His body moved in a big sigh. She could feel his pulse, strong and slow, against her breastbone. There was another time of formless drifting. Then he said, his voice gravelly with sleep, “Soon as the weather clears, I’m moving in.”
He didn’t ask, he stated. She probably should have a problem with that. Nah, she was too tired. But she did notice he held very still, as he listened for her response.
She thought she might have rug burn, and her nose itched. She slipped one of her wrists out of his lax hold so she could scratch it as she yawned. “You’d better. But we’re going to have to have a talk about how chatty you get after sex.”
Torso to torso as they were, she felt his stomach muscles clench as he burst out laughing. The husky, low sound was as gorgeous as the rest of him. He lifted his head off her hair enough so she could turn to nuzzle at him, and he covered her mouth with his in a quick, physical response. She adored how affectionate he was with her. She adored everything about him. They were going to fight and discover each other’s less attractive traits, and the thought of him moving in was frankly rather scary, but there was simply no other alternative. There hadn’t been from the moment they both acknowledged the mating shift, so she thought she might as well just go ahead and accept the changes and enjoy the ride, because it was going to be wonderful to wake up in the mornings with him in her bed, to go to sleep at night with him in her body.
Something buzzed nearby.
What was that? She didn’t have anything in the living room that buzzed. It buzzed again and Gideon lifted himself away from her body. His expression was still heavy lidded with sensuality but his gaze had turned sharp and alert. He twisted to reach for his cell phone.
He clicked it on. “Yeah.”
She watched his face grow cold and still as he listened to the deep, growly voice on the other end. Her sleepy, wondering pleasure vanished in a clench of dread.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “I can bring Alice in. She would be safe at HQ and I could help with the search.”
She concentrated on the voice on the other end. A male said, “No point in doing that, son. I got plenty of people on the hunt. Just wanted to give you an update. If he’s got ’em, all he needs is one more now.”
“What about protection on the others?” Gideon asked.
The voice said, “I dispatched the first detail soon after we last talked and told them to keep a low profile so they didn’t freak anybody out any more than they already were. We’re working as goddamn fast as we can.”
She felt sickened. Oh no. No.
She had turned cold without his body heat and she felt vulnerable without her glasses on. She put them on and reached for the tangled pile of blanket to pull it around her as Gideon set the phone aside. He turned to her, the expression in his eyes grave.
“What’s happened?”
“Bayne got confirmation from the airlines,” Gideon told her. He reached out and picked her up, blanket and all, and cradled her against his chest. “The three chameleons scheduled to fly to L.A. never made it to checkin. Their seats were given last minute to three people waiting to fly standby. I know you know them, sweetheart. They’re—”
“Stewart Rogers. His mom, Leigh. Her fiancé, Jim Welch,” she whispered. She thought of the delicately boned boy, his sweet little earnest face, those serious eyes behind Coke-bottle-thick spectacles and his shy, rare smile. He took after his mother, a gentle, kind woman. Something roared in her ears. “Stewie’s in my class, Gideon. Not Stewie. Please don’t tell me that.”
He held her with his entire big body. He threw off heat like a furnace but it still wasn’t enough to drive away the killing cold.
“Sweetheart, I would give anything in the world,” Gideon said, “to be able to not tell you that.”
Somewhere outside, she could have sworn she heard the wicked wind laugh.
Chapter Seven
Love
She got to her feet, anxious to do something, anything, to push the news away. Gideon rose to stand beside her. He rubbed her back as he asked, “Can you think of anything Stewart or his mother might have said in the last few days that might have seemed different or out of place?”
He sounded so calm she wanted to scream at him. Stewart and Leigh might have been murdered in the most horrible way even as she and Gideon had been making love. She put both hands over her mouth, shaking with the effort to find some kind of control.
“Remember, Alice, we don’t know what happened to them,” he said. Rogers and Welch were pretty far down on the alphabet. If the killer had taken them, he might hold on to them until he had his seventh sacrifice. “The only thing we know is that they’re missing. They may not be dead.”
She looked up to find Gideon watching her closely. There was pain in his eyes. Even though he didn’t know any of the people, he was hurting too, hurting for her. The sight clicked her back into balance. “Give me a minute,” she said, “I need to calm down so I can concentrate.”