Raintree Read online

  Hope was normal. If she knew what he was and what he could do, he would never again get close enough to touch her.

  The first crack of lightning split the sky and lit the night. The bolt danced across the black sky, beautiful and bright and powerful, splintering like veins of power. He felt it under his skin, in his blood. The next bolt was closer and more powerful. It was drawn to him, as he was drawn to it. He and the lightning fed one another. He drew the energy closer; he drank it in.

  The next bolt of lightning came to him. It shot through his body, danced in his blood. His eyes rolled up and back, and his feet left the sand so that he floated a few inches off the ground. He never felt more powerful than he did at moments like these, with the night cloaking him, the waves lapping close by, and the lightning running through his blood.

  Gideon didn’t just love the storm, he was the storm. Caught in the lightning show, an integral part of it, he drank in the power and the beauty. He gave back, as well, feeding the storm as it fed him. With the summer solstice coming, he didn’t need the extra jolt of power the storm provided, but he wanted it. Craved it. Standing on the beach alone, fortifying his body with the power he shared with explosive nature, he could not deny who he was.

  Raintree.

  The next thunderbolt hit Gideon directly and blew him back several feet. He felt not as if he had been thrown but as if he were flying. Flying or not, he landed in the sand on his ass, breathless and energized and invigorated. His heartbeat raced; his breath came hard. As the storm moved on, small slivers of lightning remained with Gideon, crackling off his skin in a way that was startlingly obvious in the darkness of night. White and green and blue, the electricity danced across and inside him. He lifted a hand to the night sky and watched the fading sparks his skin generated.

  Normal wasn’t his thing, and it never would be. Best not to waste his time wishing for things that would never happen, impossible things like being inside Hope the next time she lurched and trembled.

  If she scoffed at auras and crystals and lucky tokens, what would she think of him?

  SIX

  Wednesday—8:40 a.m.

  Gideon half expected Hope to be far, far away from her mother’s shop by the time he arrived at The Silver Chalice to pick her up. She’d had time to think about last night. She could be downtown, filing a report against him or requesting a transfer. Maybe she was on her way back to Raleigh, though to be honest, she didn’t look like a runner. Still, it was unlikely that she would continue on as if nothing had happened.

  Again she surprised him. She was waiting out front, outwardly casual, a coffee cup in one hand. As usual, she was dressed conservatively, in a gray pantsuit and white tailored blouse that would look plain on any other woman but looked incredibly hot on Hope Malory. Did she know that those tailored trousers she thought made her look professional only advertised how long and slender her legs were? And with those heels she wore—heels that were probably intended to make her look even taller than she already was—she was a knockout. If she was wearing the charm he’d given her last night, it was well hidden, just as his was.

  “You shouldn’t be standing out in the open,” he said as he reached across and threw open the passenger side door.

  “Good morning to you, too,” Hope said distantly as she took her seat. “What’s the plan?” If she’d had the guts to actually look him in the eye, he wouldn’t have believed she was human.

  “I culled out four homicides, all of them in the Southeast, that share some similarities with the Bishop murder.”

  “All women?”

  He shook his head. “Three women, one man.”

  “Commonality?”

  “Similar weapon and souvenirs taken. Not always fingers and hair, but souvenirs in themselves are unusual enough to make them worth looking at. There were no witnesses, and no evidence to speak of. All the victims were single. Not just unmarried, but unattached romantically and without family living close by. That could be coincidence, but…”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” Hope said coolly.

  “Neither do I.”

  He hadn’t seen Sherry Bishop’s ghost since yesterday, which didn’t mean anything. She might show up at any moment to feed him another tidbit of useful—or not so useful—information. Or he might never see her again, in which case he was on his own.

  He glanced at Hope. Not as on his own as he would like to be. Pretty and intriguing and smart as Hope Malory was, he didn’t need or want a partner. Why was she still here? In forty-eight hours he’d tried to antagonize her and then to make her his friend. He’d disabled her car, saved her life and made her come. She should either love him or hate him, and yet here she was, cool as ever.

  What would it take to rattle her?

  “I called a mechanic about your car. He’s going to meet us at the Hilton in ten minutes.”

  “Thanks,” she said coolly.

  “The lab analysis on Sherry Bishop should be in early this afternoon. Most of it, anyway. Once your car is taken care of, I figure we can go to the office and make some phone calls about these other murders while we wait for the report to come in.”

  “Fine with me. If we have the time I’d like a look at the file on Stiles, if you don’t mind. He could be behind yesterday’s shooting, and the blonde the bookstore clerk saw might have nothing to do with the case.”

  “Possible,” Gideon agreed. “If we do have a serial killer on our hands, she hasn’t done this before. She’s never stuck around and targeted the investigators.”

  “Maybe she’s scared because you’re so good.”

  “Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?”

  “Ah, you really are a star detective.”

  So…she wasn’t quite as cool and distant as she pretended to be.

  When they pulled into the Hilton parking lot, the mechanic was already there, waiting. Gideon parked close to Hope’s Toyota and killed the engine. As he started to leave the car, she said softly, “One more thing, Raintree, before the day gets under way. Lay a hand on me again and I’ll shoot you.”

  He hesitated with his hand on the door handle. “You mean you’ll file charges against me, right?”

  She looked him in the eye then, squarely and strongly. Yeah, she was entirely human, not altogether pleased with him, and more than a little rattled.

  “No, I mean I’ll shoot you. I handle my own problems, so if you thought you were going to send me crying to the boss asking for justice and a transfer, you were mistaken.”

  And how.

  “I don’t know how you did it, and I don’t care,” she continued, her voice low but strong. “Well, not much. I am curious, but not nearly curious enough to let this slide. From here on out, keep your hands to yourself if you want to keep them.” She opened the door and stepped out, dismissing him and effectively ending the conversation.

  Damn. Apparently he had himself a new partner.

  Tabby took long strides along the riverfront, anxious and twitchy and unhappy. Sherry Bishop’s funeral wouldn’t be held until Saturday, and even then, it was being held in Indiana. Freakin’ Indiana! What was she supposed to do, travel all that way on the chance that Echo would be there? No, she had to be here on Sunday. Here and finished with her part of the preparations.

  Time to be realistic. Time to look beyond what she wanted and concentrate on what had to be done. It was too late to get Echo first. If the Raintree prophet was going to see that something was about to happen, she’d already seen it. Maybe Echo wasn’t as powerful as advertised.

  Tabby had to focus on what she could do here and now, and dismiss what she couldn’t. Echo was nowhere to be found, at least not at the present time, but Gideon Raintree was right here in Wilmington, so close she could almost taste him.

  Raintree’s neighbors were too close and too nosy. There was always someone on the beach or on a nearby deck. Taking him at home would never work. She needed privacy for what she had planned. Privacy and just a little bit of time. She wouldn�€