The Last Victim (24 page)

“You saw a man?” Charlie’s eyes narrowed as a possibility occurred to her, but it wasn’t anything she could share. “What did he look like?”

Having checked out the kitchen, Kaminsky was doubling back to
search the bedroom. “Tall. Blond. Built. Way hot.” Kaminsky cast a suspicious look at Charlie before she stuck her head inside the bathroom and glanced around. “Naked.”

Charlie blinked. “Naked?”

“Starkers.”

Charlie saw a shimmer moving through the air near the bathroom. Keeping a wary eye on it, she called to Kaminsky, “Believe me, there’s no naked man in here.”

Just as soon as she said it, the shimmer turned solid and, sure enough, there
was
a naked man in there. It was Garland, of course, in all his tanned and muscular splendor. He cast Charlie an unfriendly look and disappeared into the bathroom.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Kaminsky emerged from the bedroom looking confused. She held her gun in one hand, which was down by her side. An admission, via body language, that she’d been mistaken.

“There’s no one here.” She sounded like she hated having to say it. The look she shot Charlie was distrustful. Despite Kaminsky’s continual prickliness, Charlie almost felt sorry for her.

“No,” Charlie agreed, doing her best to keep her face expressionless. What could she do? Telling the truth wasn’t an option.

“I know what I saw.” Kaminsky looked at her hard.

Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“If you snuck some guy up here for a sleepover—”

“I didn’t,” Charlie interrupted indignantly, her moment of feeling sorry for Kaminsky over. “Do you
see
a guy?”

“I did. I know I did.” Kaminsky grimaced and strode toward the door. “He must have gone somewhere else. Let me do a quick search of the house.”

“Isn’t the alarm on?” Charlie asked, with the aim of saving the other woman some effort. In fact, she knew the security alarm was on, because she had watched Kaminsky reset it after they had entered.

“Yes.” Kaminsky pulled open the door and walked out into the
hall, where she glanced swiftly around. With one hand still on the knob, she looked back at Charlie. “Maybe he was already inside when we came in. Maybe … I don’t know. But I have to check.”

“I don’t think—” Charlie began.

“Lock this door. Stay put,” Kaminsky threw at her without waiting for Charlie to finish, and closed the door.

Charlie stared at the closed door for a second, concluded that there was nothing else she could do to discourage Kaminsky from wasting her time, and locked it.

Then she went in search of Garland.

He was in the bathroom. Naked. With his back to her, swiping in obvious frustration at one of the white bath towels hanging on the rack. If he was hoping to connect, he was out of luck: his hand passed right through it.

A quick, comprehensive glance was all it took to emblazon on Charlie’s memory forever the absolute eye candy of his broad shoulders, corded arms, powerful back, narrow hips, tight ass, and long, strong-looking legs. Muscles upon muscles rippled as he moved. His hair was wet, slicked back from his face, curling just a little on the ends. His tan looked golden in the bathroom’s bright light.
Gorgeous
wasn’t quite the right word—it was too feminine to do him justice—but it was the first one that sprang to Charlie’s mind.

Dangerous
was the second.

“Why are you naked?” she whispered accusingly, mindful of Kaminsky out there searching the house.

“Why do you think? I just felt like stripping off.” He sounded angry. He turned to glare at her. His right biceps sported a tattoo, she saw: a cobra in green and black. But she saw that only in passing, because she was too busy getting a load of his full-frontal glory: wide, smooth pecs and a pronounced six-pack and …

Of course he would be totally hung.

Charlie jerked her eyes elsewhere as her body reacted with a carnality that, until now, she would have said was absolutely foreign to her nature.

What’s wrong with you? It’s not like he’s the first naked man you’ve ever seen
, she scolded herself. Then, in an annoying, involuntary
corollary, her internal dialogue concluded with,
He’s just the best-looking
.

He stalked toward her, all hard-bodied and lean-hipped and rampantly male where it counted. He was looking her over. Charlie was suddenly supremely conscious of the messiness of the tousled hair that ten minutes earlier she’d shaken out of her shower cap, run a brush through, and tucked behind her ears; her scrubbed-clean face; the white robe belted around her waist; her bare calves and feet. As if in self-defense against his approach, her hands gripped the ends of the terry cloth belt and tightened it around her waist.

“You want to fuck?” His growled question as he stopped in front of her snapped her eyes into shocked collision with his.

“What? No.” At least she didn’t stutter like a flustered high-schooler. But she had a terrible feeling her cheeks had turned pink. Because the hideous truth was, for just a split second there, maybe she did.

His eyes were blue as a summer sky and hard as glass and as sexually charged as a lap dance.

“Then quit looking at me like that.”

Charlie didn’t know how she was looking at him—she didn’t want to know—but fortunately anger snapped her out of it.

“How do you expect me to look at you when you show up here
naked
?” The fact that she was whispering took none of the indignation out of her tone. “And just to set the record straight, I don’t think you
can
fuck anymore, Casper.”

The look he gave her crackled with ill temper.

“Oh, yeah? Let’s find out.” Garland reached out to yank her into his arms. Charlie squeaked and jumped back and would have—well, she didn’t know what she would have done, because instead of grabbing her, his hands passed right through her. She felt the electric charge of the miss clear through to her bones. Glancing down at his empty hands, Garland first looked surprised, then mad.

“See?” Feeling both smug and way safer than she had just seconds before, Charlie smiled at him. She couldn’t help it; there was a taunt in there somewhere.

“Enjoying yourself, Doc?” The words were soft. Too soft. The
purr in his voice and aggressive set to his jaw would have given her pause not so long ago. But now …

She realized she wasn’t the least little bit afraid of him anymore. And it wasn’t only because he’d lost the power to be a physical threat.

The sound of Kaminsky coming back through the door kept her from responding. Charlie heard the key in the lock, heard the door open, and tore herself away from the devil in her bathroom to deal with the FBI agent in her living room.

“I couldn’t find anyone,” Kaminsky said from the open doorway when she saw Charlie. “I came to tell you so you wouldn’t worry.”

Charlie almost said she wasn’t worried, but bit the words back in time. If she hadn’t known who the naked man was that Kaminsky had spotted outside her door, she wouldn’t just have been worried, she would have been scared down to her toes.

“Maybe what you saw was a shadow. Or a reflection of some kind,” she offered, simply because she felt a little guilty that Kaminsky was looking so perturbed. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Garland walk into the living room. He was still naked. Still all rippling muscle and bad attitude.

It required what was almost a physical effort, but Charlie managed to stay focused on Kaminsky.

“Maybe.” Kaminsky didn’t sound like she believed it. But after all, what other explanation could there be? Charlie had been around the agent long enough to be almost certain the truth would never even occur to her.

If Kaminsky didn’t believe in something as universally accepted as psychiatry, Charlie was willing to bet dollars to doughnuts she also didn’t believe in things that go bump in the night.

“Don’t worry, you’re perfectly safe. We’ve been all through this place. There’s nobody here but us.” Tony walked up behind Kaminsky and gave Charlie a reassuring smile over the other woman’s head. Charlie was surprised to see him: she hadn’t realized he’d returned to the house. Immediately self-conscious about her un-made-up, tousle-haired, bathrobe-clad self, she summoned the internal fortitude to smile back, then caught a distracting glimpse of the naked man on the other side of the room looking up sharply from what he was doing—which involved her laptop, damn it—to watch.

“I must have imagined it,” Kaminsky told Tony, sounding embarrassed. From the suspicious glance she shot Charlie, it was obvious she was still not totally convinced she
hadn’t
seen what in fact she had. “I never would’ve called you guys over here if I hadn’t thought there was good reason.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Tony replied. “We’re all tired. Anybody can make a mistake.”

“I blame all that wine you had with dinner,” Crane called up from somewhere below. He was joking, Charlie knew, because of course Kaminsky, like the rest of them, had not had a single alcoholic drink.

Kaminsky’s brows snapped together. It was clear from her expression that Crane’s joke had gone over like a lead balloon. “I’m going to bed,” she told Tony. Then, with another of those quick, mistrustful looks at Charlie, she turned and strode toward her room. “Hey, Buzz Cut, go soak your head,” she yelled down the stairs.

“Love you, too, Lean Cuisine,” Crane shot back.

“And on that totally professional note, I’ll say good-night,” Tony said with resignation. He looked beyond tired, with lines around his eyes and mouth that Charlie hadn’t noticed before, and shadows beneath his eyes. But he also looked determined and capable. The kind of man a woman wanted on her side when a serial killer might be hunting her.

“I’m sorry your work got interrupted,” Charlie said quietly.

He shook his head. “It was time to pack it in for the night anyway. We got a make and model off that surveillance shot Haney gave us, by the way. No license plate, though. At least, not yet.”

“That’s something.”

“Yeah.” He smiled at her. “Don’t worry, Charlie, we’ll keep you safe.”

“I know you will.” She smiled back at him. “Good-night, Tony.” Their eyes connected in a warm and friendly way that had overtones of something more. Then the naked serial killer ghost behind her made a rude noise, and she glanced in his direction automatically, breaking eye contact with Tony, and the moment was lost.

“ ’Night. Lock this door,” Tony told her as he pulled it shut.

Charlie did, then turned around to glare at the problem. Fortunately,
enough furniture stood between them that she could only see him from approximately the navel up. Still, that much unclothed Garland was definitely something to see.

“Charlie. Tony,” he mocked. “You’re making progress, Doc. Keep it up, and pretty soon he’ll be asking to hold your hand.”

“Put on some pants,” she snapped, moving toward him with the intention of snatching her laptop, which was in front of him and thankfully in sleep mode, out of his reach.

“You got any ghost pants lying around?”

“Ghost pants?”

“Yeah, because real pants don’t work for me anymore. Neither do towels. I tried.”

She stopped walking, folded her arms over her chest, and regarded him quizzically. “What happened to your clothes?”

“I went for a walk on the beach. Then I decided to go swimming in the ocean. Flag’s up, but it doesn’t matter, because I sure as hell ain’t gonna drown. What did happen was that my clothes disappeared. I’m out there, bobbing along like a cork on the waves, since I apparently have no weight anymore, and I realize I’m naked. Why? Got me. What to do about it? Got me. You have any suggestions, I’m all ears.”

Charlie frowned. The problem of ghost wardrobe had never come up previously. “Where did you get the clothes in the first place?”

He shook his head. “One minute I’m in a prison uniform, next minute I’m wearing the clothes I wore when I got arrested. I’ve gained some muscle since then—not a whole lot to do in prison besides work out and read—but they fit fine. While I was in the water they vanished. I took off my boots before I went in. When I got out, they were gone, too.”

Charlie didn’t know what to make of that. “Hmm.”

He gave her a disgusted look. “ ‘Hmm’? That’s all you’ve got?”

“You know, I’ve never had a pet ghost before. I may not be totally up to speed on all the ins and outs of it.”

His eyes narrowed. “I ain’t no pet, Doc. If I were you, I’d keep that in mind.” He looked her over. “So are you gonna clue me in on why three FBI agents are guarding you like the Crown Jewels?”

Charlie thought back to their exchange in the car. “You said you weren’t interested in knowing.”

“I am now.”

Frowning, she considered for a moment.

“All right.” If he was going to be hanging around, it was time to lay it out for him. No more glossing over the aspects that he might find disturbing—or worse. “Trevor Mead and his parents were murdered, and his half sister, Bayley, was taken, by a serial killer. The same serial killer who slaughtered two other families and kidnapped and killed two other teenage girls within the last few weeks. This serial killer may or may not be the same one who butchered five families and kidnapped and murdered five teenage girls fifteen years ago. And the FBI is protecting me because I am of value to them, and I am of value to the FBI because I am, as you know, an expert on serial killers.”

Her tone had bite, and was in the end even accusatory, because after all he was one of
them
. But something in her expression must have been a little off, because Garland looked at her more closely.

“That doesn’t explain why you’re holed up in here under guard, like you’re a potential victim. Unless I’m missing something, this guy’s target is teenage girls. You’re not a teenage girl. So what’s up?”

Charlie’s lips pursed. Having been freshly reminded of what he was, she lost any inclination to spill her guts to him. If the human race was divided into sub-groups of predator and prey, she knew which group they each belonged in. The look she gave him was challenging. “I told you. I’m of value to the FBI.”