Part 19 (2/2)

Cash got in front of him before he could start for the door. ”Sit down.”

”Like h.e.l.l I will!”

”I said, sit down!”

Cash pushed him back into the chair and stood over him, powerful and immovable. ”Remember who and what you are,” he said forcefully, his dark eyes even and steady on his brother's. ”You can't go raging out of here like a mad dog, chasing shadows. You don't even have a suspect. What are you going to do, run cheek swabs on every male in Jacobs and Tarrant Counties?”

Said like that, it sounded absurd. But Garon wasn't thinking straight. He was furious. He wanted to hurt someone. He wanted to find the s.e.xual predator and strangle him slowly with his own hands. He couldn't remember feeling such mindless rage. At least not since he'd lost his own love, so long ago...

But he'd lived in the past too long already. He'd used it to ward off any emotional ties, to keep himself safe from another relations.h.i.+p. He was alone, by choice. But Grace had paid the price for his escape. He'd savaged her to save himself. She would never forgive him...

He stared up at Cash with dawning realization. Grace had come out of the dark nightmare that was her life to reach out toward Garon with hope and breathless antic.i.p.ation. He'd knocked her back, savaged her verbally and emotionally. He'd frightened her so badly in the cafe that she'd backed away from him, shaking like a leaf. He'd done that to her, when her only crime was that she wanted to love him.

His eyes closed on a wave of pain. Grace had sent Marquez to El Paso to dig up the most horrible chapter in her life. She'd done it not for herself, but to try to save some other child from what she'd endured. She was willing to take the risk that reopening the case might bring the killer back to finish the job he'd started.

In a flash he saw what he'd missed from the minute Cash gave him the file folder. Grace was the only person alive who could identify the child killer. And sharing the case with police might get her killed, as well.

12.

IT WAS A LONG DRIVE to Victoria. Sat.u.r.days in early spring brought all the weekend adventurers out on the highway. Usually Garon didn't mind bottlenecks, but he was anxious to get to his destination. He wasn't sure how he was going to manage it, but he had to coax Grace into coming home.

He'd phoned Marquez's cell phone, but he hadn't gotten an answer. Probably the younger man was still furious and unwilling to talk to him. He couldn't blame him. The detective loved Grace. It wouldn't sit well with him that Garon had caused her so much pain.

He was wearing a lightweight jacket, which he probably wasn't going to need. It was a warm, sunny day. The SUV ahead of him had a canoe lashed to its rack and fis.h.i.+ng poles sticking out of the back window. Fis.h.i.+ng. He grimaced, recalling how he'd overreacted when he found Grace at the local fis.h.i.+ng pond.

Her cousin lived back off the road in a grove of pecan trees. There was a dirt driveway that led up to the house. It was an old house, simple white clapboard, one story, with two chimneys and a long front porch that contained rocking chairs, a settee and a swing, all painted green. Off to the side was a large pond with a pier. He glanced toward it and blinked. Grace was out there, dressed in knee-high cutoffs and a red T-s.h.i.+rt, bending over what looked like a minnow bucket.

He got out of the SUV and walked down to the pond, sungla.s.ses hiding the apprehension in his dark eyes. The sungla.s.ses were an individual thing now. But when he was in the elite Hostage Rescue Team, everyone copied the team leader's sungla.s.ses. Those had been good days, working tight with an expert group of men. His job now, even heading a crime unit squad, was less exciting. It was less stressful as well. Maybe that would seem like a benefit, one day.

Grace saw him coming and straightened. Her chin came up. She was barefoot and wore no makeup at all. Her long hair was in a braid that reached between her shoulder blades. She wasn't wearing sungla.s.ses and she wasn't smiling. In one hand, she held a long cane pole with a cork, sinkers and a hook on the fis.h.i.+ng line.

The memory of their last meeting, when he'd humiliated her in Barbara's crowded cafe, was still fresh in her mind. ”Well, well, if it isn't the Prince of Darkness,” she said coldly, and her gray eyes reflected the pain, indignation and outrage of the past few weeks. ”I can't think of a way you could cause me any more embarra.s.sment on this planet. So, have you come for my soul?”

He stopped just in front of her. If he'd hoped for a truce, he was disappointed. He stuck his hands in his pockets, eyeing the plain, old-fas.h.i.+oned fis.h.i.+ng pole. ”If you plan to catch anything, you'd have better luck with a spinning reel,” he advised.

She moved to the side of the pier, bent and pulled up a string of ba.s.s. They were five to six pounds, each, and she had four of them. His surprise was visible.

She held the string of fish at her side, and she was glaring. ”I won the Jacobsville Ba.s.s Rodeo two summers in a row,” she informed him. ”Which is why I spend every free minute at Jake's Fish Pond in Jacobsville in early spring. Practicing. Sadly I've had to forego practice since you decided that I was chasing after you!”

He felt the hot color flow into the skin over his high cheekbones. He'd accused her of following him to the fis.h.i.+ng pond. She hadn't been chasing him at all. At least, not that time.

”Why are you here?” she asked, not moving.

He stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks and searched for inspiration. He hoped he didn't look as uncomfortable as he felt.

But he did. She c.o.c.ked her head and studied him for a minute. ”Oh. I see. Someone told you the truth about my past, is that it?” she asked with icy poise.

The muscles in his jaw tautened. ”Something like that.”

She averted her eyes and moved to the foam cooler she'd brought to store her fish in. She opened the top and put the fish on top of the layer of ice inside. She closed it back, all without giving him a second glance.

”You sent Marquez to El Paso,” he said without preamble.

She looked at him. ”I know things about the killer that you don't. I tried to tell you, but you decided that I'd come to your house for, shall we say, other purposes, before I could get the words out.”

His lips compressed tightly. ”Listen,” he began.

”No, you listen!” she shot back, eyes flas.h.i.+ng like silver lightning in a face livid with bad temper. ”I've spent my entire adult life backing away from men. I've never chased anyone in my life, and that goes double for you. Do you really think I have so little pride and self-respect that I'd go running wildly after a man who'd just told me he didn't want anything else to do with me?”

Now that he thought about it, no, he didn't. But it was too late for that belated inspiration to save him. Grace was furious, and he was already on the defensive and not liking it.

He drew in a short, angry breath. He rammed his hands deeper into his slacks pockets and scowled down at her. ”What do you know about the killer that we don't?” he asked.

”For one thing, that he likes little girls with long blond hair and light-colored eyes,” she said, trying to sound calmer than she felt. ”He also said that he'd been watching me at school. He knew that I lived with my grandmother and that she drank herself to sleep. It amused him to take me right out of her house and through the window in the middle of the night. He said that he'd dreamed of collecting blond girls just my age, with long hair, and that he would tie us up with red ribbons so that everyone would know we belonged to him. I believe that's what your organization calls a killer's 'signature'?”

”My degree is in criminal justice,” he countered. ”I don't do profiling. That's up to the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico.”

She gave him a smoldering look. ”If there's a dead child in San Antonio, and there were also dead children in Del Rio and Palo Verde,” she pointed out, ”with a year or so in between, similar coloring and a similar killing style, then you're looking for a serial killer.”

”Perhaps you'd like to put that in writing and send it to Marquez's lieutenant,” he suggested. ”He still doesn't consider it a serial crime.”

”Or maybe he just doesn't like the FBI,” she returned sweetly, ”and is trying to keep you from taking over his case.”

”Criminal cases aren't property. n.o.body owns them.”

She picked up the cooler and her fis.h.i.+ng pole. ”Whatever you say.”

She was walking away.

”I saw the file,” he bit off. ”And the photos.”

She stopped in her tracks. Her spine stiffened. But she didn't turn around.

He moved to her side, turned and looked down at her pale, strained face. ”You told me the scars were from an automobile accident.”

She wouldn't meet his gaze. ”That's what my grandmother taught me to say,” she replied simply. ”I thought she was being evasive and old-fas.h.i.+oned. Then, when I was sixteen, one of the new boys at my high school asked me out on a date and I told him just a little of what happened to me.” She didn't look at him as she drew the memory out of the past. ”We went to a fast food place. I noticed that he was looking at me in a really strange way. I asked why. He wanted to know exactly what the man who abducted me did to me, how it felt and if I enjoyed it.”

His indrawn breath was eloquent.

”That's right,” she said when she saw his face. ”All the warped people aren't in jail or seeing psychiatrists. I got sick. I wouldn't even let him take me home. I phoned Barbara and she sent Rick to pick me up. He was all for laying my date out in the floor, but I thought it wouldn't look good on his record.”

So that was why Marquez was so protective of her. They had a history. It bothered him.

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