Raintree

by Linda Howard

  He snagged her panties and quickly pushed them down and off. Just like that, she was naked but for the protection charm he had made for her and insisted she wear. She slid her trembling fingers into the waistband of his boxers and pushed them down. Down and eventually off, leaving him wearing no more than she.

  Before he covered himself, she wanted to touch him. She wanted to feel him in her hand, and she did. She wasn’t shy, and neither was he. Not about this.

  They kissed again, and this time Gideon spread her thighs and touched her while their mouths met and danced. A deep trembling had settled into her body, and nothing could stop it but the finale of this dance. There was only one possible end, only one acceptable conclusion, and that was Gideon inside her and the release they both needed. Her hands rested easily but insistently on his bare hips, her fingers gently rocking in much the way that her hips did.

  He took his mouth from hers and reached for the bedside table, fumbling around and finally delving into the back of the messy drawer to snag a condom. It was a necessary but annoying delay, like stopping for gas when you were just five miles from your destination. But soon he was back, touching her again, slipping his fingers inside her and circling his thumb against her in a way that made her gasp and lurch. She had never wanted anything as much as she wanted him inside her. Now. And then he was there, pushing into her, stretching her slowly until she was accustomed to his size. She almost gasped at the sensation. Nothing had ever felt this good; no moment in her life had ever made her want to cry with the beauty of it.

  Gideon made love the same way he did everything else: with complete dedication and an extraordinary level of skill. Hope closed her eyes and let him love her. He filled her body and took her to that place where she was on the edge, and he kept her there. Ribbons of pleasure danced inside her, strong and promising and demanding. Just when she was about to come, he backed away and slowed his pace, then started again.

  She opened her eyes and whispered, “You’re torturing me.”

  “Just a little.”

  The room was dark, thanks to the thickness of the drapes that covered the picture window and the French doors. If it hadn’t been so dark, she never would have noticed the hint of a glow that rimmed the green irises of Gideon’s eyes.

  “You’re glowing again.” Oddly enough, she didn’t find that fact at all disconcerting.

  “Am I?”

  “It’s beautiful.” She shifted her legs so that they were wrapped around his hips, lifted her body to his and pulled him to her, until he was buried fully inside her. He didn’t draw back this time but plunged deeper and harder, faster and more completely, until she came with a cry. The release racked her body and went on even after she was sure it would end, unlike anything she had ever known before. She cried out again and grasped at Gideon’s shoulders. He came with her, shuddering above and inside her.

  Eventually he slowed, and so did she, and then he lay down on top of her and continued to hold her close while he remained cradled inside her. When he finally lifted his head to look down at her, she flinched a little in surprise.

  “You give a whole new meaning to the word afterglow, Gideon.”

  He was indeed glowing a little. His eyes shone with that unnatural green light, and there was a hint of sparkling luminescence around his body.

  “Is this…normal?”

  He withdrew, physically and mentally, and rolled away from her. “It’s happened a time or two. I wouldn’t exactly call it normal.”

  She reached out to touch him, to stop him, to tell him that she wasn’t complaining. Quite the contrary. But he moved faster than she did and left the bed before she could touch him, heading for the bathroom.

  Heart, body and soul. Gideon didn’t remember exactly how he knew that all three had to be involved for the literal afterglow to happen, but he did. He took an extra minute in the bathroom to wash his face, again, and brush his teeth—again. Normally he would have done those things before, not after, but nothing about this morning had been normal.

  He barely knew Hope Malory. So she was gorgeous, so she was hot, so she’d seen what he could do and hadn’t fled as if a monster was on her heels. Yet. Beyond that…shit, there couldn’t be anything beyond that.

  She was an interesting diversion, that was all, and sleeping with her would bring an end to the unwanted partnership. She would have to ask for a transfer now, like it or not, and that was what he wanted more than anything else. So why the damn glow?

  An aberration, that was the answer. Next time, if there was a next time, nothing out of the ordinary would happen, and eventually Hope would convince herself that what she’d seen had been a trick of the light or the simple aftereffect of coming so hard that she’d temporarily screwed up her own eyesight.

  And she had come hard. What was a woman like that doing alone? She was alone in the same way he was. He knew it, the same way he knew his heart, body and soul had to be involved for what had happened to happen.

  No big deal. He’d thought himself in love once before. The woman in question had seen a small hint of who he really was, and that had been the end of that. That short relationship had really screwed up his ideas of having anything normal in his life. In the end, he’d gotten over her well enough, and he would get over Hope, too.

  “It’s Emma who’s got my head all twisted around,” he muttered to the mirror, studying his too-bare chin. “Dante and his damned turquoise.”

  All of a sudden he saw Emma’s reflection in the mirror and instinctively grabbed a towel to wrap himself in before he turned. Appearing maybe five years old today, she was floating above the tub, dressed all in white again. Her dark hair curled a bit and was fashioned into two long pigtails.

  “Hi, Daddy. Did you call me?”

  “No, I didn’t call you.”

  “I heard you say my name,” she protested, with all the innocence and persistence of a stubborn little girl.

  A horrifying thought crossed his mind. “Were you just here?”

  “No,” she said, wide-eyed and growing more and more substantial as he watched. “I was waiting, and then I heard you call my name.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  Emma smiled. “Be careful, Daddy,” she said as she began to fade away. “She’s very bad. Very, very bad.”

  “Who’s very…?” Before he could finish the question, Emma was gone. Surely she was warning him about Tabby. A warning last night before he’d gone to the riverfront would have been nice. Not that it would have stopped him from going.

  By the time he returned to the bedroom, Hope was gone. He heard her moving around in the guest bathroom down the hall. After a few minutes the bathroom door opened and she shouted, “Raintree, you wouldn’t happen to have an extra toothbrush, would you?”

  “Second drawer to the left,” he answered.

  Gideon chastised himself as he pulled his clothes for the day from the closet. At least Hope wasn’t being emotional about this. She recognized this morning for what it was: fun, in a world where there wasn’t nearly enough fun. Release for two adult, apparently neglected, bodies that needed it. Just another day in along line of days.

  Yeah, Hope was hot; she was gorgeous; she was brave. But he couldn’t love her, and this couldn’t last.

  “You must have more clothes around here that would fit me. I’d rather wear something of yours than this!”

  “My clothes are too big for you,” Gideon said sensibly. “Echo’s fit just fine.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” Hope grumbled as she tugged on the hem of the cutoff T-shirt that revealed her belly button. She was a good three inches taller than Echo Raintree, so it was a miracle anything the other woman had left here would fit.

  They’d both showered and changed clothes, but then she’d been stuck with choosing between the wrinkled blouse she’d slept in and the even more wrinkled trousers Raintree had thrown on the floor last night, or something from the drawer of clothes his cousin had left here on one of her infre
quent visits.

  The man didn’t own an iron, or so he said. Everyone owned an iron! Hope thought as she tried to tug up the waistband of the hip-hugger jeans. Gideon claimed the dry cleaner took care of all his ironing.

  Her choices were a couple of bikinis, two T-shirts with the hems ripped out to display a belly button ring Hope did not have, and either a pair of cut-off shorts that would allow the cheeks of her butt to hang out or the tight pair of faded and ripped jeans she would normally have tossed in the garbage. For today the jeans were the lesser of two evils. They must have dragged on the ground when Echo wore them, given the frayed ends, but they were better than the cutoffs.

  And not only would wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday be inappropriate and their hopelessly wrinkled state raise questions she didn’t want to answer, this morning she’d discovered more than one spot of blood on the sleeve of her blouse and on the trousers. She didn’t have a proper explanation for that, either, so she had no real choice but to make do with Echo’s clothes.

  At least Gideon had dressed casually, to keep her from feeling like a complete fool. His jeans actually looked good on him, and so did the T-shirt that entirely covered his belly button.

  “We’ll stop by your place later and you can change clothes,” he said, turning his back on her to pour a cup of coffee.

  “We’ll stop by there first,” she said.

  “Maybe not,” Gideon said thoughtfully. “Someone must’ve seen Tabby hanging around the club where Echo’s band played, or at the coffee shop, or checking out the apartment building. She hasn’t been invisible. The suits put some people off. People get defensive and just want to get rid of us as soon as possible, so we end up with squat. We’ll go in more relaxed today, just following up with a few more questions.”

  Judging by the way Gideon was acting, a casual observer would have thought nothing out of the ordinary had happened this morning. He wasn’t distant, but he wasn’t exactly warm and cuddly, either. He was all business, and he hadn’t touched her at all since he’d left the bed this morning.

  Maybe having incredible casual sex with a partner he barely knew wasn’t out of the ordinary for Gideon. It was certainly out of the ordinary for her, but she didn’t necessarily want him to know that. Not if he thought what had happened was casual and unimportant.

  The plan for the day was to get one of the other detectives—probably Charlie Newsom—busy collecting mug shots of anyone who matched Tabby’s general description, while she and Gideon interviewed Sherry Bishop’s friends, coworkers and neighbors once again. Maybe one of them had seen Tabby in the days preceding Sherry’s death. Maybe one of them knew her last name. Unless they were very lucky, they wouldn’t get far with nothing but “Tabby” to go on. This afternoon Gideon was meeting with a sketch artist. She wasn’t sure how he would explain how he knew what the killer looked like, but somehow he would manage. She also had the washcloth she’d used to wipe away whatever Tabby had used to drug him. It was a long shot, but she planned to get that washcloth to the state lab. Unfortunately it would take weeks to get the results, and they didn’t have weeks.

  “My sister’s coming in later today,” she said. “She makes jewelry for the shop, and she has some new pieces to deliver.”

  Gideon lifted his head and looked at her. “You have a sister?”

  Yet more evidence that they didn’t know one another nearly well enough for what had happened this morning to happen. “Yeah.”

  “If you want to take some time and spend it with her while she’s in town, I don’t mind.”

  Of course he didn’t mind. He would probably be relieved to be rid of her. “No. We see each other fairly often.” And besides, I’m the odd man out when Mom and Sunny get together.

  “Is she anything like you?” he asked, half teasing, half curious.

  “No. She’s two years older than me, has three little boys, and is every bit as flaky as my mother.”

  “So you’ve always been the ‘normal’ one?”

  For a while she’d thought that to be true. She’d been so sure that she was not only normal but right in her skepticism. Gideon had pretty much blown that theory out of the water. “Normal is relative.”

  He didn’t continue with the conversation. “Let’s go. We’re running late.”

  Hope grabbed her purse and followed Gideon to the stairs that led to his garage. She recognized what he was doing; she just didn’t know why. He was ignoring what had happened in the hope that it would go away. He had become professional Gideon Raintree again, his mind completely on the case.

  Maybe if she followed his lead and pretended that nothing had changed, they would be able to work together. They could be partners and maybe even friends. He was a good cop, and she could learn a lot working with him.

  On second thought, Hope wasn’t sure she could do that. The change between them was too deep to ignore. Should she take a chance and tell Gideon that she couldn’t be just his partner and his friend? She was a woman who wanted all or nothing, and she had decided in the last couple of years that her only option was nothing. Maybe it would be better if she just played it safe, let Gideon back away and pretend nothing had happened.

  Fortunately for both of them, she didn’t have to make that decision this morning. Tabby was out there, and gut instinct told Hope that the woman was nowhere near finished.

  TEN

  If Tabby was local, she’d never been arrested. Not as Tabby or Tabitha, at least. There was no way to be sure that was her real name, of course. Could be a nickname. Maybe her name was Catherine and it had been shortened to Cat, and then someone had started calling her Tabby and it stuck. It might be an alias, with no connection to her real name, in which case it did them no good at all. For whatever reason, the initial search on Tabby and her physical description had turned up nothing. It hadn’t taken Gideon fifteen minutes to very carefully study everything Charlie had come up with. A couple of new detectives were checking out hotels in the area, in case Tabby was a visitor and not a resident. Charlie and another detective were now checking federal databases, and that would likely take a while. Hope had insisted on sending the particles of the drug Tabby had used on him to the state lab, insisting they could explain the details of how they came by the drug later, if an identification was made.

  There was no way he could officially explain away what had happened last night. There was no sign of the wound in his thigh, and he couldn’t reveal how he’d known to be in that place at that time without revealing that he’d spoken to Lily Clark’s ghost. Somehow he didn’t think the new chief or his coworkers would buy that explanation as easily as Hope had—not that he wanted them to know what he could do. To go public with his talents would not only be unwise, it was forbidden.

  His current partner might be uncomfortable in Echo’s clothes, but she looked great. Elegant and sleazy at the same time. The heels that barely peeked out from the frayed hem of the jeans only made the look more fetching. When they’d interviewed Sherry Bishop’s friends, the men had all opened up to Hope in a way they hadn’t during the first round of interviews. Unfortunately, none of them had anything startling or helpful to offer.

  Right now Hope was rounding up coffee for both of them—her idea, not his—and Gideon was taking a moment’s well-deserved rest in the office they shared in the police station on Red Cross Street. Now what? Tabby—for lack of a better name, that would have to do—had killed Sherry Bishop. Why? Chance? Bishop’s bad luck? No. It couldn’t be coincidence that all the victims were single. No one was going to come home at an inopportune time and interrupt Tabby while she was working. Tabby had tortured and killed Lily Clark just to get a message to him, and then she’d tried to add him to her list of victims.

  He’d called the sheriff who’d handled the Marcia Cordell case, and they had an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. He hated the idea of leaving Wilmington even for a few hours while Tabby was on the loose, but if Marcia Cordell’s ghost was hanging around that house, he n
ot only needed to try to send her on, it was possible she might be able to add something new to what little he knew about Tabby.

  Somehow he would have to find a way to leave Hope behind. She wouldn’t like it if she knew what he was up to. She had accepted what he’d told her last night, but what would she think when he actually started using his gift? Would she freak out? Likely. He didn’t want to leave her unguarded, but it wouldn’t do for him to get too comfortable with his new partner, and that was where things were headed. Comfortable. Which meant that, deep down, he was more worried that she would accept what he could do.

  They couldn’t sleep together and work together; that was just asking for trouble. Truth be told, he would much rather sleep with Hope on a regular basis than accept her as a partner, but it wasn’t likely that she would gently and obediently transfer to another division. Was she ever gentle or obedient? Not that he’d witnessed.

  Hope entered the office with two disposable cups of steaming coffee. Seeing her was much too much of a relief, as if she’d been gone for hours, not minutes. And that was the problem. Getting involved with her simply wasn’t going to work. It was going to complicate everything. Problem was, they were already involved, things were already complicated, and he wasn’t ready to let this end.

  Someone had taken a shot at one of them, and if he was right, she was in danger just because she was close to him. It was too late to undo their connection. Trying to separate himself from her now would be like locking the barn door after the horses had bolted.

  She set both coffee cups on his desk. “Some idiot uniform just made a pass at me. I swear, I think these clothes scream party girl and give off some kind of weird hormone thing. You’d think I was starring in a video of Cops Gone Wild. I cannot wait to get out of your cousin’s clothes and into some of my own.”

  An unwanted anger rose up in Gideon. “Did he touch you?”

  “What?” She looked at him oddly, as if she didn’t understand his very simple question.