The Man from Gossamer Ridge

by Paula Graves

  “Nope, not me.”

  “I found out about the murders. And not from Gabe, so don’t look at him like he’s peed in your pool,” J.D. added when Cissy’s gaze whipped up to meet Gabe’s. His voice shifted slightly, taking on a tone of censure. “He didn’t say a word.”

  “I suppose you’re here to take me back home.”

  “I’d like to,” J.D. admitted.

  “And I guess it doesn’t matter to you that I’ve set up an internship here for the summer, huh?”

  “It matters to me, of course it does.” J.D. took a step toward her, holding out his hand. “Are you going to even give me a proper hello?”

  Cissy’s angry expression melted into a look of love so fierce it made Gabe’s chest hurt. She wrapped her arms around her father’s waist and pressed her cheek to his shoulder. “Hey, Daddy. It’s so good to see you.”

  J.D. kissed the top of her head. “Listen, why don’t I take you for a snack and we can talk about it, okay? You listen to what I think and I listen to you. How does that sound?”

  “Suspiciously like you plan to kidnap me and take me back to Gossamer Ridge kicking and screaming,” Cissy replied, but there was affectionate humor in her voice. “Okay, we’ll go out. And you can talk.”

  J.D. looked over at Gabe. “You want to come, too?”

  Gabe shook his head. He suspected Cissy might be more open to persuasion if she didn’t feel as if she were being double-teamed. “I’ve got work to do here.”

  He saw J.D. and Cissy to the door, watching them through the window until J.D.’s truck pulled onto the street and disappeared from sight. Then he listened to his stomach’s growling protests and went to the kitchen to find a snack.

  He had just finished eating when another knock on the door detoured him from his beeline back to Alicia’s desk for more file perusal. The face on the other side of the peephole caught him by surprise.

  He opened the door to find Tony Evans on the other side.

  “So,” Tony said with a smile, “what do you say we try a little interagency cooperation?”

  ALICIA’S LAST CLASS ENDED AT four-thirty, and as she’d promised, she called Gabe for an escort home. He was waiting in the parking lot next to her Ford by the time she gathered her things and walked out to her car.

  He rolled down the window, flashing her a smile. “How was your day? After I left, I mean.”

  “Fine,” she answered, although she barely remembered anything about her day after he left, since he’d been invading her thoughts ever since.

  Both of her afternoon labs had involved end of semester final exams, leaving her little to do but keep an eye out for signs of cheating. She normally loved test days, as they offered extra time to work on her dissertation research. But today, despite having a pile of new information on the murder cases to ponder, she’d found her mind wandering again and again to Gabe Cooper.

  Tony was right. She was tired of being so alone all the time. And it was her own fault.

  But figuring a way out of her self-imposed isolation wasn’t an easy fix. The issues that drove her to view the world with skeptical cynicism were still there.

  Her parents were still academia’s version of glitterati, making Alicia’s own academic career feel like an endless night in some swanky Hollywood hot spot, where everyone she met wanted to get closer to her because her parents were celebrities. She couldn’t trust any friendships formed with eager professors angling for a brush with the greatness of Martin Solano and his glamorous wife Lorraine.

  And any attempts to make friends on the other side of the aisle, as she’d come to think of it—the cops, the prosecutors, the forensic scientists who dotted the landscape of her chosen field of study—rarely went past the first mention of her late brother, the terrorist. Only Tony had bothered to see past that part of her life and she knew that even he wasn’t comfortable with her parents and their hagiographic view of Sinclair.

  So far, neither her parents’ reputations nor her brother’s crimes had seemed to faze Gabe Cooper, but there was yet another problem where he was concerned: he had his own agenda where these murder cases were concerned. She could make a compelling argument that he saw her mostly as a tool he could use to find the answers he’d been seeking for years. Her usefulness could be what was keeping him around, not her beauty or her charms or her wit. If she was no longer useful to him, how likely was it that Gabe Cooper would still stick around?

  Not bloody likely at all, was it?

  She parked her Ford in front of the apartment building, surprised to find Tony’s Jeep parked across the street. Tony was waiting for them inside her apartment, seated on the sofa, surrounded by case files and notes.

  He barely looked up as they entered, just waved them over. Alicia took a seat next to him on the sofa, while Gabe went into the kitchen and returned with three glasses of sweet tea. He handed a glass to Alicia and set his glass and Tony’s on the coffee table in front of them.

  “We’ve been working on this for a couple of hours,” Gabe said, waving at a row of yellow lined notebook pages spread out across the coffee table. “At first, we got bogged down in some of the older cases, but we decided they weren’t pertinent at the moment, since we’re pretty sure a different beta was involved in those, and the key to this whole thing is definitely the beta.”

  “Because outside of the signature and the M.O., which in all the cases hasn’t really changed, most of the variables can be attributed to the beta killer,” Tony added. “His personality. His connections. His passions.”

  Alicia looked from one man to the other, caught off guard by the sheer force of their determination. She hadn’t expected them to be anything more than civil to each other and here they were joining forces and working together like they’d been partnered for years. “I agree,” she said, although she’d never really separated the cases that way, not in her mind, anyway.

  She had been thinking academically, piecing the cases into a narrative she could type up in a doctoral dissertation to earn her degree. She was passionate about the work, but not in the same way Tony and Gabe were. Tony was a cop, whose hunger for justice had led him into uniform and danger. He wanted results, not just profiles and statistics.

  And something even more powerful than justice drove Gabe. Call it vengeance, call it a blood debt—Gabe needed a resolution to his family’s suffering and loss. He needed results, too, but this case was so much more personal to him than to her or to Tony.

  So what if he was just using her to find the truth that had eluded the Coopers for so long? She was a big girl. She could take it. Being part of giving Gabe the closure he needed was worth it to her.

  So was bringing justice to a couple of ruthless killers.

  “We’re down to the women who were killed in the last four years, after Victor Logan went to jail,” Gabe said, picking through the sheets of paper until he’d extracted six sheets. “There’s a pretty large gap of time between Victor’s incarceration date and the next murder we have on record. I suppose it’s possible there are murders we don’t know about—”

  “We know we’re missing several, if there are really twenty-one of them,” Tony agreed.

  “But I think it’s likely that most of the missing murders happened during the Victor Logan era,” Gabe concluded. “Reporting and forensics have gotten better every year, and more recent murders are probably better documented and easier to find in records searches.”

  Alicia felt a smile bubbling up, unstoppable. “Look at you guys. Playing nice and getting things done.”

  “Well, I’m through playing nice for the day,” Tony said, rising to his feet. “It’s nearly dinnertime, so I should clear out of here—”

  “You could stay for dinner,” Alicia suggested, not sure she was ready to be left alone with Gabe when he was in such an intense mood. She’d found him hard enough to resist when he was flirty and charming. Add the fire she saw flashing in his eyes and he was downright dangerous.

  “Nope. I have plans
.” Tony smiled down at her. “Got a date with Ellie from the property room.”

  After the tiniest spark of territorial jealousy, Alicia smiled. Tony was a good guy and she knew Ellie had nursed a big crush on him for a while. They’d have fun together. Maybe more—who knew? “Have a good time. Say hi to Ellie for me.”

  After Tony left, Gabe slanted a look at Alicia. “You don’t usually tell your new main squeeze that your old one says hi.”

  “Main squeeze?” She rolled her eyes. “You need to update your slang, geezer.” She reached for one of the sheets of paper Gabe had laid out on the coffee table.

  He reached across and stilled her hand, making her look up at him. “Are you really okay with it?”

  She frowned, not following for a moment. Then she realized they were still on the subject of Tony and his date. “Of course. We’ve been over for months. I’m happy he’s moving on.”

  Gabe held onto her hand a few seconds longer, finally letting go to pick up the paper she’d been reaching for and hand it to her. “You agree that we should focus on the newest murders, right?”

  “I do. It’s good insight and a better use of our time.” She’d been so caught up in tying all the cases together that she’d lost sight of what would work best for solving the case. “Anything jump out at you so far?”

  “There’s some information missing here and there—for instance, this case in Meridian, Mississippi—” Gabe picked up one of the sheets of handwritten notes. “Kellie Davis. Twenty-six years old. Waitress at an all-night diner where she was murdered. But that diner is only a half mile from Meridian Community College. Could she have been a part-time student? These files don’t say, but we should look into it.”

  “Can I borrow this?” Alicia reached for the notebook lying on the table next to the spread-out papers. She pulled a pen from her briefcase and jotted a note. “We’re going on the premise that the more recent murders are all somehow connected to universities or colleges?”

  “Well, we know the most recent three are. And of the other three murders, one of them is a definite yes—Maleah Kramer was a student at the University of West Alabama over in Livingston. I wouldn’t be surprised if these other two were also students.”

  “Which means the more recent beta also has a connection to the universities.” Alicia tried to keep her focus cool and professional, but a hot, curling sensation was running through her belly like a mass of snakes.

  “That’s what I’m thinking.” Gabe looked up from his notes. “Since we’re talking about at least three different universities in the last four or five years, it’s probably a student, don’t you think?”

  Alicia nodded, but her mind was already racing through the potential numbers. Though a small university by most standards, Mill Valley had around five thousand part-time and full time students. The male-female ratio was two males for every three females, which dropped the number down to two thousand. Age would eliminate some but not all. “How old do we suppose the beta would have to be? Could he have started as early as sixteen or seventeen?”

  “Maybe.” Gabe shrugged. “There’ve been some pretty young serial killers, and since there’s an older mentor involved, the beta could have been very young when he started.”

  “Then maybe Tyler Landon could be the killer.” She had to swallow the lump in her throat to get the words out.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Gabe moved to sit next to her on the sofa. When he looked up at her, his blue eyes were smoky with desire. “It’s not like it’s a stretch that a young guy might find you irresistible.”

  There she went, melting again at the mere sound of his honey-thick drawl. She tried laughing his comment off. “Apparently, I’m quite the stalker magnet.”

  Gabe didn’t laugh with her. “You have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?”

  Her flippant reply died in her throat as she turned to find his face inches from hers. Fear battled with desire for control of her body.

  Desire won, at least for as long as it took for her to lean forward and meet his descending mouth.

  He tasted so good, a combination of the sweet tea he’d just drunk in lieu of lunch and a darker, richer flavor that belonged only to him. She wanted to drink him dry.

  Gabe was the one who pulled away this time, leaving her so off balance she had to grab the back of the sofa to keep from falling into his lap. “Wait a minute.”

  She stared at him, still feeling as if the world had pitched sideways beneath her. “What?”

  He turned and scooped up the notes he’d made, scanning them for a couple of seconds before he turned back to her, his expression a battle between triumph and dismay. “Behavioral Science,” he said aloud. “All of these women were connected in some way to the Behavioral Science departments at their schools.”

  Her heart dipped to her stomach. “All of them?”

  He caught her arms in his big, strong hands and pulled her to face him, his expression intense. “You can’t go back to that college.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “It’s just a few more days and then the semester’s done.” Alicia’s jaw was set in stone. “I’m not working the summer session. I’ll go somewhere. Maybe Hawaii.” She flashed Gabe a tense grin that he knew was supposed to be flippant and breezy.

  She was just too damned terrified to pull it off.

  Still, he hadn’t been able to change her mind about working out the last week of the semester, despite spending the last half hour outlining every dire possibility he could think of. “You can get that friend of yours—Mark or whatever—”

  “Marlon Dyson,” she supplied.

  “Get Marlon to cover your classes.”

  “He has some classes at the same time as mine.”

  “Alicia—”

  She caught his hand, stopping his relentless pacing. “You know what we need? Food.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Her smile was genuine this time, edged with wicked humor. “Food is fuel, Gabe.”

  Her smile turned his stomach inside out. “Dirty pool, Solano, throwing my words back at me.”

  She stood up, twining her fingers with his. “There’s a place in walking distance from here.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “I’ll be safe if you’re with me,” she said firmly. The weight of her trust in his ability to keep her safe was both humbling and terrifying.

  He couldn’t let her down.

  “Okay,” he conceded, letting her lead him out of the apartment and down the steps to the sidewalk.

  “It’s a Lebanese diner—a hole-in-the-wall, really,” she told him as they headed for University Drive and walked right, toward the school. “Naji Garnem runs the place—his daughter Eliana was one of my students last semester and she introduced me to the place. Amazing tabouli and the best falafel I’ve ever had anywhere.”

  “I thought San Francisco had the best food anywhere.” Gabe glanced at their entwined hands. She hadn’t let go of his hand when they reached the sidewalk. Fine with him; he liked the feel of her small, soft fingers threaded through his, probably more than he should.

  “San Francisco has great food,” she agreed, “but here’s a little secret. It’s not nearly as amazing as its residents like to pretend. No place is.”

  “Ah, but you’ve never been to Gossamer Ridge,” he said with a smile. “Ten minutes out on the lake with me in my bass boat and you’d never want to go anywhere else.”

  She darted a look at him. “Is that a come-on?”

  It hadn’t been, but her teasing mood was contagious. “Is it working?”

  Her eyebrows flicked upward and she flashed a pair of dimples at him. “Maybe a little.”

  “If this is your idea of distracting me from our earlier discussion—”

  “Argument,” she corrected.

  “Discussion,” he insisted. “And if you think you’ll distract me with food and flirtation, you’re…probably right. But not forever.”

  “I’m actually trying
to refocus you onto something that’s actually feasible.” Alicia pointed toward a small brick building at the corner ahead. “That’s the Cedars Café.”

  The place was tiny and nondescript from the outside, but when they entered the cafe, it was like stepping into another world. Beautiful photos of the Lebanese landscape lined the walls—not professional travel photos, clearly, but images shot with such obvious love for the subject matter that Gabe found himself wishing he could take the next flight to Beirut.

  The images were eclipsed only by the spicy aromas permeating every inch of the café—cumin, cinnamon, garlic, thyme and mint were a few that Gabe recognized. At the counter, a glass front case displayed an array of à la carte items such as pistachios, baklava triangles, fresh-baked pita bread and small containers of creamy hummus.

  Alicia ordered an appetizer sampler that included hummus, grilled lamb and something called kibbe, which Alicia explained was a sort of spicy meatball made with ground beef and bulgur wheat. They also ordered falafel wraps, which Alicia didn’t have to explain to him, because the crunchy chickpea patties were among Gabe’s favorite foods.

  “There’s a place in Birmingham that has amazing falafel wraps,” he told Alicia later, as they ate outside at one of the two tiny bistro tables that served as the Cedars Café’s outdoor dining area. The other table was currently unoccupied, though Gabe wasn’t sure how long it would remain that way, since the crowd inside the diner had been larger than he’d expected.

  “Well, you’ll have to take me there before we head for Gossamer Ridge, since I’d like to try those falafel wraps before I embark on my slavish devotion to your bass boat.”

  “I like to think of the devotion as less slavish and more passionate.”

  She grinned. “Yeah, I bet you like to think that.”

  As tempting as it was to sit here and flirt away the evening with Alicia in her devilish mood, he couldn’t let her distract him from the danger that encroached like the coming night, muting the vivid colors and warm light of the waning afternoon. He laid down his half-eaten falafel wrap and waited until she looked up at him to speak. “I still think you need to get out of town for a while.”