help them identify the mystery man he’d spotted.
“If it’s the beta, he’s not going to drop a convenient gum wrapper or a cigarette butt with his DNA still attached,” Alicia murmured. “They’ve gotten away with murder for a long time.”
“The alpha has. We’re pretty sure he switched betas when Victor went to jail,” he reminded her.
“Still, that’s over four years of committing murders and not leaving any evidence behind. I don’t think the alpha would pair up with someone he didn’t know could be trusted to cover his own tracks.”
They scanned the area for a few more minutes, without luck. Gabe finally switched off the flashlight, plunging the ground beneath the willows into shadows again.
He felt Alicia move closer to him, instinctively seeking him out in the sudden darkness. He wondered if she even realized what she was doing.
She was afraid. She’d be a fool not to be.
He was afraid for her.
“Let’s go back to the apartment.” He caught her hand, surprised to find her fingers icy cold. He closed his fingers over hers, warming them as they walked back to the apartment.
He locked them safely inside and turned to look at her, releasing her hand. “You understand that Cissy has to leave tomorrow, don’t you?”
She crossed her arms, tucking her hands beneath her elbows as if to warm them. “You’re right. The beta’s unpredictable, and if he knows the subject of my doctoral dissertation, then he probably knows that Cissy and I are friends.”
Gabe led the way to the sofa and sat, gazing up at her. “He may even know who I am. This is a small town, and between my run-ins with the cops and my connection to Cissy, word could have spread fast.”
“I think we have to assume he does know who you are.” She sat close to him. Too close. He felt his temperature notch upward as her arm brushed his. “It won’t take long for him to connect you to Brenda Cooper’s murder, either.”
“Or what happened last month in Mississippi,” he added.
“I read up on that and Cissy filled in some blanks for me. It sounds like a pretty horrible ordeal.” She leaned a little closer, her side now nestled against his. He felt awkward sitting there elbow to elbow so he lifted his arm and draped it over the back of the sofa behind her.
“My brother and his wife had a rough time of it,” Gabe agreed. Jake and Mariah had been taken captive at gunpoint by Victor Logan and barely escaped with their lives after a harrowing cat and mouse chase through the rainy Mississippi woods for a couple of days.
She glanced at him, a flicker of humor in her dark eyes. “I know at the time it happened, nobody was thinking in terms of an alpha killer and a beta killer, but do you think it’s possible that the second man your brother and sister-in-law saw—the one you said had a rifle—could be the beta we’re looking for in these murders?”
Gabe hadn’t really considered that possibility before now. No one had been able to figure out the identity of the mystery gunman Jake and Mariah had encountered during their escape from Victor. Neither of them had gotten a good look at his face, so all they’d been able to tell the authorities and the rest of the Cooper family was that the man with the rifle—the man who’d rigged the gas explosion that had killed Victor and destroyed his house—had sandy brown hair and a lean build and youthful way of moving.
Except for the sandy hair—because the darkness outside had obscured any details like coloring—that description of the gunman sounded a hell of a lot like
the dark figure he’d seen lurking outside Alicia’s apartment earlier.
“Okay, let’s say it’s the same guy. The rifleman in Buckley, Mississippi, is the same guy who sent you a note and was just now lurking outside your apartment,” Gabe agreed. “What does that tell us about him?”
“Well, if we’re assuming that he lives in the area where he hunts for victims for the alpha killer, I’d say that means he lived in the Buckley area at least for a while last month.”
“Not necessarily,” Gabe said, remembering something about the events that had unfolded for his family the previous month. “This all took place the first week of April. And what I remember about that week, besides what happened to Jake and Mariah, is that Cissy was home from college on a break.”
Alicia’s eyes widened. “That’s right. We do take a later spring break than a lot of colleges. So the beta could still have been living here at the time. He could have been in the Buckley area for the break.” Her brow creased. “But why? How did he know to be in Buckley at just that time?”
A light went on in Gabe’s brain. “Of course. The cable news broadcast.”
Alicia’s frown deepened. “What broadcast?”
“One of the cable news outlets carried a live broadcast from the tornado sites. When we did a little looking into how Victor Logan could have known Mariah was in Buckley, the cops talked the local stations and the cable newsers into letting us look at the footage they aired the day after the twister hit. We found a couple of hits—one with just Mariah and Jake in the background of an on-scene live report, and a later one from a cable news station that showed Victor actually stalking Mariah and Jake.”
“So if the beta knew Victor—”
“Oh, he knew him,” Gabe said confidently. “My guess is that he knew Victor first and maybe that’s how he ended up hooking up with the alpha.”
“Possibly,” Alicia agreed. “So if he knew Victor, and he saw Victor stalking people on a national cable broadcast—”
“He’d probably want to know what the hell Victor was up to,” Gabe finished for her. “Jake and Mariah said the guy seemed to be Victor’s ally sometimes and his enemy at other times. Very strange relationship.”
“Very strange seems to be our beta’s primary descriptor,” Alicia said dryly.
“And very dangerous,” Gabe added. “Because if we’re right, then he’s one hell of a determined freak. And right now, he seems pretty damned determined to see you dead.”
TONY EVANS WAS OFF DUTY when Alicia reached him on his cell phone, but he came to her apartment as quickly as he could. He eyed Gabe with a little bit of latent hostility as soon as he stepped out of his car, but Alicia forced Tony’s attention to the issue of the stalker.
“You’re right,” he said a few minutes later after examining the area under the willows that she and Gabe had already investigated. “The area’s pretty clean. I’m not sure even a crime scene team could get anything here. I doubt I could get permission to call a team out here tonight in any event. Some guy standing across the street from an apartment full of pretty girls may be creepy, but it’s not illegal.”
Gabe shot Alicia an I-told-you-so look. He had been against calling Tony, certain the police couldn’t do anything about a guy who hadn’t broken any laws.
“I do think it’s interesting he was on foot,” Tony added. “Sounds like he could live around here.”
“Or he’s smart enough to park his car a couple of blocks away so that nobody can connect him to some strange vehicle parked outside Alicia’s place,” Gabe added.
Tony shot him a dark look. “Or that,” he conceded.
Alicia looked at Gabe, whose glittering eyes were locked in battle with Tony’s. “Did the guy see you chasing him?”
Gabe turned his attention to her. “No, I’m pretty sure he didn’t see me. By the time I was able to get outside and go after him, I was too far behind for him to notice.”
“So maybe he’ll come back. At least we know where to look for him.”
“I don’t think you should try to take on the guy yourself,” Tony warned. “I mean, I know Gabe here is an auxiliary deputy and all, but this guy could be really dangerous.”
Alicia nearly rolled her eyes at Tony’s barely veiled insult of Gabe’s part-time law enforcement work. “Believe me, we know how dangerous he could be.”
“Sorry to drag you out here, Tony,” Gabe said, clapping Tony on the shoulder. “I guess we were being overly cautious and all. Not being professionals like you.”
Alicia groaned inwardly. Oh, for God’s sake, what was it with men?
“Well, anything for my girl Alicia here.” Tony wrapped his arm around her and hugged her to him. Under most circumstances, the gesture would have been innocent enough, but choking on the cloud of testosterone emanating from the two men, Alicia saw it for the territorial gesture it was.
She extricated herself firmly from his grasp. “I’ll try not to call you out on a wild goose chase next time, Tony. Thanks for coming.”
Tony’s eyes narrowed, but he got the message and said his goodbyes at the curb, though he did eye the front door of her apartment as if he would have liked to be invited in.
Alicia felt a little guilty for excluding him, but their relationship was over and she wasn’t interested in stirring up old embers. She had enough trouble on her plate as it was.
Gabe laid his hand on the small of her back, guiding her toward the steps. It was just as territorial a gesture as Tony’s quick hug, but Alicia didn’t find it nearly as irritating. After all, Gabe was here to protect her. He did have a stake in what happened to her.
And if going all alpha male was his way of keeping focused on that job, Alicia wasn’t inclined to complain.
They had barely stepped inside the apartment when the phone began to ring. Tony, calling to make sure she was safely inside, maybe? Alicia picked up the receiver and checked the caller ID on the wireless phone’s display. Nothing showed up; the caller must have blocked his information from displaying.
She was about to push the answer button when Gabe caught her wrist, making her arm tingle from fingertips to shoulder.
She looked up at him, every inch of her body aware of just how close he was standing. “What?”
“It could be the beta, sending another message,” he murmured. “Do you have another extension?”
Her heart skipped a beat. She should have thought of that possibility herself. “In the bedroom.”
“Wait ’til you hear me say go.” He disappeared down the hall. A second later, he called out, “Go.”
She answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Oh, thank God. I was afraid I’d have to leave a message on your answering machine and you know how much I hate those bloody things.”
Alicia’s heart sank. “Hi, Mom.”
There was a soft click on the line. Gabe hanging up the phone, now that he knew it wasn’t a call from a killer.
“What was that?” Lorraine Betts-Solano asked. “Was that someone else on the line?”
Alicia pressed her fingertips to her forehead and ignored the question. “How’s Dad? Is he there?”
“He’s still at work—late seminar. Don’t change the subject. Do you have a roommate now?”
“No, Mom, no roommate.”
“You’re not back with that police officer again, are you?” Lorraine didn’t bother to hide her disdain.
“No, it’s not Tony.”
“But it’s someone.”
Alicia shook her head. For all the pride she took in being an unconventional, untraditional woman, her mother was every bit as obsessed with Alicia’s love life as a mother whose primary goal was seeing her daughter well-married.
Of course, Lorraine’s interest was in making sure Alicia didn’t settle for someone unsuitable for Martin and Lorraine Solano’s daughter. Police officers were a definite no. Nor had they approved of the stockbroker she’d dated for a while when she was attending grad school in New York.
; Feeling a wicked streak of rebellion, she blurted, “If you have to know, he’s a professional fisherman. I met him through one of my students—he’s her uncle.”
There was dead silence on the other end of the line.
“He’s from right here in Alabama,” she added, pouring it on. She knew her mother’s opinion of any place that didn’t have its own public transit system and a visible skyline.
“When you say professional fisherman—”
“He fishes for a living. Owns a bass boat, takes people out and shows them where to catch fish. I think he said he’s fished a few tournaments, too.”
“Dear God, where do you meet these people? Never mind, I know where you meet them. Why you ever chose a little no-name college for your doctorate—”
“It’s a university, not a college,” Alicia said firmly. “Mill Valley is quite prestigious in the region. I went where my subject matter was.”
“Oh, yes, your beloved murderers.”
“At least I don’t date them.”
“Small comfort, Alicia. Your father and I still believe you’re wasting the talents and opportunities you’re fortunate enough to have at your disposal.”
“You mean I’m not doing what you and Dad think I should be doing,” Alicia corrected.
“Your obsession with the picayune and the grotesque was amusing when you were a teenager. But you’re not a teenager anymore. It’s time to take your rightful place—”
“You make our family sound like royalty, Mother.” Alicia chose the word deliberately, knowing which buttons to push. “Have you and Dad found a suitable match for me from a neighboring realm?”
“I have nothing against your fisherman, nor your policeman for that matter. Their work is noble enough, but surely you can see that your opportunities for conversation, for mutual stimulation is severely limited—”
“I can assure you, there’s no limit to our mutual stimulation,” Alicia retorted, blushing even as she said it. Her mother had urged her to speak honestly and openly about her sexuality. But Alicia knew that Lorraine didn’t really want to hear the details of her daughter’s love life any more than Alicia wanted to share them.