Raintree: Haunted

by Linda Winstead Jones

  Hope gasped, twitched and shuddered. The hand that had been about to push him away grabbed at his jacket instead and clutched the fabric tightly in a small, strong fist. She made an involuntary noise deep in her throat and stopped breathing for a moment. Just for a moment. Her thighs parted slightly; her heart beat in an irregular rhythm. He had to hold her up to keep her from falling to the floor when her knees wobbled. The response to the electricity coursing through Hope’s body wasn’t ordinary or conventional. She moaned; she lurched. And then she went still.

  He was hard, no surprise, and they were standing so close that she was surely aware of that fact. If she kneed him now, she would do serious damage. He slowly dropped his hands and backed away.

  “What did you…?” Hope didn’t finish her question.

  Gideon reached into his back pocket, withdrew his wallet and slipped out a ten-dollar bill. “For the charm,” he said, tossing the bill onto the counter and ignoring what had just happened. “Want me to pick you up in the morning? Breakfast at the Hilton again? We’ll see about getting someone out there to look at your car.”

  He waited for her to tell him to go to hell. She could bring him up on charges of sexual harassment, but who would believe her? We were both fully dressed. It happened so fast. He laid a hand on me, and I came like a woman who hadn’t been with a man in ten years.

  She couldn’t do that. No one would ever believe her. Her only option was to tell him to go to hell and ask for another partner, to request another, more suitable, assignment.

  “I think I’ll skip breakfast,” she said, her voice still displaying the breathless evidence of her orgasm.

  Gideon smiled. Maybe it was going to be easier to scare her off than he’d thought it would be. That hope didn’t last long. Still breathless, she said, “Pick me up when you’re done.”

  After she locked the door behind Raintree, Hope rushed to the stairway and sat on the bottom step, all but crumpling there. Her knees were weak; her thighs trembled; she still couldn’t breathe; her mind was spinning. What had happened, exactly?

  Granted, it had been a long time since any man had touched her. And she did find Gideon attractive. He had that roguish charm that both intrigued and annoyed her. But to orgasm simply because he laid a hand on her and kissed her neck? It was impossible. Right?

  Unlikely, unheard of, but apparently not impossible.

  She leaned against the wall, hiding in the shadows, her insides still quaking a little. Her knees continued to shake, and she felt a growing dampness that told her that she wasn’t finished with the man who’d aroused her and made her come in a matter of seconds. Well, mentally she was most definitely finished with him, but her body felt differently.

  Gideon could hurt her so much. He could be the wrong man all over again. She couldn’t do it; she simply could not take that chance. So why did she still remember the way his mustache had tickled her neck and wonder how it would feel against her mouth?

  She began to fiddle with the silver doodad that hung around her neck. What she should do was rip the damn thing off and throw it away. What she should do was file charges against the SOB for daring to put his hands on her. Of course, that was probably just what he wanted and expected her to do.

  What she was going to do was meet him tomorrow morning and pretend that nothing had happened. There was more to Gideon Raintree than met the eye, and she was going to find out what that more was.

  This time of year the storms came frequently. Gideon loved storms. Most of all, he loved the lightning. Midnight had passed. He stood on the beach wearing his cutoff jeans and Dante’s protection charm, and lifted his face and his palms to the clouds. Electrons filled the air. He could taste them; he could feel them.

  He could still feel and taste her, too. Normally nothing distracted him when there was electricity in the air, but he still felt Hope reeling against him, clutching at his clothes, moaning and wobbling and coming more intensely than he’d expected. He could still taste her throat on his tongue. It had been an exercise meant to distract her, and instead here he was, hopelessly distracted himself, hours after he’d walked away and left her trembling and confused.

  He couldn’t afford to be distracted. Not now, not ever. It was the reason he always sent Emma away, the reason he mailed Dante fertility charms on a regular basis. Someone had to carry on the Raintree name, and it wouldn’t be him.

  What normal woman would accept who and what he was? Like it or not, there were moments when that was what he wanted more than anything. Not to be normal, not to deny who and what he was and give up his gifts. Not that, never that. But some days he craved a touch of normal in his life. Just a touch. And he couldn’t have it. Nothing about his life ever had been or ever would be normal.

  Hope was normal. If she knew what he was and what he could do, he would never again get close enough to touch her.

  The first crack of lightning split the sky and lit the night. The bolt danced across the black sky, beautiful and bright and powerful, splintering like veins of power. He felt it under his skin, in his blood. The next bolt was closer and more powerful. It was drawn to him, as he was drawn to it. He and the lightning fed one another. He drew the energy closer; he drank it in.

  The next bolt of lightning came to him. It shot through his body, danced in his blood. His eyes rolled up and back, and his feet left the sand so that he floated a few inches off the ground. He never felt more powerful than he did at moments like these, with the night cloaking him, the waves lapping close by, and the lightning running through his blood.

  Gideon didn’t just love the storm, he was the storm. Caught in the lightning show, an integral part of it, he drank in the power and the beauty. He gave back, as well, feeding the storm as it fed him. With the summer solstice coming, he didn’t need the extra jolt of power the storm provided, but he wanted it. Craved it. Standing on the beach alone, fortifying his body with the power he shared with explosive nature, he could not deny who he was.

  Raintree.

  The next thunderbolt hit Gideon directly and blew him back several feet. He felt not as if he had been thrown but as if he were flying. Flying or not, he landed in the sand on his ass, breathless and energized and invigorated. His heartbeat raced; his breath came hard. As the storm moved on, small slivers of lightning remained with Gideon, crackling off his skin in a way that was startlingly obvious in the darkness of night. White and green and blue, the electricity danced across and inside him. He lifted a hand to the night sky and watched the fading sparks his skin generated.

  Normal wasn’t his thing, and it never would be. Best not to waste his time wishing for things that would never happen, impossible things like being inside Hope the next time she lurched and trembled.

  If she scoffed at auras and crystals and lucky tokens, what would she think of him?

  SIX

  Wednesday—8:40 a.m.

  Gideon half expected Hope to be far, far away from her mother’s shop by the time he arrived at The Silver Chalice to pick her up. She’d had time to think about last night. She could be downtown, filing a report against him or requesting a transfer. Maybe she was on her way back to Raleigh, though to be honest, she didn’t look like a runner. Still, it was unlikely that she would continue on as if nothing had happened.

  Again she surprised him. She was waiting out front, outwardly casual, a coffee cup in one hand. As usual, she was dressed conservatively, in a gray pantsuit and white tailored blouse that would look plain on any other woman but looked incredibly hot on Hope Malory. Did she know that those tailored trousers she thought made her look professional only advertised how long and slender her legs were? And with those heels she wore—heels that were probably intended to make her look even taller than she already was—she was a knockout. If she was wearing the charm he’d given her last night, it was well hidden, just as his was.

  “You shouldn’t be standing out in the open,” he said as he reached across and threw open the passenger side door.

  “
Good morning to you, too,” Hope said distantly as she took her seat. “What’s the plan?” If she’d had the guts to actually look him in the eye, he wouldn’t have believed she was human.

  “I culled out four homicides, all of them in the Southeast, that share some similarities with the Bishop murder.”

  “All women?”

  He shook his head. “Three women, one man.”

  “Commonality?”

  “Similar weapon and souvenirs taken. Not always fingers and hair, but souvenirs in themselves are unusual enough to make them worth looking at. There were no witnesses, and no evidence to speak of. All the victims were single. Not just unmarried, but unattached romantically and without family living close by. That could be coincidence, but…”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” Hope said coolly.

  “Neither do I.”

  He hadn’t seen Sherry Bishop’s ghost since yesterday, which didn’t mean anything. She might show up at any moment to feed him another tidbit of useful—or not so useful—information. Or he might never see her again, in which case he was on his own.

  He glanced at Hope. Not as on his own as he would like to be. Pretty and intriguing and smart as Hope Malory was, he didn’t need or want a partner. Why was she still here? In forty-eight hours he’d tried to antagonize her and then to make her his friend. He’d disabled her car, saved her life and made her come. She should either love him or hate him, and yet here she was, cool as ever.

  What would it take to rattle her?

  “I called a mechanic about your car. He’s going to meet us at the Hilton in ten minutes.”

  “Thanks,” she said coolly.

  “The lab analysis on Sherry Bishop should be in early this afternoon. Most of it, anyway. Once your car is taken care of, I figure we can go to the office and make some phone calls about these other murders while we wait for the report to come in.”

  “Fine with me. If we have the time I’d like a look at the file on Stiles, if you don’t mind. He could be behind yesterday’s shooting, and the blonde the bookstore clerk saw might have nothing to do with the case.”

  “Possible,” Gideon agreed. “If we do have a serial killer on our hands, she hasn’t done this before. She’s never stuck around and targeted the investigators.”

  “Maybe she’s scared because you’re so good.”

  “Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?”

  “Ah, you really are a star detective.”

  So…she wasn’t quite as cool and distant as she pretended to be.

  When they pulled into the Hilton parking lot, the mechanic was already there, waiting. Gideon parked close to Hope’s Toyota and killed the engine. As he started to leave the car, she said softly, “One more thing, Raintree, before the day gets under way. Lay a hand on me again and I’ll shoot you.”

  He hesitated with his hand on the door handle. “You mean you’ll file charges against me, right?”

  She looked him in the eye then, squarely and strongly. Yeah, she was entirely human, not altogether pleased with him, and more than a little rattled.

  “No, I mean I’ll shoot you. I handle my own problems, so if you thought you were going to send me crying to the boss asking for justice and a transfer, you were mistaken.”

  And how.

  “I don’t know how you did it, and I don’t care,” she continued, her voice low but strong. “Well, not much. I am curious, but not nearly curious enough to let this slide. From here on out, keep your hands to yourself if you want to keep them.” She opened the door and stepped out, dismissing him and effectively ending the conversation.

  Damn. Apparently he had himself a new partner.

  Tabby took long strides along the riverfront, anxious and twitchy and unhappy. Sherry Bishop’s funeral wouldn’t be held until Saturday, and even then, it was being held in Indiana. Freakin’ Indiana! What was she supposed to do, travel all that way on the chance that Echo would be there? No, she had to be here on Sunday. Here and finished with her part of the preparations.

  Time to be realistic. Time to look beyond what she wanted and concentrate on what had to be done. It was too late to get Echo first. If the Raintree prophet was going to see that something was about to happen, she’d already seen it. Maybe Echo wasn’t as powerful as advertised.

  Tabby had to focus on what she could do here and now, and dismiss what she couldn’t. Echo was nowhere to be found, at least not at the present time, but Gideon Raintree was right here in Wilmington, so close she could almost taste him.

  Raintree’s neighbors were too close and too nosy. There was always someone on the beach or on a nearby deck. Taking him at home would never work. She needed privacy for what she had planned. Privacy and just a little bit of time. She wouldn’t have all the time she wanted, but she definitely planned to have minutes with Raintree instead of seconds. Hours would be better, but she would take what she could get.

  Raintree and his partner had been in the police station most of the day, and she wasn’t stupid enough to try to take them there. Besides, she didn’t want this to be quick. She wanted to be looking into Gideon’s green Raintree eyes when she killed him. She wanted to be close enough to absorb any energy he emitted when he drew his last breath, and she certainly wanted a memento or two.

  Fortunately, she knew exactly how to draw him out of the safety of the police station and well away from home.

  The boardwalk by the river was crowded with tourists and a few locals. She scanned them all, one at a time. Someone here had to be alone. Not just by themselves at the moment, but truly and completely alone. Miserably isolated. Tabby scanned people quickly, dismissing one after another as inadequate for her purposes. And then her gaze fell on the person she’d been searching for.

  Alone, scared, separated from her loved ones. Uncertain, vulnerable, needy. Perfect.

  Tabaet Ansara smiled as she focused on the redhead’s shapely back and wondered if the woman had any inkling that she was about to die.

  Wednesday—3:29 p.m.

  “What do you mean, the computer chip is fried?” Hope all but shouted into the phone. “It’s practically a new car!” Just out of warranty, in fact.

  She listened to the mechanic’s explanation, which was in truth no explanation at all. He didn’t know what had happened. He only knew that a very expensive computer chip had to be replaced. Naturally, he didn’t have the part on hand. It would take a few days to get the new chip in and have it installed.

  She banged the phone down with a vengeance, and Raintree lifted his head slowly to look at her. “Bad news?”

  “I’m without a car for a few days.” She began to leaf through the yellow pages on her desk. “Who would you recommend I call about a rental?”

  “You don’t need a rental car,” Raintree said.

  “I’m not going to let you chauffeur me around town for days,” she argued. And her mother’s mode of transportation was an embarrassment. The car did get good gas mileage, but it was only slightly larger than a cigar box, and had a nasty habit of dying at stop signs and red lights.

  “How are you with a stick?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Standard transmission,” he said, lifting his gaze to her once again. “Can you handle it?”

  “Yes,” she said tersely.

  Raintree had taken her seriously this morning, she supposed, since he hadn’t touched her all day. Not inappropriately, not casually, not at all. That was what she wanted, right? So why was she still so on edge in his presence that she wanted to scream?

  “I’ll loan you my Challenger,” he said. “We’ll run by the house tonight and I’ll get you a set of keys.” When she hesitated, he added, “If Leon was without a car, I’d make the same offer to him.”

  A part of her wanted to refuse, but she didn’t. It would just be for a few days, after all. “Sure. Thanks.”

  Raintree sat well away from his computer, studying the thick file in his hands. They had the initial crime scene report from the Sherry Bishop
case, such as it was, and were awaiting the coroner’s report at any moment. Another detective, Charlie Newsom, stuck his head in the office Raintree and Hope shared—at least for the moment. He looked at Hope, openly interested with those sparkling eyes and that killer smile. Charlie was probably one of the nice guys, not a stinker at all. He didn’t put her on edge in the least. “I ran that check on Stiles. He was locked up in the county jail last week for drunk and disorderly.”

  “He bonded out?” Gideon asked.

  Charlie shook his head. “Nope. He’s still there.”

  Which meant he couldn’t possibly have been the one to take a shot at Raintree—or her—yesterday.

  Gideon ran his fingers over the top photo of a woman killed in a rural part of the state four months ago. There were others just like it beneath, some with poor lighting, some from less gruesome angles, but this was the photo that spoke to him.

  Marcia Cordell had very little in common with Sherry Bishop. Marcia had been a thirty-six-year-old schoolteacher in a small county school. At the time of her death she’d been wearing a loose-fitting brown dress that might have been purposely chosen to hide whatever figure she had. She wouldn’t have been caught dead—or alive—with pink hair or a belly button ring. She’d lived not in an apartment but in a small house off a country road, a house she had inherited from her father when he’d passed on five years ago.

  What she and Sherry did have in common was that they were both single. Instead of filling her lonely nights with music and a job at a coffee shop, Marcia Cordell had filled her emptiness with other people’s children, two fat cats, and—judging by the photo on his desk—an impressive collection of snow globes from places she had never been. They’d also both been murdered with a knife that left a similar wound. Sherry had been killed by a slash to her throat, but Marcia had been stabbed half a dozen times before her throat had been cut. The angle and depth of the final wound was the same in both cases, though, and there was destruction at both scenes, as if the murderer had gone into a frenzy once the murders were done.