The Girl Next Door (Shadow Agents #6)(16)
Author: Cynthia Eden

Gabrielle found herself standing in the living room, gazing around with dazed eyes. Everything that she’d valued was gone.

Cooper was on his phone. Probably calling the police for her. Again.

She rubbed chilled arms. The cold wasn’t just on the surface, though, it went bone deep.

Cooper shoved his phone back into his pocket. He’d already holstered his weapon.

You can fall into me. She wanted to fall right then, but Gabrielle was afraid that if she did, she’d never be able to get up again.

“I told you,” she said and was surprised by how eerily calm her voice sounded. “Someone was watching me.”

“You were right.” His eyes blazed with a barely banked fury. She should be feeling a similar fury, but she wasn’t. That coldness seemed to be cloaking all of her emotions.

“I called in a favor,” he told her. She couldn’t look away from his eyes. She didn’t want to look anywhere else. Everything is gone. “I’ve got a team coming over here. If the SOB left any prints, any evidence, we’ll find him.”

That seemed…odd to her. “You didn’t call Carmichael?”

“He’ll be informed.” His fingers curled around her arms. “Right now, I want you to come downstairs with me. You’re going to be staying at my place tonight.”

His place. Her eyes widened. “What if—what if he did this to your apartment, too?”

“I don’t think—”

She pushed past him and ran down the stairs. Cooper was working with her now. What if the intruder had realized that? What if he’d destroyed Cooper’s place, too?

Breath heaving, she staggered to a stop at Cooper’s door. He was beside her. Always, moving so fast. He unlocked his door. Hit the lights.

Untouched.

The intruder had just gone after her. He’d just destroyed her home.

“I’m glad,” she whispered as her shoulders slumped. “I didn’t want him hurting you…because I pulled you into this mess.”

He swore and tugged her closer to him.

“I know it’s related, it has to be,” she said. She wasn’t going to ignore the facts, even though they terrified her. “It’s him. The killer. He knows I was at McAdams’s place. He could have been there, watching us from the outside when the police arrived.” A crowd of people had gathered on the street.

He could have been right there.

Her heart pounded in a double-time rhythm. “He knows who I am, where I live. And getting hauled into the station by Carmichael tonight…” She swallowed. “That just might have saved my life.”

Because maybe the perp’s knife wouldn’t have just been used on her furniture and clothes.

He could have used it on me.

Chapter Five

Cooper shut his apartment door. Gabrielle was inside, showering, and he had a few minutes to spare.

Rachel and Dylan Foxx were already waiting outside for him—along with a sweeper crew. He jerked his head, and the crew hurried upstairs. If the killer had left evidence behind, they’d find it.

“The local cops?” he asked. Because Carmichael would find out about tonight’s events, sooner or later.

The EOD wanted that discovery to be later.

“Our team won’t leave evidence behind. The detective will be called in once we’re finished,” Rachel said smoothly.

Because before the local authorities took over, they had to make sure nothing had been left to implicate the EOD.

His hands clenched into fists as his gaze met Dylan’s stare. “He’s targeting her.”

“That doesn’t fit.” It was Rachel who replied. “He’s going after EOD agents—”

“Their girlfriends,” Cooper said flatly. “He kills the girlfriends, the lovers, first. Then he goes after the agents.” It was the rogue’s pattern. “He knows these men, knows them better than we do.” Because he was hiding behind the mask of a friend. “And maybe he thinks that Gabrielle saw something, that she knows something about him, because that SOB destroyed her home.”

He wouldn’t even allow himself to think about what might have happened if Gabrielle had been home when the rogue attacked.

“Are you sure,” Dylan asked, voice quiet and gaze steady, “that she doesn’t know more? She was the one who found out about Van, right? Long before anyone in-house knew he was connected to Melanie Farrell.”

“Someone in-house knew.” He hadn’t been given a chance to reveal this yet. “The last thing Van did was leave a message for me, in his own blood. EOD. That’s what he wrote.” McAdams had just been confirming what they already knew—

The killer terrorizing D.C. was one of their own.

“Did the cops see that message?” Dylan demanded as his face tensed.

“No, I took care of it.” And that didn’t sit well with him. He’d destroyed evidence. “But Gabrielle saw it.”

Rachel and Dylan shared a long look.

“What?” Cooper snapped.

“She’s a reporter,” Rachel reminded him with a raised brow.

“I know what she is.”

“She’s not going to forget what she saw. That woman will dig and dig until she figures out what the EOD truly is.”

Not possible.

“You have to stop her.” Dylan’s firm order. Dylan was the team leader on this case. The former SEAL had been working with the EOD much longer than Cooper had. “Throw her off the scent, give her another lead, but stop her from focusing on the EOD.”

Easier said than done. “Right now, my goal is to keep her safe.” Even as he said the words, he realized they were true. It wasn’t about finding out what Gabrielle knew any longer. Not about getting close to any intel that she might possess.

He wanted to make sure that she didn’t get hurt. That the rogue didn’t come within ten feet of her again.

And I want to make sure that if she ever does fall, I’m right there to catch her.

The thought rushed through him.

Changed him.

Then he heard the rustle of footsteps behind him. “She’s coming,” he whispered. Gabrielle would be looking for him, and she’d want to know what was happening upstairs.

The door opened behind him bare seconds later. He glanced over his shoulder.

Her long hair was wet. Slicked back, it accentuated her high cheekbones and her wide, dark eyes.

She’d put on one of his old T-shirts. It seemed to swallow her delicate shoulders, and she’d worked some kind of magic to get a very faded pair of his running shorts to fit her.