Читать книгу The Man from Gossamer Ridge - Paula Graves - Страница 12

It was almost two o’clock in the morning before Gabe Cooper knocked on Alicia’s door. She’d spent the hours since his call on her sofa, certain she’d be unable to sleep. But the long day at work and her stressful evening had taken a toll on her stamina. Gabe’s knock woke her from a dead sleep.

She pushed to a sitting position on the sofa where she’d nodded off, taking a second to gain control over her jangling nerves. Tightening her robe over the shorts and tank top she wore as pajamas, she pushed to her feet. After a quick check of the peephole, she unlocked the door and let Gabe inside.

He looked haggard and apologetic. “I should have just gone back to the motel instead. It’s so late—”

She took his arm and led him to the sofa. “No, I want to hear everything you want to tell me. I guess you’ve been with the cops?”

Gabe’s hair already looked as if he’d spent the last few hours running his hands through it. Another pass didn’t do anything to improve its disheveled state. “Yeah. They had a lot of questions.”

She hadn’t even considered they might think him a suspect. “They didn’t arrest you or anything, did they?”

“No. They called my brother Aaron, who’s a deputy sheriff back home. He vouched for me. That seemed to be good enough for the locals.”

“This is so weird. Your just dropping by that particular convenience store at that particular time—”

“Yeah, I think the cops were pretty struck by that, too. But it’s less than a mile up the road from my motel, and I hadn’t eaten much dinner, so I went to stock up on some snacks.” Gabe grimaced. “Not really that hungry anymore.”

Her chest ached with sympathy. He looked so tired. “You know, maybe what you really need is sleep. We can talk about this tomorrow—”

Gabe shook his head. “It’s fresh in my head now. Best time to discuss it.”

“Okay. How do you want to start? Just tell me what happened, start to finish? Or skip to the details?”

“Nothing really happened—I went to the store, shopped for the food, and by the time I got to the counter, nobody had responded to the bell over the door that rang when I arrived.” Gabe’s blue eyes met hers suddenly. “Can I have some water?”

“Of course.” Alicia kicked herself mentally for not offering something when he first arrived. She found a large glass and filled it with water, adding extra ice because she’d seen the way he’d eyed the glass earlier that evening with a mixture of amusement and mild disappointment. Southerners seemed to like an inordinate amount of ice in their beverages.

He took the glass from her. “Extra ice,” he murmured, a small smile curving the edges of his mouth.

She smiled back. “I guess you earned it.”

He cradled the glass between his large hands. “It was so quiet. I called out, thinking maybe the clerk was in the back and hadn’t heard the bell, but there was no answer.”

“So you went into the back?”

He nodded. “The back room was dark, but I could feel her. When I turned on the light, I knew exactly what I’d see.”

The haggard look in his eyes when he lifted his gaze to meet hers made her breath catch. She reached across and covered his hand with her own.

He looked down at her hand, slowly turning his own until his palm touched hers. “I know you told me the signatures were similar, but when I saw her lying there—” He broke off, seeming unable to find the words.

She waited in silence, realizing Gabe Cooper was dealing with a lot more than just finding a dead body this evening. He’d found Brenda Cooper’s body, too. He’d been younger than Alicia was now, no more than twenty-one or twenty-two. It might well have been the first time he’d ever seen a dead body outside a funeral home. And now, it had happened again.

Gabe cleared his throat, finally, and finished his thought. “It was like finding Brenda’s body all over again. The pose, the wounds, the woman’s shape and overall looks.” His gaze slanted toward her. “You fit the profile, Alicia. You have to know that.”

She nodded.

“You have to be really careful, do you understand?”

“I know,” she agreed. She’d thought of little else since she’d first realized just how much she looked like the previous two victims and, if Gabe’s reaction were anything to go by, the third victim as well. “Did you get a name for the victim?”

“Melanie Phelps.”

Alicia gave a small start. Melanie Phelps was in one of her psych classes. “I know her. About twenty-seven, shoulder-length dark brown hair, brown eyes—”

Gabe nodded. “This guy is a lot more specific than I ever really gave him credit for being.”

“How would you have known?” she asked sensibly. “You knew about Brenda, and after the fact, you learned about the other women in Mississippi and Alabama, but with the scrapbook practically destroyed, you couldn’t have tracked those people down and made the connections.”

“How did you do it?” Gabe asked, waving his hand at the folder still lying on her coffee table. “You’ve already connected these murders to previous murders, including Brenda’s. How’d you even know where to look?”

She listened for any hint of suspicion or skepticism in Gabe’s voice, but all she heard was curiosity. “It started with a favor I was doing for a friend. He’s a police officer, and he’d been the first officer on the scene at Meredith Linden’s murder—the one at the TV repair shop in Blicksville. Anyway, he went to college in Livingston, and there was a case there that had been a big deal in town, and Tony—my friend—thought Meredith Linden’s case sounded suspiciously similar.”

“So he asked you to work your profiling mojo?”

She bit back a smile. “Something like that. I went with the premise that there had to be other similar murders, unsolved, since the guy was still killing. I started gathering information on unsolved murders in Alabama and Mississippi. Anyway, sometime last month, Cissy came to me—she’d heard about my side project, since by then I was thinking seriously about making it the topic of my dissertation, and I wasn’t exactly being secretive about it. She told me about Victor Logan and his scrapbook.”

“And Brenda’s murder?”

She nodded. “The M.O. was so similar—curvy, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman in her mid-to late twenties, working alone late at night in a secluded area. Raped, then stabbed to death.” She held back a shudder. “I started searching through cold cases for that victim profile, making a list of possible victims based on characteristics the killer might find appealing—body shape, hair color, eye color, type of job—that sort of thing.”

“The convenience store was in the middle of nowhere,” Gabe said quietly. “Melanie Phelps could have gone her whole shift without seeing anyone. Just like Brenda.”

Alicia nodded, not missing the bleak tone of his voice. He’d clearly taken his sister-in-law’s murder hard. She wondered if there was more to it than his being the person who found her. “Did the police get anything from the security tape at the convenience store?” she asked aloud.

Gabe released a soft huff of grim laughter. “All the tapes were missing. The guy apparently knew what to look for and covered his tracks.”

Alicia grimaced. “He’s been at it a long time. He’s probably only getting better at it as he goes.”

“You know what? I shouldn’t have come here. I gave the police a statement. It’s probably going to be more accurate than anything that I can come up with right now.” Rubbing his temples, Gabe stood. “I should just go back to the motel and let you get some sleep. I can ask to see my statement tomorrow and refresh my memory then.”

Alicia caught him as he started toward the door. “Wait. Don’t go.”

He stopped and looked down, towering over her. The room around them seemed to close in on all sides, heat roiling the air between them. Alicia dropped her hand away from his arm, but her fingers still tingled from the feel of his sinewy muscles beneath her fingertips.

“What?” he asked, his voice little more than a murmur.

“You can take my bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

His eyes narrowed slightly at her blurted offer, and her cheeks grew hot with embarrassment. Had she really just invited a stranger to stay the night?

“I think the killer’s probably through for the night. You should be safe,” Gabe said.

She was tempted to latch onto the easy out he’d just given her, but that wasn’t really why she’d asked him to stay. Sure, having him around would make her feel exponentially less vulnerable, but so would a German shepherd.

“That’s not what I mean,” she said, stepping away from him to try to regain her focus. “I just—you came here because of me, and you’ve had a rough night because of me. The least I can do is give you somewhere homey and nice to stay instead of some Route 7 motel room.”

“The motel’s not so bad,” he said. But she could tell the words were perfunctory.

She turned back to look at him. “I make a mean omelet.”

His lips curved. “Now you’re playing dirty.”

“And, okay,” she admitted, “I would feel a little safer if someone else was here tonight.”

He laid one large hand on her shoulder, the touch gentle and undemanding. Still, the flesh beneath her robe tingled and burned as if he’d caressed her. “I’ll take the sofa.”

She eyed the brightly colored sofa warily, feeling a little guilty at the idea of his spending the night hunched up there, trying to make his long limbs fit. “It’s not very big.”

“It’ll do.” He dropped his hand away from her shoulder and sat on the sofa, hunching forward to rub his face. His palms swished audibly against the rough patch of beard growth shadowing his jaw. “I’m keeping you up. You probably have classes in the morning or something.”

“I have a lab at eleven,” she answered softly, surprised by how much willpower it was taking not to snuggle up next to him on the sofa. Where had this sudden susceptibility to big biceps and sexy blue eyes come from?

She was a career woman. Dating was a sporadic thing for her, worked in around classes and studies. She’d tried dating entirely outside the criminology pool, which ended in disaster. Then she’d tried dating a cop—not quite a disaster, but no happy ending there, either. She couldn’t give the time or attention required to nurture a long-term relationship.

Recently, she’d stopped trying.

“Why criminology?” Gabe’s voice rumbled into the middle of her musings. She found him looking up at her, curiosity tinting his blue eyes with hints of smoky gray.

“Why not?” she countered lightly, not sure she really wanted to get into the whole sordid Solano family saga at this time of night.

“My brother Aaron became a deputy after he was arrested for toilet-papering a neighbor’s house,” Gabe answered, leaning back and threading his fingers together behind his head. “Well, not immediately after. In between, he blew out his knee, ending a promising college and maybe pro football career. That might have had something to do with it, too.”

“Probably.” She dropped to the ottoman, trying not to stare too obviously at the lovely things his taut chest muscles were doing to the front of his gray polo shirt. What had they been talking about? Oh, right—criminology and why she’d chosen it as a career. She squelched the urge to fan her hot cheeks.

“My brother-in-law, Riley, became a cop because he didn’t want to be a rancher, so when his best friend became a cop, Riley figured, why not?” Gabe’s eyes narrowed slightly, watching her through the space between his ridiculously long, dark lashes. “Which brings me back to you. How did a nice girl from San Francisco end up in Millbridge, Alabama, investigating murders in the first place?”

She smiled down at him. “It’s a long story, and we both need a little sleep. So how about this? I go get you a pillow and a blanket, and in the morning, over that omelet I promised, I’ll tell you the story of Alicia Solano, girl detective. Sound like a plan?”

The sleepy-eyed look he gave her almost made her knees buckle. For a second, any thought beyond dragging him back to her bedroom with her fled her mind. But she managed to get a grip on her hormones before she did something stupid and headed out of the room in search of bedding.

In the hall closet she found a spare pillow and a thin cotton blanket which should offer just enough cover in this warm climate. She pulled them out and held them tightly against the front of her robe, taking a couple of bracing breaths before she returned to the living room.

Okay, add “sexy Southern men” to the list of “things that make Alicia lose her head and behave like a blithering idiot,” she thought. Not that any of the other men around here had ever had quite such a potent effect on her equilibrium before.

He wasn’t even her type. He had to be in his mid-thirties, putting him nearly a decade older than she was. She’d never been one to find older men particularly attractive.

Yeah, but those older men didn’t look like Gabe Cooper, chica.

She took no small amount of pride in the steadiness of her gait as she took the bedding back into the living room. Gabe was in the kitchen, refilling his glass of water. He’d stripped off the polo shirt he’d been wearing earlier, revealing a plain white T-shirt beneath.

Alicia held back a whimper when he came around the kitchen counter into the living room, revealing just how tightly the soft cotton hugged his muscular arms and shoulders. She dropped the bedding on the sofa and retreated to the kitchen for her own glass of water.

She gulped it down greedily, keeping her back to the living room. She ventured a quick glance over her shoulder. “Do you need another pillow or a heavier blanket?”

“No, this will be fine.” Gabe’s muscles flexed as he unfolded the blanket and laid it over the back of the sofa.

By the time Alicia returned to the living room, he was sitting on the sofa with one boot off, busily untying the string of the other boot. “When I was a kid, we used to go camping in the woods up on Gossamer Ridge—it’s the mountain behind our house. I have five brothers and a sister, and the whole crew would go—even Hannah, who was the baby.” He grinned up at her, clearly caught up in the memory, and Alicia sank to the ottoman before her legs gave out on her.

“Big family, huh?” Her voice sounded faint and raspy, but if Gabe noticed, he gave no sign.

“Yeah, and getting bigger all the time. Aaron’s getting married next month, and Luke and Abby just found out she’s expecting. There’ll be Coopers running all over Gossamer Ridge for generations to come. I reckon most of them will go camping during the summers, too.” He waved at the sofa beneath him. “Won’t have a bed quite this comfortable, though.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel like less of a hostess failure.”

He grinned at her, and her legs went gelid. “Did you ever go camping? There are some great places near San Francisco for hiking and camping.”

She laughed aloud at the thought. “My parents were about as far from the camping type as you get. We spent our spare time at museums, libraries and rallies.”

“Well, that can be fun, too,” he murmured, kicking off his other shoe. She couldn’t tell whether he was sincere or just humoring her.

“Sure, but a little camping might have been fun once in a while,” she grumbled. “Just for variety.”

“Tell you what. Next time you and Cissy have a break at school, get her to take you up to Gossamer Ridge and I’ll see how many Coopers we can gather together for a camping trip.” He stripped off his socks and folded them on top of the polo shirt sitting on the coffee table. “Maybe we’ll even take you on the haunted hike.”

She could tell by his tone of voice that he was enticing her into asking the obvious question. But as much as she wanted to know exactly what a haunted hike was, she resisted. Despite her later class schedule, she still wanted to get up early and do some more work on her thesis. And Gabe looked as if he’d just run a marathon uphill. They both needed sleep.

“I might take you up on that if I ever finish my thesis.” She stood, flattening her robe where it had bunched from sitting. “But for now, I have plans to work in the morning before my classes, and you can certainly use a little sleep—”

“Wait.” Gabe’s hand snaked out to circle her wrist. Almost instantly, her whole arm went tingly and hot. “You said you think I should try hypnotic regression, to remember more about what happened the night of Brenda’s murder. I think it’s worth a shot. Do you know anyone here who could do it? Maybe set me up with someone—”

“Actually, I’m a licensed hypnotherapist,” she answered, forcing her voice past the growing lump in her throat. “I could do it.”

“You?” His eyes narrowing, he released her arm. She tucked her wrist against her belly, resisting the urge to rub the burning skin where he’d touched her.

“After I got my masters in psychology, I did the course work necessary to earn my license. I thought it might be a handy skill if I continued with my criminology work.”

He gazed up at her, bemused. “Just how old are you, anyway?”

She lifted her chin. “Twenty-five.”