The Man from Gossamer Ridge

by Paula Graves

  “For how long? Until somebody catches the killers? What if that doesn’t happen for months? Or years?” She laid her wrap on the plate in front of her as well, dropping the pretense that her only worry was whether or not there’d be any baklava left if she wanted dessert later. “I can’t let these men control my life that way. If they’re so intent on killing me, maybe we should just let them try.”

  He grabbed her hand, his grip tighter than he intended. He loosened his fingers when she winced. “Don’t even joke about that, Alicia. You’re not going to play bait.”

  “I’m not planning to,” she said firmly. “But I also don’t plan to give them any opportunities to catch me alone. I’m going to take precautions. You can follow me to and from the university, or I can get Tony or Marlon to do it.”

  “Wait a minute. How do we know the killer isn’t Marlon?” Gabe asked. “I mean, we think he’s someone connected to the Behavioral Science department, and Marlon’s the right age. He’s in good shape, so he could even be the guy who killed Victor Logan.”

  “Marlon can’t be that guy,” Alicia disagreed. “Victor Logan was murdered during Mill Valley’s spring break and Marlon spent that week with his parents on a trip to France, Italy and Germany. I’ve seen the trip photos.”

  “Okay, probably not Marlon then,” Gabe conceded, “but is he really going to be able to fight off a couple of killers if they decide to make a bold move?”

  “Can you?”

  “Damned straight I can,” he answered, and realized he meant it. He may have failed miserably at protecting Brenda twelve years ago, but he wasn’t that same, careless kid anymore, was he? He’d learned a lot of things about life and responsibility over the intervening years, much of it self-taught as a direct response to his earlier failure.

  “You sound so sure,” she murmured, turning her palm over until it met his, reminding him that he was still holding her hand. “You’ve talked about protecting me before, but there’s always been a little hesitation. But not now.”

  He held her gaze. “If anyone tries to hurt you on my watch, I’ll kill them if necessary.”

  No doubts. No hesitation.

  She looked troubled by his words, but also relieved. “I hope it never comes to that.”

  “I hope not, either.”

  She took a long, shaky breath, sliding her hand away from his. “Okay, it’s not Marlon and we agree it’s not Tony.”

  “That kid who hit on you is a real possibility.” Gabe’s neck hair prickled at the thought of that teenage punk’s attitude toward Alicia just because she didn’t respond to his advances the way he hoped. “The way he behaved is pretty aggressive.”

  “Maybe.” Alicia didn’t look convinced. “I can’t help thinking it was too aggressive, really. Neither the alpha killer nor the beta seems driven by impulse. They’re organized. Careful. I’m betting they both have a lot of practice keeping their real selves hidden. Tyler Landon wasn’t nearly that controlled. I just don’t think he fits the profile.”

  “Profiles have been wrong before.”

  She gave him an odd look, as if his words had hurt her. “Of course. I just don’t think I’m wrong about this.”

  “I still think Tony’s right to give him a good, hard look.”

  “I agree with that.”

  “What about other people? Anyone else at the college strike you as strange?”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a small notebook. She wrote down Tyler Landon’s name and added a small question mark next to it. “There’s an adjunct professor in the sociology department—Terence Lowell—who’s always staring at the female students. It’s apparently creepy enough that a few of them have mentioned his attention to me.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “We’ve met a few times at faculty events. He seems okay, at least with the teachers.”

  “Present company excepted, I’m guessing most of the teachers don’t look much like twenty-year-old coeds.” A dark thought suddenly occurred to him. “Was Cissy one of the students who came to you about this Lowell guy?”

  “Down, boy. Challenging people to duels is still illegal in this state,” she said with a smile. “As far as I know, Cissy’s never had any classes with him.” She cocked her head. “You’re so protective of her. Does it have anything to do with finding her mother dead?”

  Gabe looked down at his half-eaten dinner, his appetite crumbling, corroded by guilt. “It has everything to do with it,” he admitted. “It was my fault.”

  Her eyes narrowed with confusion. “Because you found her?”

  “Because I failed her.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t get it—”

  “I was supposed to meet her before her shift was over at the trucking company where she worked. It was a late night shift—three-to-eleven. Her car had been acting up and she was afraid the battery would be dead when she left work, so she asked me to meet her there at the end of her shift in case she needed her battery jumped or a ride or something.”

  Alicia’s expression shifted from confusion to sadness. “You were late.”

  “It just didn’t seem that important, you know? To pay attention to the time. I was twenty-one and fresh out of college, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life and it so happened that she asked me for this favor the same day a friend of mine was in town for a couple of days, a quick stop between college and his new job.”

  “Why didn’t she call someone else, like her husband?”

  “J.D. was still in the Navy. He was on an assignment. My other brothers were spread out all over the place—the Marine Corps, college—and my sister was only seventeen at the time. She was helping my parents watch Cissy and her brother Michael.”

  “So it was up to you.”

  “I meant to be on time. I didn’t drink much of anything at the pool hall, just one beer, because I knew I had to pick up Brenda.” He pressed his fingertips to his throbbing temple. “I just lost track of time. One minute everything was fine, the next I looked up at the clock and saw that it was after eleven. I dropped everything and broke about a hundred traffic laws to get to her.”

  “But it was too late.”

  “My brother J.D. tries to act like it doesn’t matter, like he doesn’t think about my failure every day. But I know he does. And I don’t know what I’m going to do when Cissy finds out about what I did—”

  “I already know.”

  The sound of his niece’s voice sent an electric jolt through him. He twisted in his seat and found his brother and Cissy standing a couple of feet away.

  “Dad told me,” Cissy said. She looked at Alicia. “Hi, Alicia.”

  “Hi, Cissy.” Rising, Alicia looked past her to J.D. “You must be Cissy’s father.”

  J.D. stepped forward and shook her hand. “J.D. Cooper. Nice to meet you. You’re younger than I expected.”

  Alicia smiled, darting a quick look at Gabe. He smiled and shrugged. J.D. was gruff and blunt. Once you got to know him, it was a big part of his charm, but it could be a little confounding on first meeting. “Nice to meet you, too, Mr. Cooper. Cissy’s one of my favorite people.”

  “Cissy has good things to say about you, too,” J.D. said quickly, infusing the words with extra enthusiasm, as if he realized his first stab at a polite greeting had fallen short. Unfortunately, it only came across as trying too hard. To his credit, J.D. seemed to recognize that fact as well, and subsided to his normal growly understatement. “She’s got good sense.” J.D. glanced at his daughter. “Sooner or later, anyway.”

  “Which is Dad’s way of saying I agreed with him about going home,” Cissy said, looking at her father with long-suffering affection.

  “Good,” Gabe said. “It’s the right choice.”

  “I really just came to say goodbye before I left. I dropped by Alicia’s but you weren’t there. One of my roommates said she’d seen the two of you walking this way and I had a hunch Alicia might be taking you here to Cedars.”

/>   “That predictable, huh?” Alicia smiled sheepishly.

  “Now that we’re here, I’m kind of hungry.” Cissy turned to her father, tucking her arm through his. “How about a lamb gyro for the road, Daddy?”

  J.D. made a growly sound low in his throat that could have been frustration or assent. With him, it was hard to know sometimes. But he pulled his wallet out of his pocket.

  “You coming?” he asked Cissy when he reached the door and she hadn’t budged.

  “I just wanted to say goodbye to Alicia. Lamb gyro. Oh, and some baked pita chips.”

  With another rumbling growl, J.D. went into the café.

  “I haven’t told him about the connection between these murders and Mom’s,” Cissy said quickly as soon as he was out of sight. “I don’t want him to know. Not yet. In fact, that’s really why I agreed to go home. If he stayed here trying to talk me into going with him, he might figure out the connection himself.”

  “And that would be a bad thing?” Alicia asked.

  “He’s run around after so many false leads that ended up breaking his heart,” Cissy explained. “I just don’t want him to go through that this time. Not until we’re absolutely sure.”

  “Not until we can deliver a real answer,” Gabe agreed. He looked at Cissy. “I’m sorry, you know. More than I can say. About your mama, I mean.”

  Cissy laid her hand on his arm. “I know. You’ve done everything you could over the years to make it up to us. But you didn’t kill her. Nobody blames you.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Dad told me when I turned sixteen.”

  Three years ago. She’d known that long and never said a thing. And J.D. hadn’t seen fit to warn him, either.

  Not that he had a right to question when or how his brother chose to tell his own daughter that her mother was dead because her Uncle Gabe was a self-absorbed loser who couldn’t bother to keep track of time one night out of his sorry life.

  “What did your dad say?” Gabe hated himself for asking, but J.D. had spent most of the last twelve years trying to avoid talking to Gabe about the night of Brenda’s murder. Not a word of blame had ever escaped J.D.’s lips, but Gabe had seen enough recriminations in his brother’s eyes to harbor no doubts about his brother’s feelings.

  “He just told me to think carefully about all the decisions I make in life. You never know when even the most innocent of mistakes will have terrible consequences.”

  Gabe burned with shame. “A true-life cautionary tale, huh?”

  So much about the last few years suddenly made sense.

  J.D. emerged from the café, carrying a large paper sack. Cissy said nothing further, just crossed to her father’s side. “Don’t suppose you bought a bag of that fresh pita bread, did you?”

  J.D. reached into the bag and pulled out a small plastic bag of the flat, round bread. “I got some hummus, too,” he said with a smile.

  “So y’all are heading home?” Gabe crossed to where they stood near the door. “Kiss Mom for me.”

  “Will do,” Cissy said.

  J.D.’s smile faded and he looked at Gabe for a long moment, until his silent scrutiny became uncomfortable.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said aloud.

  Gabe couldn’t tell if he meant it or not. “I am sorry.”

  J.D. looked at him another moment, then lifted his large hand and cupped Gabe’s face for a moment. “I’ll call when we get home so you know we made it safely.”

  “Thanks.” Gabe watched them turn and go, a painful lump in his throat.

  Alicia broke the silence a few seconds later. “I sacked up our leftovers. We might feel hungrier later.”

  He felt her small hand slip into his. Closing his fingers around hers, he turned and looked at her. She was gazing up at him with luminous brown eyes full of sympathy.

  “I wish I’d kept track of the time,” he murmured.

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I know.”

  Gently tugging his hand, she led him away from the café toward her apartment.

  THEY HADN’T SEEN HIM. He hadn’t made an effort to hide this time. He had every right to be out and about, and Alicia would have thought nothing of spotting him among the crowd of students and locals taking advantage of the warm, beautiful May afternoon.

  They had spoken for a few minutes with Cooper’s niece and a tall, older man who looked enough like Cooper to convince Karl that he must be Gabe Cooper’s brother. Probably Cissy Cooper’s father, if their familiar behavior with each other meant anything. If Karl had to guess, Cooper had convinced his brother to come to Millbridge to take his daughter home to the backwoods town they came from.

  With women getting killed in the area, he’d want the girl out of town. The only thing that surprised Karl was that it had taken Cooper so long to pull this move. He’d have done the same thing in Cooper’s place, though he’d have done it the day Alicia got the note. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that a killer targeting Alicia might think of using Cissy as a pawn.

  Karl had counted on that assumption.

  He’d never had any intention of using Cissy Cooper to get to Alicia. Sure, the idea was tempting. After all, he wasn’t like Alex. He didn’t focus on curvy, dark-haired, brown-eyed women in their mid-twenties. Frankly, he could see himself enjoying a little alone time with Cissy Cooper and a few select tools he had hidden in the storage closet in his apartment.

  But she didn’t present an advantageous target. She lived with three other people, which meant she was rarely alone. She’d be missed quickly, a fact that would make it hard to take enough time with her to make it worth the effort.

  Alicia, however, was worth the effort. Whatever it took.

  If he told Alex what he planned to do, Alex would order him to abort the plan. So he didn’t tell Alex.

  It would be over tomorrow. Alex wouldn’t know until it was a done deal. What could he do? Fire him?

  After tomorrow, if everything went the way he planned, Karl wouldn’t need Alex anymore.

  SHE WAS FLOATING.

  The world beneath her feet had disappeared, but she didn’t fall. She felt a soft rush of air against her skin, the sensation of rocking in a cradle of warm strength. She tried to open her eyes but her eyelids felt too heavy to budge.

  “Shh,” a voice rumbled in her ear. “Go back to sleep.”

  Gabe, she thought, her lips curving automatically. Gabe was here. He was making her float.

  And then she wasn’t floating anymore. The bands of strength slid from beneath her and she lay, instead, in a field of soft cotton. It felt comforting and familiar, but she wanted the heat back. The solid steel that had borne her high above the distant ground below.

  “Don’t,” she whispered when she felt the warmth abandon her. She reached out with heavy, sluggish hands, trying to keep him from leaving.

  Fingers tangled with hers. “I can’t—”

  “Stay.” She tugged his hands, pulling him into the cottony softness beside her. The heat returned, a solid wall that drew her like a moth to a candle. She buried herself in the heat, the strength, until the world around her faded into sweet nothingness.

  Alicia slept, unaware that for Gabe, lying next to her in her bed, sleep was damned near impossible.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Alicia woke with a start. Fragments of her dream chased her into consciousness—a fiery explosion, a guttural cry. She lifted her fingers to her face and felt hot tears on her cheeks.

  She had dreamed about Sinclair again.

  Closing her eyes in grief, she rolled onto her back and came up against something warm and solid.

  Something that gave a low grunt on contact.

  Snapping her eyes open, she saw Gabe Cooper’s sharp blue eyes staring back at her.

  “What are you doing here?” she blurted.

  “Sleeping,” he answered.

  Traces of memory teased her sleepy brain. They’d been working late into the night, making a li
st of possible suspects at the university, and she had a vague recollection of floating through the air…

  She saw, with a mixture of relief and disappointment, that she was still dressed in the shorts and T-shirt she’d donned after they’d returned home from dinner. Gabe was still in his jeans and polo shirt, though his feet were bare.

  Entirely too many clothes altogether.

  She rolled toward him, pressing her hand against the center of his chest, where his hammering heart gave lie to his calm demeanor. “I asked you to stay,” she murmured, remembering more of the night before. “And you did.”

  He closed his hand over hers, stilling the slow slide of her fingers up his chest. “Let’s not play with fire here.”

  “Let’s do.” Overwhelmed by a sense of time running out, she pressed closer, brushing her lips against his jaw. “I want to burn. Don’t you want to burn?”

  He cradled her face between his hands, his eyes dark with hunger. “We talked about this. We agreed—”

  “I changed my mind.” She pulled him closer until their lips brushed.

  He groaned, deep in his throat. “Alicia—”

  She silenced his protest with a kiss. Electricity snapped between them as she wound herself around Gabe, longing to be closer until her body was his body, entangled beyond separation.

  He rolled her onto her back, his hips pushing into hers, driving her deep into the mattress. She opened her thighs until her sex cradled his, separated only by inconvenient layers of denim and cotton.

  He nuzzled her neck, his bristly beard marking her, setting off sparks along her nerve endings. He twined his fingers with hers and pinned her hands against the pillows, gazing down at her with eyes that had gone as dark as the twilight sky.

  “We can’t—” His words, spoken in a guttural rasp that rumbled from his chest to hers, seemed a feeble last gasp of protest before giving in to the inevitable.

  “Stop fighting it.” She wriggled her hips until he uttered a low gasp. “I’m tired of worrying about everything. Can’t we be happy for just a little while? Please?”