The stranger’s jaw was strong, jutting; the mouth wide and probably incredibly attractive when he smiled. Which he was not. His light brown hair fell a bit shaggily over his brow, and his dark green eyes seemed to see more than the average person’s. He wasn’t excessively tall, just of average height, but his body was big, compact, incredibly muscular and intimidating.
No wonder he’d been able to pick her up so easily and haul her out of harm’s way. He was built like a gladiator.
Olivia usually dated lean, softer-looking men. But for the life of her, she suddenly couldn’t remember why. Because this one had her stomach—not to mention her female parts—fluttering with just one long look.
“Are you sure you’re okay? I didn’t hurt you?”
Hurt her? He might have just saved her life. “I’m fine, thank you. I can’t believe I was so oblivious.”
He took her arm and steered her toward the curb, making sure she stepped up onto it. Then, glancing around, he stepped back, bent and scooped up a pair of dark sunglasses off the street. They must have fallen off his face when he’d rescued her. They were now missing a lens. And the other was badly scratched.
“I’m so sorry,” she told him. “Please let me replace those. Were they prescription?”
“Nah.” He shrugged, tucking them into his suit pocket. “No biggie. I’m so hard on ’em I stock up at the dollar store.”
He had a nice voice, she realized, when he wasn’t barking at people. His soft drawl said he was a Georgia native—maybe not Savannah, more country—but still attractive, sexy.
“You, uh, wanna tell me what had you so fascinated that you almost walked right up to the pearly gates and introduced yourself to St. Peter?” he asked, his voice low, lightly amused. But his stare remained keen, assessing.
She licked her lips, glancing past him at the fire scene, where emergency responders continued to work, making sure the area was secure. “I, uh . . .” What could she say, that she’d heard about the fire on the news and had driven down here because she had this strange mental compulsion? Savannah police already thought those associated with eXtreme Investigations were bonkers; why on earth would she add to that conclusion? “I just saw the activity and came over to see what was happening. I didn’t even realize I’d actually stepped out into traffic.” A weak excuse, and she doubted he entirely bought it.
He didn’t. “That’s all? You wouldn’t have any information about the fire, would you?”
She evaded the question. “I heard you found human remains inside.”
His eyes widened, and his jaw dropped briefly. “How the hell . . .”
“It was on the radio.”
“Damn it,” he snapped. “Are you kiddin’ me?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” she said, realizing his anger at having a leak on the scene might work to her advantage. He looked ready to go rip somebody a new one, which meant he might not be too interested in questioning her further.
That was a good thing. She suddenly wanted to get out of here, to forget she’d ever come down here. Whatever strange force had made her come here had nearly gotten her killed, and she wasn’t interested in heeding it anymore.
The officer was glaring toward the news truck, then glancing over his shoulder at the site across the street, already distracted, his mind back on his job.
“I’m so sorry I took you away from your work,” she told him. “I promise I’ll stick to the sidewalk from now on.”
He nodded absently. “Yeah, you do that, please. Have a good day, ma’am.”
“You, too,” she said. “And thanks again.”
“Take care now,” he said; then he turned, looked both ways, and jogged across the street. He immediately engaged in a serious conversation with a uniformed police officer, forgetting about her and her near miss.
But Olivia had the feeling she wasn’t going to soon forget him. Not only because he’d saved her life but also because he’d done it without even thinking about it, without giving a thought for his own safety. He’d been decisive and powerful, forceful and strong. She wasn’t used to being around such men, men who could easily swoop in at a dangerous moment, pick a woman up in his arms and carry her away as if she weighed next to nothing. Like a hero, a real one.
“You’re watching too many romantic movies,” she mumbled. “He’s just a man.”
No, he wasn’t. He was the man who’d saved her from a lot of pain or worse and whose name she didn’t even know.
It doesn’t matter; you’ll never see him again, she told herself as she got in her car, determined to drive straight to work without any more detours.
Somehow, though, she didn’t find her own words comforting. In fact, she found them pretty damn depressing.
Chapter 2
Though the week had started out badly, it was finishing off pretty well. First of all, Olivia had had no more bad dreams since Monday morning. Second, she and the rest of the eXtreme Investigations team had helped solve a case involving a missing woman. And third, it was almost the weekend, and she hadn’t had one additional near-death experience—hers or anyone else’s.
No, not a bad week at all.
“Especially considering you started it by almost becoming roadkill,” she mumbled as she finished showering Friday morning.
She’d thought about the near miss several times, though she hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. Not only because she still felt foolish about walking out in front of a speeding car but also because of that strange, urgent compulsion that had drawn her to the scene of the fire.
Then, of course, there had been that good-looking cop who’d saved her.
She would have liked to have met him under different circumstances and wished she’d gotten his name. At the very least, she’d like to replace his sunglasses, dollar store or not. She’d been keeping an eye on TV news stories about the case but hadn’t seen him in any of the coverage. A couple of cops had been quoted in the paper, but there were no clues that would help her identify the man who’d saved her life.
Nor had the articles contained much additional information about the crime itself. So far, the police had been pretty closemouthed about the case, beyond finally acknowledging that there had, indeed, been human remains found on the site.
Frankly, she’d feel better when those remains were identified, so she could stop this crazy wondering that had plagued her since Monday.
“Best to just let it go,” she told herself. Looking back on it, that weird urge she’d had to go down there the other day seemed more than a little ridiculous, not to mention embarrassing.
Wrapping her hair in a towel and donning a robe, she headed downstairs to the kitchen, needing a cup of coffee to get her going. It was a bright, sunny morning, sunlight spilling through the bank of windows running across the width of the kitchen. Poindexter had already staked out his favorite spot on the windowsill. When she’d gotten out of bed, he’d been sleeping on her pillow. Now he was sleeping in a shaft of sunlight, the key word being sleeping.
“Feels good, doesn’t it, Dex?” she said. “But only because you don’t have to go out in it.”
He offered her his standard, baleful kitty stare, reminding her who was top dog around here, then dropped his head back onto his paws.
It suddenly hit her. She’d become a cat lady: a single, living-alone, muttering-to-herself, hadn’t-been-on-a-date-in-months, hadn’t-had-sex-in-far-longer-than-that cat lady.
She chuckled in spite of herself, knowing how that would have horrified her late grandmother, the one who’d left her this house. Olivia Wainwright, daughter of a multimillionaire, granddaughter of a former senator, cousin of a current one, descended from a long line of Southern debs and socialites . . . a spinster. Frankly, she suspected her grandmother would be more horrified by that than she would by the fact that her granddaughter had an unhealthy connection with the dead and worked with a bunch of eccentric paranormal types.
After setting the coffeemaker, Olivia stuck a piece of bread in the
toaster, if only to keep herself from reaching for a donut when she got to the office. Julia brought them in almost every day—a habit that had lingered from the other woman’s previous days as a Charleston cop. Of course, a donut obsession wasn’t the only thing that had stuck around after Julia left Charleston. Her last partner had, too. Not that he could be seen by anybody but Julia.
Ghosts. Huh. Once upon a time, the very idea would have made Olivia laugh in outright disbelief. That was before she, herself, had become a semiregular in the land of the dead. Now, it wasn’t that tough to believe anything. eXtreme Investigations was staffed with the best of the paranormal best.
There was Julia, of course, her boss, who was seldom without her ghostly best friend. Aidan McConnell’s psychic visions had proved remarkably helpful in solving crimes. Mick Tanner’s ability to touch something and know its entire history had led them all in some interesting directions. And Derek Monahan’s ability to see a murder victim reenacting his own death again and again added to the power of Olivia’s own shared-death experiences.
“Crazy stuff,” she muttered. But all part of her life now.
Not really thinking about it, she picked up the remote and flipped on the small TV that stood on a corner counter just in time to hear a news anchor say, “Coming up after the break, the latest on remains found after Monday’s fire at a bar on Ogeechee Road.”
Her stomach tightened instinctively, her mind immediately tripping back to those surreal moments Monday morning when she’d felt like somebody else was propelling her body to that crime scene. Olivia was used to feeling like she’d stepped into other people’s bodies; the feeling that someone else had taken over hers was something she didn’t like. Not one bit. Especially since it had nearly gotten her killed.
You should turn it off. You don’t need to be thinking about this.
But of course she didn’t.
The news program segued into a long commercial break, but the cheerful jingle of a national fast-food joint didn’t distract her. Instead, despite all her efforts, her tension rose.
After pouring her coffee, she buttered her toast and took a few bites. She stopped chewing as soon as the familiar news program logo reappeared.
“And now, more on a story we broke Monday morning, about a fire at a bar called Fast Eddie’s, which revealed a disturbing discovery: human remains concealed inside a wall. This morning, sources inside the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department are telling us that the remains most likely belonged to a child.”
Olivia swallowed hard, her hand shaking a little, or a lot, judging by the coffee that sloshed out of the mug and hit her skin. Lowering the cup to the counter, she absently reached for the sink, turned on a stream of cold water and let it run over the side of her stinging thumb.
The news anchor introduced a reporter who was delivering a live update from outside one of the local police precincts. The perky-looking woman gave her intro and then introduced a police officer, whose image soon filled the screen.
“You,” Olivia said, the word riding out of her mouth on a pleased sigh.
Because there, easily recognizable, was the man who’d saved her from a run-in with a car. The bottom-of-thescreen graphic identified him as Detective Gabe Cooper.
“Gabe.” A nice name. She liked how it felt on her lips.
Cooper squinted at the camera, his rugged face bathed in harsh morning sunlight. Probably because some clumsy idiot made him break his sunglasses.
Dark smudges under his eyes and a weary slump to his broad shoulders said he hadn’t been sleeping well. She wondered if anybody surrounded by crime and murder ever could.
“Detective Cooper, can you give us any more information on the victim?” the reporter asked. “We’re getting reports that you have identified a child?”
“No, that is incorrect,” the detective said, almost cutting the reporter off. She sensed Gabe Cooper didn’t like reporters. “We haven’t identified him at all. The coroner’s office has confirmed the skeletal remains found at the scene of the fire belonged to a male child, likely Caucasian, approximately ten to twelve years of age.”
Olivia slowly lifted her hand and turned off the faucet, then reached for the remote and jacked up the volume. Her heart had begun to thud a little harder, her pulse picking up its pace.
A boy. Ten to twelve years of age. God.
“Has a cause of death been determined?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss specifics of the murder investigation. But we do need the public’s help with the actual identification,” the detective said.
“What about dental records or DNA?” asked the reporter, as if reading off a CSI script.
“We’re working on those,” Cooper said, “but this child doesn’t appear to have had any dental care in his short life.”
The reporter nodded, looking pious and sympathetic. She obviously wanted to appear saddened rather than merely thrilled at scooping the other local stations this early on a Friday morning by landing an interview with the lead detective on a tragic murder case.
“They’re not all media cockroaches,” Olivia reminded herself, remembering she and the other agents at eXtreme Investigations no longer loathed all members of the media the way they once had, mainly because of Aidan McConnell’s new girlfriend, Lexie, a reporter.
“His remains also appear to show signs of regular and extended abuse.”
Olivia’s mouth had gone dry, but she didn’t lift the coffee cup because she had the feeling her suddenly churning stomach would reject anything she tried to swallow.
Abused. Neglected.
“Judging by some property records we’ve discovered, we suspect this boy might have been hidden in the wall twelve years ago, during a renovation after a previous fire.”
Twelve years.
Was this really possible?
“Whoever this boy was, his life was very difficult,” Cooper said, his voice thickening, as if he were taking this case personally. “We want to catch whoever did this to him. Badly.”
“How can the public help?” the TV reporter asked.
“A forensic artist has created a sketch of what the victim might have looked like at the time of his death.” Then the detective stared into the camera, intensity revealed in a pair of attractive green eyes. “If you recognize this boy, or if you recall a child you might have suspected was being abused who has since disappeared, please contact our office.”
The screen split. Olivia held her breath, waiting for what she knew would appear beside the live scene outside the police station—the drawing. It wouldn’t be perfect, of course, based merely on the shape of the skull, the measurements between the eyes, the prominence of any bones. She knew that and was prepared to find nothing familiar in the impersonal sketch.
After a brief technical pause, an image appeared. She stared at it.
A sound filled her kitchen, making Poindexter leap up and run out of the room. It took a second before she realized it had been her own voice, emitting a long, helpless moan.
“Again, if you have any information or think you might recognize this child, please contact the authorities,” the reporter said, the voice merely a dull background noise now because Olivia’s entire focus remained on the drawing.
As expected, it was basic. Simple. Like any of the dozens of police sketches she’d seen before but, of course, not like any of the dozens she’d seen before.
The shade of the hair was wrong, as was the eye color. But the face . . . Oh, God, the face … Those prominent cheekbones, the thin, sallow cheeks—like those an abused, neglected child might have. The deep-set eyes, the small mouth, the hooked nose. All of it familiar. So damned familiar.
Olivia stared at the face for as long as it remained on the screen, awash in mental images of the last time she’d seen it. Her memory inserted sunken, too-old-for-theiryears brown eyes, a smattering of freckles over pale, bruised cheeks and a mouth twisted with pain, sadness and mistrust.
She knew this face,
knew this boy. It was the same one she’d dreamed about, the one she’d searched for again and again over the past twelve years.
Her killer. Her tormentor. Her savior.
Jack.
Why don’t you drown her?
He’d sentenced her to death in the most awful way imaginable. And then he’d brought her back from the other side. She owed him everything and had long told herself that someday she would find him, would repay him.
Once she’d been rescued, the authorities had listened to her story and had tried to locate him. But eventually, when the leads went nowhere and the case had been deemed otherwise closed, they’d lost interest. Then her father had hired private investigators. And once she’d grown up and moved out on her own, Olivia had done the same thing.
All for nothing. They’d been searching for a child who’d probably died not long after he’d helped Olivia escape from their captor. While she’d been filled with hope that she’d be able to repay the greatest debt of her life, he’d been rotting away inside the wall of a bar just a few miles from where she lived.
Olivia couldn’t think for a moment, oblivious as the picture faded and the anchor moved on to the next bit of dishy city news. She just stood there, frozen, letting it sink in, letting herself accept that he was gone, murdered all those years ago.
And when it did sink it, when she swallowed that reality like a bitter, rancid hunk of meat, the only thing she could do was lean over the sink and vomit up her breakfast.
By Friday afternoon, Gabe was beginning to regret releasing the sketch of their young Jimmy Doe to the public, but not because it hadn’t generated any tips. In fact, it had brought hundreds, all of which had been duly recorded and then delivered to him to sort through.
The problem was, there were too many, and none of them looked very promising. It seemed like every family with a missing son had called in from all over the state. Hell, all over the East Coast. Many were desperate parents, hopeful and pleading, thinking they might finally get a response to a long-unanswered question. Those he could understand.
Cold Touch Page 4