Raintree

by Linda Howard

  In truth, more than that was causing her hesitation. In spite of her down-to-earth personality and her dedication to her career, she had the very worst luck with men. She always picked the wrong guy. If there were twenty nice guys in a room and one stinker, she picked the stinker every time. She’d felt an unwanted but undeniable attraction to Gideon Raintree from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, and the last thing she needed right now was to get involved with another stinker.

  “Okay, Gideon it is,” she said. “I guess you might as well call me Hope.”

  The half smile that crossed his face made him look as if he knew something she didn’t, as if he was in on a secret joke and she wasn’t. “You sound so enthusiastic about the prospect, how can I refuse?”

  The apartment didn’t look any different than it had yesterday. It was just quieter. Deader. Sherry Bishop wasn’t hanging over his shoulder, wailing about the injustice of being dead and not getting to wear her new boots. There weren’t cops and neighbors hanging around in the hallway, watching. It was just him and Malory trying to piece together a very bizarre crime.

  His new partner stood near the door, studying the crime scene through her own calculating eyes. She was quiet, as if she understood that he needed silence and space to do his thing. At first she had been a distraction, but he was already accustomed to her presence. It had taken him almost a year to get this comfortable with Leon.

  The blinds were open to let the morning’s natural light shine into the apartment. The ripped couch, the bloodstains and the wanton destruction looked obscene in the light of day, out of place and evil and wrong.

  Standing in the quiet apartment, Gideon could almost see the progression of events. The doorbell had rung late in the evening. A woman’s voice had informed Sherry Bishop that there was a pizza delivery. She opened the door, the woman rushed in and…

  “There was something odd about the knife.”

  Gideon turned around and saw a very faint image of Sherry sitting on the couch as she had when she’d been living. Only now the couch was in shreds, and she was dead.

  “The knife,” he whispered as he dropped to his haunches so he was face-to-face with her. From this vantage point, she looked a little more solid.

  “What?” Hope took a single step toward him.

  He silenced his new partner with a raised hand. She hated that, he knew, but he didn’t want to scare Sherry off. He couldn’t even afford to look away, because if he did, he might lose her. The ghost before him wouldn’t last long, not in her present state. “I’m thinking out loud,” Gideon said without looking at Hope.

  “Oh.”

  “What about the knife?” he asked softly.

  “It was antique looking, you know?” Bishop said. “I think maybe it was silver, and there was something fancy on the handle.”

  “Fancy how?”

  “I couldn’t see the whole grip, because that psycho bitch was holding it, but there was an engraving. Words, I think.”

  “What did it say?”

  The ghost shrugged. “I don’t know. It wasn’t English, I don’t think. I wasn’t exactly trying to read at that moment.” Already she was starting to fade. “She was really angry. Why was she so angry? I never did anything to—”

  Sherry didn’t fade away; she disappeared in an instant. Gideon remained there before the sofa, hunkered down and thinking. She’d seemed certain the killer had done this before. This afternoon, when he sat down with the files he’d requested, maybe he would be able to figure out if that was true or not. They not only had the type of weapon and wound to match, but there was the matter of the missing finger and piece of scalp. This killer took souvenirs, and that was the key that would lead him to previous victims, if there were any.

  It was unusual for a serial killer to be a woman, but it wasn’t impossible. What had drawn the killer to Sherry Bishop? What had caught her eye and brought her here?

  He heard and felt Hope crossing the room. She moved smoothly, silently, but he was in tune with her energy, and that was what he felt as she moved closer.

  “Okay, you’re spooking me a little,” she said as she stopped behind him.

  “Sorry.” Gideon stood and turned to face her. “I want the uniforms to scour the surrounding area searching for the knife.”

  “They did that yesterday.”

  “I want them to do it again. Odds are the killer’s still got it on her, but we can’t take any chances. We need the murder weapon.”

  “It could be in the river, for all we know,” she argued.

  “I hope you’re wrong.” Sherry hadn’t recognized her killer, so there was no name to go by, just a vague description, the mutilation…and that knife.

  Hope’s eyes softened a little. “You’re taking this case kinda personally. Did you know Sherry Bishop better than you’re letting on?”

  “I take all my cases personally,” he said.

  Hope studied him carefully, as if she were trying to figure out what made him tick. Good luck.

  Suddenly Emma, the wannabe daughter of his dreams, appeared, floating hazily behind Hope. Her eyes widened and she glanced toward the window and seemed to swipe at Hope with flailing hands, as if she were trying to push her. “Get down!”

  Without hesitation, without even stopping to wonder at the fact that Emma had appeared while he was awake, Gideon tackled Hope and threw them both to the floor. They fell into and through Emma’s image, before the girl disappeared. For a split second he was chilled by direct contact with the child who claimed to be his daughter. He and Hope landed hard, just as the window shattered and a bullet slammed into the wall. They lay there for a moment, his body covering and crushing hers.

  A current of electricity shimmered through his arms and legs and torso. Not everywhere, but wherever he touched Hope there was definitely a flicker of unusual voltage that he couldn’t control. She felt it, too; he knew by the way she reacted with a jolt.

  After the gunshot all was silent, until they heard the shouts of an alarmed neighbor from two floors down.

  Gideon rolled off Hope, drew his gun and edged toward the shattered window. She was right behind him, pistol in hand. He peered cautiously through the window, trying to see where the shot had originated. A window on the building next door was open, faded curtains ruffling slightly with the breeze. “Stay here and stay down,” he ordered as he popped up and ran for the door.

  “Like hell.”

  Hope was right behind him, and he didn’t have time to stop and argue with her. Not now. She wanted to be treated like a real partner? Fine. “Third floor, fourth window from the south. I’m going up. You make the call and watch the front entrance. Nobody gets out.”

  For once she didn’t argue with him.

  Hope stood by the front door of the apartment building while Gideon ran for the stairwell. Anyone leaving would either come through this door or around the side of the building, a few feet away. Unless the shooter had already left the building, he was trapped. She made a phone call reporting shots fired at this location, and then she waited. Waiting had never been her strong suit, but sometimes it was required. Unfortunately, it gave her time to think about what had just happened, and at the moment she didn’t want to think.

  Had Raintree seen sunlight flashing on a muzzle? Had he heard something out of the ordinary that alarmed him? He’d tackled her a fraction of a second before the shot was fired, so he must have seen or heard something. Problem was, he’d been facing the wall at the time, not the window, so he couldn’t have seen anything. The window had been shut, so hearing anything from across the alley would have been almost impossible. Instinct? No, instinct was too much like psychic ability, and she refused to go down that path. Two flakes in the family were quite enough.

  Extraordinary intuition wasn’t all she had to think about. When Gideon Raintree had landed on top of her, something odd had happened. She’d heard of chemistry, of course; she’d even experienced it a time or two. She’d certainly heard sexual attraction r
eferred to as a spark before.

  But she had never before felt an actual spark. A popping, charged spark. When Gideon had landed on top of her, it was as if she’d put her finger in a light socket. An electric charge had literally run through her body, from her toes to the top of her head. She’d felt it, as if lightning had danced through her blood. For a moment she’d had to fight the urge to reach out and hold on to the man above her with everything she had, not to fight the electricity off but to take it in and beg for more.

  She tried to brush the memory off as imagination, but her imagination wasn’t that potent. She’d felt something; she just didn’t know what to call it.

  Hope very much wanted to follow Gideon to the third floor, but until there was another officer available to guard this entrance, she wasn’t going anywhere. She couldn’t help but wonder what Raintree would find. Was the shooter still up there, just waiting?

  A man with a solution rate like his had surely made enemies over the years. There was one open case he was continuing to investigate, many months after the fact. Had Frank Stiles, Gideon’s suspect, fired that shot? Was Gideon getting too close? Or was the shooter connected to the Bishop murder? There were too many possibilities, and now was not the time for baseless theories.

  A patrol car arrived, and Hope assigned the two uniformed officers to take her place on guard duty. She ran into the apartment building and to the stairwell, just as Gideon had minutes ago. She’d had partners before, and some of them had become friends. She’d lost a couple to retirement or promotion, but she’d never lost one to a bullet. Now was not the time to start.

  She met Gideon on the second floor landing. “Apartment’s empty,” he said. “No one answering my knock at the others. Who’s on the door?”

  “Two uniforms, with orders not to let anyone in or out.”

  They took the second floor apartments, Gideon starting at one end, Hope at the other. No one had seen anything, though they had all heard the shots. Too many apartments were empty, the doors locked. Other officers arrived, the building manager was located, and in less than forty-five minutes they’d been through the entire building, floor by floor, apartment by apartment. They searched the narrow back alley. Twice. Either the shooter had escaped before they reached the building, or he was a regular tenant and they’d looked him in the eye without knowing who he was.

  When the search was done, Gideon sat on the front stoop and stared out at the street, thinking. She hated to interrupt him when he was so deep in thought, but there were too many questions to leave unasked. Besides, she’d waited long enough.

  She sat beside him, close but not too close. “So, who wants you dead?”

  He turned his head to look at her. “What makes you think you weren’t the target?”

  She managed a tense smile. “I’ve been on the job here less than two days. I haven’t had time to make any serious enemies yet. You, on the other hand…”

  Gideon turned his gaze to the street again. “Yeah.”

  Hope leaned back slightly. “So how did you know?”

  “How did I know what?”

  “You tackled me before the shot was fired, Raintree,” she said. “Not by much, but somehow you knew.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Complaining?”

  “No, but I’m definitely curious.”

  “Dangerous stuff, curiosity.”

  She wanted to ask about the sparks she’d felt, but what if that response had been one-sided? Maybe she really had imagined the lightning bolt, and it had just been surprise and maybe even her reluctant physical attraction that had made her tingle from head to toe. Then again, maybe she’d felt sparks when Gideon landed on her because it had been two years since any man had touched her.

  “I live for danger,” she said, half-serious.

  “Let’s save this conversation for later.”

  Even though she hated saving anything for later, she nodded and left him alone. She owed him that much, she supposed. “Okay. Now what?”

  Gideon looked up and down the sidewalk. “Someone saw something. It’s broad daylight, middle of the day, and if the shooter got out, he must’ve left here at a run. Somebody saw.” He looked at her, and damned if she couldn’t feel that lightning again, even though they were nowhere close to touching. “Let’s find out who.”

  FIVE

  Gideon walked down the block from the apartment building where the shots had been fired, his new partner right beside him on the sidewalk. Today was the first time he’d seen Emma outside a dream. Her appearance had told him that she was indeed more than a fantasy. The little phantom had saved his life, or Hope’s, or both. He wasn’t sure who would have been hit if Emma hadn’t warned him to get down and flailed vainly at Hope, as if she were trying to push the woman out of the way.

  She wasn’t a ghost. He was convinced that she was exactly what she’d claimed to be all along: an entity that had not yet come into this world, a spirit between lives. The amount of energy it had taken to appear to him as she had was considerable, and he could no longer write Emma off to bad dreams of a life he didn’t dare to ask for. She was Raintree, all right, or one day would be.

  They passed by the doorway to a corner bookstore. An older woman stood behind the counter near the window, her curious gaze turned to the street. If the shooter had come this way, she would have seen him. Gideon nodded through the glass to the nosy woman. “Why don’t you ask that sales clerk if she saw anything?”

  Hope, who’d been thoughtfully quiet since they’d left the building, said, “You don’t want to question her yourself?”

  “I need to make a phone call. Family stuff,” he added, so this partner he didn’t want would know he wasn’t trying to leave her out of the loop. She hesitated, but finally went into the bookstore and left him standing on the sidewalk alone. He snagged his cell and hit the speed dial.

  Dante answered on the second ring.

  “How’s everything?” Gideon asked—loudly, since there was a lot of static to talk over. Damn cell phones.

  “Royally screwed,” his brother answered.

  “I can sympathize, trust me. I won’t keep you, but I have to know. About three months ago you sent me a piece of turquoise.”

  “I remember.”

  “The blasted thing was gifted, wasn’t it?” Unconsciously, he fingered the cord that hung around his neck. It was hidden by his dress shirt and tie, at the moment, but he was always aware of the power of the talisman. The silver charm that hung there carried the gift of protection, a blessing from his brother. A newly gifted charm arrived every nine days by overnight carrier. Big brother insisted, since Gideon’s job came with potential dangers. The turquoise that was sitting on his bedroom dresser had obviously carried another kind of power.

  Dante laughed. “I’m surprised it took you this long to figure out.”

  “What was the gift, exactly?”

  “A glimpse of the future.”

  “Near future or distant?”

  “It wasn’t specific.”

  Gideon leaned against the bookstore’s brick wall and cursed succinctly. Dante had made the gift nonspecific time-wise, but Emma was an entity waiting to come into this world, and she said she was coming soon.

  Not necessarily. He was in control here. He made his own decisions. If he didn’t want a family, then he wouldn’t have one. In spite of everything he’d been taught in his life, he could not believe that he had no choice in such an important matter.

  “What did you see?” Dante asked.

  “None of your damn business.”

  Dante laughed again, then ended the conversation abruptly, as if someone had interrupted him.

  Hope opened the bookstore door and stuck her head out. “Raintree, I think you’re gonna want to hear this.”

  Tabby paced her recently rented apartment, the adrenaline still pumping amidst the faded and dusty furnishings. She’d had the woman in her sights, and it would have been an easy enough shot from the deserted apartment on the o
ther side of the alleyway from Echo Raintree’s place. Aim. Pull trigger. Watch the target fall. Run. It was a good, simple plan. Not the way she preferred to work, but still, a good enough plan to throw Raintree for a loop.

  And then Gideon had knocked the target to the floor, and the bullet had been wasted. Tabby didn’t know what all of Gideon’s talents were, but apparently he had some kind of psychic power as well as the ability to see ghosts. He’d knocked his partner to the ground a split second before she’d pulled the trigger.

  Tabby hated hotel rooms. There was no privacy in such places, and she needed to know that no one else had access to her things. No matter where she went, she was able to find a cheap apartment to rent, like this one. She paid a month in advance and was always long gone before the month was done. She avoided her neighbors and never ever brought her work home with her.

  On the small kitchen table of this shabby, furnished apartment, the newly taken finger and hank of bloody hair had been treated and were drying. She sat before them and drank in the sensations they recalled so vividly. She wished for more, wished to be able to absorb the life power of her victims, but in a way she was satisfied that these things were now hers. There was such a wonderful dark mojo in her keepsakes; they soothed her even when everything else was going wrong. And at the moment it seemed that everything truly was going wrong.

  Echo was still nowhere to be found, and that was a problem. Cael’s orders had been specific. Echo was to die first. Tabby knew that if she called her cousin and told him what had happened, he would order her home, and then he would send someone else to finish the job she’d failed to accomplish. Her life wouldn’t be worth spit if that happened. She had to finish the task she’d been given, and she had to finish it herself. Echo first, Gideon later in the week, and preferably at a time and place where she could get close enough to appreciate the experience.

  Mulling over the possibilities, she reached out and barely touched a strand of spiked, pink and bloodied hair. She’d hit a couple of road bumps, but soon the Raintrees she’d been assigned to kill would be dead, and that was all that mattered. As for the woman cop, Tabby now wanted her dead on principle alone. She hated to miss.