He breathed in her intoxicating scent, his head full of her, his blood pounding, roaring through his veins.
I love you, I love you!
He felt her hands on his back, pulling him close, tugging at him, pushing slapping, shoving, shoving, shoving—
He broke away in surprise.
"What the hell are you doing?" she screamed.
Stunned, he jumped to his feet, away from her.
She was lying on the couch, her shirt twisted under her armpits, her bra above one breast, her eyes large and angry and frightened.
"I thought, I didn't mean—"
She sat up, dropping her blouse to cover her nakedness.
"Gillian, don't be afraid of me. Please don't be afraid of me. You're the only friend I have. Please—"
"This is how you treat your friends? You try to rape them?"
Rape? "No." He raised an imploring hand to her. "No—"
"If it is, then fuck you, Gavin Hitchcock. Fuck you." He heard the front door slam shut and her stomping footsteps, followed by her car squealing away from the curb.
And he realized it hadn't been God whispering in his ear at all—it had been the devil.
Chapter 18
Three days after her abduction and subsequent escape, Holly Lindstrom checked the peephole and then answered her front door. Standing on the step was a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl. She had blond hair with lighter streaks, cut very cool, curving in under a small, pointed chin. She wore a white crop top and beige hip-huggers with jogging shoes. Her flat stomach was tan, and her belly button was pierced.
Holly had secretly gotten her belly button pierced once, but it ended up getting infected and she'd had to tell her parents. The stud was taken out, the site cleaned, and she'd been put on antibiotics. The whole episode had been gross, but whenever she saw someone with a cool navel ring, she still wanted one.
"Yeah?" Holly asked.
"Don't you recognize me?" the girl asked, smiling broadly. "I'm your cousin, Gillian."
Gillian? Oh, shit! Holly thought in disbelief. Gillian? This was the cop who was supposed to be living with them?
Holly was standing there with her mouth hanging open when Gillian let out an excited squeal, wrapped her arms around her, and gave her a huge hug, the screen door hitting her in the ass.
"I can't believe I'm going to be living here with you," Gillian said. "Come help me get my stuff."
Holly followed her outside. "This is your car?" Holly asked, staring at the Mustang convertible.
"Isn't it great? It's a '65. Dad restored it for me." Gillian put down a huge suitcase and then made a face. "That was last year. Before I started getting into trouble."
Holly felt a little dizzy, trying to sort out what was real and what was acting. She'd been told the cop, when she came, would remain in character most of the time. Holly was already believing the crap she was telling her, even though she knew it was made up.
She helped carry her things inside, locking the door behind them. "Mom! Dad!" she shouted. "Gillian's here!"
Her parents appeared from around the corner. Their mouths dropped open, and Holly giggled. She could tell they were still trying to figure it all out when Gillian reached into her backpack and pulled out her badge. Now that she was inside the house, she must have thought it would be okay to come clean.
"I'm Agent Cantrell," Gillian said, her voice lower and smoother than it had been before. "We spoke on the phone."
Holly's father shook her extended hand, a perplexed expression on his face. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-three." She flipped her hair with one hand. "The stylist did an excellent job. I cut a picture out of Seventeen magazine, took it in, and told her I wanted to look like that."
"You could be seventeen," Holly said.
"I've always looked young for my age. You should see my mom. She's fifty and looks thirty."
"The FBI agent who interviewed me—her name was Cantrell."
"She's my sister."
"Cool." But Holly was really thinking about school. She'd spent the last two days moving through classes in a cloud, like nothing was quite real. Her friends didn't know how to act, so they avoided her. She would have been hurt, but it was like there was a fuzzy glass between her and everybody else. Now, at the thought of Gillian coming along, she felt a surge of excitement. "You're going to have the guys at school going crazy!" she said, laughing.
Gillian sat down with the Lindstroms at the kitchen table.
They talked about the detectives that were watching the house. They talked about being hypervigilant. They rechecked phone numbers in order of importance. Gillian told them what to watch out for and what to do in any given situation. "It's extremely important that you treat me like a seventeen-year-old relative, and not a BCA agent," she told them once all the pertinent details had been discussed.
Holly's parents nodded in agreement. The unforgiving ceiling light cast shadows, accentuating the exhaustion in both of their faces. "We want this guy caught and our daughter safe again," Mrs. Lindstrom said.
"That's what we all want," Gillian agreed.
Holly's father stretched his arms above his head. "You know, I might actually be able to sleep a little tonight."
His vote of confidence should have made Gillian feel good. Instead, she found it unsettling. They were counting on her. They had faith in her. Suddenly she began to wonder if Mary had been right. Was she ready for a step of this magnitude? Or had she jumped into a situation above her skill level just to prove herself to Mary, with no thought of the possible consequences? Now, with the victim and her family looking at her as if she were their salvation, Gillian was confused and a little scared—a reaction she was careful to hide.
Holly jumped to her feet. "Come on." She waved her hand, motioning for Gillian to follow. "I'll show you where you're going to sleep and put your stuff."
Holly's room was small, with a single window facing the street. The walls were papered with pink flowers— a design probably left over from early childhood. The rest of the room had been updated with funky lights, fake-fur-covered pillows, band posters, and candles. And, of course, stuffed animals.
"We brought a bed in here for you," Holly said, pointing to a twin bed covered with a purple spread.
Holly slid open the closet door. "I moved my clothes over so you can have this side."
"Thanks."
Holly plopped down on her bed, sitting on her hands. "I was so pissed when my parents told me you were coming. It sounded like such a lame idea. I was expecting some goofy older person in a wig or something. But this is going to be so cool." She bounced up and down. "This is going to be so much fun."
Gillian had spent the last two days pulling together a wardrobe, getting her hair cut and lightened, and talking the department into letting her lease the Mustang rather than a Fiesta. At first they were going to allow her only a hundred dollars for clothes. She finally convinced them that she would need at least five hundred. She'd looked into the school Holly attended and knew that even though Holly's parents were both teachers and weren't in the upper income bracket, most of the kids at the school came from wealthy families. The idea was for Gillian to blend, not stick out.
"You can't tell anybody about me," Gillian warned. "Not your best friend, not anybody."
"I'm good at keeping secrets, and this is one I won't have to feel guilty about. That's why it's so cool."
"I'm your cousin who's been having trouble at home, so I've come to live with you and keep you company. Period."
Holly nodded. "Right."
They went over various scenarios that might pop up, such as where Gillian was from, how well she and Holly knew each other. They decided to say they had met only a couple of times. That way there would be less chance of messing up their stories.
"Do you have a gun?" Holly asked out of the blue.
Gillian sat down on her bed and pulled up the hem of her flared pants. Strapped to her ankle was a little five-shot Smith & Wesson backup. "You can't as much as touch it."
"Don't worry."
Gillian didn't like guns. She wasn't comfortable with them. As a BCA agent she didn't wear one all that often, and she hadn't thought a gun would be appropriate to bring into a high school, but Wakefield felt it was necessary and had cleared it with the few school authorities who knew her true identity.
"Part of the reason you're there is to protect Holly," he'd pointed out.
Now Holly shrugged. "I've seen guns before."
"Your dad's?"
"No, kids at school."
Holy shit. "Kids have guns at school?"
"Well, not in the building, but in their cars. One guy had me come out and look, and he had three guns in his trunk." Gillian must have appeared dismayed, because Holly made a shooing motion with her hand. "Don't worry. He got kicked out last semester."
"If you ever see anyone with a gun, you have to report it right away," Gillian said. "You know that, don't you?"
"I don't like to squeal on people, but yeah, I know."
The room grew dim, and Holly lighted some candles and incense. They settled back on their beds and talked, Holly hugging a stuffed animal.
This was the part of childhood that Gillian had missed out on. She'd been fourteen when Fiona was murdered. At that point, her world had changed, had lost its brilliance. At that point, she'd finally understood that life was real, and the things you said, every word you spoke, mattered. She had screwed up, and in the process Mary, Gavin, Fiona, and herself had been robbed of their youth. So lying in the candlelit bedroom, talking and confiding in soft whispers was bittersweet for Gillian because she'd spent her own years in silence, in shame, guilt, and fear.
They chatted lightly for a while; then Gillian asked, "What about the guy who kidnapped you? Do you mind if we talk about him?"
Holly looked up sharply. "I'd like to. Nobody here has even mentioned what happened. Like it's going to set me off or something. Like it's not something I'm thinking about every second anyway. Do you think he'll try to kidnap me again?" she asked, poking the eye of the stuffed bear she was holding. "Detective Wakefield said that's why you're here."
"It's a possibility. Are you afraid?"
"No. Worried, but not afraid. I got away from him once. I can do it again." Holly was quiet for a minute, thinking through the question. Then she said softly, "Have you ever killed anybody?"
Nobody had ever asked Gillian that before. "No." She couldn't imagine any other answer.
"If you had to, would you?"
Point a gun at someone and pull the trigger? Could she do it? "Yes. If I had to. If someone's life was in danger."
Had Mary ever shot anybody? Gillian wondered. Had she ever killed anybody?
"But isn't that why you're here? To kill him if you have to?"
"Catch him, not kill him."
A knock sounded on the closed door; then Mrs. Lindstrom said, "Better get to sleep, girls. School tomorrow."
Gillian raised her eyebrows in surprise, and Holly pressed her face against the bear to stifle a giggle. Once they were in bed and the candles were blown out, Holly had another question to ask: "Why did you become a cop?"
Gillian wondered how much she should divulge and decided upon a watered-down version of the truth. "When I was a little younger than you, something happened to me that made me question who I was and what I really wanted out of life. I had a friend who was put in prison for something he may not have done, or something that may not have been his fault. That led to my interest in crime investigation."
"What did your friend do?"
Gillian hesitated, then decided to be forthright. "He was found guilty of murder."
Holly gasped. "But you don't think he did it?"
"I never used to feel that he was capable of murder. But now . . . lately, I'm not so sure. ... I always thought I knew him so well, but I'm beginning to wonder if I was just fooling myself. My sister says I see things the way I want them to be, not the way they really are, and maybe that's true."
Holly was quiet for so long that Gillian thought she was asleep.
"I lied," Holly suddenly said, the confession coming out of the darkness. "When I said I wasn't afraid, I lied. I'm always afraid now. I think about him all the time. I can't think about anything else." Her words came in a panicked rush. "You'll catch him, won't you? You'll kill him or put him in prison so I can quit thinking about him, won't you?"
Mary headed for the U of M campus and the fraternity where Sebastian Tate lived. They'd uncovered some new incriminating information about him, and she wanted to get her own interview.
Three days had passed since Gillian had gone undercover, and Mary wasn't feeling any better about it now than she had that afternoon in Wakefield's office. The thought of her sister exposing herself to a warped killer scared the hell out of her. But Gillian was a grown-up, and Mary couldn't do a thing if Gillian decided to act like an idiot. Not that she'd ever listened to Mary before—not even when they were kids. Gillian may have been the youngest, but she'd always had a mind of her own.