The Last Victim (29 page)

Where is he?

A long shudder racked her, along with a surge of searing heat.
I want you
was what he had said. Well, she wanted him, too.

Now. Hot and hard and …

Charlie took a deep, shuddering breath. She diagnosed her problem at just about the same time she realized the darkness she was staring up into hid a plain white ceiling and not a night sky full of an improbably large moon and millions of stars. The surface she lay on was a bed, not a beach. What was twisted around her were the covers, not Garland’s gorgeous body. What she smelled wasn’t sea air, but a hint of fabric softener combined with bleach.

Her problem was that she was consumed with lust. Suffering
from a bad case of near coitus interruptus. Turned on to her back teeth. Horny. Aching for a man.

Face it, you’re aching for
Garland.

And she had reached that sorry state of affairs because she’d had a bad—okay, bad and really, really sexy—dream.

Even as Charlie recognized the truth of that, even as she recoiled in dismay from the path her wayward subconscious had led her down, she was startled into motion by the blare of the alarm clock on the bedside table. In a flash she knew where she was: in her bed in the in-law suite of the FBI’s rented beach house. Apparently the clock’s ring was what had jolted her out of her dream, and, still groggy, she’d hit snooze, and the thing was going off again. Turning a disbelieving eye toward the clock, she saw that it was 6:05 a.m. As she grimly smacked the off button, she remembered right before she had fallen asleep sitting up and setting the alarm clock for her scheduled run with Tony.

For a moment, as she lay there trying not to think about the still urgent clamoring of her body, Charlie debated: exhaustion plus the sudden disinclination to go messing up her love life any further by dragging a perfectly nice man into it argued with canceling out by staying in bed. Mental confusion, a sexed-up body that needed to be cooled by about several hundred degrees, and the need to give herself a guy to think about besides Garland weighed in on the side of the run.

What sealed the deal was the thought of Garland in the next room. The TV was still on; she could hear it. Given the time frame, and the salt, he was almost certainly in there, no convenient vanishing in the middle of the night for him. The knowledge made her tense. It made her nervous. It made her insides take on the approximate consistency of melted butter. It made her—well, she refused to acknowledge it, but the bottom line was that she badly needed to clear her head before she had any kind of significant interaction with Garland. The last thing in the world she wanted was for him to get some kind of an inkling of the role he had so recently played in her dream. And the way she was feeling right now, he might pick up on it.

As aroused as she was, she was probably giving out massive vibes screaming
Do me
.

That did it: the run won.

Stifling a groan, Charlie clicked on the lamp, tossed back the covers,
swung her legs over the side of the bed, stood up, and headed for her suitcase. Padding across the carpet, she yawned hugely.

I feel like I didn’t get any sleep at all
.

On the heels of that thought came another, horrifying one: what if her little interlude with Garland hadn’t been a dream? Her pulse kicked into overdrive at the mere possibility. A quick glance down at herself was reassuring: her blue nightgown was definitely on. Definitely the same one she had gone to sleep in. Her panties were intact, too. In other words, she was still as completely dressed as she had been when she had tumbled into bed the night before. Anyway, he was about as substantial as water vapor, remember? No way they could have …

Wincing as vivid images of herself pulling her nightgown over her head replayed themselves in her mind, Charlie shucked her sleepwear—not so much as a single grain of sand in it—and quickly checked herself out in the mirror over the dresser. No swollen lips, no love bites. No telltale signs of a passionate interlude on a starry beach. Letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, she pulled on her running gear, brushed her hair back into a ponytail, and headed for the bathroom. Moments later, face washed, teeth brushed, moisturizer-cum-sunblock in place, she was ready to race out the door.

Only she had to get past Garland first.

The last thing you want is to let him sense fear
.

She remembered thinking that about him back at Wallens Ridge. When he’d been nothing to her but a dangerously handsome serial killer she’d been studying—who was having, according to what he’d told her in her dream, a high old time imagining her naked. Now she had the same thought about not letting him sense her fear—albeit fear of a totally different kind.

What was scaring her now was that he would somehow divine how badly she wanted to have sex with him.

A predator was a predator, and she knew how to deal with those. But a spectral predator whose bones she wanted to jump? That was new.

Get a grip
, she thought. Then, back straight, chin up, she strode into the living room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Garland lay sprawled on the couch with one arm bent behind his head, watching some kind of sports show. The living room was dark except for the glow from the TV, so she didn’t get the details, but she could see that he was staring at the screen with a less-than-enthralled expression on his face. His big body took up practically the entire piece of furniture and was as solid-looking as her own. He’d taken off his boots: his feet were encased in white athletic socks. He looked so completely normal, so alive, so much the typical, couch potato, sports-watching male that for a moment, as he turned his head and looked at her, Charlie was thrown off her game.

Was his expression appraising? Broody? Or, God forbid,
knowing
?

Say good morning and get out
. That had been the plan.

But just looking at him made her heart pick up the pace, and her breathing quicken, and her blood heat. Panicking a little as his eyes slid over her—it absolutely had to have been a dream, so there was no point in letting herself even begin to imagine otherwise—she felt her body tightening deep inside.

Thank God it was dark.

If the warmth in her cheeks was any indication, she was blushing.
The man—ghost—whatever—was not a fool. Given a reasonable degree of light, a blush he would see. That, coupled with her expression, which she guessed was something less than cool indifference, would be easy for him to interpret.

Probably as a sadly misguided case of the hots for him.

Crap. Leave. Fast
.

Jerking her eyes away from him, not saying a word, Charlie kept on moving, heading for the door even as Garland frowned and sat up.

“Where are you going?” His eyes tracked her.

“For a run,” she answered, and was out the door before he could say anything else.

She ran lightly down the stairs. Like her rooms, the house was dark, shadowy, because all the window coverings were drawn. She was just thinking that if Tony wasn’t up she had a problem, because she didn’t know which of the downstairs bedrooms was his, when she saw movement in the little alcove off the kitchen. Her heart gave an automatic lurch a split second before Tony’s black hair and tall form registered. He was up, then, dressed in running gear, and doing a series of stretches as he waited for her.

“You’re early,” she said.

“I heard your alarm go off.” He grinned as her eyes widened fractionally. “My bedroom’s right below yours.” Charlie barely had time to wonder what else he might have heard when he added, “So, you ready?”

She nodded.

“Security alarm’s already off,” he said as she started toward the keypad, so she turned back and waited for him. What she really wanted—no, needed—at the moment was to be alone. Usually her runs were her time to think her own thoughts, sort through things, clear her head. But being alone right now wasn’t smart; and if she couldn’t run alone, she would just as soon have Tony with her as anyone else. No, sooner, actually. She liked him a lot, and she certainly wouldn’t have to worry about the Boardwalk Killer with him beside her, which, she discovered as he followed her out the door into the pale morning light and the fresh ocean-scented air hit her in the face, was a bigger relief than she would have thought. With the rustle of the sea oats and the roar of the tide loud enough to drown out any noise
up to, possibly, a siren, and the dunes to provide concealment if someone wished to hide, Charlie realized that, alone, she would have been feeling pretty vulnerable as she set out down the narrow wooden walkway toward the beach. With Tony only a couple of steps behind her, though, she did not.

That was the thing about a man with a gun.

“If you’d told me you were going with your boyfriend, I wouldn’t have busted my ass breaking through your ju-ju walls to get out here,” a growly voice said in her ear. It was so unexpected that Charlie almost stumbled on one of the weathered gray boards underfoot as Garland materialized beside her, looking disagreeable as all get-out. He was bleary-eyed, with stubble on his jaw, and if ever a ghost could look like the morning after the night before, he did.

“Go away,” Charlie muttered out of the side of her mouth.

“Cramping your style, Doc?” But to Charlie’s relief, he vanished as suddenly as he had shown up.

She was left to deal with a jumble of emotions, none of which were pleasant and all of which it was necessary to hide as she reached the beach and Tony caught up with her.

“Beautiful morning,” Tony observed, smiling at her. With his chiseled features, dark eyes, quick smile, and tall, well-built frame, he was good-looking enough to make any woman take notice. Charlie noticed, but, unfortunately, she was not in the mood to appreciate. She nodded, and set out.

The beach was perfect for running: firm and flat, a wide, white sand surface that she refused to compare to the soft, crumbly texture of the beach she’d visited in her dreams, although that comparison—
was this the beach?
—was what immediately popped into her head. Dismissing the memory with an inner snarl, she picked up her pace. To paraphrase
South Pacific
, she was going to run that … whatever he was, right out of her hair. To that end, she put one foot in front of the other and concentrated on the here and now. She deliberately didn’t look at the Meads’ house as she passed it, although all she was actually able to see of it from the beach was the second story, which had its own terrible connotations that she wasn’t going to allow herself to think about. As it was, she could almost feel Julie Mead’s anguish
rolling out in waves from the master bedroom. As long as she kept going and kept her eyes turned toward the ocean, though, she could cope.

The view was spectacular. The sun was just rising above the eastern horizon in an orange and purple and pink blaze of glory. Rainbow-colored breakers rolled toward shore. The temperature verged on hot—probably low eighties—but it was not yet humid, and a nice breeze blew in off the ocean. Only a few others—a couple of joggers, a wader or two—had ventured out so early in the morning, so she and Tony practically had the beach to themselves.

“You usually do five miles, right?” Tony asked. He was between her and the dunes and the houses, Charlie noted, and wondered if he’d done that deliberately, positioning himself to act as a buffer for her against the most likely source of potential danger, sort of like a certain kind of man automatically walked on the outside of the sidewalk to protect the woman with him from runaway cars.

It was a nice gesture, but again, she wasn’t in the mood to really appreciate it.

Damn Garland anyway. Last night he’d invaded her dreams. Now he was invading her run.

“You found out I usually do five miles from the background check you ran on me, right?” Charlie asked with resignation.

“Yes.” He kept pace with her easily, although she was kicking it up because she really, really needed the endorphins. A sideways glance told her that he wasn’t even breathing hard yet. Athletic, which considering his build wasn’t really a surprise. Probably played some kind of sport in high school or college. Plenty muscular, although he was less so than—anyway, he was muscular, and from the way he’d had his gear with him and his current lack of difficulty catching his breath although she was setting a mean pace, she guessed he must run regularly to keep fit, too.

Here’s the guy I should be dreaming about
, she thought sourly, and scowled.

“Like I said before, I was just doing my job,” Tony said, clearly misinterpreting her expression. Since it was impossible to explain how cosmically unfair it felt that she had found this great guy at the
same time as she had been saddled with the ghost from hell who unfortunately seemed to possess the ability to invade her dreams and make her wild with lust, she changed the subject.

“Any luck identifying the car from the surveillance film Officer Price gave you?” she asked.

He shrugged. “It’s a gray Avalon. Right place, right time to be of interest. No visible license plate or identifying marks. Driver impossible to see.”

“Hmm. So how helpful is that?”

“We’re having a DMV check run to identify all local owners of gray Avalons. I imagine we’re talking a fairly substantial number. Will our guy be among them? Who knows? It’s one more puzzle piece.”

“That’s what you do, isn’t it? Put the puzzle pieces together.”

“We have to find them first.” Tony gestured at a banana yellow shingle house a little farther up the beach. “If you’re going for five miles, that’s the halfway mark. We probably want to turn around there.”

Charlie glanced at him. He was breathing a little harder, and there was sweat beading his brow. Well, she was breathing a little harder and sweating, too. Usually she ran at a more deliberate pace, but this morning she’d felt the need to clean out as many cobwebs as she could.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“I try to run every day. Keeps me sane.”