Judging by the visible clenching of Gabe Cooper’s jaw and the way his eyes narrowed as he offered her one brief nod, she’d made her point. He might suspect her memory was faulty, but he could no longer doubt she passionately believed what she was telling him. After her surprising admission, he’d left the room without another word, leaving her to wonder just how bad it was going to be when he came back. Probably pretty bad.
“You should have brought somebody,” she told herself, though she didn’t know who.
Her sister had called this morning, after seeing the local news, her mind obviously going the same way Olivia’s had. But Liv had downplayed the whole thing and definitely hadn’t told her she recognized the boy in the sketch. Brooke was recently engaged. And though Olivia considered her sister’s fiancé a complete ass, she still didn’t want to do anything to intrude on the younger woman’s excitement over making wedding plans.
Nor did she want to drag her parents into this. Her kidnapping had wrought enough havoc on them, including the breakup of their marriage. Well, at least, that’s what she thought had caused it, though they insisted otherwise. Still, it was hard to argue with the fact that as soon as Olivia had recovered from her ordeal, her mother had packed up her and Brooke and, over her father’s loud objections, moved them to Tucson for several years. The destruction of even a happy marriage had been painfully easy when husband and wife lived on two different sides of the country and one blamed the other for their child’s kidnapping.
Her mother’s eventual boyfriend hadn’t helped matters. Nor had her father’s eventual girlfriend. And yet neither one of them had taken the oh-so-final step toward filing for a divorce.
God, wasn’t Thanksgiving a convoluted mess in the Wainwright house nowadays?
In any case, no, she didn’t want to involve them. Her parents would go into protector mode. Her sister would just worry. Her senator cousin and his ambitious wife would shudder at the thought of all that unpleasantness being dredged up again only a year away from the next election. That was it for family.
Nor could she have brought one of her colleagues. Considering the Savannah authorities didn’t have much use for anybody who worked for Julia Harrington at eXtreme Investigations, it had been bad enough for Olivia, one of them, to come in unannounced.
Coming alone to this squat, cold police building on Bull Street had taken a lot of will. If she’d stopped to think more about it, or if she’d told anyone else what she planned to do, she might not have gone through with it. Yet she was glad she had, even if the uniformed officer who’d shown her to this room had been a little slimy, his milky eyes way too intrusive, his hand too quick to move to the small of her back when he ushered her in.
But as for Detective Gabe Cooper, it had been a completely different story.
The man had saved her life or darn near close to it.
Even if he hadn’t, though, even if she’d never met him before today, she had the feeling she’d still have trusted him. Maybe it was because this morning during that TV interview he’d looked so strong and resolute despite his physical weariness. Or it could have been because he’d so obviously tried to lay on some Southern charm in order to relax her, as if he knew she’d been crying her face off half the morning. Being honest, she had to acknowledge one more possibility: It could have been because she was just so damned attracted to him. Not just because of his looks but also his personality, his ease with people—with her.
Then there’d been that sweet, unexpected moment when he’d told her how sorry he was about what she’d been through. Olivia had heard a lot of people rehash the story over the years, saying what an awful thing it was. But she couldn’t remember anyone saying quite those words in quite so tender a way. He had a very kind streak, this big, tough cop. He was quickly working his way around every last one of her defenses.
Olivia wasn’t usually the type to let her guard down around good-looking men. God knew she’d been the target of a number of them. Most of them saw dollar signs where her eyeballs should be or wanted her family’s political connections more than they wanted her. Or, if they did take the time to really get to know her and found out what she could do, they usually got scared and ran like she was Wednesday Addams and she’d just introduced them to Cousin It.
Gabe Cooper seemed different. Within a mere half hour she’d found herself liking this man a lot. He was easy to talk to, reasonable, friendly. And he obviously cared about the same thing she did—finding out what had happened to the boy who had saved her all those years ago.
She only hoped her instincts were right and he didn’t prove to be one of the suspicious, judgmental types who could turn on a dime. Like the ones who’d nearly ridden her colleague Aidan McConnell out of town on a rail last spring after a bad turn in a child murder case.
She needed Detective Cooper to be much more than that. Even if he was the open-minded sort and didn’t come back in here telling her to get out and take her woo-woo reputation with her, he was probably going to have some serious reservations about granting the request she intended to make when he came back. She didn’t know anybody who wouldn’t. Because it was a biggie.
The minute she heard footsteps approaching the door from the hall, she stiffened in her chair. And as soon as he stepped back inside, his face stern, his mouth looking like it had been carved out of pure granite, she let out a long mental sigh. He knows.
She couldn’t help feeling a surprising rush of disappointment, knowing whatever sparks of interest or friendship or attraction had flashed between them a few minutes ago were now gone, lost forever. Sharp, realistic, blunt police detectives didn’t get involved with slightly eccentric paranormal investigators with a thing for death.
Not that she’d really been thinking they might have gotten personally involved beyond a wonder what it would be like moment or two. But it might have been nice for the entire team to actually get along well with somebody in the police department. The fact that he was pretty damn sexy wouldn’t have hurt, either.
“Well, you’re still here,” he said, eyeing her as he pushed the door closed.
“Did you think I wouldn’t be?”
His shrug said the thought had crossed his mind.
“It doesn’t make me an unreliable witness,” she told him, cutting through any pretense or preamble to the conversation she knew they were going to have.
He didn’t jump to the bait. “What doesn’t?”
“What I do for a living.”
Looking resolute, stiff, he approached her, eating up the floor in three long strides. He pulled out the metal chair opposite her. It scraped across the faded linoleum, emitting a long, low squeal that made her flinch. Spinning the chair around, so its back touched the table, he straddled it, resting his arms loosely on the back. Then he placed a few sheets of paper on the table between them. “If you say so.”
She did. Sort of. Only she couldn’t protest, considering what she really wanted from this man, because her profession was definitely going to come into it sooner or later. “I didn’t say anything because . . .”
He threw a hand up, palm out, stopping her midsentence. “Look, I don’t care what you do from nine to five,” he said matter-of-factly. “You came in here only as a former crime victim and as a witness, and that’s all I’m interested in hearing about.”
Which was fine. Good. Perfect.
Except for the fact that it wasn’t entirely true. She wasn’t here strictly as a crime victim and potential witness. In fact, sooner or later—probably sooner—she was going to ask him to trust her to do something most people would find utterly horrific and ghoulish.
“I don’t care if you say you can look into a bunch’a tea leaves and tell me who was on the grassy knoll when JFK got shot,” he added. “The only thing I’m concerned about is the case I’m workin’ on right this minute.”
Spoken like a stubborn, nose-to-the-grindstone skeptic. Damn.
He’d left here ten minutes ago someone she thought she could tr
ust, someone she suspected might even trust her. He’d come back a suspicious, doubting cop.
She felt the loss somewhere deep inside, wondering why it always came back to this. Why she could still be surprised by people’s reactions to what she could do and what she had done. Not, she suspected, that he knew all that. He had probably just seen eXtreme Investigations as the name of her employer and formed as much of an impression as he needed to.
Olivia Wainwright: Rich. Spoiled. Freak. Next?
“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms and lifting her chin. He wanted to play this cool and professional; that was just fine by her, at least for a little while. Until she got around to telling him why she had really come here today.
As if realizing he might have come off a bit judgmental, Cooper sighed heavily. “Look, I know one of the people you work with, okay?”
“Is that a good thing or a bad one?” she asked. Considering he worked for the SCMPD, she suspected she already knew the answer.
“Actually, I thought Aidan McConnell got a lousy deal on the Remington case. That was some shoddy police work, and I think he was made a scapegoat to cover some asses.”
“Yes, he was,” she murmured, surprised a city detective would admit such a thing.
Aidan had caught the blame for steering local police in the wrong direction during the search for a missing little boy. When the child had been found dead, Aidan had been blamed by the press, the family, and the authorities. Lately, though, due to some diligent investigative work and well-placed whispers in the right ears, the case was being reexamined. The city was rife with rumors that the child hadn’t merely wandered away and gotten trapped in an old freezer at all. Which everyone who worked with eXtreme Investigations had already figured out—the boy’s mother had killed him. They just couldn’t prove it. Yet.
“He and I have crossed paths on the job once or twice,” he added, “and he’s been helpful. So can we get past any idea that I think you’re a whack job looking for attention?”
Her jaw dropped open.
Wincing, he clarified. “I mean, if that’s what you thought I was thinking.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Good.”
“Until now,” she mumbled.
Ignoring her last comment, he lifted the sheets of papers from the table and quickly flipped through them. “Here’s the sketch,” he said, pushing the drawing she’d seen on this morning’s news over the table to her. Then he pulled out another sheet—a printout of a police interview—and placed it before her as well. “And your original statement about this boy, Jack.”
“You read my case file?” she whispered, feeling her stomach turn over. Not just at having to revisit that night but also at the thought that he already had.
He shook his head. “No, it’s pretty big. I printed it out but just grabbed this page where you gave the description of the boy for right now.”
She managed to hide a sigh of relief. It was one thing for him to know she worked for eXtreme Investigations; it was another for him to read exactly what had happened. Then she’d go from poor-little-kidnapped-rich-girl to poor-little-kidnapped-and-murdered-rich-girl. That familiar look of pity and horror would cross his face, the same one she’d seen on just about everyone else’s who’d ever heard the whole story.
He frowned. “But I will have to read through the rest of it. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
She thought about it, wondering how much to reveal. Then she decided to reveal nothing, at least not right now. Once she made her request, she would have to give him some more answers, if only to explain what she thought she could accomplish. And why. But for right now, she’d just as soon not don the freak cloak and instead work on rebuilding whatever sense of trust might have been forming between them before he’d left the room.
“Not just yet.”
“Okay,” he said, a tiny line furrowing between his eyes, as if he were disappointed in her answer. “Now, I’m inclined to think you might be on to something. The description you gave then sounds a lot like this,” he said, tapping the tip of his finger on the drawing.
She glanced at the artist’s rendering, which had already imprinted itself on her mind, and then scanned her own words, trying to hear them in her young, fifteen-year-old voice. It was like reading a book, a piece of fiction drawn out of the dark imagination of some anonymous writer. Separate from her, not at all a part of who she was now.
And yet she knew that when she went to work, when she did what she did, it was this girl, this terrified, broken fifteen-year-old, who always showed up for duty.
“I gotta say, you gave a really good, solid description, especially after what you’d been through, Miz Wainwright.”
“Olivia,” she murmured, pushing the printout away with her fingers. “If we’re going to be discussing the most personal, dark details of my life, you should call me by my first name.”
He didn’t respond, didn’t say her name but didn’t refuse to, either. “I know it took a lot for you to come here and talk to me about this,” he said, his tone gentle again, some of the belligerence he’d been wearing like an invisible shield since his return disappearing. “If it matters, I think you did a brave thing.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you ready to see it all the way through? Get justice for this boy?”
Olivia tilted her head and eyed him. “I think he’s a little beyond justice, but I can’t deny I’d like to find out once and for all what happened to him.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “It’s never too late for justice.”
“It is for Jack. If this played out the way I think it did, it’s not as though you can do anything to his killer.” Seeing his confusion, she suddenly realized he hadn’t read far down in her case record at all if he didn’t even know how the whole thing had ended. “You obviously didn’t read much of that file, did you, Detective Cooper? Why? Were you too distracted when you Googled me and saw the name of my employer?”
He didn’t flinch at the accusation, replying evenly, “Like I said, I printed it out but only grabbed the sheet with your description of the boy to help prompt your memory. I figured I’d be hearing the whole story from you.”
“Sorry,” she said knowing she was being a little oversensitive. “The point is, my case was closed long ago.”
“I could tell that much by the file name.”
“But do you know why?”
He stiffened. “Tell me it’s because the guy was caught and is now in prison serving as some in-house gang’s blow-up doll.”
She shook her head. If only it were that easy. If she could have asked the monster who’d taken her what he’d done with her fellow captive, she would have done it ages ago. “He’s not.”
Cooper was intuitive; he immediately knew what she was getting at. “Don’t tell me.”
She told him. “The man who kidnapped me and probably murdered the boy who helped me was killed in a shootout with police several hours after I escaped.”
He muttered a curse, looking frustrated, almost angry. He ran a hand through his thick hair. It stuck up a little, making him appear almost boyish, though the expression on his face was anything but. He looked like a man deprived of achieving his lifelong goal, and she sensed that he was sorely tempted to launch out of his chair and stalk around the room.
Obviously Gabe Cooper took his cases very seriously. And some of them, like this one, a little personally. She wondered just how far he’d be willing to go to solve one that had become so important to him. Hmm.
“The authorities later identified the man who’d been killed as Dwight Collier,” she added. “He was an ex-con, with a long rap sheet of minor offenses. A loner, no known address, I guess because he was living out in the woods with the boy.”
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, sinking, all the anger disappearing to be replaced by utter disappointment. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I’m not glad they caught the bastard who did this to you. It’s just, I was
happy to finally have some kind of lead in the case.”
“I know. But this might not be over yet,” she said, her tone low. Even as she said the words, she wondered if she was making a mistake, opening a door she might someday regret opening. Because as desperately as she wanted answers, a churning in her stomach hinted that maybe they would only lead to more questions.
She plugged on, anyway. She’d never know the truth if she didn’t at least try to push for it. “I might be able to confirm who this boy was and how he died.”
“We know how he died,” he interjected, sounding suspicious. “He was strangled. The coroner said the hyoid bone was broken.”
She closed her eyes briefly, feeling sick. Olivia had experienced strangulation before. Having to look directly into the face of the person who was killing you made the experience beyond awful. But there were worse things than that. Staring into the void of unresolved memory, living an eternal mystery, waking up night after night seeing the face of someone you desperately wanted to save but having not the slightest clue how to do it—all that was worse. If going through with this experience gave her the answers she needed, if it gave her peace, it would be well worth one hundred and thirty seconds of fear and pain.
“I still think I can help you,” she insisted. “Part of me feels sure the remains you found belong to this mystery boy I knew. But another part . . .”
“Is wondering about the timing?” he asked, immediately leaping upon what had been bothering her about this whole thing.
“Yes,” she admitted, glad he’d seen the difficulty, too. “I’ve long thought Collier must have killed Jack right after he found out I’d escaped. I figured he ditched his body, then moved the trailer where they’d been staying, went to collect the ransom money and was shot by police.”
“Not much time in that scenario for somebody to build a wall around the boy’s body.”
“Exactly.” That was the only thing that didn’t fit, the only fly in the ointment to this whole scenario she’d painted in her mind to answer all those old questions. “The bar is close to the cemetery I stumbled into, so it wasn’t far from his campsite. That makes me think it’s not impossible.”
Cold Touch Page 7
