Raintree: Haunted (Raintree 2)

he shop, and she has some new pieces to deliver.”

Gideon lifted his head and looked at her. “You have a sister?”

Yet more evidence that they didn’t know one another nearly well enough for what had happened this morning to happen. “Yeah.”

“If you want to take some time and spend it with her while she’s in town, I don’t mind.”

Of course he didn’t mind. He would probably be relieved to be rid of her. “No. We see each other fairly often.” And besides, I’m the odd man out when Mom and Sunny get together.

“Is she anything like you?” he asked, half teasing, half curious.

“No. She’s two years older than me, has three little boys, and is every bit as flaky as my mother.”

“So you’ve always been the ‘normal’ one?”

For a while she’d thought that to be true. She’d been so sure that she was not only normal but right in her skepticism. Gideon had pretty much blown that theory out of the water. “Normal is relative.”

He didn’t continue with the conversation. “Let’s go. We’re running late.”

Hope grabbed her purse and followed Gideon to the stairs that led to his garage. She recognized what he was doing; she just didn’t know why. He was ignoring what had happened in the hope that it would go away. He had become professional Gideon Raintree again, his mind completely on the case.

Maybe if she followed his lead and pretended that nothing had changed, they would be able to work together. They could be partners and maybe even friends. He was a good cop, and she could learn a lot working with him.

On second thought, Hope wasn’t sure she could do that. The change between them was too deep to ignore. Should she take a chance and tell Gideon that she couldn’t be just his partner and his friend? She was a woman who wanted all or nothing, and she had decided in the last couple of years that her only option was nothing. Maybe it would be better if she just played it safe, let Gideon back away and pretend nothing had happened.

Fortunately for both of them, she didn’t have to make that decision this morning. Tabby was out there, and gut instinct told Hope that the woman was nowhere near finished.

TEN

If Tabby was local, she’d never been arrested. Not as Tabby or Tabitha, at least. There was no way to be sure that was her real name, of course. Could be a nickname. Maybe her name was Catherine and it had been shortened to Cat, and then someone had started calling her Tabby and it stuck. It might be an alias, with no connection to her real name, in which case it did them no good at all. For whatever reason, the initial search on Tabby and her physical description had turned up nothing. It hadn’t taken Gideon fifteen minutes to very carefully study everything Charlie had come up with. A couple of new detectives were checking out hotels in the area, in case Tabby was a visitor and not a resident. Charlie and another detective were now checking federal databases, and that would likely take a while. Hope had insisted on sending the particles of the drug Tabby had used on him to the state lab, insisting they could explain the details of how they came by the drug later, if an identification was made.

There was no way he could officially explain away what had happened last night. There was no sign of the wound in his thigh, and he couldn’t reveal how he’d known to be in that place at that time without revealing that he’d spoken to Lily Clark’s ghost. Somehow he didn’t think the new chief or his coworkers would buy that explanation as easily as Hope had—not that he wanted them to know what he could do. To go public with his talents would not only be unwise, it was forbidden.

His current partner might be uncomfortable in Echo’s clothes, but she looked great. Elegant and sleazy at the same time. The heels that barely peeked out from the frayed hem of the jeans only made the look more fetching. When they’d interviewed Sherry Bishop’s friends, the men had all opened up to Hope in a way they hadn’t during the first round of interviews. Unfortunately, none of them had anything startling or helpful to offer.

Right now Hope was rounding up coffee for both of them—her idea, not his—and Gideon was taking a moment’s well-deserved rest in the office they shared in the police station on Red Cross Street. Now what? Tabby—for lack of a better name, that would have to do—had killed Sherry Bishop. Why? Chance? Bishop’s bad luck? No. It couldn’t be coincidence that all the victims were single. No one was going to come home at an inopportune time and interrupt Tabby while she was working. Tabby had tortured and killed Lily Clark just to get a message to him, and then she’d tried to add him to her list of victims.

He’d called the sheriff who’d handled the Marcia Cordell case, and they had an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. He hated the idea of leaving Wilmington even for a few hours while Tabby was on the loose, but if Marcia Cordell’s ghost was hanging around that house, he not only needed to try to send her on, it was possible she might be able to add something new to what little he knew about Tabby.

Somehow he would have to find a way to leave Hope behind. She wouldn’t like it if she knew what he was up to. She had accepted what he’d told her last night, but what would she think when he actually started using his gift? Would she freak out? Likely. He didn’t want to leave her unguarded, but it wouldn’t do for him to get too comfortable with his new partner, and that was where things were headed. Comfortable. Which meant that, deep down, he was more worried that she would accept what he could do.

They couldn’t sleep together and work together; that was just asking for trouble. Truth be told, he would much rather sleep with Hope on a regular basis than accept her as a partner, but it wasn’t likely that she would gently and obediently transfer to another division. Was she ever gentle or obedient? Not that he’d witnessed.

Hope entered the office with two disposable cups of steaming coffee. Seeing her was much too much of a relief, as if she’d been gone for hours, not minutes. And that was the problem. Getting involved with her simply wasn’t going to work. It was going to complicate everything. Problem was, they were already involved, things were already complicated, and he wasn’t ready to let this end.

Someone had taken a shot at one of them, and if he was right, she was in danger just because she was close to him. It was too late to undo their connection. Trying to separate himself from her now would be like locking the barn door after the horses had bolted.

She set both coffee cups on his desk. “Some idiot uniform just made a pass at me. I swear, I think these clothes scream party girl and give off some kind of weird hormone thing. You’d think I was starring in a video of Cops Gone Wild. I cannot wait to get out of your cousin’s clothes and into some of my own.”

An unwanted anger rose up in Gideon. “Did he touch you?”

“What?” She looked at him oddly, as if she didn’t understand his very simple question.

“The uniform who made a pass. Did he touch you?”

She sighed. “No. He just leered at my belly button and asked me what I was doing after my shift was over.”

“Get his name?”