Hold on to Me (28 page)

His lashes fell, shadowing his cheekbones.

She held on tight to his hand. “Vince claimed him for me. He’s buried with my mother and grandmother, between them. I didn’t name him…I couldn’t without…” She swallowed against the ache in her throat. “Not without you.”

He nodded, his head bent once more, his nape exposed and vulnerable. Fine tremors moved through his shoulders.

“I thought about names, before.” She lifted her other hand to stroke over his hair, the thick dark strands soft under her fingertips. “I’d feel him moving around, at night, and I was missing you so badly, wanting to share him with you, wanting you with me—”

A strangled moan rose between them and her voice died in her throat. He was shaking, harsh choking sobs attacking his lean form. She caught the glimmer of tears on his face.

“Oh, Tick.” She moved, kneeling on the seat to enfold him in a tight embrace. Her shoes slid to the floorboard. He buried his face in her hair, arms coming around her with bruising intensity. With the rain falling around them, she closed her eyes and ran soothing hands down his back, holding on as he cried.

Tick stopped at the top of the steps and stared at the stenciled star on the recently installed department door. He still felt raw and exposed, and the last thing he wanted was to go in there and tell Stanton the killer was one of theirs. Sitting down and talking to his mother about his sex life held more appeal. He wouldn’t even have Caitlin for moral support—she’d insisted on going back to her hotel to check for messages.

His hand tightening on the evidence bag, he pulled the door open and stepped into the familiar controlled chaos. Voices drifted into the hall from the squad room and he bypassed his own office, heading in that direction.

Might as well get it over with.

The rich smell of Big Dawg hamburgers hung in the squad-room air. Cookie and Jeff sat at their desks, eating. Stanton had pulled up a chair. He grinned at Tick. “Hey, looks like we caught a break.”

He couldn’t return the smile. “Yeah?”

Jeff wiped his mouth. “The white Nissan? Belongs to Kimberly Johnson. Got a match on the VIN.”

That surprised him. “It still had the plate on it?”

Cookie sucked mayonnaise off his thumb. “The one on the dash was gone. But Nissans have one on the firewall. Bobby Gene forgot that one. Chris and I brought him in. He’s in holding.”

Stanton’s grin widened. “Won’t say a word. Asked for a lawyer. Looks like we might have our man.”

Tick shook his head. “It’s not him.”

Jeff dropped his burger on the wrapper. “What do you mean, it’s not him? His prints are on Ingler’s car, he has possession of Johnson’s car, what else do you want? A signed confession?”

“It’s not him.”

“If it’s not him, why’d you have us bring him in?” Cookie leaned back in his chair, a frown drawing his heavy brows together.

“Because we think he knows something. He—”

Jeff exchanged a disparaging look with Stanton. “We.”

Anger tightened his chest. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re not exactly objective,” Stanton said.

Tick stared at the man who’d been his partner, who was still his close friend. “I don’t believe this.”

Jeff rested an elbow on the arm of his chair. “Okay, so if it’s not Bobby Gene Butler, who is it?”

“A cop. One of ours.”

“What the hell?”

“Bullshit!”

With the simultaneous outbursts, Stanton and Jeff exchanged another look. Cookie, remaining silent, glanced between the three men. Stanton ran a hand over his eyes. “Son of a bitch. Lord, she’s done it again—you’ve lost your everlovin’ mind.”

Blood pounded in Tick’s ears. “Why do you keep bringing her into this? This has nothing to do with her—”

Jeff’s humorless laugh rang in the room. “This whole cop thing was her idea, wasn’t it? Your name’s on the damn board in there as a possible suspect. Cookie’s, too. And Chris. Hell, guess I’m next.”

“Tick.” Stanton’s voice was calm, firm. “Look, we’ve got a viable suspect.”

He refused to be soothed. “What we have is a possible witness who we damned well know is going to be uncooperative.”

Jeff pointed across the desk. “Cookie, don’t you have anything to say?”

Cookie shrugged, his face impassive. “What do you want me to say? It could be possible.”

Groaning, Jeff rolled his eyes. “What did I expect? She’s female, and you’re…you.”

Stanton’s rough exhale bordered on a sigh. “Look, Tick, Tommy Gillabeaux wanted her here. She came down. She looked at everything—she’s been a big help organizing what we had. We’ll take her profile, and we’ll use it. But a cop? One of our cops? Come on.”

Tick blew out a long breath, staring at the ceiling. “Is this because Cait’s involved or because you don’t want to face the truth?”

“We don’t have a truth yet.”

Jeff snorted. “The truth is you’re screwing her, and you’d do anything to draw this investigation out just to keep her here.”

Anger washed the room in a red haze. “Shut up, Schaefer.”

“Damn it, Tick, he’s right. You’re never yourself around her and—”

“So the general consensus is that I’d let a killer run loose so I can get laid? Is that it?”

Cookie ran a finger over his chin. “I think that’s what they’re saying, yeah.”

“Then explain that.” Tick flung the evidence bag on the desk, the card with its department logo face up on top of the bag inside. A neat stack of incident reports exploded, fluttering to the floor.

Silence descended. Stanton lifted the bag, his face white. “Where did this come from?”

“Someone left it in a motel room Amy Gillabeaux rented in Tallahassee the night Kimberly Johnson was killed, the same night Amy used Johnson’s credit card. Looks to me like one of our guys killed Johnson and tried to use Amy to cover his tracks, then killed Amy, either because she was pregnant or she was figuring things out. The same guy probably offed Sharon, Vontressa and our Jane Doe.” He threw his hands up in the air. “But what do I know? I’m only interested in getting my brains fu—”

“Does that mean you’re not charging my client?” Autry Holton, the county’s public defender, dropped her briefcase on the empty desk nearest the door.

“We may charge him with possessing stolen property,” Tick growled. “But we might be able to work out a deal if he talks to us.”

Stanton pinched the bridge of his nose, shoulders slumped with absolute defeat. “Cookie, go get Butler out of holding. Maybe he’ll talk to us now.”

Tick turned away, not able to look at Stanton, not wanting to feel sorry for him. He rubbed a hand over his nape, hurt anger clutching at his chest. Damn it, he wished Stanton could see past the wall of his stubborn dislike for Caitlin. Scratch that—he wished Stanton had seen past it months ago, when she’d wanted to tell Tick about their son. Shit, another “if only” to live with. Just what he needed.

Autry grabbed the nearest chair. “Do you guys always get along this well? Y’all sound about as friendly as the DA and I do when we’re arguing motions.”

“Autry, please,” Stanton said, his voice weary. “Not now.”

Awareness prickled along Tick’s neck, down his spine. He looked sideways, his gaze clashing with Jeff’s steady one. The younger man regarded him with a weighing, assessing expression that set Tick’s teeth on edge.

Lord help him if Tori ended up wanting to marry the guy.

Cookie appeared at the doorway, out of breath. “Somebody might want to call the GBI.”

Stanton looked up, a sick expression tightening his face. “Why?”

“Because Bobby Gene is dead.”

After a deep drag, he offered the pack to Cookie next to him. “Want one?”

“I thought you were quitting.”

“Yeah, so did I.” He stared at Bobby Gene Butler’s body, now lying on the floor, still able to see him as he’d been when they’d run down the stairs to the cell area. Butler, face a deep purple, had twisted in a slow rotation, his body suspended from the top of the iron cage by his pants, knotted around his neck.

Supposedly he’d jumped from the top bunk. Tick figured he’d had a little help.

“Don’t you know it’s against the law to smoke in a municipal building in Georgia?” Will Botine, agent in charge of the Moultrie GBI office, slapped Tick on the arm.

Without a word, Tick extended the pack of cigarettes. Botine grinned and shook one out, pulling his lighter from his pocket. “Thanks. You boys didn’t have enough excitement over here with that nut running around strangling women?”

Tick glanced at the holding cell, where two agents were lifting Butler’s corpse into a body bag. The zipper rasped shut. He’d had enough excitement today to last the next ten years, at least. “Guess not.”

Botine attempted to blow a smoke ring. “Didn’t think I’d ever be investigating another dead prisoner in Chandler County. Not with you and Reed in charge now.”

Wonder what Botine would say if he knew their primary, albeit unknown, suspect was a Chandler County cop? A cop Tick himself had helped choose. Cursing, he ground his cigarette out in his empty foam coffee cup.

Botine gestured toward the ceiling. “I thought y’all were going to install cameras for this room.”

“They’ve been ordered. County commission won’t cut a check for them—said they were an unnecessary expense.”

Cookie snorted. “Bet you ten bucks someone’s here tomorrow, installing them.”

Botine leaned against the wall, his casual posture not fooling Tick for a minute. “So who was down here, anyway?”

Cookie hooked his thumbs in his belt. “I walked through about thirty, maybe forty minutes before we found him. Roger had been down here, but he takes the front desk when Lydia goes to lunch. Could’ve been half a dozen deputies in and out the back door.”

“Where were you?” Botine waved his cigarette at Tick.

“Tallahassee. Running down a lead.”

“Can anybody verify that?”

“Agent Caitlin Falconetti, FBI.”

“Agent Falconetti. I had the pleasure of talking with her this morning about some lab work you all are waiting on.” His expression indicated it was anything but. “Was Schaefer here?”

Cookie shrugged. “Except for earlier this morning when he went out to Mrs. Milson’s place. Her car was missing again.”

Botine grinned. “Where’d she park it this time?”

“Behind her garage.”

“You said earlier Chris Parker went with you to bring Butler in. Where is he now?”

“Home, probably. It’s his split shift. He left around eleven.”

Botine added his cigarette butt to Tick’s coffee cup. “Well, let me go check in with Stan. Talk to you boys later.”

Cookie watched him go. “We are so screwed.”

“Oh, yeah.” Maybe the FBI would take him back. A long undercover assignment in Podunk, Mississippi didn’t sound so bad right about now.

Frustrated, Caitlin stepped out of the car and glared at the oil pooling beneath it.

She slammed the car door, muttering curses that would have horrified her grandfather. The car was dead, her cell phone was MIA and she was on a deserted rural highway.

Even in the middle of the day, the Georgia sun bright overhead, the scenario was terrifying. She didn’t want to think about what it had been like at night.

Sharon had to have been scared out of her mind.

Caitlin put her hands on her hips and cursed the car again. At her waist, the holstered nine-millimeter SIG was a reassuring weight.

Unlike Sharon Ingler, she wasn’t defenseless.

A thin trickle of perspiration ran down her spine, her blouse clinging to the dampness. Nearly an hour since the car shuddered and died. She wanted to think that sooner or later Tick would come looking for her.

“You’re talking about the man with absolutely no sense of time,” she muttered, using the sound of her own voice for reassurance. Arms crossed over her chest, she leaned against the car and eyed the highway. No traffic, in broad daylight, in almost an hour. A house lay a mile up the road, she remembered it, and she could understand the compulsion to start walking toward the nearest people.

She shivered in spite of the glaring heat. She understood the impulse, but she wouldn’t give in to it. The distance was nothing—she ran far more than that on a regular basis. The isolation was everything. And she could just imagine Tick’s reaction if she did set out on foot and he happened upon the empty car. The worry would drive him berserk. She loved him too much to do that to him.

She closed her eyes on a long, slow exhale. She loved him.

That was something else he needed to know.

She needed to give him the words. She killed the next fifteen minutes indulging in fantasies of the best way to do just that, imagining his response. The following fifteen minutes she spent devising ways to punish him for not noticing that she’d been MIA for an hour and a half. If he was shooting the bull with Cookie while she sweltered, she would handcuff his ass to the bed, tease him to within an inch of his life, and leave him there until she was good and ready to put him out of his misery.

Considering she couldn’t keep her hands off his long, lean frame, about five minutes max.

She brushed her hair back, eyeing the heat mirages on the blacktop. A vehicle topped the hill, coming into sight before the rumble of the engine reached her ears. It slowed to a stop behind her rental, and she tensed, not pushing away from the car. She unsnapped her holster, resting her hand lightly on the butt of the semiautomatic.

She didn’t relax, even when she recognized the driver. He stepped out of the car and began walking toward her. “Having a little trouble, Agent Falconetti?”

Sitting against the wall, Tick studied the patrol schedule from the night Sharon Ingler disappeared. Something was off, but he just couldn’t figure out what it was—like having a popcorn kernel stuck between two molars and being unable to wiggle it free. The sensation drove him crazy.

Peace and quiet to think would probably help. He glared at the commotion brewing around him. The coroner had finally arrived, and Butler’s body had been removed. The jail complex still crawled with GBI agents, and he’d given the same answers to the same questions to four different agents, not counting Will Botine. They made it very clear who was in charge and the sense of powerlessness grated.

Desperate to get something done, he’d pulled the patrol schedules for the last two months and sent Roger for the dispatch tapes and unit videos. There had to be something here that would lead him to the son of a bitch hiding among them.

“Here.” Cookie handed him a fresh cup of coffee and slid to the floor next to him, grunting. “Find anything?”

“No. Not a damn thing.” Tick leaned his head back, sipping the hot, bitter brew with caution. Four cups of coffee and a half a pack of cigarettes on a now-empty stomach were coming back to haunt him. Acid gnawed at his gut, the burn spreading into his chest. His eyes drifted closed.

“Hey, where is Falconetti, anyway?”

“She went to check her voice mail at the hotel. She should be back anytime now.” Reluctantly, he opened his eyes and glanced at his watch, unease skittering along his nerves. Two hours. More than two hours. The trip to her hotel and back should have taken fifteen minutes at the most.

Setting his coffee aside, he jerked his cell from his belt and dialed. Phone at his ear, he rolled to his feet, brushing dust from his slacks. Her voice mail picked up immediately, her husky voice cool and professional as she directed the caller to leave a message.

“Cait, it’s Tick. We’ve got a problem at the jail. Call me.”

Cookie stood. “Tick. You just left a message on a cell phone she can’t find.”

“Ah, damn it.” He dialed the hotel’s number, asked for her room extension and listened to the phone ring until the message center picked up there. He shook his head, worry joining the coffee and nicotine gnawing at his gut. “She was just going to the hotel and back.”

Cookie shrugged. “Maybe she stopped off somewhere, went to lunch or something.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Cookie.”

“No, you’ve just got it bad, period.”

“Not you, too.”

“Hey, I say go for it, man. It’ll be fun to watch her make you toe the line. And if you think about it, the idea of this bastard being a cop makes a sick kind of sense. Falconetti and I talked about it…you know, who would a woman trust enough to get out of a disabled vehicle.”

“What did she say?”

“That she wouldn’t get out of the car for anyone.”

“Sounds like Cait.” He jerked a hand through his hair. Where the hell was she? “I’m going to look for her. Not like I’m needed around here—”

“Well.” Stanton joined them, his face haggard. “An hour and a half of investigating, and the GBI has ascertained that we have a dead prisoner on our hands.”

Cookie grinned. “Careful, Stan, your superiority complex is showing.”

Stanton turned to Tick. “Ray’s at the front desk, screaming for a statement. You want to talk to him?”

Tick fixed him with a baleful glare. “You think I’m capable of putting more than two words together?”

“Damn it, Tick, I don’t need this right now. Just go give him a statement.”

Botine jogged down the stairs. “Damn, Reed, your day keeps getting better and better.”

With a quiet curse, Stanton rolled his eyes skyward. “What now?”

“State trooper located an abandoned rental car out on Highway 19 a few minutes ago.”

Stanton shrugged. “So? We probably get a couple of abandoned cars a week.”

“Well, this one happens to have a dead female FBI agent in it.”

A red haze exploded behind Tick’s eyes. Hands at Botine’s neck, he slammed him into the wall. “What did you say? What the hell did you just say?”

“Calvert, what the fuck!”

“Stop it.” Stanton’s arm came across his chest, attempting to break his hold on Botine and push him away at the same time. Tick ignored him, horror and grief and a desperate disbelief pulsing through his brain.

Oh, God, no, it wasn’t…it couldn’t be…not…he couldn’t lose her, too…

“What did you say?” He pushed Botine against the wall again, and Stanton’s arm tightened on his chest and shoulders, thumb pressing hard into the nerve point behind his clavicle. Numbness took his body, knees buckling, giving Stanton the leverage to drag him away from Botine and pin him against the opposite wall.

He closed his eyes, a scream pushing up in his throat. No. She couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t take it. He could not bear it…not this.

Absolute silence blanketed the room. Botine’s voice emerged choked with fury and pain. “Reed, what the hell?”

“They’re old friends. They were at Quantico together.” Stanton supported Tick against the wall—his own knees didn’t want to bear his weight.

“He was doing her on the side.” Schaefer’s muttered words coincided with Stanton’s.

Snarling, Tick lunged at him, breaking Stanton’s startled hold. “Son of a bitch—”

He hit the solid wall of Cookie’s chest, preventing him from wrapping his hands around Schaefer’s throat as well. Strong fingers grasped his wrist, pushing his arm up behind his back, shoving him against the wall again. The physical discomfort didn’t come close to the agony crushing his chest. Shit, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t…

“Come on, Tick, calm down.”

Calm down? Was he crazy?

Cookie released his arm, keeping him restrained by pressing his shoulder into the wall, Stanton’s hand pinning his other shoulder. Stanton growled next to his ear. “I don’t want to throw you in a cell, but I will if I have to.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Stan. The last guy we put in there is dead.”

“Shut up, Cookie.”

The fury drained, swallowed by the shock and anguish. His lungs wouldn’t work, first heaving, then seeming to stop altogether. “Cookie, my God…Mark, she can’t be dead. She just can’t be…”

Heavy fingers tightened on his shoulder in sympathy. “I’m sorry, Tick.”

His eyes closed once more. How could she be dead? How could everything be gone, just like that? His throat shut against the animal sob of despair welling within.

Stanton’s voice, from a distance. “What happened?”

“Car’s on the southbound side of 19.” Botine sounded less outraged. “Trooper on site mentioned multiple gunshot wounds. I was going to see if you and Tick wanted to ride out that way with me, but—”

“I’m going.” Tick opened his eyes.