by Paula Graves
Not with Alicia sleeping one room away.
“I’m not a good relationship bet, Gabe. I’m obsessed with my work, I have family issues out the wazoo—and I don’t do casual sex, so I’m not a good bet for a fling, either.”
He didn’t either, not these days. In fact, his out of control reaction to Alicia wasn’t anything he’d ever experienced before and he wish he knew what the hell was causing it.
She was pretty enough, but he’d seen more beautiful women. Her curvy shape whispered all sorts of wicked promises about what lay beneath her clothing, but he’d seen perfect bodies before, clothed and unclothed, that hadn’t tempted him this way.
What was wrong with him?
“Can we just agree to not do this? Please?” Alicia’s voice softened. “I need your help. I need someone watching my back while I’m investigating this case. But we can’t—”
“Okay,” he said. “I will do my damnedest to be on my best behavior with you.” Even if it kills me, he added silently.
“Thank you.” She crossed warily to the sofa and sat down, her dark eyes watchful.
Gabe tugged the ottoman away from the coffee table, putting a little extra distance between them, and sat. The footstool was a little short for his long legs, pushing his knees up close to his chest. Alicia’s lips curved but she managed not to laugh at what Gabe was sure must be a comical sight.
“What do you plan to do tomorrow while I’m at work?” she asked him after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence.
“I’m hoping you’ll leave me the files on the other murder cases to look through,” he answered, although that was only part of what he had planned for tomorrow.
He also intended to do a little snooping around Tony Evans and see if anything worrisome turned up, but Alicia didn’t have to know about that little plan.
“I can do that,” she agreed. “I won’t have time to do any work on my dissertation between classes tomorrow, anyway. Marlon and I are planning to do a lab inventory on Saturday to see what items need restocking, so I’m going to try to do a little preliminary organizing between classes tomorrow in preparation.” She grimaced. “Does that make me sound like a nerd?”
He grinned. “A little. But nerd looks cute on you.”
She frowned. “Gabe—”
“I promised not to try to seduce you. I never said I wouldn’t flirt.”
The corners of her lips twitched. “On that note, I think it’s time to turn in. Do you have everything you need out here? Blankets, pillows?”
Everything but you, he thought. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
She walked to the hall, pausing in the doorway to look back at him. “This is going to be an interesting few days.”
As she turned and disappeared into the hall, he slumped forward, resting his head in his hands. His whole body seemed to be a live wire, trembling and twitching, just waiting for something to come along and set off sparks.
Interesting few days?
That was the understatement of the year.
Chapter Twelve
Cissy Cooper was in Alicia’s first lab of the day. She arrived early and crossed to Alicia’s desk, where she was stealing a moment to check for critical updates to the lab’s library of software programs.
“So, did you and Unlce Gabe find anything outside last night?” Cissy asked, perching on the edge of the desk.
Alicia finished jotting a note to herself and looked up, struck for the first time how much Cissy looked like her uncle. The Cooper family genes were apparently as overwhelming as the people who possessed them. “No. I was hoping, but I guess I wasn’t really surprised.”
“It’s so creepy, thinking about that guy standing out there, watching you.”
“What guy?”
Alicia and Cissy both turned at the sound of Marlon Dyson’s voice. Alicia’s lab partner stood in the doorway, his sandy eyebrows raised.
Alicia glanced at Cissy. “Nobody, really—just a guy who was staring at me a little too long outside. I think the coed murders have all of us women spooked.”
“Very spooked,” Cissy admitted. “My uncle thinks I should leave town as soon as I finish my chem final this afternoon.”
“He sounds a little overprotective.” Marlon crossed to his desk next to Alicia’s. “You don’t even fit the profile.”
“I know. But he just worries.” Cissy slid off Alicia’s desk and headed to her station near the back of the lab.
Marlon put his briefcase on his desk and crossed to where Alicia sat. Bending toward her, he murmured, “So, really, a guy staring at you spooked you? Who are you and what have you done with the Alicia Solano I know?”
She should have known Marlon would see through her fib. “Okay, fine. Just don’t let it get around, okay?” She lowered her voice even more. “Last night, Gabe Cooper spotted someone lurking outside my apartment, watching the place.”
Marlon looked surprised. “Did you see him?”
“No, by the time Gabe realized what he was seeing, the guy was already on the move.”
“Hmm.” There was a note of skepticism in Marlon’s voice that surprised her.
“Hmm?”
“Well, weird that this guy just comes to town, conveniently stumbles across a murder like the ones you’ve been investigating and then happens to see some guy lurking outside your apartment, rendering himself damned near indispensible to you. I bet he’s offered to stay at your place to protect you, hasn’t he?”
Alicia frowned at Marlon. “I’m glad he’s there, actually.”
“Well, sure. Thanks to him, you’re convinced you’re in danger. Again, pretty convenient.”
“You think Gabe’s setting me up?” Alicia’s stomach knotted as she realized Marlon was serious.
“The timing is really strange, don’t you think?” Marlon glanced toward the back of the room, where Cissy was already working on the computer at her station. He lowered his voice. “Isn’t he the guy who found that other body, all those years ago? And now he finds another body the first night he’s here in Millbridge? How do you know he’s not one of the guys you’ve been looking for?”
“Because Victor Logan was one of the two men behind Brenda Cooper’s murder,” Alicia answered tightly. Of that, she was convinced. “What do you want me to do, ask Gabe to account for his whereabouts for every murder in my files?”
“It would be a start.”
Students were filing into the classroom, forcing her to table the discussion. “What do you have after this lab?” she asked Marlon. She had a free period and had planned to stop by the university food court to grab lunch.
“I’m filling in for Doctor Kline next period, then I have an appointment off campus.” He gave her a considering look. “I could meet you later if you want to talk.”
She’d promised Gabe she’d call as soon as her classes were over. But if there was any chance Marlon could be right, that she’d been duped—
“No,” she said aloud, almost before she realized she’d made a decision. “We’ll just plan to have lunch tomorrow after labs and we can talk about this more.”
“So you’re going to let him stay there with you anyway?”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she answered firmly, turning her attention to her notes for that day’s lab.
But turning her mind from the doubts Marlon’s words had raised proved much harder to do.
“YOU’RE DOING WHAT?” Aaron’s voice rose a notch over the cell phone.
Gabe shifted his headset and slid a little lower in the front seat of the truck. “I’m tailing a cop.”
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line before his brother asked, “Am I going to hate myself for asking why?”
“Probably,” Gabe admitted.
“Oh, what the hell? Why?”
“His ex-girlfriend has a stalker and I need to know if it’s him or if it’s someone who helped kill that convenience store clerk the other night.”
“I don’t suppose he could be bo
th.”
“No, he has an alibi for the other two murders and I’m pretty sure the convenience store murder was connected to the others. But I’m not sure he wasn’t the guy I chased outside Alicia’s apartment last night.” Gabe brought his younger brother up to speed on the investigation, including the detail about the note Alicia had received the day before. “If it’s the cop, he might be trying to convince her she needs him back in her life to protect her.”
“Which backfired when you stepped in to be her knight in shining armor.”
“Something like that.” Gabe peered through the windshield. Tony Evans had a first floor unit in a two-story red brick apartment building a few blocks away from the Millbridge Police Department. It hadn’t been hard for Gabe to find his place; Alicia’s address book had been lying on the kitchen counter in plain sight when he got back to the apartment that morning after following her to work to make sure she arrived safely.
He hadn’t really expected to find the police officer at home when he drove by, figuring he’d already be at work. He’d really just come to get a feel for how long it might take Evans to get from home to Alicia’s apartment.
But he’d spotted Evans walking to the row of mailboxes at the end of the drive and circled around, parking across the street in front of a dry cleaning business. He saw Evans go inside the apartment. So far, he hadn’t come out again.
Aaron released a long-suffering sigh. “Am I going to have to call the Millbridge Police and pull your bacon out of the fire again?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Gabe, be careful.” Aaron’s tone grew serious. “You know how close Jake and Mariah came to dying last month because of Victor Logan and his rifle-toting buddy. If that’s the guy who’s stalking Alicia—”
“I know.” Gabe had seen the aftermath of the mystery man’s handiwork. As ruthless as Victor Logan had been in taking his brother and sister-in-law captive, the man who’d blown up Logan’s house had been infinitely more deadly. “Hey, how’s the wedding planning going?” Aaron had finally convinced his girlfriend Melissa to marry him.
“We’re set for the end of June.”
Gabe was surprised. “So soon?”
“Melissa didn’t want anything fancy, and now that she’s finally said yes, I figured I’d be playing with fire to wait too long. She might change her mind.”
“I’ve seen the way she looks at you, man. She won’t be changing her mind.”
“Can you believe I’m marrying a lawyer?”
Gabe snorted. “I still haven’t gotten used to your being a sheriff’s deputy. You’re the family delinquent, remember?”
“Keep stalking cops and you may take over the top spot,” Aaron warned. Gabe could tell his brother was only half joking.
Gabe spotted Evans coming out of the apartment. The police officer walked to a Jeep Cherokee parked three slots down from his apartment door and climbed inside.
“He’s on the move,” Gabe told his brother. “Gotta go.”
“For God’s sake, be careful,” Aaron said.
Gabe hung up and cranked the truck, waiting until the Cherokee had pulled out of the apartment parking lot and onto the street, heading south.
Toward Mill Valley University.
Gabe wasn’t a surveillance expert, but he knew enough to stay several car lengths back. He kept pace with the Jeep, hoping he was wrong about where the policeman was headed, right up to the moment Evans’ Jeep turned down the tree-lined drive toward the Mill Valley University Library. But the Jeep drove right past the library and hung a left, heading toward Atchison Hall, the building that housed the School of Behavioral Science. Gabe had been there just this morning, following Alicia’s blue Ford to the faculty parking area near the entrance to make sure she arrived at work safely.
Tony parked the Jeep in one of the visitor slots and got out, moving with singular determination toward the entrance. If he noticed Gabe’s truck moving slowly past him, heading for another empty parking slot, he gave no sign. Evans stopped at the top step of the entrance porch, reaching into his back pocket to pull out his cell phone. The tail of his jacket shifted upwards, revealing a holstered Smith & Wesson. Answering the phone, Evans continued into the building.
Gabe cut the truck’s engine and headed in pursuit, his pulse pounding like a bass drum in his head.
THE MINUTE TONY WALKED INTO the empty lab, his brown eyes soft with concern, Alicia felt like an idiot for calling him. “I’m sorry—you probably had plans for your day off that didn’t include holding my hand.”
Tony caught her hand in his, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. “Nothing I had planned beats lunch with you.”
She extricated her hand as soon as she could do so politely. Tony had been more ambivalent about their break up than she had and she didn’t want to give him any wrong ideas about why she’d called him. “I feel really stupid about it, now. It’s not like I didn’t make a couple of calls myself after Gabe showed up practically on my doorstep—”
“There’s nothing stupid about taking a few precautions,” Tony assured her, gesturing toward her desk. He pulled up the empty chair from Marlon’s desk and sat in front of her. “Tell me what raised your suspicions about Cooper.”
“That’s just it. There’s nothing to make me suspect him. It’s just—I mean, I met him three days ago. And now he’s set up camp in my living room, and it’s just not like me to let someone into my life that way, and I don’t know what I’m thinking half the time—” She stopped short, realizing she was revealing a lot more about the confusing nature of her relationship with Gabe than she’d intended.
She could tell that Tony read into her words exactly what she’d hoped to hide. For a second, his dark eyes revealed an emotion that might have been dismay, but he recovered quickly. “I’ve never doubted your good judgment and you didn’t go wrong this time, either. I made some calls, like you asked. Cooper is about as squeaky clean as you can get. Comes from a good family, several family members in law enforcement, has a good reputation at the sheriff’s department where he volunteers—hell, I’d probably hire him to watch my kids, if I had any.”
“You couldn’t afford me.”
Alicia’s whole body zinged with surprise at the sound of Gabe’s voice. He stood in the lab doorway, arms folded over his chest, his expression humorless and brooding. She didn’t know how much of her conversation with Tony he’d overheard, but clearly it had been enough to put him in a black mood.
Tony turned to face Gabe. “Sorry, Cooper. Nothing personal. Doesn’t hurt to be thorough.”
“No, I get that.” Gabe pushed away from the door and closed in, his gaze settling on Alicia. “What I don’t get is why you didn’t just tell me you were going to check up on me. Why call Evans behind my back?”
Before Alicia could answer, Tony stepped between them. “What are you doing here anyway, Cooper?”
“Following you,” Gabe answered flatly.
Alicia went from embarrassed to outraged in the course of a second. “Following Tony?”
Tony laughed. “You suspect me of being Alicia’s stalker?”
Gabe shrugged. “Ex-boyfriend who maybe didn’t take the breakup quite as well as she did. A cop who’d know all about covert surveillance—gotta admit, if you were in my position, you’d take a look at you, too.”
Alicia’s cheeks burned. “Gabe, damn it, we talked about this and you agreed—”
“I didn’t agree to anything,” he said. “In fact, I remember telling you not to get too complacent about trusting anyone until you’d checked things out.” He shot a look at Tony. “I guess maybe you took that to heart, huh?”
“Maybe I should have told you I was checking up on you.” She narrowed her gaze, giving in to a little flash of anger. “But you should have told me you were going to follow Tony around town today. I’d have given you his address and then you wouldn’t have had to sneak into my address book for it.”
Gabe flushed a little and she knew her guess
had been spot-on. She made a note to keep her address book in a safer place from here on.
“Where did you think I’d lead you?” Tony asked Gabe.
“I wasn’t sure. I don’t even know if I really think you’re a stalker. I just know you’re one of the first guys the cops would look at if we’d called them.”
Tony was silent for a moment, as if considering Gabe’s words. After a moment, he gave a nod. “I was at a high school awards ceremony when Alicia called last night. My cousin Phil’s boy David is on the Class 2 championship baseball team and they got their trophies at the high school. I went along because I was one of David’s first baseball coaches. Dozens of people saw me there—and more than a few of them gave me dirty looks when my cell phone rang in the middle of the program and I had to step over them to leave.”
Alicia looked at Gabe. He wore a contemplative look, as if he were carefully considering Tony’s story. After a beat, his gaze shifted and met hers. “Okay,” he said aloud. “He’s not the stalker.”
“And ignoring the fact that you trailed me all the way here from my apartment, I don’t think you’re the stalker either,” Tony conceded.
Alicia was surprised by just how relieved she felt to hear them both admit what she’d felt certain of all along. “Maybe now we can work together instead of against each other?”
Both men looked at each other, the testosterone back in full force. But at least they weren’t at each other’s throats. Gabe finally put out his hand and Tony shook it.
“I was about to take Alicia to lunch in the food court on the quad. You’re welcome to join us,” Tony offered.
“The food here is pretty good.” To her chagrin, she sounded embarrassingly eager. Obvious much, Solano?
“Tempting an offer as that is, I need to be going over your case notes.” He slanted a look toward Tony. “I got a little sidetracked this morning. But I’ll walk y’all out.”
“What are you looking for?” Tony asked as he walked with Gabe and Alicia to the exit door. “In the case notes, I mean.”
“I just want to go over everything, see if there’s some connection between cases Alicia hasn’t made yet.”