Gabriel (4 page)

Chapter Four

Leah twisted the knob on the dashboard, kicking the heat up a notch as she inched
along I-93S. Four-fifteen on a Monday afternoon and five o’clock traffic had started
early. She grimaced and flicked her signal up, notifying the parade of cars on her
ass she intended to take the Columbia Road exit.
Two car lengths, jerks
. They taught that rule in driver’s ed.

She sighed. God, she was bitchy. If anyone had been riding with her, they would have
resorted to strangling her by now. She wished she could blame her mood on traffic
and drivers who’d received their licenses at the nearest bodega. But the honors belonged
squarely on the wide, burdened shoulders of Gabriel Devlin.

Also known as her best friend and the man she loved with an unrequited passion that
made Cyrano de Bergerac seem like a lightweight.

She loved him—had been helplessly in love with him since she’d turned fifteen and
realized his blue eyes contained the power to make her feel as if she’d eaten too
much cotton candy and discovered the perfect shade of nail polish at the same time—fluttery
and delighted.

As a teen she’d adored him with the awe and happily-ever-after dreams of a teenager.
At thirty-one, the awe remained, but the woman’s heart understood heartache and disappointment.
The woman realized and accepted that love did not conquer all. Sometimes the heart
just settled for what it could get. Barely out of college, she’d witnessed Gabriel
marry another woman, and six years later, she’d seen him plummet into the bowels of
grief and eventually start to claw his way back to life…and she’d been there, quietly
loving him through it all.

She didn’t know if the devotion made her brave, stubborn, or just plain pathetic.
Probably a Prozac prescription away from all three.

Because Gabriel was not an easy man to love. He had the dark, brooding writer stereotype
down—even before he’d attained fame and success as a
New York Times
bestselling author. Still, it hadn’t been until after the deaths of Maura and Ian
that he’d become bitter, angry, and a recluse. And there were times—like Friday—when
she despaired of ever seeing the man he’d once been. She missed the Gabriel who quietly
teased her, the Gabriel who gifted her with a beautiful St. Michael’s pendant after
she’d graduated from the police academy seven years earlier. The Gabriel who laughed…who
lived.

She refused to give up until he returned.

But, damn, when he snapped and snarled before retreating into the cave he called his
office, she wanted to cry and rage while slamming his head repeatedly against a wall.

She’d loved Ian—the boy had been a part of the man who owned her heart. And though
she’d envied Maura, Leah had genuinely cared for Gabriel’s wife as well. Watching
the large white casket with Maura’s and Ian’s bodies locked inside lower into the
hollowed-out ground had been one of the most heartbreaking days of her life. But God
forgive her, as she’d stared at the terrible, muddy scar in the earth, her main thought
had been,
Thank you, God, that Gabriel was not in the car or in this casket
.

Shame stung her. She was selfish. Especially when Gabriel’s devout wish had been to
follow his family into the grave. But as she’d thanked God for Gabriel’s life that
day, she would help him fight for it now. With or without his agreement.

She turned onto the quiet street in the Dorchester district where Evelyn Gray Sheldon
had lived for over twenty years, bringing her thoughts to the task at hand.

She eased her car to a stop in the alley bordering Chayot Gray’s childhood home, and
parked next to a dark blue, early model Chevy sedan. She’d known Chayot—or Chay as
they called him—almost as long as she’d been friends with Gabriel, but she’d never
been to the house where he’d grown up. A damn shame her first visit was due to the
disappearance of his mother Evelyn’s old boyfriend, Richard Pierce.

Leah had never met Chay’s mother, either, but she did remember her own delight after
finding out Richard and her friend’s mother were dating. Several times she’d pestered
Chay with ideas of her flower girl dress and him holding her hand as they walked down
the aisle together if Richard and his mother were to marry.

She frowned. Funny how she’d forgotten those details for all these years. Only mention
of Evelyn Sheldon—or Evelyn Gray, as she’d been known then—in the old newspaper articles
Leah had dug up over the weekend had jogged her memory.

After Richard had disappeared, Chay had never spoken of the man who’d been his mother’s
partner for a little over a year. It had been Gabriel who’d comforted her, not Chay.
Gabriel who’d listened to her stories of her “Uncle Richard.” Not Chay. Wouldn’t it
have made sense for the two of them to share their sadness? After all, she’d lost
a second father, and he’d lost a father figure.

At eleven, she hadn’t questioned Chay’s absence and utter silence. But now, with the
edge of grief dulled by two decades, it seemed…odd.

She switched off the ignition, palmed the key, and got out. As she rounded the rear
bumpers of her truck and the sedan, she noticed a small set of stairs nestled in the
short wall of well-groomed hedges lining the alley. She climbed the steps and realized
they accessed the Gray property. With only a moment’s hesitation, she lifted the latch
on the hip-level, old-fashioned wire gate and swung it open.

Anticipation hummed through her, and her stomach performed a nervous somersault that
would have scored a perfect ten. The asphalt stairs represented the first step toward
the truth.

I’ll find out, Richard. I’ll find out what happened and bring you home.
The vow whispered through her mind as she headed toward the front of the small, olive-green,
single-family home and climbed the porch steps. At four thirty on Columbus Day, the
bank where Evelyn Sheldon worked as a part-time teller was closed, and Leah had gambled
on the hour being late enough for Chay’s mother to have returned home from any errands
she’d run that day.

Leah knocked on the front door. Her foot tapped out an erratic cadence as she removed
a peppermint from her pocket. She popped the striped candy into her mouth and waited.
And waited. Another minute passed and no one came to the door. She rapped the door
again. And waited some more.

Frowning, she leaned over the porch railing and peered into the window. But the white
curtains were drawn, leaving a sliver of space. The parked Chevy meant someone should
be home. Of course Evelyn could have been picked up by another person but…
damn
. Leah propped her fists on her hips and frowned, disappointed.

After another unanswered knock, she retraced her steps to the side of the house and
the alley gate. Silence greeted her as the back door came into view. At this time
of day—adults arriving home from work, children returning from school, evening traffic—the
neighborhood should be buzzing with activity. Instead, the absolute stillness wrapped
around her, almost suffocating in its weightiness. Unease skated down her spine.

She neared the rear of the home in a slow, measured stride. The need for caution clanged
in her head, insisting she proceed carefully. Nothing about the narrow sidewalk, tidy
bushes, and bright blue welcome mat should have inspired the disquiet tightening her
gut. Yet as she stood at the door, the visceral instinct credited with saving her
ass more than once while on the force clamored for her attention. And she heeded its
warning.

Reaching under her jacket, she thumbed the restraining strap around her SIG free.
She studied the window with the shuttered blinds, the cheery yellow paint bordering
the frame, and scanned down the white door to the knob.

Holy shit.

Her heart bucked. Shock lassoed the breath in her throat.

Red streaks marred the white paint near the doorknob, the rust-colored marks like
a macabre version of the peppermints she habitually consumed.

Reason interjected, argued the smudges could be mud or dirt or grease.

Intuition asserted that the stains were exactly what they appeared to be—blood.

The car in the alley. No answer to her knocks on the door… A half-dozen explanations
scrambled in her head, but one blared louder than the rest. What if someone was lying
inside the house, hurt? What if Evelyn, Chay’s mother, was that someone?

An image of Chay’s fallen-angel beauty flashed before Leah’s eyes—the golden, solemn
eyes, the pretty mouth with the rare smiles. She loved him. Chay, Raphael, and Malachim
were like brothers to her. And if someone Chay cared about might be in trouble, nothing
would keep her on the wrong side of this door.

She tugged on the cuff of her knit sweater and dragged the long sleeve over her hand.
Chest tight, she twisted the brass handle. The lock clicked, gave. The door cracked
open.

Oh, God.

The odor slammed into her, knocking her back several steps.
Rancid meat. Sultry heat peppered with bitter copper and waste.

Her stomach heaved. She gagged, swallowed convulsively.

Jesus.
Jesus Christ
.

Death
.

On her first week as a beat cop, she and her partner had found a decomposing body
in a garbage-strewn alley. The god-awful stench had imprinted itself on her olfactory
memory. She would never forget the reek of the bloated, rubbery corpse that had once
been a person with life shining behind eyes that had turned glassy and blank.

Leah pivoted on her heel and a slight twinge spasmed in her hip. She gasped as fire
flared in damaged muscle and tendon.

“Son of a bitch,” she rasped, stumbling to the gate, gripping it as she gulped down
several lungfuls of fresh air. Long moments passed as she tried to recover from the
blast of pain and clear her mouth and nose of the vile smell clinging to her tongue
and throat.

“Son of a bitch,” she repeated, her voice lower, softer, bitter. Her fists tightened
around the gate, the wire biting into her palm and pushing back the echoes of pain
in her hip. The injury reminded her she wasn’t a cop any longer; she should call 9-1-1
now and wait for real officers to arrive.

She set her jaw, straightened. Screw that. She turned back to the open back door,
dragged the neck of her sweater over her nose and mouth, and grimly stalked forward.

As she approached the entrance, she removed her gun from the shoulder holster. She
grasped the grip and extended the weapon in front of her, the muzzle aimed toward
the ground. She avoided the doorknob, nudged the panel open with her shoulder, and
eased inside the house.

Eerie silence shrouded the tiny entry hall. Her breath—hot against her lower face—resounded
in the space, loud and harsh. The corridor immediately branched off to the left, and
she emerged into a large, bright kitchen. Blue-and-white gingham curtains. Pristine,
white counters and cabinets. A huge, yellow refrigerator covered with magnets from
different cities: New York, New Orleans, Charleston, Las Vegas. The scene was welcoming,
cheery—and completely at odds with the body drenched in blood at her feet.

“Damn.” Relief and regret knotted her chest—relief the empty eyes staring up at her
weren’t Chay’s mother’s, but regret for the male who had lost his life. From the mottled
bruises on his face and ragged tears in his chest and abdomen, he hadn’t gone easy.
Blood pooled around the man’s large frame and splattered the pale gold cabinets of
the butcher block island and halfway up the nearest wall.

Though the man was obviously beyond any help, she crouched down and pressed two fingers
to his neck. Nothing. Not that she’d expected a pulse, but…
damn
.

She straightened with a sigh. Removing a napkin one-handed from her pocket, she wiped
the rust-flaked residue from her fingertips and carefully repocketed the tissue. Weapon
still drawn, she sidestepped the body and gore, circled the island, and exited the
kitchen. For the next ten minutes, she worked her way through the two-bedroom home,
careful to touch as little as possible. She didn’t enter the bedrooms off the hall
but elbowed the doors open so she could peer in and scan the area in case another
person had been harmed.

A shudder passed over her as she stepped back over the kitchen threshold and into
the tiny backyard. She tugged down the shirt from her nose and mouth and inhaled her
first deep breath in ten minutes. Striding away from the house, she holstered the
SIG and removed her cell from her pants pocket.

Trembling, she dialed.

“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”

“My name is Leah Bannon,” she said, surprised her voice didn’t betray the tremors
rippling though her. “I need to report a murder.”

Chapter Five

The trip to Evelyn Sheldon’s Dorchester home from his Charlestown condo should have
taken twenty minutes. Gabriel made it in fifteen. Images of blood, broken limbs, twisted
metal, gasoline-soaked gifts—

No, damn it!
He shook his head as he strode up the sidewalk.
Get a fucking grip
.

He gritted his teeth, and forced the constricting bands around his chest to loosen.
After a moment the paralyzing terror receded, leaving thin, icy remnants of fear slithering
in his veins.

When Leah had called to tell him what had happened, she’d assured him she was fine.
Gabriel kept reminding himself of that. And thankfully Evelyn hadn’t been home. His
loved ones were okay.

They. Were. Okay
.

A murder. At Aunt Evelyn’s.
Jesus
. The victim could only be one person—Darion Sheldon, his aunt’s husband of ten years
and Chay’s stepfather.

How could this have happened? True, Dorchester wasn’t the best of Boston’s neighborhoods,
but as long as he and Chay had been friends—which had been all of their lives—nothing
like this had ever taken place in this neighborhood. He’d always felt safe here.

Hell, how was Evelyn going to deal with Darion’s death? First Richard, now this. She
would be crushed.

Sorrow curled in Gabriel’s gut.
Been there, still doing that
.

Sometimes, this world could be a really fucked-up place.

Yellow-and-black caution tape already barricaded the property, warning onlookers to
maintain their distance. Well, he wasn’t an onlooker.

He skimmed his gaze over the heads of several officers looking for a recognizable
long, dark ponytail.
Not with them
, he noted, impatient frustration spilling through him. Peering at the front door
of the olive-green house that had been like a second home to him, he squinted at the
two police officers who stood in the open doorway. It seemed…profane.

He pushed forward up the driveway and was immediately stopped with an authoritative
palm to the chest. The police officer frowned as Gabriel leaned into his hand.

“Stop right there, sir. You can’t pass.”

“I’m family,” Gabriel insisted.

The officer’s expression remained placid, but his hand exerted more pressure. “I understand,
sir, but I’ll need to verify—”

“He’s okay, Officer Jamison,” a woman called out. “He’s with the family. Please let
him through.”

Jamison nodded and lowered his arm, complying with Leah’s request. With barely a glance
at the cop, Gabriel ducked under the tape and strode forward. But, as if an invisible
wall had sprung up, he drew to a sharp halt at the bottom of the paved walk leading
to the porch. And not out of respect for the crime scene before him.

Until that moment, he hadn’t realized the tension within him stretching tighter than
a guitar string was due to a panicked dread bubbling just below the surface. Though
Leah had claimed to be unharmed on the phone, he’d needed to see her lovely face with
his own eyes. He’d needed to determine for himself she was safe and untouched by what
she’d witnessed.

With her thick, black strands of hair smoothed back from her face, the fairy eyes
seemed more ethereal, the black fringe of lashes more pronounced. Of course, those
were the only things delicate about her. Where Maura had been petite and curvaceous,
Leah reminded him of an Amazon—beautiful, tall, and with a grace that could make mincemeat
of a fleeing perpetrator as easily as execute a perfect Viennese waltz.

That didn’t stop him from inspecting her slim figure from the top of her glossy hair
to the tips of her brown stiletto boots for injury as she nodded to the officer, turned,
and descended the porch steps.

Her long stride didn’t falter; it was confident, alert. A cop’s walk. Two years ago,
she might’ve shown up for this call in one of Boston’s finest’s squad cars. Had she
thought of that while giving her witness report to her former brothers in blue? Did
it bother her to see them there, to be on the outside of the fraternity she’d once
belonged to?

Yes.
He noted the grim, unsmiling line of her lush mouth, the aloof, rigid expression,
and the bruised darkness in her eyes he knew had nothing to do with finding Darion
Sheldon’s dead body.
Being outside the brotherhood bothers her
. He recognized the particular sheen of hurt and anger dimming the normal brilliance
of her gaze.

“Hey, Gabe,” she said. The remote coldness hardening her features was echoed in her
tone.

He nodded and slipped his hands into the pockets of the dark blue peacoat he’d yanked
on as he’d left his condo. Either he did something with his hands or he would grab
her close and wrap her in his arms until the shadows evaporated from her expression.

“Thanks for calling me.” He dipped his chin in the direction of the officers around
the house. “Did they find out anything?”

She shook her head and mimicked his pose. The movement nudged her jacket open, and
he glimpsed the strap of her shoulder holster as well as the butt of the SIG Sauer
she carried. His mouth went as dry as a Bill Belichick interview after a Patriot win.
Usually the sight of her weapon didn’t faze him, but with Darion’s body cold in the
house, cops standing guard on the porch, and the frenetic tension of a crime scene
humming in the air, it shook him. Hard.

Maura had been a homemaker; her most hazardous trip had been to Wal-Mart with Ian
pre-nap time. Leah’s job as a PI, while mostly fact-finding, entailed trailing people
who didn’t want to get caught in illicit activities, digging into lives, and uncovering
information people fought to keep under wraps. It required a damn gun.

He’d lost Maura on a conventional, risk-free drive to her parents’ home for a Christmas
party. Where would he lose Leah? While on surveillance? Outside a target’s home? Entering
a house with a dead body where a killer could remain, lurking in the darkness in wait
for another victim?

His heart thumped like a bass drum, loud and hard, reverberating through his body.
Yet another reason to keep his distance from her.

For a moment, it drowned out the primitive beat of desire humming in his blood.

Just the thought of wanting Leah caused guilt to flay his gut. Yeah, Maura was gone,
but her death served as a vivid, agonizing reminder of why he didn’t dare risk anything
with Leah other than friendship. Opening his heart and losing Leah, the best friend,
would wreck him. But losing Leah, his best friend
and
lover, would destroy him.

Leah was a risk he—his heart, his soul—simply wasn’t willing to take.

“No,” she replied to his question, bringing him back to the situation. “Nothing new.
I just finished up my statement with the officers. The ME arrived a few minutes ago,
and the detectives are still going through the house. They have Chay around back and
are interviewing him. It’s probably going to be a while before we find out anything.”

She fished in her jacket pocket, pulled out a peppermint.

“Want one?” When Gabriel shook his head, she unwrapped the candy and slipped it between
her lips in an unconsciously sexy gesture. He clenched his jaw.
Shit
.

“How’s Chay?” he asked, disgust at his unruly hormones sharpening his tone.

“He’s”—she twirled her hand in the air as if attempting to conjure the correct term
to describe their friend—“Chay.” She sighed, tucked the wrapper into her jacket pocket.
“Calm, quiet, keeping it together.”

Yeah. Keeping it together…while inside he was probably screaming. But damn if Chay
would show it. The four of them—Gabe, Mal, Rafe, and Chay—all had their issues, their
inner demons. Gabriel had lost Maura and Ian in a senseless, tragic accident; Malachim
had daddy issues that made Hamlet and his father look like drinking buddies; Raphael
had an eternal case of black-sheep-itis. And Chay— Gabriel often wondered what event
would ultimately bring his friend’s emotional house of cards tumbling down.

“Is it bad?” he asked.

Leah grasped the meaning behind his question, and slowly nodded. “It isn’t pretty.
I’ve seen a few murder scenes in my day, and this one…” She glanced over her shoulder
toward the house. The front and side of the structure had been roped off with several
officers standing guard, and one uniform posted at the front door with a notebook.
As they watched, the cop stopped a man in a Tyvek suit, gloves, and booties, scribbled
something on the pad, and then allowed the crime scene tech inside the house. “This
one’s up there in brutality. I’m not an expert or psychologist, but the stab wounds—they
were vicious, savage. Whoever did this was angry, filled with hate. This was very
personal.”

Good God
. Gabriel closed his eyes, shuddered. Instead of Darion, his mind reflected Leah lying
on the floor, bloody, battered, torn apart. Terror clawed at his chest, spilled a
bitter tang on his tongue. His lashes lifted as though his soul needed reminding she
stood before him, whole, unspoiled.

“I want to pull you into my arms and hold you right now.” The confession was ragged,
hoarse, dragged from the part of him he’d buried with his wife and son—the part of
him he denied existed any longer.

She blinked. Stared. Then a hesitant, tentative smile wavered on her lips. As if uncertain
of his words’ meaning—or her reaction to them. The expression, so jarring on the confident,
stubborn woman he knew, pierced the atrophied muscle he called a heart.

“Thanks,” she murmured. “It’s enough that you want to. I—”

“Hey, Bannon,” Jamison shouted from behind him. “These two here. Do you know ’em?”

Leah sidestepped and peered around Gabriel. “Yes. They’re with the family, too. Let
them through.”

Gabriel turned in time to watch Malachim and Raphael rush forward. In spite of the
circumstances, the corner of his mouth twitched as Jamison eyed Rafe as if he belonged
in the back of a squad car handcuffed, not crossing a police barricade. Clothed entirely
in black from his hoodie and jeans to his combat boots, with long, black hair falling
around his face and small silver hoops piercing his brow and ears, Rafe presented
an intimidating figure. Malachim, in his perfectly tailored black suit and long wool
coat, cut an equally striking figure. His cool, refined elegance was the antithesis
of Rafe’s roughness, yet they both shared the same take-no-prisoners demeanor that
made Rafe an excellent security specialist and Mal a formidable litigator in the Boston
area.

Rafe reached him and Leah ahead of Mal. Gabriel stepped forward and they embraced,
the hug brief and tight. He repeated the clinch with Mal, murmuring a hello.

“Hey, sweetheart.” Rafe planted a kiss on her cheek. His eyes searched her face. “You
okay?”

Leah nodded. “I’m fine.”

Mal leaned forward and kissed her opposite cheek.

“Chay called you?” Gabe asked his friends.

“I did,” Leah interjected. “I figured Chay would want you all here for support.”

Gabriel stared at her and wondered if there would come a day when she would cease
to amaze him. Beautiful, intelligent, and compassionate.

“This is a mess.” Mal glanced toward the front porch. If the officers’ presence disturbed
him, he concealed it well. But then, Mal had always been the rock of their group,
older than the rest of them by ten hours. Even as a teenager, he’d been more mature
than his years, the natural leader of their group, whom they all turned to for the
guidance only one teen male could give another. Mal turned back to Leah. “So you’ve
been inside,” he stated. When she nodded in acknowledgment, his tone hardened. “I
guess it didn’t occur to you that whoever did this could still be in the house?”

Leah glared, her shoulders stiffening.

Rafe’s muttered, “
Fuck
,” didn’t go undetected by her. Her fierce scowl swung in his direction, blasted him.
“Don’t you dare start with the overprotective bullshit.”

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Rafe said, holding his hands up. “But I happen to agree with
Mal. You could’ve been hurt, or worse.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I was a police officer for six years. In that time I learned
a little—just a little, mind you—regarding the correct procedures upon entering an
unsecured crime scene,” she stated with such icy precision Gabriel wondered if Rafe’s
balls might be frostbitten. “I assure you both the integrity of the evidence
and
my safety were uppermost in my mind. The blood smears on the door were dry. And the
smell of decomp when I opened the door was unmistakable. That scene had obviously
been undisturbed for a while. No one was in that house.”

Maybe Mal and Rafe realized pursing the line of conversation meant having their asses
handed to them in slings. Or maybe they, too, caught the hurt ghosting across her
eyes. Gabriel swallowed, glanced away.

Part of him wanted to reach out and stroke a hand over her soft, black hair, press
a kiss to her forehead. She was a strong, smart, capable woman who, despite her personal
connection to the home and possible victim involved, had handled the grisly crime
scene with a cool, level head. As a suspense author, he’d heard more than one cop
complain about inexperienced or clumsy first-response officers inadvertently bungling
a scene when they stumbled upon it. But not Leah. Boston PD had lost a jewel when
she’d resigned.

On the other hand, the coward who fanatically sought to protect his heart from further
harm yearned to wrap her in plastic bubble wrap and ship her to a deserted island
where the most danger came from eating the wrong berries. Too clearly he recalled
sitting in the hospital, frantic as they waited on word about the surgery required
to remove the bullet from her hip.

“I’m sorry,” Mal said softly. “You’re right. Sometimes it’s hard to flip off the big-brother
switch.”