Raintree

by Linda Howard

  “We have a few minutes,” Tabby said, flipping her hair in a caricature of girlishness. “Long enough for us to finish our business. Much as I would love to spend a little time with you and your girl, I need to hurry. I have a party to go to tonight, and I want to make myself extra special pretty.”

  Gideon knew there was a rarely used back stairway that was kept locked, except when Rainbow took the trash to the Dumpster in the alleyway. Obviously Tabby had entered the building that way. She could have shot them both in the back when she’d come out of the kitchen. They wouldn’t have known she was there until it was too late. Why hadn’t she? Why was she so intent on dragging out the confrontation?

  And where the hell was the team he’d hired to keep an eye on this place? Dammit, someone should know Tabby was here. They should have been watching all the entrances to the building, locked or not.

  The fact remained: if Tabby simply wanted him dead, he would already be dead.

  “Let’s finish our business, then.” He could take Tabby down with one motion; he just needed her to move the weapon aside so Hope wouldn’t take a bullet if the automatic weapon the blonde was holding went off when she went down.

  The psycho reached into the roomy pocket of her dress and drew out the knife she’d used to kill Sherry Bishop and Lily Clark and so many others. So that was the way of it. She wanted him dead, but not quickly and not from a distance. He could use that to get himself closer, to make sure Hope wasn’t harmed in any way.

  “Tell me why,” Gideon said as he took a step forward. Since he was unarmed and she had two weapons, Tabby didn’t feel threatened, and she didn’t tell him to step back or stop moving forward.

  “Who cares why?” Lily Clark said frantically, jumping up and down. “Just kill her! Don’t let her get away with this.”

  Gideon turned his gaze to the ghost. Lily was strong. She had the power to affect this reality if she tried hard enough. If she wanted it badly enough. “I need you to move that weapon aside.”

  “I’m not moving anything,” Tabby said, not yet realizing that Gideon wasn’t speaking to her. Lily didn’t realize it yet, either.

  “I need you to shift the barrel of that gun away from me and Hope.”

  Clark’s eyes went wide, and her figure shimmered. “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  Tabby finally put two and two together. “You’re not talking to me, are you? Well, good luck. I’ve killed a lot of people. I’ve even felt like maybe their ghosts were watching me. But none of them ever laid a hand on me. You know why? They can’t. They’re dead. All that’s left when I’m done is a pitiful spit of energy that can’t do anything but moan and cry to you. They’re pathetic.”

  Lily’s misty hand reached for Tabby’s gun and wafted through it without creating so much as a wobble.

  “I don’t feel anyone trying to move my gun,” Tabby said, brandishing the weapon almost wildly. “See? I’m in control here. No ghost is going to touch me or my weapon.” She quit jiggling the pistol and took aim at Hope. “I want to feel you die in my hands, Raintree. I don’t care about her. She can die right here and now.”

  Gideon threw himself between Hope and the gun just as Lily finally made contact. The ghost’s misty hand grabbed the barrel and shoved upward. A surprised Tabby lost control of the weapon. It swung wildly up and then to the side, and a bullet slammed harmlessly and loudly into the ceiling before Lily managed to knock the weapon from Tabby’s hand.

  The pistol hit the floor and skittered away, coming to rest half beneath the sofa. Hope ran toward the weapon to retrieve it, while Gideon lifted his hand and directed a bolt of electricity at Tabby before she could reach for the pistol she’d lost. He could fry her heart from this distance, but he didn’t want her dead. Not yet.

  Was there a second bomb or not? He had to know. The bolt he let loose knocked Tabby backward and to the floor, where she landed hard. But she didn’t lose her grip on the knife.

  “What the hell was that?” she asked breathlessly as she looked up at Gideon. “They didn’t tell me you could do that.”

  “Who’s they, Tabby?” If she wasn’t working alone, then this wasn’t over by a long shot.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Gideon dragged the blonde to her feet and wrested the knife out of her hand, tossing it away. She tried to fight but was weakened by the electricity he’d called upon to stop her. Hope held on to Tabby’s weapon and fetched her own pistol. She stood more beside than behind him, her own pistol pointed unwaveringly at Tabby.

  “Where’s the other bomb?” he asked.

  Tabby just smiled, and he gave her a small jolt to remind her of what he could do. “I can stop your heart with one jolt,” he said quietly. “I can pop you with more electricity than your brain can handle. Don’t think I won’t.”

  “Go ahead. I have worse waiting for me if I walk out of here and leave you alive. Besides, we’re going up in a big boom any minute now. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.” She grinned at him. “Afraid?” She closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath, inhaling deeply and holding it.

  “Hope, check on the bomb squad,” Gideon said without turning to look at her. “If they don’t have the device neutralized, get out of the building.”

  She edged to the door. “I’ll get a status report, but I’m not walking out of here without you.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  Hope left the room without responding, leaving Gideon alone with Tabby. “How touching,” she whispered, opening her eyes once again. “What are you planning to do, Raintree? Get married and make little freaks? Settle down and pretend you’re just any old cop? Good luck. Even if…well, let’s just say it’s never gonna happen, and we both know it.”

  He ignored her attempt to distract him. “Where’s the other bomb?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “It’s in your best interest to cooperate, Tabby. Is that your real name?” he asked almost casually. “Tabby?”

  The woman didn’t answer. She worked her mouth oddly, and before Gideon realized what she was up to, she bit into something she’d had hidden in her mouth. Instantly her body bucked and her eyes rolled back in her head. A few seconds later, she went slack.

  Gideon muttered every foul word he knew as he dragged Tabby from the room. Hope met him on the stairs. “The bomb was a simple mechanism, and it’s already been disabled. What happened?”

  “Tabby had some kind of poison hidden in her mouth, and when she realized she wasn’t going to get away, she bit into it. Dammit!” Considering the almost paralyzing dust she’d thrown into his face, he should have seen this coming. He needed to know about the other bomb. He also wanted to know what she’d meant when she talked about “them.” Were there others out there who knew what he could do? For all he knew, there was someone around the corner waiting to take her place.

  “Is she dead?”

  “Not yet.” If she was dead, her spirit would be here, hounding him still.

  “Did she tell you where the second bomb was?”

  “No. I don’t know when or where, or even if the bomb is real.”

  An ambulance was already on the scene, and the paramedics rushed forward as the three of them hurried from the building. Gideon didn’t know what Tabby had taken, so he couldn’t be much help. He did warn the EMTs to keep her restrained, in case she did come to. Anyone in her path was likely to end up dead if she woke up.

  Gideon spotted one of the private security guards he’d hired to watch The Silver Chalice and the apartment above. He made his way roughly through the crowd of cops and onlookers, and grabbed the man by the collar, slamming him against the wall. “Where the hell were you?”

  The kid didn’t put up a fight. “While everyone was rushing out of the store, a woman’s purse got snatched. She screamed, and people were running and talking about a bomb. It was a mess, and I was distracted. I’m sorry.”

  “Where’s the other guard?” Gideon asked. “I specifically asked
for two people to be on duty at all times.”

  The kid—and he really was just a kid—paled. “Joe went to the hospital in the first ambulance. He was checking the perimeter of the building, and a woman out back stabbed him in the gut. He was hurting, but he was able to tell the officers what happened before the ambulance left. The paramedics said he’ll be all right.”

  Gideon released the boy and shook off his anger, running agitated fingers through his hair and turning away. Hope was talking to her mother, maybe making explanations or offering daughterly, calming words. When their eyes met, she placed a hand on her mother’s arm, patted it gently and then walked away, heading for Gideon.

  He wrapped his arms around her and held on as they met, not caring who was watching or what they thought.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  “Love you, too,” she said comfortably, as if she’d already accepted everything. Their love, Emma, who and what he was, who and what she would become. Amazing, for a woman who just a few days ago had admitted without reservation that she didn’t believe in anything she couldn’t see or touch.

  “Let’s go home,” she said as she smoothed a wayward strand of hair from his cheek. “We can leave word for the hospital to call us if Tabby wakes up. Or if she doesn’t. I just want to go home.”

  There was such longing in her voice as she said the word. Home. His house. Their house. “Yeah. I just have one thing to do first.”

  He released Hope and turned to face what was left of Lily Clark’s ghost. She was fading at last. “Thanks.”

  The spirit smiled at him, almost shyly. “I did help, didn’t I?”

  “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  The justice she’d demanded had been done, but Lily wasn’t quite ready to go. Her smile faded. “If she dies, will she be there? Where I’m going? Will I have to face her all over again?”

  Gideon didn’t have to ask who she was. “No. Tabby’s going to another place.” He didn’t know where or how, and didn’t want to, but he knew for sure that Lily wouldn’t be seeing her killer again.

  Lily glanced up as she began to fade away. “They’re so proud of you,” she said, her voice growing distant.

  “Who?”

  “Your mom and dad. They’re so…” Lily Clark didn’t fade. She simply disappeared with a small and distinct pop that only Gideon heard.

  How odd, that this house was home. Not her mother’s apartment, not the house she’d grown up in, not her Raleigh apartment where she’d lived for years. Here.

  The hospital had called not five minutes after they’d walked into the house. Tabby was dead. They knew from the remains of the capsule in her mouth and the way she’d died that it was a poison of some kind that had killed her, but they hadn’t yet identified the toxin. It could be days before they knew exactly what it was.

  Hope planned to call the lab on Monday morning and harass them about the dust Tabby had thrown into Gideon’s face. Maybe the two drugs were related somehow.

  Gideon was distracted. He’d undressed her slowly and made love to her without saying a word. Tonight he didn’t cheat. He didn’t arouse her with caresses colored with lightning or make her come with a touch of his hand. He just pushed inside her body and stroked until she climaxed hard, and then he found his own release in her. He did still glow in the dark a little, though, her own personal flashlight.

  Eventually the warm glow faded, and he pulled her body against his and held on tight. If not for his breathing and the way one hand occasionally caressed her, she would have thought he had fallen asleep. But he hadn’t. He was nowhere near sleep. She felt it; she knew it because she knew him.

  “You can tell me anything, Gideon,” she whispered. “What are you thinking about right now?”

  At first she thought he was going to ignore her, and then he answered, “I never saw my parents.”

  “What do you…?”

  “After they died. I never saw their ghosts. Everywhere I turned, there were spirits, but not theirs. Never theirs. I was so mad at them for not coming back. For a while I was mad at everybody.”

  She stroked his face with her fingertips.

  “I started to get into trouble not long after they were murdered.” He lifted his hands, studying them as if they weren’t his at all but those of a stranger, hands he didn’t know or understand. “Think about it. No security system or lock is going to stop me from getting to what I want. No jail is going to hold me. With enough lightning I can pop any lock. I would make a fine thief, and for a while I was so furious with the world that I almost went there.”

  He might not know that such a thing never would have happened, but she did. Gideon was one of the good guys. Heart and soul. “What stopped you?”

  “My brother. My sister. Knowing that maybe, just maybe, even though I couldn’t see my parents, they could still see me.”

  “You made that choice a long time ago, Gideon. Why are you thinking about it now?”

  “Something Lily Clark said before she moved on, about my parents being proud of me, as if…as if she’d spoken to them. Maybe she did. And you. You have me thinking about things I haven’t faced yet. Emma…I don’t even know where to start there.”

  Hope led his hand to her bare stomach, where it rested comfortably. “You’re going to teach our daughter everything your parents taught you. Whatever she can do, whatever her gifts, you will always know the right way to teach her.” She grinned. “And I’m going to teach her how to shoot a gun, along with a vast repertoire of self-defense maneuvers.”

  Gideon kissed her. In the deep silence, music drifted into the room. Honey and the brunette bimbo next door were having a party tonight, and they had their stereo cranked up high. They could hear bursts of laughter, too, as the party got more earnestly under way.

  Gideon pulled his mouth from hers and sat up quickly. “Party. Tabby said she was going to a party tonight. You don’t think…”

  “It’s Saturday night, Gideon. There are lots of parties going on.” So far they hadn’t had word of another explosion. Maybe there wasn’t another bomb and Tabby had been bluffing.

  Gideon slid from the bed and reached for his clothes. “I’m going to walk over there and look around, just in case. She mentioned the surf outside my window, so I have to believe she knew all along where I live. If Tabby did plant a bomb there earlier in the day, it would probably be under the house.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No.” He leaned over and kissed her. “You stay here. I’ll be right back.” He exited by way of the bedroom door, stepping onto the deck and into the moonlight.

  Hope fell back against the pillows and closed her eyes, but there was no way she could possibly sleep. After a few minutes she left the bed and pulled on one of Gideon’s T-shirts, then stepped out onto the deck herself. Leaning against the rail, she looked across the way to the crowded deck next door, which was well lit by the fading sun and the colorful lanterns the women had strung across the deck. It was very festive, and very foreign. Hope had never been a party girl. She’d always been too serious, too concerned about what was right and proper.

  Young and beautiful members of both sexes, most of them in bathing suits even though they didn’t look to be going anywhere near the water, drank beer and danced and laughed on the crowded deck. Hope couldn’t see Gideon from here, but then, she could only see a small portion of the house from this vantage point. She couldn’t see the front of the house, or the entrance to the area under it where Gideon would check for a bomb—just in case Tabby hadn’t been bluffing.

  Honey had one arm wrapped around a too-thin young man with longish blond hair and a killer tan. The brunette bimbo was similarly engaged. She and her young man were dancing. They were tanned and dressed in bright colors, and they’d probably spent hours on their seemingly casual hairstyles.

  The life those women led was entirely alien to Hope. Had she ever been so young? Had she ever smiled that way, without a thought beyond which CD t
o play next? No. Never. Most of the people on the deck were the same way. They smiled as if they didn’t have a care in the world. They danced and touched and kissed and laughed.

  She’d never had that before, but in an unexpected way she had it now. Maybe her party was just a party of two—or perhaps three—but Gideon Raintree made her laugh. There were moments when he made her feel absolutely giddy. He made her truly happy, for the first time in her adult life.

  Hope studied the partygoers as she waited for Gideon to return. One blond woman, wearing a short, colorful dress well-suited for the beach, stood alone by the rail, much as Hope did, and turned toward Gideon’s house as if she knew she was being watched. Seeing Hope, the woman lifted her hand and waved, fluttering her fingers. Hope’s heart stuttered, and her knees went weak.

  Tabby.

  SIXTEEN

  If a bomb had been planted at Honey’s house, it was likely either under the house—perhaps under the deck—or in the garage. Gideon walked around the house, checked out the garage, then opened the hatch that led under the house through a half door. It didn’t take fifteen minutes to discern that there was nothing out of the ordinary here. Maybe Lily Clark had been right and Tabby’s talk of a second bomb had been nothing but a bluff.

  Gideon didn’t head straight for home but walked toward the ocean. Sunset and the brief period of half light that followed was a beautiful time of day, peaceful and powerful. If not for the thirty or so people crowded onto Honey’s deck, he would reenergize himself here and now. He would reach for the power that was uniquely his and drink it in. Even though many of the partygoers were already drunk, it was a chance he couldn’t take. Someone might see, and that was risky.

  Maybe one day he would buy himself an island and build a house for his family, a house so isolated that he could recharge whenever he felt like it, and no monsters would dare to come near him or Hope or Emma. In many ways it was a comforting idea, but could he do that? Could he literally hide away?