Accompanying Alice (22 page)

“You mean to tell me,” Aunt Kate exclaimed shrilly from the living room, “that there was a murder just around the co
rn
er from here the night before last and nobody told us before they invited us to stay here?”

“No, really, Aunt Kate,” Edith soothed. “I’m sure the paper is wrong, it must be perfectly safe by now.
Aunt Kate!”

“Alice Marie Brannigan!” Aunt Kate clicked agitatedly into the kitchen, evening newspaper flapping. “You didn’t tell us about any loose psychopath who could come in and murder us all in our beds when you invited us here! I really think
that’s something we should have known about before we agreed to stay with you.”

“What are you talking about?” Arms akimbo, Alice faced her aunt squarely. “I don’t have enough room to have willingly invited you to stay here and I don’t know anything about a loose psychopath.”

“This,
this
is what I’m talking about!” Indignantly Aunt Kate thrust the paper at her and Gabriel, pointing to the fuzzy news photo of police bending over a blanketed victim at a wooded crime scene. Gabriel took a good look. The picture was of the once-smiling-but-now-dead special agent who’d been his partner. “Why didn’t you,” Aunt Kate repeated shrilly to Alice, “tell us they were killing policemen practically in your own backyard?”

Chapter Eight

G
abriel viewed the newspaper blankly, feeling the violence rise in him.

Memory returned like a physical jolt, a freeze-frame waking nightmare of the moments that had led to Sunday night, Nicky’s shooting, the face he’d almost glimpsed behind the gun when it was aimed at him. Damn, he’d been so absorbed in Alice that he’d actually forgotten what had brought him here.

His hands dropped to Alice’s waist, tightening painfully to support her when she took an involuntary step back and trod on his toe. Her hands closed instinctively, protectively, over his, refusing to let him go when he would have set her away from him. Trapped against the sink, he strained to control the bile rising in his throat, fought the claustrophobic urge to shove Alice aside and give in to the impotence of rage. God, she had to let him go. He didn’t want her warmth or her protection, didn’t want to touch her until he got control of this desire to destroy.

Hang on, Book, stay cool,
he urged himself mutely.
You won’t gain anything
if
you lose it now. Keep it together, babe, keep it together.
He could feel himself twisting inside, losing touch with sanity. This was the hard part about undercover, the lying to himself, the duplicity between what he had to do, how he had to appear, and what he had to feel in order to remain honest on the job. Nothing must show. Everything had to stay tucked inside
,
deep out of sight, unexpressed, unacknowledged, where even he himself couldn’t be sure it existed.

He smiled blankly, blindly at the gathering family, pretending. Alice stiffened imperceptibly, and her hands, her arms, tightened on his when his hands on her contracted
more harshly. Gabriel swallowed painfully. How did she always seem to know what he was feeling? Why wouldn’t she let him go?
Damn it, Alice, let me go,
he screamed silently.
You’ll give me away and I’ll hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. Damn you for dying, Nicky. Damn Markum for setting us up. Damn Scully for sending us in. Damn you all to hell. I’ll be damned
if
I don’t send you there....

In front of him the paper rattled when Alice released his hands to take it from Aunt Kate and fold it up. “Look, Aunt Kate, calm down,” she said. “This did not happen in my backyard. I live in the city, remember? No woods. And that’s—” she snapped the picture in the paper “—at least
three miles north of here, and it happened two nights ago. Whoever did it’s long gone by now.”

“Just the same, you never know.” Aunt Kate’s fresh purple voile caftan billowed with the anxious flounce of her arms. “I’m sleeping with the butcher knife under my pillow tonight.”

“Not in my house you’re not,” Alice assured her firmly. She rolled her eyes to find Helen standing on the fringes of the discussion and gave her sister a you’re-dead-for-doing-this-to-me look. Helen cleared her throat to rid it of a laugh. “There are too many people here, Aunt Kate,” Alice went on, frowning at Meg, Twink, Sam and Edith to step in any time and help her out. They ignored her. Alice glared profoundly at them. “I don’t want any of them hurt if you sleepwalk or have nightmares.”

“But who will protect us?” Aunt Kate moaned, wringing her hands. “We have children here. Someone has to protect them.” She grabbed Gabriel’s arm, her face turned up to him beseechingly. “Don’t you think we should get a gun? You’ll handle that for us, won’t you? You’ll get one and take care of us....”

Gabriel stared down at her wishing he could laugh at her just to take the edge off. He’d been an undercover cop too long to let his true feelings show, but they were reaching for him now. And this wasn’t funny. He fumbled for his voice, trying to sound normal. His throat was tight; his eyes sought Alice’s.
Get rid of them,
they told her. “I don’t think...”

Eyes narrowed on Aunt Kate, Alice laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t let her put you on the spot, love,” she told him. “This is my house, I’ll handle it.” She aimed a stiff finger at Aunt Kate. “No guns,” she warned her. “No knives, no weapons of any kind. None. Now.” She took Aunt Kate’s arm and turned her around, maneuvering her into the dining room where evening had begun to lay in shadows. “My mother is waiting for you. You should go, have dinner, a couple of drinks, relax, forget about the news. In the morning, Helen will find you a nice secure hotel far
away from here.” She glanced back at the kitchen and gave Helen a dirty grin. “Won’t you, Helen?”

“I live to serve,” Helen returned mildly, but her eyebrows waggled dire and unspeakable messages at Alice.

“Don’t worry, Mother Kate.” George took her arm from Alice, tucked it through his and guided her out the front door, motioning his wife, his father-in-law and his boys after him. “Julia will take good care of us, you’ll see. We’ll have some of those tropical drinks with the little umbrellas you like, then maybe some shrimp cocktail, and for dinner...”

His voice trailed off into the slam of car doors and the roar of its engine. The car scraped over the bump at the bottom of the driveway, paused momentarily and was powered away. Alice’s sisters maintained their decorum for a five full seconds, then exploded.

“God, did you see the look on Allie’s face when Aunt Kate asked for a knife?”

“I thought I’d die when she said she wanted a gun!”

“Who’s the disaster-monger who told her that happened near here, anyway?”

“Edith!” they chorused, laughing, moving toward the kitchen door.

“What did
I
do?” Edith asked indignantly and followed them into the living room.

Alice turned to Gabriel. “Are you—?”

“No,” he said shortly, voice low. “I’m screwed to hell. Damn.” He ran a savage hand through his hair, flipped open the paper where it sat on the counter, slapped it closed. “
Uniformed officer killed in the line of duty by an unknown assailant or assailants.
Uniformed!
Crap.” He laughed harshly. “They
dressed
him. He was undercover and they stopped after they killed him and took the time to dress him. Why? What was the point? Sympathy? Misdirection? It doesn’t make sense. Oh, man.” He threw up
his
hands; his laughter wore an edge. “I am f
reak
in’ out here, Alice. My partner’s lying in the leaves waiting for someone to find his body and all
I
can think about is making love with you. Man, somehow that doesn’t balance, does it?”

“No,” Alice answered, “I guess it doesn’t. Not so you can tell, anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Everything happens for a
reason,
but sometimes it takes you a while to see it?”

“Yes.”

“Bull.” The violence was creeping up in him again. He could feel it in his fingers, in his hands, clenched into fists that wanted to strike out at whatever they could reach. He dug his palms around the edge of the counter, trying to contain himself. He wanted to move, had to move to relieve the fury, but her kitchen was too small, her sisters too near. “Not everything happens for a reason, Alice.” The strain told in his voice. “Some things are just done for the hell of it. This—” he picked up the paper, threw it down “—this was done for thirty pieces of silver and a kiss on the cheek by some greedy bastard who thinks murder and shortcuts are the only path to a richer life.”

“What do you want me to say?” Alice asked. “That I’m sorry it happened? That I wish to God it hadn’t? Well, I
am
sorry it happened and I
do
wish to God it hadn’t. But, damn you, I’m glad
you
weren’t killed, too. I’m glad you’re still alive to do something about it, even if everything does take longer than you want it to.”

“Well, ain’t that the cliché of the month,” Gabriel sneered. He rocked himself away from the counter, swung to face the kitchen window. He struggled to locate the cool calculating part of himself that had always protected him, distanced him from a situation, allowing him to observe and document everything as though he wasn’t part of it. Two, three more days, and the man he’d contacted last night would have the missing pieces of this case together. All Gabriel had to do was hold on to his sanity—not an easy task some days.

Spend only what you have to, to survive,
he reminded himself.
Save what you can.
He reached down inside himself, digging deep to find the single piece of calmness and humanity left in him, and drew a long breath of it. “Look,” he said more quietly, “I don’t really want you to say anything, Alice, nothing. There’s nothing to say except I’m sorry. You don’t need this from me. It’s not your battle.”

“But it is, Gabriel.’ Alice stood beside him, earnest and determined. “You may be the law, but I’m a taxpayer, that makes it my battle, too.” She touched his chest, made him look at her. “Even if I wasn’t a taxpayer, it’d still be my battle because you’re my friend.”

Gabriel made a gesture of disbelief and laughed without humor. “Friend. Is that what you call it?”

“
Friend
was your term this morning,” she prodded gently, “not mine.”

He huffed an impatient breath. “I was wrong then—or I lied, Alice,” he said. “Things with you move so fast I can’t be sure of where I stand or what I feel from minute to minute. But we’re not friends. What I feel for you is not friendship—not by itself. I can’t.” He studied her face for
an instant, let his fingers touch her cheek, drop again to his side. “I wish...” he began softly, then stopped himself, shook his head. Wishing was for the innocent. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got to take care of this on my own.”

He paused, looking down at her, half-poised to touch her again, to memorize her face with his fingers. The sound of voices reached them from the front porch. “Grace is here,” Sam called. “She brought the pizzas and Phil. How are you…”

“Gabriel?” Alice whispered.

She hadn’t brushed her hair since they’d come in from the car; it was still textured from the wind that had blown through the open windows. He stroked her hair, smoothed it, aware of every strand that passed beneath his palm. “I just need some time to sort it out, Allie. I’ll be all right.”