Safety Breach

Now that I’m back on my feet... Eric had said.

Maybe that meant he’d been out of commission. That would explain his nearly one-year absence. He hadn’t been in jail. Kellan had combed the records for that, just in case Eric had been picked up under an assumed name. He’d investigated any and all possibilities for that and had come up empty.

So, maybe Eric had been hurt and physically unable to kill? Of course, this could be about finances, too. With every law enforcement agency in the state looking for him, he would have needed funds to move around.

Kellan’s phone rang again, and he answered it right away when he saw that it was Austin PD. That caused Gemma to send another look his way. Caused Kellan to issue another round of that silent profanity for the bronc-kick of heat he felt behind the zipper of his jeans. Thankfully, it didn’t affect his hearing.

“Just wanted you to know that there’s still no sign of the shooter,” Sergeant Alan Gonzales said. “Or Eric Lang. We’ll keep looking though.” The update, or rather the lack of it, had probably come because Kellan had left the sergeant two messages to call him.

Kellan was still stewing over the gunman’s getaway, and nearly peppered the sergeant with questions about why the gunman hadn’t turned up on highway cameras or why no one had spotted him or someone matching his description, but he knew Gonzales. He was a good cop. Still, if Kellan had thought it would get him answers, he would have peppered a good cop with those questions and more. But it was obvious Gonzales had nothing to give him.

He ended the call, taking some of his frustration out on the button on his phone that he jabbed too hard, and he got up to pour himself his umpteenth cup of coffee. Of course, Gemma was looking at him, waiting.

While he gathered his thoughts—and pushed other thoughts aside—he studied her a moment over the rim of his cup. She was as wired as he was, and she’d chewed on her bottom lip so much that it was red and raw. Her fidgeting hands had plowed through her long brunette hair, too. Another sign of those nerves.

She was normally polish and shine with that flawless face and mouth that had always made him think of sex. Today though, her mussed hair tumbled onto her shoulders as if she’d just crawled out of bed, and the only shine came from those ripe green eyes that shimmered from the fatigue of staring too long at the computer screen.

Kellan thought of sex again, cursed again, and forced himself to tell her what she was no doubt waiting to hear. The info he’d just learned from that phone call.

He went across the room toward her. Close enough to see that her pulse was already skittering against the skin of her throat.

“They didn’t find Eric or the shooter.” He said it fast, knowing there was no type of sugarcoat that would make it better. It’d left a bitter taste in his mouth, all right. Because it meant Gemma was in just as much danger now as she had been when they’d escaped from her house.

A weary sigh left her mouth, causing her breasts to rise and then fall. If they’d never been lovers, he might have put a comforting hand on her arm. But that was dangerous. Because even though he doubted either of them wanted it, there was a connection between them that went beyond the pain and the hurt of what’d happened a year ago.

“Why did you say you owed me?” she asked.

The question came out of the blue and threw him, so much so that he gulped down too much coffee and nearly choked. Hardly the reaction for a tough-nosed cop. But his reaction to her hadn’t exactly been all badge, either.

Kellan lifted his shoulder and wanted to kick himself for ever bringing it up in the first place. Bad timing, he thought, and wondered if there would ever be a good time for him to grovel.

“I didn’t stop Eric from shooting you that night.” He said that fast. Not a drop of sugarcoating. “You, my father and Dusty. I’m sorry for that.”

Her silence and the shimmering look in her eyes made him stupid, and that was the only excuse he could come up with for why he kept talking.

“It’s easier for me to toss some of the blame at you for not ID’ing a killer sooner,” he added. And he still did blame her, in part, for that. “But it was my job to stop him before he killed two people and injured another while he was right under my nose.”

The silence just kept on going. So much so that Kellan turned, ready to go back to his desk so that he wouldn’t continue to prattle on. Gemma stopped him by putting her hand on his arm. It was like a trigger that sent his gaze searching for hers. Wasn’t hard to find when she stood and met him eye to eye.

“It was easier for me to toss some of the blame at you, too.” She made another of those sighs. “But there was no stopping Eric that night. The stopping should have happened prior to that. I should have seen the signs.” Gemma silenced him by lifting her hand when he started to speak. “And please don’t tell me that it’s all right, that I’m not at fault. I don’t think I could take that right now.”

Unfortunately, Kellan understood just what she meant. They were both still hurting, and a mutual sympathy fest was only going to make it harder. They couldn’t go back. Couldn’t undo. And that left them with only one direction. Looking ahead and putting this son of a bitch in a hole where he belonged.

She nodded as if she’d reached the same conclusion he had, and Gemma swiveled the screen so he could see it. It was a collage of photos of the crime scene at the Serenity Inn. He’d wanted to give her some time to level her adrenaline and come down from the attack, but it was obvious she was ready to be interviewed.

“I’ve been studying this,” she said, “and Eric could have been telling the truth about some things.” She paused. “I hope he’s telling the truth about Caroline, that he left her alive.”

Yeah. But if she was alive, did that mean she’d been with a serial killer this whole time? That twisted the knot in his stomach. There were things worse than death.

“I know you didn’t get a good look at everything in the inn where Eric had you that night. Eric said he picked up the gun from inside the inn. Did he?” Kellan asked.

“It’s possible. He’d drugged me by then so everything was blurry around the edges. But, yes, he could have done it. When he stepped into the house, he had his arms crooked around mine and Caroline’s necks. Caroline hadn’t been drugged so she managed to elbow him as he was backing up with us. She fought like a wildcat.”

Kellan nearly smiled. That sounded like Caroline. “If he was telling the truth, the gun would have been on the floor. Eric would have had to reach down to get it.”

She stayed quiet a moment, and he could almost see the images replaying in her head. “He staggered when Caroline was clawing at him.” Another pause, her forehead bunched up. “They both fell, I think. But only for a few seconds.”

He hadn’t thought that knot in his stomach could get any tighter. It did. Because a few seconds was plenty enough for Eric to have grabbed a gun and used it to shoot Gemma just as Kellan had been walking through the door. If that had happened though, and if by some miracle Eric had been telling the truth, then that left Kellan with a big question.

Why was the gun there?

Kellan looked at the photos again, letting it play out in his mind, too. “There are some inconsistencies.” He hated that blasted word, so sterile and detached from the emotion. Still, it was better than saying that there were things that had caused him a year of living hell and to not have a single full night of sleep.

“Dusty was shot with a different gun than my father and you,” Kellan said, spelling it out, again, with the hopes the inconsistencies might go away. “We always assumed Eric had two weapons and had possibly even run out of ammo in the one he’d used on Dad and you and that’s why he shot Dusty with another one.”

She cleared her throat just a little as if trying to clear her head, too. “Neither gun was found at the scene, which means Eric could have taken them with him. I don’t suppose either have turned up in a pawn shop or someplace like that?”

“No.” He’d been keeping tabs on that because a gun could possibly still have trace or fiber evidence even after a year. “I did put in a request, though, to have the CSIs go through the Serenity Inn again. They’ll head there first thing in the morning.”

For the first time today, he saw some kind of amusement in her eyes. He doubted it was from actual humor but rather because Gemma would know how that played out. “I’ll bet they weren’t happy about that. How many times have you had them go through it?” she asked.

“Three.” He’d lost count of how many visits he’d made himself. “That hotel was once a house, built in 1880, and people had hidey-holes all over. It has twenty-eight rooms and nearly fifteen thousand square feet. And as if that weren’t enough, it sat empty for a decade before Eric got near it. The squirrels and mice could have added even more holes. Easy to miss something in all that space.”

Gemma made a sound of agreement, pushed her fingers through her hair again. She opened her mouth, but then closed it as if she’d changed her mind. “Sorry. I was about to attempt a profile. We both know how reliable I am with those.”

That bite to her voice was drenched in regret and pain, things he knew plenty about. And while he didn’t want to go the profile route, either, he did want to run something past her.

“Rory Clawson,” he threw out there. “I know you’ve been doing hypnosis and therapy to help you remember more of what happened after Eric drugged you, and just wondered if you recalled him being there that night.”

“No. No recollection of that,” she said without hesitation but then paused. “How did you know about the hypnosis and therapy?”

“I’ve been getting updates on any and every aspect of this investigation—in case any new evidence came to light.” Kellan didn’t intend to apologize for it, either. “I want my father’s killer caught.”

Gemma continued to stare at him as if trying to figure out if that was all there was to it, but she didn’t press it. “I’ve been searching computer records, too, for updates. In case there’s any new evidence,” she added, emphasizing his own words.

Of course, she had. Because his father’s killer was also the same person who’d put three bullets in her. Well, probably. Unless Eric was telling the truth and Gemma had been the only person he’d shot that night.

“I can’t hack into Rory’s records,” she went on. “And, yes, I just tried.”

Again, no surprise, but he gave her a warning glare because she’d just confessed to committing a crime. He was ornery enough to consider arresting her but secretly wished he’d had the “moral flexibility” to do the hacking himself. Yes, he wanted the truth, but the badge meant something to him, and it had meant something to his father, too. Buck wouldn’t have wanted Kellan or his other sons bending the law even when it was for the sake of finding his killer.

Gemma must have had no trouble interpreting his glare or the way his forehead was now bunched up. While looking him straight in the eye, she lifted her hands, palms up, wrists exposed, as if waiting for him to cuff her.

Kellan’s glare deepened, and using his free hand, he braceleted those exposed wrists to push them back down. Unfortunately, that involved the touching that he’d been trying to avoid. Touching, that seemed to bother Gemma, too, because her breath hitched a little, and her gaze finally darted away.

“I’m sorry,” she said when his grip melted off her. “That put you in a tough position, but I’m not sorry for trying to get to the truth. Eric is out there, killing.” Now she shuddered, gave her bottom lip another bite until her mouth stopped trembling. “And he found out where I was, how to get to me. It bothers me that Rory’s a marshal and therefore could have gotten access to my WITSEC location.”

“That’s not the only thing that bothers me about him, but yeah, that’s part of it. What bothers me just as much is that I haven’t been able to solve the murder of Lacey Terrell, the prostitute Dusty was investigating. He was convinced that Rory was behind that somehow.”