Hold on to Me (8 page)

Damn it all, none of this made sense.

He jerked the truck door open, gaze straying to Jeff’s flaring brake lights as the unit pulled out of the parking lot. Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind him.

“You know what you need?” Tori leaned against his hood.

“Don’t say it.” He dropped his tone to the stern warning he’d used when she was a teenager. It hadn’t worked then, so he didn’t hold out a lot of hope that it would work now. She was like a runaway semi when she got on a tear, and she always felt she had to try to fix everyone’s problems.

“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter, Lamar. I was going to say an afternoon fishing, but what you’re thinking would do wonders for your mood.”

“Tori, go away. Do your job. Help somebody.”

“Good Lord, you’re a grouch. And I’m trying to help somebody. I just…I want you to be happy, and I think you could find so much with her.” Her expression turned sober. “What happened to her, Tick?”

His nerves jerked in response to the quiet, simple question. “What makes you ask that?”

She shrugged, brows drawn together in a puzzled frown. “She’s…different. Tense, withdrawn. Doesn’t look like she’s had a decent night’s sleep recently, either.”

“She has a tough job, Tor.”

She pinned him with a cynical look. “No one’s job is that tough. She looks like she can’t stand to be in her own skin.”

She had to say that. Tick shuddered. He’d heard it before—Tori had screamed the same words at him in an agonized rage mere weeks after Reese had raped her. His stomach pitched and he lifted a hand to wipe beads of sweat from his upper lip. It was one thing for him to see changes in Caitlin, quite another for Tori to see the same. If Tori saw it, too, it might be real.

“Tick, what is going on?” Her worried voice penetrated the icy dread gripping him. “I haven’t seen you look like that since—”

“I don’t know.” The raspy whisper hurt his throat, but the horrific possibilities rolling through his mind hurt worse. He pushed his hair away from his forehead, fingers pressing against his skull. Lord, what secret was Caitlin keeping locked up inside? “She hasn’t said anything. Look, we’re just speculating. Like I said, it could be nothing more than job stress.”

Even he didn’t believe his reassurances.

“If I were you, I’d keep an eye on her. I know that look.”

He expelled the air from his lungs in a harsh breath. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I used to see it in the mirror every day.”

From the nature CD, the soft strains of Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito” blended with a pattering rain and croaking frogs. Eyes closed, Tick sat in his darkened office, glad the thick blinds and sheltering oak trees cut the insistent sunlight. Head tilted back, he pushed his shoulder blades into the chair and concentrated on breathing in and out in a slow rhythm. The five-minute relaxation technique was the only thing he’d gotten out of a three-date relationship with the yoga instructor at the local Y.

It wasn’t working.

He still wanted a cigarette and couldn’t clear his mind of budget figures, crime scene photos or Miss Lauree’s sobs. Worse, the light rain on the CD made him think of Caitlin. Rain always brought her to mind, but the thoughts weren’t pleasant this time. Memories of her pushing him away mingled with fear of what had caused the changes he saw in her.

She looks like she can’t stand to be in her own skin.

With Tori’s words echoing in his head, any relaxation he’d achieved evaporated. He rubbed at his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Tori had nailed what he’d been seeing and been afraid to name. In his experience, the look Caitlin wore, the tension she carried, arose from some horrific event. What trauma caused the icy shadows in her eyes?

He had too much familiarity with every awful act that could be inflicted on a woman, and his mind insisted on conjuring terrible scenarios in realistic detail—screams, bruises, terror. His stomach turned, a slow, sick roll.

Not Caitlin. Not that.

With a curse, he rested his elbows on the desk and buried his head in his hands. Whatever had happened, she was dealing with it alone. Pride and stubbornness he understood, and she wouldn’t want anyone to see her healing process as weakness.

Didn’t she get that he wasn’t just anyone?

Protectiveness stirred in him. He wanted to be there, to be the one person she could trust. He wanted to be her stability, a sanctuary she could hold on to when the memories and the horror became too much. A deep shudder traveled through him.

A rap at the door broke the quiet. He didn’t raise his head. “It’s open.”

The hinges squeaked, and the cacophony of voices and a ringing phone flooded the room. Footsteps clicked on his office floor. He didn’t need to look up to know who closed the door, shutting out the noise again. Lord, he could
feel
her. He rubbed slow circles over his aching temples.

“Tick?” Caitlin’s husky voice sent soft shivers along his spine. “Are you all right?”

Sanctuary. He wanted to hold on to her as much as he wanted to stand strong for her. The real note of concern made him want to lie in the dark somewhere with her and spill all his worries and insecurities, her arms and that voice wrapped around him. Man, he was in bad shape.

Leather creaked, and the sound of rain swelled around them, thunder rumbling. “Not really, but I’ll survive.”

In the dimness, he could make out the outline of her form across from him, but not the expression on her face. “What’s wrong?”

He laughed and leaned back to scrub his hands down his face. “It would be easier to tell you what’s not. Four dead girls, no leads. You think it might be a cop. The county commission wants us to cut our budget further, and it’s already so tight that…” He let the words trail away, irritated by his own self-pity. “Hell. I shouldn’t have left the bureau.”

She leaned forward and his ears picked up the whisper of silk against skin. “Why did you?”

“Because…” How to articulate that? How to put his stupid idealism into words she would understand? “Because it’s home, and the people here deserve real service and protection. Because I owed it to Daddy to make sure that once the men who killed him were out of power, a decent department took their place.”

“Are you doing that?”

“I’m trying.”

“Then you did the right thing.” Although he couldn’t see her genuine smile, he knew it was there nonetheless, and the surge of warmth she sent through him with her approval had a frightening intensity.

Be careful, Lamar Eugene. Not like she hasn’t kicked you in the balls before.

He pushed up from the chair and skirted the desk to hit the lights. A cold fluorescent glare flooded the room, and the air of intimacy disappeared. Caitlin blinked at him, her expression like someone waking from a wonderful dream to a bleak winter morning. He looked away and returned to his chair.

“What did you need?” He leaned over and cut off the CD player, stopping the rain and thunder and music. “How did your interviews go?”

She shrugged. “Just confirmation that Amy led a double life. According to her roommate, she was dating an older man, someone she didn’t want her parents to know about. So much so that she wouldn’t even divulge his name to her friends. Laurie, the roommate, said this seemed to be the first relationship where Amy wasn’t the one in control. Whoever he was, she’d had to work to get him, and she was working to keep him.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “So if he’s the killer, maybe she knew that, was using the knowledge to hold on to him.”

Her mouth tightened a moment before her expression smoothed over. “Anything’s possible. Could be a motive. So either she was dating your killer or she’s not related to the other victims, and the similarities between her death and theirs are coincidental.”

Frustration dug in with fierce claws. “So we’re not any further along than we were. There are just more avenues to follow.”

“I never figured you for a quitter, Calvert.” A mocking light glinted in her eyes. “Throwing in the towel before we even get started?”

The frustration flashed into fury. She was calling him a quitter? Like hell. Calverts didn’t give up before the job was done. He bit his tongue to keep an angry retort from spilling forth. Like reminding her that she’d given up on them before they’d even started.

Kinda like you did, Lamar Eugene?

He inhaled sharply. He had quit. Hurt and confused, he’d let her push him away and he’d gotten on that plane back to Georgia, sought sanctuary in the familiarity of home.

Damn it, but he was a fool.

Releasing the breath slowly, he relaxed his frown. She still watched him, one eyebrow lifted in silent challenge.

“I’m not quitting, Falconetti.”
Not on this case and not on you, either.

“Good. So which of those avenues do you want to travel next?” Her smile faltered. “Or do you have another budget meeting?”

“No, thank God.” He drummed his fingers on the desk, the nicotine urge winding its way around him again. He reached for a peppermint instead and offered her one. She shook her head. He tucked the mint into his cheek to speak. “Where would you go next?”

She pushed her hair back, feathering the strands between her fingers. “I’d like to see where Sharon and Amy’s cars were discovered. Visiting Vontressa King’s apartment could be helpful as well.”

The idea of touring possible crime scenes with her wasn’t supposed to give him a thrill, but it did. The more time spent in her presence meant more chances to convince her to let him back into her life, get to the bottom of what had gone wrong between them. He reached for his keys, lying atop his cigarettes on the desk.

“Let’s do the apartment first.”

“Great. I’ll grab my things.”

He followed her to the war room, enjoying the trim fit of her black pinstriped slacks over her taut rear end. Awareness hummed under his skin. Suppressing it, he looked at the neat stacks of files and papers on the table. “You’ve been busy.”

Tucking her notebook into her small leather bag, she shook her head. “I’ve been hanging out with Schaefer, doing interviews. Cook’s been busy. He’s compiling a database and doing a good job of it, too.”

Tick lifted a paper from the closest pile, skimming the list of Vontressa King’s friends. “Yeah. He can be really methodical when he’s not being a major pain in my ass.”

“According to a couple of Amy’s friends, he’s a really fun date, too. Are all of his girlfriends that young?”

“He doesn’t date any of them long enough to call them girlfriends.”

“Apparently, neither do you. Your name came up in a couple of those interviews. Amy’s infatuation with you was common knowledge in her circle of friends.”

“Amy wasn’t infatuated with me, and she wasn’t looking to date me, either. All she wanted was another notch on her bedpost. Are we going or not?”

The analytical way she studied him set his teeth on edge. “Whenever you’re ready.”

An eerie silence hovered in Vontressa King’s empty apartment. She’d never finished moving in—no furniture filled the rooms, boxes waited by the door, a television sat on a milk crate by the window. A half-empty Diet Pepsi stood open on the counter between the living area and kitchen.

In the middle of the large L-shaped living room, Caitlin looked at Tick over her shoulder. “It’s like she’s going to walk through the door any second, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“She was probably dead within three or four hours of her disappearance.” She peered into the boxes. “I think the statistic is seventy-six percent of abductees are killed during that time frame. But why her? Why Sharon?”

“No ‘why Amy’?”

“Amy’s different. If it’s the same guy, she’s personal.”

“It’s the same guy.” His voice hardened.

“You sound sure.” She set one box to the side. “Intuition?”

“Yeah.”

“I think he’s an evolving killer.” She flipped through the second carton’s contents—spicy romance novels, R&B CDs, a collection of DVDs. “Fantasizes about the attacks, before and after, planning them, reliving them, figuring out how to make it better the next time.” She frowned, nibbling her lower lip. “Maybe that’s why VICAP didn’t turn up anything. There’s a distinct pattern to these deaths. Maybe he did it before somewhere else and changed his methods to elude detection.”

“You don’t think he’s local?”

“Could be.” She rolled one shoulder in a shrug. “Or he’s local and he killed before elsewhere? A lot of times, we find these kinds of killers do a lot of trolling in different areas, driving around, looking for victims. They’ll have high-mileage vehicles.”

Tick nodded. “Maybe we need to have Schaefer expand the VICAP search, look for clusters of deaths that don’t share this MO but are in the tri-state area.”

“Good idea.” She picked up a photo album from the next box and flipped it open. Vontressa’s wide grin appeared in picture after picture chronicling her senior year of high school. The last few pages depicted the party atmosphere of a cruise ship. Another familiar smile caught Caitlin’s eye. “Tick, look at this.”

“What?” He moved to stand behind her and the warm scent of his soap enveloped her.

She passed a fingertip over Vontressa’s face to the pretty blonde standing next to her, an arm around Vontressa’s waist. “It’s Amy.”

“Their senior trip.” He tapped a long finger against the photo above, a beach scene with several people in a group. With the movement, his arm brushed hers. “And there’s Sharon.”

Caitlin studied the pictures. In both, a long-haired teenage boy loitered at the edge of the action. In the bottom photo, he stared at Amy Gillabeaux with a hungry gaze. “Who is he?”

“Keith Lawson. His daddy runs a local garage.” He paused. “And he applied to the police academy. They turned him down. He didn’t have the grades.”

She glanced up at Tick, intensely aware of his closeness. “We should talk to him.”

“Tomorrow.” His deep voice caressed her ears. “He’s probably gone to the car auction in Thomasville with his daddy.”

She nodded and looked away. This close to him, she wanted his mouth on hers, his hands on her skin. The silence enclosed them, much as the darkness had in his office earlier. She’d wanted to touch him then, too, to comfort him. A good thing he’d shifted to consummate professional and turned on the lights before she’d embarrassed both of them.

“Cait.” If anything, his voice deepened, his drawl like sweet, smooth molasses. She looked at him again, desire sharpening the angles of his face, and her lungs slowed down, tried to stop. He cupped her shoulder, his fingers sliding over her thin silk blouse, leaving fire behind.

This was not good. She wanted him to go on touching her, to glide his hands down her body, to assuage the ache building low in her stomach, to fill in some way the yawning emptiness Fuller had left behind.

That wasn’t possible.

Shaking back her hair, she stepped away and laid the photo album on the nearest box. “You said Vontressa’s car hadn’t been found, right?”

“Right.” A muscle flicked in his cheek above his jaw.

“The car could have been a motive in her murder—”

The shrill beep of his cell phone cut her off. He tugged it from his belt and glanced at the screen. “Excuse me.”

She stepped to the window, studying the parking lot below. Across the street, a strip mall squatted under a thundercloud. People hurried to and from the grocery store. Cars filled the spots in front of a Chinese restaurant and drugstore. A Chandler County patrol car sat in the corner of the lot, facing the street at an angle. A shiver traveled over her skin, and she turned away, letting the curtain fall back into place.

“Thanks, Williams. We’ll see you in a while.”

He flipped the phone closed and returned it to his belt. Her skin still crawling, Caitlin forced a polite smile. “Case related?”

“Yeah. Williams is ready to start on our autopsies. I thought you’d want to ride over for that.”

“Definitely, I—”

His phone rang again and he grimaced at the repeat interruption.

“Holy hell.” When he glanced at the caller ID, both his expression and stance softened. “Hello? Hey, Mama. What? I’m a little busy…work. I’ll try, but I can’t promise.” Phone pressed to his ear, Tick glanced heavenward. “Yeah, I know I work too hard. I love you too. Bye.”

“Do you mind if we make a quick run by the hospital on our way to Moultrie?” He tugged a hand through his hair in a tight, frustrated movement. “It won’t take long and it’ll make my mama happy.”

“Not at all.” She pointed at the window. “Tell me something first. Whose patrol car is in the lot across the street?”

Frowning, he moved to the window. “What patrol car?”

She joined him. The car had vanished. “It was one of yours, but it’s gone.”

The sense of unease the car invoked stayed with her during the drive to the hospital. Tick stopped at the front desk, picked up guest passes for them and ushered her to the elevator. “I can check the dispatch records and find out which car it was.”

She nodded. A vision of that car, its occupant watching Vontressa leave her apartment, following her, invaded Caitlin’s mind and brought with it remembered fear. She knew firsthand what it was like to be hunted.