Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [60]
“Another blade of grass?” she whispered.
“No,” he said softly.
She turned toward him then, knowing her eyes said too much, knowing she needed more armor, but helpless to find it now.
“They don’t believe you,” she said softly.
“I know.” His fingers traced along her jaw, lingered at the curve of her ear.
“My father’s good. Very good. But like all investigators, he’s meticulous. He’s going to start at the very beginning and have to work his way toward your conclusion. Maybe on another case it wouldn’t matter. But if you’re right, and there’s another girl already out there . . .”
“Clock’s ticking,” Mac murmured. The rough pads of his fingers returned along her jaw, then feathered down her neck. She could feel her chest rising and falling faster. As if she were running once more through the woods. Was she running toward something this time, or was she still running away?
“You’re very relaxed about all this,” she said brusquely.
“The case? Not really.” His fingers stopped moving. They rested at the base of her neck, his fingers bracing her collarbone and her skittering pulse. He was gazing at her with an intense look. A man about to kiss a woman? A cop obsessed with a difficult case? She was no good at this sort of thing. The Quincy women had a long history of being unlucky at love. In fact, the last man her mother and Mandy thought they had loved had killed them both. That was female intuition for you.
She wished suddenly that she didn’t think of her family so much. She wished suddenly that she really were an island, that she could be born again without any attachments, without any past. What would her life have become if her family hadn’t been murdered? Who would’ve Kimberly Quincy been then?
Kinder, softer, gentler? The kind of woman capable of kissing a handsome man under the stars? Maybe a woman actually capable of falling in love?
She turned her head away. Pulled her body away from his touch. It didn’t matter anymore. She suddenly hurt too much to look him in the eye.
“You’re going to work this, aren’t you?” she asked, giving him her back.
“I did a little reading on Virginia this afternoon,” he said conversationally, as if she hadn’t just jerked away. “Did you know this state has over forty thousand square acres of beaches, mountains, rivers, lakes, bays, swamps, reservoirs, and caverns? We’re talking several major mountain ranges offering over a thousand miles of hiking trails. Two million acres of public land. Then we have the Chesapeake Bay, which is the largest coastal estuary in the United States. Plus, four thousand caverns and several reservoirs that have been formed by flooding complete towns. You want rare and ecologically sensitive? Virginia has rare and ecologically sensitive. You want dangerous? Virginia has dangerous. In short, Virginia is perfect for Eco-Killer, and hell yes, I’m definitely gonna pursue a few things.”
“You don’t have jurisdiction.”
“All’s fair in love and war. I called my supervisor. We both believe this is the first solid lead we’ve had in months. If I take off from the National Academy to do a little sidebar exploration, he’s not gonna cry any rivers. Besides, your father and NCIS are moving too slow. By the time they realize what we already know, the second girl will be long dead. I don’t want that, Kimberly. After all these years, I’m tired of being too late.”
“What will you do?”
“First thing tomorrow morning, I’m meeting with a botanist from the U.S. Geological Survey team. Then I’ll take it from there.”
“Why are you meeting a botanist? You don’t have the leaf anymore.”
“I don’t have the original,” he said quietly. “But I might have scanned a copy.”
She turned sharply. “You copied evidence.”
“Yep.”
“What else?”
“Gonna run to Daddy?”
“You know me better than that!”
“I’m trying to.”
“You really are obsessed with this, you know. You could be wrong. This