Hunter's Need (31 page)

Ana hadn’t done it, so why else would he have just blanked out? Unless there really was another like Ana. Unlikely as it was, over the past few days, he was starting to realize that it had to be the case.

Unlikely as it was, Ana had stumbled across a serial killer with a gift way too similar to her own. It would explain so much—why he hadn’t felt anything, why Ana wasn’t affected as much up at Chugach—she’d been more immune to it, since she lived within her shields all the time.

With somebody else blocking him, possibly Carter, he wouldn’t have felt anything until it was too late. More, if somebody was blocking him, it could keep him from picking up on the clues he’d normally follow. Leaving him in the dark.

Carter . . .

Was it possible she’d been living next to a killer for a year without ever realizing it? Possible—well, hell. Yeah, it was possible. Those shields of hers—unless she was in physical contact with somebody, it definitely was possible that she wouldn’t be picking up anything from the guy. If he’d been a threat to her, her instincts would have kicked in, but Ana didn’t fit the profile of the guy’s victims so there was little chance of him being a threat to her on that level.

He felt half sick even thinking it. His stomach knotted and he flexed his hands. His body wanted to shift so bad, it left his bones aching. He took a minute to drag in a couple of breaths, hoping to cool the rage. It didn’t do much, but he did manage to get some measure of control back.

“You’re sure you’ve seen him before?”

“Sure?” Ana repeated. She shrugged restlessly. “I don’t know, Duke. But there’s something about those eyes . . . no, I’m not
sure
, but I really think I’ve seen him before.”

Duke ground his teeth together. It helped keep the growl locked in his throat. Still, his voice came out deeper, rougher, harsher than he’d intended. “But you don’t know where?”

“No. No, I don’t.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face and swore. Now what? Did he tell her? And what if he was wrong?

Ana, I saw your landlord a few hours ago. He was sitting with a girl that looked enough like Marie to be her sister. I really don’t know if there’s anything to worry about, but . . .
Yeah, that would go over real well.

“Fuck, ain’t this going to be fun?” he muttered. “Okay, so here’s what we need to do. We need to sit down and just make a list, I guess . . . ” Actually, what he needed was for Ana to be distracted so he could either run a search on Carter himself or call somebody back at Excelsior to run it. Maybe a picture of the guy from twenty years ago—

Screw that idea. He wasn’t going to get her pissed off at him unless he had a bona fide reason for it. He glanced up and realized Ana was watching him expectantly. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he said, “Shit, Ana. I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I’d noticed. You’ve been acting a little off ever since you walked in the door.” She quirked a brow at him.

No
. Screw the voice of reason right now. He wanted the voice of facts before he went and did or said something that would make her mad—or hurt her. Scare her. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to hide it if Carter was his man, but he’d damn well have a little bit of time to work out how to tell her. And maybe there wasn’t even anything to tell. Heaving out a breath, he scrubbed a hand over his face and said, “Sorry. Distracted. All this shit’s driving me nuts.”

“You and me, both,” she murmured. She leaned forward and kissed his chin, then settled back against the counter with her hands tucked inside her pockets. “Anyway, what I’d said was that I wanted to go back and talk to Marie’s sister again.”

Marie’s sister? Duke frowned, thinking back. Vaguely, he had some memory of a discussion involving the murdered woman’s sister. “Again . . . when did we talk to her the first time?”

“We didn’t.” Ana smiled. “I did. It was before you got up here. She couldn’t really tell me much. But . . . I dunno. Maybe I wasn’t asking the right kind of questions.”

“So now you think you know what the right questions are?” The wheels in his mind started to spin. This could work—if he went, he’d know where the sister lived, and then track down a picture of Carter from twenty years ago, go back out and see her without Ana . . . maybe he could get lucky and the woman would know Carter, remember him from all those years ago—if it was him. That would be something linking them, at least, and he could decide what to do from there.

His gut insisted that Marie had known her killer, somehow. Okay. Yeah. This could work.

“I don’t know if I know the right questions now, but I’ve got a better idea of what to ask at least. This might sound crazy, but I get the feeling that Marie somehow knew the guy that . . . well, the guy that killed her,” Ana said in an eerie echo of his own thoughts. “I don’t know how and I could be wrong. It’s just a feeling I’ve got. But maybe if I describe the guy I remember from Leah’s memories, maybe . . . I don’t know. Maybe Beverly knew him, too.”

Then Ana closed her eyes and sighed, her shoulders slumping. “We’re putting an awful lot of hope onto
maybe
.”

“You have to go with what you got, Ana.” Closing the distance between them, he went to her and hooked an arm around her neck. She had some maybes—and he had a gut instinct. With any luck, one of them would pan out and they could actually get something accomplished.

He pressed a kiss to her brow. She snuggled up against him, rubbing her cheek against his chest. Duke’s heart clenched inside his chest and he skimmed a hand up her back. Protectiveness, need, other crazy emotions he wasn’t ready to examine just yet swamped him. Staring out the kitchen window toward her landlord’s house, he told himself there was time.

They’d get this done—figure it all out. Then he could get to work on what to do about Ana.

 

 

 

 

I
T took them an hour to get out the door. Ana finished putting up the groceries after Duke said he needed a few minutes on the computer. Keeping an ear out to make sure she didn’t get close enough to see the screen, he logged into his email and sent a note back to Excelsior. He needed information on Hoskins, and until he had something concrete, he’d rather not have Ana catch him digging around on the Internet looking for dirt on her friend.

The few minutes ended up being forty-five and by the time they climbed into the car, it was edging on three thirty.

“We’re going to have to make this quick,” she said as he pulled out of the drive. “She watches her granddaughter during the day and she isn’t going to want to talk to us when her daughter comes to pick the girl up.”

“Should we wait until tomorrow?” Duke shot her a glance. If they waited, maybe he’d get lucky and get something back on Hoskins—like a picture from twenty years ago. He could even figure out a way to show it to Ana, see if it matched the image she’d caught while Leah took her on a grisly trip down memory lane.

She smashed the plans even as they formed.

“No. I don’t want to wait.” Ana shook her head and fought the urge to nibble on her fingernails, squirm around in her seat or fidget with her hair. She was restless. The memory of those eyes kept nudging at her and she had a headache from figuratively pounding her head against the wall as she tried to figure out where she’d seen him before.

They pulled out of the drive just as a familiar motorcycle pulled up. Ana absently waved at Carter as he turned into the drive. He slowed the bike but Duke turned out of the drive like he hadn’t noticed. She glanced at him and rolled her eyes. The carefully blank look on his face somehow managed to speak very loudly.

“You really don’t like that guy, do you?”

He shrugged. “I don’t really know the guy, so I couldn’t really say one way or the other, could I?”

“Now, Duke . . . that was actually very diplomatic. Especially for you.”

“Diplomacy isn’t my style.”

No. It really wasn’t. Still Ana had a feeling there was something that Duke wasn’t telling her. She didn’t have time to focus on that, though. Before she stepped inside Beverly’s house again, she needed to bolster up her shields. She wasn’t taking a chance of having any of the woman’s grief filter through into her head again.

She needed to keep focused and it wasn’t possible to focus with random thoughts dancing through her head or a storm of grief that threatened to blow her over.

Reaching out, she flicked on the radio and tuned it to a classical station. Duke rolled his eyes and started to change the channel. She slapped his hand. “Leave it alone.”

“Hey, I’m the one renting the car.”

Ana crossed her arms over her chest. “Too bad. I need to focus, want to layer on some extra shields. The last time I saw this lady, all the grief she had inside her hit me hard.” Ignoring his scowl, she turned the radio up louder and leaned her head back against the padded headrest. It wasn’t dark and quiet, but the classical music helped her block out everything else. It would have to work.

 

 

T
HANKS to road work and the summer traffic, it took close to thirty minutes to get to Beverly’s. Ana used the time to reinforce her shields as solidly as she could. By the time she climbed out of the car, she was wrapped in a psychic cocoon so pervasive, so complete, she felt like she’d lost one of her senses.

She hated going around shielded like this—left her feeling too vulnerable. She wouldn’t be playing unintentional voyeur, and she definitely wouldn’t be giving off any psychic vibes, but it meant she couldn’t pick them up, either. She was used to feeling . . . something.

Duke climbed out of the car and waited for her, staring up at the house with an unreadable expression. “You said you’ve been here before?” he asked, his voice tight.

She nodded. “Yeah. Not for long.”

“Anything weird?”

“Weird? No. Just a woman who’s still grieving for her sister, but that’s not what I’d call weird.” She glanced at him, and again, that preoccupied look on his face had her wondering what was going on. “Are you okay?”

He rolled his shoulders, rotated his head from side to side. “No. I dunno. Edgy. I’ve just felt a little off today, I guess. You feel anything?”

“I don’t feel
anything
,” she said. “I might as well be walking around wearing Bubble Wrap, I’ve got so much shielding up.”

Duke eyed the house, wondering if this was really worth the waste of time after all. He had other things he wanted to focus on—other people, namely Hoskins. Although it had seemed a good idea back at Ana’s, now he wasn’t so sure. He didn’t want to spend any time on this if it wasn’t going to get them anywhere.

Somehow, he doubted it would. His instincts were screaming, but they’d been doing that ever since Ana had told him she thought she’d seen the killer somewhere.

He didn’t like this Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys shit anymore. Well, he hadn’t ever liked it, but he was now in a state of serious hate. He wanted Ana out of there. Narrowing his eyes, he slid a look toward Ana and made a decision. She was leaving Alaska for a little while. It would take some doing, and she’d be madder than hell, but if he made some calls, exaggerated a bit while he explained he had his hands full and worrying about her wasn’t helping, he could make it work. He thought.

But even as he made that decision, Ana was heading up the walkway. Toward the house.

Safe behind her shields, Ana rang the doorbell and waited. When Beverly opened the door, Ana didn’t need to rely on her gift to let her know what the other woman was thinking—it was written all over her face—
Should have looked before I opened the damned door.

Something kept her from closing the door on them, though. Ana didn’t know if it was morbid curiosity or courtesy, but she was betting on courtesy.

“I should have known I wouldn’t get lucky enough for it to be done with you, especially after Paul died,” Beverly said. She glanced at Duke, curiosity lighting her eyes. “Who is this?”

“He’s a friend,” Ana said.

“A friend.” She made no attempt to hide her skepticism. “I’ve had a good five people show up on my doorstep since Paul died, trying to get me to talk about what happened the summer that Marie died. Even though I don’t
know
anything. Apparently some people think it might be
therapeutic
or give me some kind of
closure
to talk about my sister disappearing and speculating on some asinine newscast for five or ten minutes about how her disappearance has destroyed my family.”

Beverly crossed her arms over her chest and glared at them. “If you’re here thinking along similar lines, save us all the trouble and just leave. I’m not interested in being interviewed or reliving any of that time. Nor am I interested in speculating on how Paul managed to evade the authorities for so long.”

“You and I both know Paul didn’t hurt Marie,” Ana said quietly.

Averting her gaze, Beverly said nothing.

“I thought you didn’t believe Paul was guilty.”

Beverly looked back at Ana, grief darkening her eyes. “I don’t know what to believe now. I never could believe it was Paul—he wouldn’t hurt a fly. But then cops find that girl’s body, and his . . . what else should I believe?”

“I’d say trust your instincts. What do they say?”

Beverly took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she looked back at Ana, there was some measure of peace in her dark gaze. “I say, somehow, they’re wrong. But that means he’s still out there, whoever he is. He’s been out there all this time, killing girls that look like my sister. Destroying more lives.”

She looked from Ana to Duke and then finally back at Ana. “I guess you should just come on inside. Although, honestly, I’m not sure what you think this is going to accomplish.”