Raintree: Haunted (Raintree 2)

“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 referred 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…”