Raintree Read online

  In truth, more than that was causing her hesitation. In spite of her down-to-earth personality and her dedication to her career, she had the very worst luck with men. She always picked the wrong guy. If there were twenty nice guys in a room and one stinker, she picked the stinker every time. She’d felt an unwanted but undeniable attraction to Gideon Raintree from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, and the last thing she needed right now was to get involved with another stinker.

  “Okay, Gideon it is,” she said. “I guess you might as well call me Hope.”

  The half smile that crossed his face made him look as if he knew something she didn’t, as if he was in on a secret joke and she wasn’t. “You sound so enthusiastic about the prospect, how can I refuse?”

  The apartment didn’t look any different than it had yesterday. It was just quieter. Deader. Sherry Bishop wasn’t hanging over his shoulder, wailing about the injustice of being dead and not getting to wear her new boots. There weren’t cops and neighbors hanging around in the hallway, watching. It was just him and Malory trying to piece together a very bizarre crime.

  His new partner stood near the door, studying the crime scene through her own calculating eyes. She was quiet, as if she understood that he needed silence and space to do his thing. At first she had been a distraction, but he was already accustomed to her presence. It had taken him almost a year to get this comfortable with Leon.

  The blinds were open to let the morning’s natural light shine into the apartment. The ripped couch, the bloodstains and the wanton destruction looked obscene in the light of day, out of place and evil and wrong.

  Standing in the quiet apartment, Gideon could almost see the progression of events. The doorbell had rung late in the evening. A woman’s voice had informed Sherry Bishop that there was a pizza delivery. She opened the door, the woman rushed in and…

  “There was something odd about the knife.”

  Gideon turned around and saw a very faint image of Sherry sitting on the couch as she had when she’d been living. Only now the couch was in shreds, and she was dead.

  “The knife,” he whispered as he dropped to his haunches so he was face-to-face with her. From this vantage point, she looked a little more solid.

  “What?” Hope took a single step toward him.

  He silenced his new partner with a raised hand. She hated that, he knew, but he didn’t want to scare Sherry off. He couldn’t even afford to look away, because if he did, he might lose her. The ghost before him wouldn’t last long, not in her present state. “I’m thinking out loud,” Gideon said without looking at Hope.

  “Oh.”

  “What about the knife?” he asked softly.

  “It was antique looking, you know?” Bishop said. “I think maybe it was silver, and there was something fancy on the handle.”

  “Fancy how?”

  “I couldn’t see the whole grip, because that psycho bitch was holding it, but there was an engraving. Words, I think.”

  “What did it say?”

  The ghost shrugged. “I don’t know. It wasn’t English, I don’t think. I wasn’t exactly trying to read at that moment.” Already she was starting to fade. “She was really angry. Why was she so angry? I never did anything to—”

  Sherry didn’t fade away; she disappeared in an instant. Gideon remained there before the sofa, hunkered down and thinking. She’d seemed certain the killer had done this before. This afternoon, when he sat down with the files he’d requested, maybe he would be able to figure out if that was true or not. They not only had the type of weapon and wound to match, but there was the matter of the missing finger and piece of scalp. This killer took souvenirs, and that was the key that would lead him to previous victims, if there were any.

  It was unusual for a serial killer to be a woman, but it wasn’t impossible. What had drawn the killer to Sherry Bishop? What had caught her eye and brought her here?

  He heard and felt Hope crossing the room. She moved smoothly, silently, but he was in tune with her energy, and that was what he felt as she moved closer.

  “Okay, you’re spooking me a little,” she said as she stopped behind him.

  “Sorry.” Gideon stood and turned to face her. “I want the uniforms to scour the surrounding area searching for the knife.”

  “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 r