by Diana Palmer
He was listening, forcing himself to concentrate on the details, not on the terror Grace must have felt. “Duct tape. He couldn’t strangle you, so he tried to smother you. He hadn’t killed before,” he said absently. “He didn’t realize how hard it is to strangle someone with bare hands.”
“That’s what I thought,” she replied. “My grandmother talked Chief Blake into suppressing the story, so the newspapers wouldn’t get hold of it. Well, they did get hold of it,” she admitted, “but they printed that a mental patient hurt me, not seriously, and that I had amnesia and couldn’t remember a thing. They said my doctor said I’d never regain my memory. If the killer read the paper at all, he knew that I wasn’t a threat. But I was afraid he’d do it again, to some other child. I couldn’t make my grandmother understand that. She refused to ever let me talk about it again. I’ve lived with that, all these years. If they’d pursued him, maybe all those other little children would still be alive, too.”
“It took a task force over twenty years to catch the Green River Killer in Washington State,” he reminded her. “They had clues and at least one living witness, too. It didn’t help them catch him. Ted Bundy killed college girls for years, and they couldn’t catch him, either. Even if you’d told the police everything you knew, chances are your attacker would still be killing. Serial killers, especially organized ones, are intelligent and cagey. They’re hard to find, even with all our modern tools.”
“Maybe so.”
“You should come home.”
Home. She remembered all over again how he’d embarrassed her there. She glared at him. “My cousin Bob has offered me his guest room for as long as I want to stay with him. When my grandmother’s will is through probate, I can put the house on the market.”
He hadn’t counted on that response. He felt terrible. “You have friends there who would miss you.”
“Victoria isn’t that far to drive. They can come up here and visit.”
“Then let me put it another way,” he persisted somberly. “No killer forgets his first victim. He knows who you are, and he can find out where you are. If for some reason your name is connected with the killer, and he starts worrying that your memory might have come back, he might decide to stack the odds in his favor. We found DNA on his last victim, but we didn’t publicize that. For all he knows, you’re the only living human being who might be able to identify him. He might decide to come full circle.”
“He might come after me and kill me, you mean,” she said very calmly.
His jaw tautened. “Yes.”
Her lips curled down. “There’s an optimistic thought.”
“Stop that. Life has its benefits. You might marry,” he added.
Her gray eyes met his dark ones. “What would be the point?” she asked. “I can’t have a child.”
He felt as if she’d hit him in the stomach. “Plenty of marriages succeed without children.”
She laughed coldly. “Really? You were attracted to me at first,” she recalled. “You liked being with me, and taking me places. Then when you knew I couldn’t bear children, all of a sudden I became a one-night stand with disposability potential.”
He was shocked at her perception of why he’d broken it off with her. “That’s not true,” he ground out.
“Sure it isn’t.” She turned and picked up the ice chest again. She felt sick at her stomach and weak as a kitten. It must be the lost hours of sleep ruining her health. “If you’re through asking questions, could you leave?” she asked pleasantly. “I have a busy day ahead of me. Cousin Bob wants me to brush his cat.”
The sarcasm brought a twinkle into his eyes that he tried not to let her see. “At least, think about what I’ve said.” He strained his mind for inspiration. He pursed his lips. “Your roses are starting to bud out. They’ll be eaten alive by bugs if they’re not sprayed, and without fertilizer you may not have one decent stem.”
She glared at him. “I can transplant them up here.”
“They won’t like it here.”
“How would you know?” she asked indignantly. “Do you talk to roses?”
His dark eyes actually twinkled. “Not when I think anyone might overhear me. I work for the FBI. Talking to roses might get me transferred to the Antarctic.”
“The FBI doesn’t have an office there,” she returned.
He shrugged. “They have offices all over the world,” he corrected. “They might decide to open one in a far away cold place if they catch me talking to a bush.”
She rubbed at a spot of red mud on her cutoffs. “Actually scientific studies have been done on plants using audio pulses, such as classical and rock music. They actually react favorably. They do feel sensation. It’s not even surprising when you consider the structure of a single leaf,” she added absently, scrubbing at the red spot. “There are guard cells that protect the leaf from invasion by parasites…”
His eyebrows arched. “I thought your education ended at high school,” he remarked, surprised by her knowledge of botany.
She gave him a cool look. “I thought you knew better than to take anyone at face value.”
His eyes narrowed. “Come home.”
“No!”
“Give me one good reason why you won’t.”
“Because you live next door to me!” she said with pure venom.
“I’ll have a fence put up so you can’t see me,” he promised.
Involuntarily, a laugh tried to get out of her throat. She smothered it.
“Your cousin is old and infirm, isn’t he?”
“Well, yes,” she replied.
“So what if this animal comes looking for you up here?”
She drew in a small, quick breath. “I don’t know.”
“I have a big gun,” he pointed out, pulling back his jacket to display it. “If he comes looking for you at home, I’ll shoot him with it.”
She wanted to go home, but she had cold feet. She couldn’t bear to look at him, because it hurt too much. She’d gone headfirst into dreams of a shared future, and he’d encouraged her, only to shove her right out of his life in the cruelest way possible. People would pity her, all over again. She’d have to work at convincing the town that his lack of interest didn’t bother her. She’d have to see him with that Jaqui woman.
He could almost see the pain and the apprehension on her face. He remembered too well the amount of damage he’d done to her. He knew he couldn’t make up for it all at once, but he could protect her, and he would. It was naïve to believe that the killer wouldn’t be curious about the child who lived. Especially since apparently he’d killed children all around Texas in the past three years. Garon felt that Grace was in danger.
She knew she was walking a thin line. Enough people in Jacobsville knew something about her ordeal in the past. Nobody knew who the killer was. He could walk into town and order coffee at Barbara’s Café and just listen to people around him. Evidently he could blend right in. She recalled his voice. It was faintly cultured and he sounded to her like an educated man, not some backwoods idiot. His hands hadn’t been those of a laborer, either. They’d been scarred. He kept them covered with thin leather gloves most of the time he’d had her in his power.
“His hands,” she murmured aloud. “They were scarred…”
He put that down on his PDA. “You may not realize it, but even these small details you remember might be enough to help us catch him,” Garon added after a minute. “You’re the only witness, Grace. You might save lives.”
She nodded solemnly. “I suppose so.”
“Miss Turner has missed you.”
“Has she?”
“I’m sure she’d enjoy having you back.”
“I guess so.”
“If rosebushes have feelings, yours are probably grieving already,” he added solemnly. “I imagine they’re brokenhearted. They’ll cry and some passerby will hear them and check himself into the hospital for a CAT scan.”
This time the laugh did escape, e
ven though she stifled it immediately.
He smiled. “I’ll even loan you a truck and a man to drive it, so you can get fertilizer and pesticides to use on your roses.”
“Barbara has a truck,” she said, avoiding the offer.
Which Marquez would be happy to drive for Grace, on his day off, Garon realized with a twinge of something unfamiliar.
“Well?” he persisted.
She finished rubbing the spot. It was still there. It probably wouldn’t come out, anyway. Red mud was usually permanent. She glanced at him. “If you’ll promise to give me a schedule of your daily routine so I won’t risk appearing in the same place you do, I’ll come home.”
“Cut it out,” he muttered. “I’m convinced that it was coincidence. I overreacted.”
“Gee, was that an apology?” she asked with mock surprise.
“I don’t make apologies unless the director phones me personally and orders me to.”
“I figured that out for myself.”
“When?”
She frowned. “When, what?”
“When are you coming back?”
She nibbled her lower lip. “Tomorrow, I guess.”
“Good. I’ll stop by your house and tell the roses on my way home.”
“Nice of you,” she said.
“I have lots of good qualities,” he assured her.
“You keep them well-hidden, of course,” she returned with a mocking smile.
“No use wasting them on a woman who’d enjoy putting out a contract on me,” he told her.
“Unfortunately I can’t afford a hit man, on my salary,” she said.
“Why don’t you go to college and get a degree? You could earn more.”
“Why don’t you go home and stop trying to run my life?” she asked him. “I don’t need career counseling.”
“You drive a car that is an accident about to happen, and you dress out of thrift shops,” he muttered.
She flushed. “How do you know where I get my clothes?”
His teeth clenched. He shouldn’t have said that.
“Spill it!” she demanded, hands on her hips.
“You wear that damned blue wool dress everywhere. Otherwise, you wear the same pair of jeans with assorted sweatshirts. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure it out.”
“I can’t see why it should bother you how I dress,” she said sweetly. “You can rest assured that you won’t ever have to be seen in public with me again.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I’m sure your friend Jaqui can afford to shop at Saks or Neiman Marcus. No cut-rate wardrobe for her!”
He bit back a hot reply. He’d done enough damage to her ego already. “She doesn’t hide her assets,” he admitted. “She likes having men around her.”
She gave him a cold smile. “Lucky girl, not to have my history.”
His high cheekbones went ruddy with color. He turned. “I’ll see you.”
“Not if I see you first,” she replied tersely. “And that’s a promise.”
She went back into the house to put away her fish and to pack, after his car had roared off down the driveway. She was probably nuts to let him talk her into it, but he was right about her cousin being in the line of fire. If the killer did come after her, she didn’t want any innocent people getting hurt. And she did have knowledge that might help put the perpetrator behind bars.
THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY and cold. She’d left the pilot light on the furnace, though, so she had heat. She needed it, too. The weather had turned cold unexpectedly. She went through the house, making sure everything was where it should be. Then she went out into the backyard, to check the rosebushes Garon had been so concerned about.
There were young buds among the leaves on the rosebushes. There were new leaves on the trees, too, in so many shades of green that she couldn’t count them. The sun was shining down through them and there was a crisp, invigorating breeze. Impulsively she lifted her arms and danced around in a circle, laughing at the pleasure it gave her to be back on her own property again. Her own property. She’d never owned anything except the clothes on her back. Now, at least, she had a place to live. All she had to do was manage an income that would take care of the utilities and an occasional new dress. But there was time. There was plenty of time.
Garon had walked over to see her and make sure that the house was secure. He heard laughter from the back yard and turned the corner. And there was Grace, her long blond hair down around her shoulders, almost to her waist in back. She was spinning around like a happy child, dancing in the wind with her eyes closed and her face lifted to the sun.
Something hit him right in the chest as he stared at her. She was lovely. She was sweet and kind and loving. She’d been his for two heady days, when pleasure took on an aura of magic, like nothing he’d known before. But he’d wounded Grace. He’d thrown her away like a used cup, devalued her, demeaned her. She would never open her arms to him again and hold him in the darkness. She would never trust him again.
It was one of the most painful revelations he could remember. And until this very minute, when he looked at her unawares and knew how blessed he’d been to have her in his life, he hadn’t known what he felt for her. It was bad timing. Damned bad timing.
Instead of making his presence known, he turned and went back the way he’d come. He knew that if she’d seen him, all the joy would drain out of her like water through a sieve. He couldn’t bear to see that. She’d been through so much in her young life. He was sorry he’d made things hard for her. Perhaps, if he worked at it, he could earn her forgiveness. It was better than nothing.
GRACE WENT BACK to work the very next day, first at the florists’ and then at the café. People seemed generally delighted to have her home. They also mentioned what a rough time Garon had been treated to after her departure. He’d had to do his shopping in San Antonio, because local doors were shut to him after his treatment of Grace. She couldn’t say he hadn’t deserved it, but she felt sorry for him. He wasn’t a man who made friends easily, or seemed to fit in anywhere. Maybe he really had felt guilty enough to coax her back home. Or, she mused, maybe he just wanted to be able to buy his cattle feed in Jacobsville instead of having to drive a half hour to get it somewhere else.
She’d felt full of energy when she got home, but as the days passed, she began to feel an acceleration of the uncomfortable nausea and weakness that had been a hallmark of her life since she left Jacobsville. Surely it was just a virus, she told herself. She was never ill. Even if she was, where would she get the money for a doctor? She only carried a small insurance policy, which covered major medical but not routine office visits or prescription drugs. No, she’d just have to wear it out. These things usually went away in a short time. She’d get better.
But she didn’t. Late one afternoon, when she was putting mulch around her roses, the world started spinning. She felt nausea rise up in her throat just as a strange weakness overcame her. With a shocked little cry, she fell to the ground. Her last sight was of the sky going from blue to black….
13
GARON WAS HOME by early afternoon. He’d been working a bank robbery with most of the agents at his office. Everyone turned out in a case like this, where the crew they’d been hunting appeared at one of the banks Garon’s squad had staked out. The four men were dressed in camouflage carrying assault weapons. They held up a bank and bullets flew at civilians as well as law enforcement personnel in their desperation to get away. Two people were wounded. The robbers ran out of the bank and took off in an old car, but then they roared off and lost their pursuers in traffic. Minutes later, they wheeled into the parking lot of a nearby restaurant to trade the car for a parked SUV.
An off-duty cop had seen some men jump out of a car carrying weapons and money bags, cursing loudly as they fumbled with a key that apparently didn’t fit the ignition. They hot-wired the SUV and took off. Dispatch sent out a text message to Garon’s squad, giving the name and location of th
e off-duty policeman who reported armed men stealing a vehicle at a local restaurant. Because the parking lot contained several children with their parents, the off-duty officer felt it would have been too dangerous to open fire and invite return fire in such a crowded venue.
But his quick report sent lawmen rushing to the restaurant parking lot, where they discovered a parked SUV almost identical to the one the officer had seen the armed men hijack. Amazingly its tag was registered to a convicted bank robber who’d been paroled just weeks earlier. In their haste to get away, the robbers had mistaken another SUV for the one they’d apparently parked earlier next to the restaurant. But their escape vehicle was left behind, with the tag in the robber’s own name. When he arrived home, FBI agents were waiting at his house. They arrested him, and he confessed and named his partners to shave some time off his sentence.
The Bureau took priority in federal crimes like bank robbing. But even in some other felony cases, local police were glad to hand criminals over to the Bureau because the federal charges were more severe and a suspect, if convicted, would serve a longer sentence.
Garon felt good about the quick resolution to the situation, and the fact that nobody had been seriously wounded despite the flying bullets at the scene of the robbery. Thanks to some good police work and an off-duty cop’s sharp eyes, the felons were apprehended within two hours of the robbery, and all the stolen money from the latest robbery was recovered. It felt good to have the case solved. The robbers had been experienced and dangerous. Now they were off the street for years.
Garon had gone by the crime lab to drop off some evidence in the case. It was technically a little before regular quitting time, but since there was nothing pressing, the SAC told him to go home. It was Saturday, after all. He could always find something to keep him busy at the ranch.
He was driving by Grace’s house when he happened to look toward her front porch and saw what looked like a bundle of clothes strewn across the ground near the steps. It was so odd that he turned into her driveway to check it out.