Not to be conquered, she returned the kiss, wooed by the textures of tongue and teeth, by the caress of strong hands as they angled her for deeper access. A moan rose as softly as a wish, and she tried to draw him closer.
He relinquished her mouth to skim kisses across her face. Pulling away, he brushed a last kiss across her lips and whispered, almost too soft for her to hear, “I’ve been waiting for you.”
CHAPTER 21
“Insulin overdose.”
Gabriel read the coroner’s summary aloud to two women in the poorly lit, cramped detective’s office. He took a sip from a can of Coke he’d filched out of Sylvie’s private stash. Erin’s bottled water sat unopened. They were seated on the visitor side of Sylvie’s desk, jammed between the beige floor-mounted air conditioner and overstuffed black filing cabinets. The unit rumbled to life, humming and spitting frigid air into the room.
The sound grated at Gabriel’s nerves. As he scratched notes on the steno pad open on his lap, the sound of the pencil added to the dissonance. When the lead broke, he restrained a sigh and stole a fresh stylus from the cluttered desk.
Par for the course, he thought. Since the morning, he’d been unable to make anything work. The Jeep had barely sputtered to life and Erin had retreated into her shell once again. The hell of it was, he couldn’t blame her.
Today she’d discover if she’d mistakenly accused her boss of murder and left another man free to kill Harmony Turner. Their truce from the day before had ended at breakfast, when she’d been icy and distant. He hadn’t helped matters, he thought, but maybe the distance was good for her. It might blunt the edges of what lay before them now.
Brutal photographs were spread across the desk. Though he’d learned long ago to cleave his emotions and divide feeling from fact, he could see again the pallid figure tossed onto the street like trash. When the second pencil cracked into jagged pieces, he muttered beneath his breath and snatched a pen out of the cup on Sylvie’s desk.
Sylvie watched as he jerkily pushed the report closer to Erin, though both were careful not to touch. Quite a feat to manage, Sylvie thought admiringly, given the tight space.
Gabriel was as hot as gumbo, silver eyes flashing. He’d stormed into Sylvie’s office a few minutes after noon. The prim professor had come in next, with an edge of ice that could have sliced and instantly frozen a lesser cop.
He’d dragged in a chair from the bullpen, and Erin had discreetly shifted closer to the filing cabinets. They hadn’t spoken directly to each other. Not to be spared, though, Sylvie thought they’d gotten downright prickly over questions about what they were doing back at the station after Gabriel had been released. Her deceptively dull cop’s eyes detected twin flags of embarrassment when they blandly described the moments before discovering the body.
She’d drawn out the preliminaries, issuing unnecessary warnings about privacy and secrecy and penalties for lying. The lady had stiffened at the naked threats, and Gabriel’s usual even temper seemed to have abandoned him completely.
Which fascinated Sylvie even more. Like the finest exotic dancer, she’d drawn out the final reveal, waiting until Gabriel was perilously close to lunging at the folder lying in plain view on her desk. When she finally relented, he snatched at the thin file, quickly flipping through its pages. Erin reviewed it now, and Sylvie felt sorry for the girl. Her trash can sat nearby for nausea duty.
“It says she died between nine and eleven a.m.” Erin traced the grisly lines of the report. “I didn’t realize she was a diabetic.”
“She wasn’t.”
Gabriel shifted toward her and tapped a sentence near the bottom of the page. Erin flinched slightly at his nearness. The instinctive movement away lashed through him like a whip.
Putting distance between them before he did something he’d regret, he explained in a taut voice, “That’s why she died so quickly. In non-diabetics, an overdose of insulin is a poison.”
The connection was too simple, Erin thought sadly. “Initiate.”
“Come again?” Sylvie asked.
“She was an initiate into her sorority,” Erin explained. “That’s the connection. Insulin. Initiate. They were going to Greece to celebrate.”
Gabriel heard the anguish, but he knew better than to offer comfort. “It fits. She’s the ninth victim.”
“Hold on. The captain isn’t going to buy that so easily.” Sylvie straightened and grabbed the report. “Was she a drug addict? This could have been a college prank. She thinks the injection is dope and ends up in a coffin.”
Shaking her head, Erin refused to accept Sylvie’s explanation. “Harmony was too self-conscious and too much of an exhibitionist to be an intravenous drug user. The marks would show.”
“Plus,” Gabriel added, “the report says there was nothing else in her system.”
Sylvie nodded. “Okay. Say I bite. The killer had to have access to insulin. It’s not a street drug. You have to get it through a pharmacy or a hospital.”
“Or be a diabetic yourself,” Erin suggested quietly. She told herself she welcomed the space Gabriel had put between them. Any absence of warmth was a trick of her imagination and the result of a fitful air conditioner.
Gabriel closed his eyes to try to picture the assault. A coed free from college on her way to vacation. Strolling through the Quarter. He comes up behind her and grabs. Harmony fights her attacker. She thrashes about to evade the shot, but it’s no use. The heart attack does its work, and she dies. Her body is bundled inside a car or van and dumped on the street to be discovered by the crowds.
But the autopsy showed no signs of a struggle. The only bruises came from her contact with the asphalt and Erin’s attempt at revival. The rest of the tanned, smooth skin had been unblemished.
“She knew the killer,” he murmured as he turned to face them again. “The autopsy shows no ligature marks, no scrapes or cuts. Nothing to say she didn’t sit still, waiting for the injection.”
“So why her?” The detective in Sylvie needed more than language tricks. “Why select the prominent daughter of a despised man, shoot her up with insulin, and dump her in the French Quarter?”
“It doesn’t quite make sense. The others were kind to me, but with Harmony, I showed her mercy.” Erin finally locked eyes with Gabriel. She twisted the cap off her water and drank deep. The cool liquid eased her suddenly parched throat. “I changed her grade to let her join the sorority.”
“Who else knew?”
“The registrar. My teaching assistant. Kenneth.”
“So Bernard could have done it,” Gabriel said as he got to his feet. He thought more clearly when he was moving. When he wasn’t so near the rigid, terrified woman who was being tracked by a killer. He prowled the carpet between the window and the door, carefully avoiding Erin, despite the truncated area. “Sylvie didn’t arrest him until one, but she died hours before. That was enough time to kill her and dump the body.”
“Hold on a second,” Sylvie interjected. “Erin, you told me your guy has a procedure. He kills his victims and leaves the weapon. All the other victims were killed near their homes or offices.” She thumped the autopsy. “This one doesn’t fit. The other bodies weren’t moved. This one was. And there was no murder weapon. The paramedics didn’t find a syringe.”
Gabriel thought back to the evening they’d found the body and his tip to Calvin. “Uh, Sylvie, they may not have done a thorough search. There were a lot of people out there that night. I don’t know that the cops would have known to search the area.”
“We know how to do our job, Gabe.” Impatiently, Sylvie scanned the police report again. Not a word about a sweep of the area. What kind of imbecile cop forgot to do a perfunctory sweep? Then she stared angrily at Gabriel. “Goddamn it, Gabriel! You sent the boy out there to keep him off your scent. If we missed the evidence, it’s your fault. Holy shit!”
She thundered out of the office, yelling for Officer Rochon. Through the din of the squad room, Sylvie’s righteous indign
ation and fury cut through the noise like a scalpel. Feeling sympathetic, Gabriel winced at the invective Sylvie used to describe the chagrined young man’s mental acumen.
No good deed goes unpunished, he thought, blithely ignoring his role in Rochon’s mistake.
Gabriel crossed the room and pushed the office door shut. Satisfied they had some time alone, he rubbed his hand along a spear of tension in his neck. He stood near the door and watched Erin pretend not to watch him.
Erin stifled an apology for her behavior. The strain between them had everything to do with her. She’d awoken that morning knowing today would be the end of it.
No more running. No more hiding. Nine lives had been taken, and she was the reason. Intellectually, she understood that the sickness in the killer hadn’t begun with her. Julian Harris hadn’t been his first victim. But the killer performed for her now, counting on her to remain silent. Knowing she couldn’t stop him without revealing herself.
So she’d do the unexpected.
“Nathan was a diabetic.” Twisting in her seat to squarely face Gabriel, she explained, “Nathan Rhodes. The man I killed.” She sifted through the greasy layers of panic and guilt and degradation. This was familiar territory. Being the catalyst for a man’s transgressions. She’d escaped, and with Sebastian’s help, she’d made a new life. “He’s repaying me for killing Nathan. Over and over again.”
“How do you know?”
“There have been signs. Little things linking the victims to Nathan.”
Bleak lines fanned out from Gabriel’s thinned mouth. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“No.” She said the word without apology. “At first, I wasn’t sure.”
“You were sure enough to think you had to hide it.” The accusation was quietly damning.
Erin accepted the judgment. “I can’t do this here, Gabriel. I promised you the truth, but not here. Can we go somewhere private to talk?”
“Sure.” Gabriel led her out of the police station and to his Jeep, knowing she wouldn’t run now. They rode in wired silence to his apartment. The unit had a separate entrance from the newspaper offices.
She paid scant attention as he keyed in his access code to the elevator. The doors slid open with hushed efficiency. He drew her out of the car and into his home. Erin halted on the threshold and stared.
Lofts, particularly those owned by men, paid stark homage to metal and chrome. At best, they reflected the latest trend in mass-marketed furniture and accessories. Rarely did they look like home. Gabriel’s did.
Sofas and a lush chair upholstered in deep green faced one another across a rug woven in muted colors. The warmth spread from the center of the room, along the rich woods that composed tables and chairs and frames. She moved a chair near the windows. He followed.
“It’s time, Erin.” The words were hushed, too low to reach beyond their bodies. “Time to tell me everything.”
Her edgy frame shuddered once. She couldn’t pretend not to understand. After two years of hiding, of running, the past had found her.
Gabriel murmured, “Let me help you, Erin. Help us stop him.” He touched her then, tipped dry, anguished eyes up to his own. With precious care, he stroked the furrowed brow, swept his thumbs along the proud cheekbones. Soothing, calming, he waited for her to relax. He waited for her to believe in him. That he would not abandon her to her past. Shifting his hold, he captured her cold hands. “Talk to me, Erin. Trust me.”
It wasn’t trust, she thought, that would make her tell him. It was fate. And like the condemned, she accepted her fate, that it had become entwined with his, with the innocent residents of New Orleans. There was no escaping what she’d done, no building a future with it hanging over her, a bloodied Sword of Damocles. “His name was Dr. Nathan Rhodes,” she began faintly. “I met him when I was fifteen.”
Unable to stand still, to feel the contempt that would surely seep into her skin, she pulled away. She would tell him the whole story and accept her punishment. Otherwise, she was no better than the man they chased.
“My father was a writer and my mother was a scientist. A neuropsychologist. As they describe it, I was an unexpected addition. I was born when they were already in their forties. When I was two, I demonstrated an unusual aptitude for language. By the time I was five, I could read in several different ones. My parents taught me themselves and brought in the top minds in every field to train me. Most of my childhood was spent in hotel rooms or in university laboratories, being tested.”
Gabriel could imagine the child she’d been. Isolated, shy. “What about friends?”
“I had one. Sebastian. His mother, Mrs. Cain, traveled with us, took care of me.”
“Did you ever attend school?”
“There was no reason to.” She stared wistfully out of narrow windows. How many hotel windows had she stood at and pined for other children to play with, for her best and only friend, Sebastian? Shaking off the self-pity, she continued. “I had tutors, and we were always traveling.” She turned and lifted her hands in entreaty. “Don’t misunderstand. Mom and Dad weren’t ogres. They did their best with me. But I was too … different. They’d never expected children, and definitely not me.”
“It was their choice. Not yours,” snapped Gabriel. “They had a responsibility.”
“They tried. But I didn’t make it easy. I’d become a minor celebrity, so my teenage years included a full complement of defiant acts. Shoplifting. Tantrums. In London, I tried to run away and live in a hostel. Dad found me, promised to let me have some freedom if I behaved. I demanded they let me try out for a game show on the BBC. Mom took me to the audition and I made it onto the show. I had to answer questions about etymology. I won. They kept me on for nearly six months. The teenage language freak.”
Startled, Gabriel shook his head, the pieces falling into place. He’d been in London then, a twenty-year-old reporter interning with the Times. “You’re Analise.”
“That’s who I was.” She turned to face him, guarded and calm. “My full name is Analise Erin Abbott Glover. Abbott is my mother’s maiden name.”
He picked up the story, remembering. “You did an interview once. They asked you about your hobbies. I remember, you said you liked to read obituaries. Said the people in them had much more interesting lives than yours.” He smiled gently. “I remember thinking you sounded incredibly tired.”
“My parents had a different idea. They got scared. Decided I needed structure and to be around kids my own age.”
“They sent you away.”
“To Callenwolde.” Chilled by the coming memory, Erin moved past Gabriel to the chair to sit. “Dr. Nathan Rhodes was an exceptional linguist and appropriately older than I. He agreed to an arrangement. I’d work with him and he’d help hone my talent.”
“You have a second degree?”
“No. I didn’t finish my studies in linguistics. After my junior year, he refused to allow me to major in it. Told me my talents weren’t up to it.”
“What did your parents say?” Gabriel bent down next to her, refusing to allow her the distance to hide.
“My parents and Mrs. Cain died in a plane crash during my sophomore year. I only had Nathan. I was so lost,” she said in a tiny voice he could barely hear. “So grateful for his attention. Because I was a minor, he petitioned the courts for custody. Later, I moved out of the dorm and into his house.” She remembered the days in a blur. How she’d left the house for classes, driven there and back by Nathan. The few friends she’d made began to stop inviting her out, knowing she’d decline. “I didn’t have to think about anything. He told me to cut my hair. I did. He told me to change my studies. I did. Everything he demanded, I did. I was a coward, a nebbish.”
“You were a child.” Gabriel gained his feet and towered over her. He heaved her up to stand, and she hung limply in his grasp. She watched him, defeated, broken. “You were a child, damn him. He used you!”
The shame burst out of her, a bitter torrent. “I let him us
e me! I gave him everything, and I didn’t have the sense to try and walk away. After I left linguistics, he convinced me to let him use my ideas. We’d have weekly sessions where I’d tell him about my concepts and he’d tear them apart. Then he’d refine them and publish them under his name. I didn’t fight him because he said he needed me. I needed him to need me.”
“He stole from you.”
“I let him. I let him take everything.” She couldn’t look at him as she spoke. “A few years after the plane crash, Sebastian hitchhiked from New York to California to see me. We hadn’t talked for a while.” Again humiliation suffused her skin, and she dropped her head down lower. “He knocked on the door to Nathan’s house. Nathan told me to send him away. That Sebastian would only remind me of my parents. He told me that Sebastian would try to take me away, to exploit me for my parents’ money. Seventeen years of friendship versus two years of subjugation. I told Sebastian to go away. That he and his mother had ridden on my coattails. I told him to never contact me again.”
“Erin—”
“I hadn’t known I could be cruel. Not until Nathan.” Her shoulders quivered, like her voice, but her eyes remained tearless. She wanted the tears to come, but they remained hidden, unwilling to give her relief.
Gabriel sat in the chair and cradled her taut form. The grief, the self-loathing, tore at him, but he understood the need to purge the wound that festered. Tenderly he skimmed his hands over her. “You’re not cruel. You’re not a coward. You’re a strong, determined, brilliant woman who saved herself.”
When she tried to shake loose, he tightened his hold. “Finish it, Erin.”
She didn’t speak for several moments. “After Sebastian, there was no one else. Just the two of us. Nathan said I could finish my degree. I started grad school, but he didn’t like it if I talked to the other graduate students. To my professors. He always knew. But since I’d always been peculiar, they thought nothing of it. I finished my dissertation, but Nathan wouldn’t allow me to teach. I took care of his house and played hostess to his friends. Gave him theories to test and prove right.”
Never Tell Page 21