Her Best Friend's Keeper (Finley Creek Book 1) Read online

He looked at her. Something about the intensity of his eyes had her fighting the urge to squirm.

  Gabby knew herself well, and she knew her quirks. Every last quirky one of them. She didn’t do well when confronted by those in authority. She didn’t do well with tall, broad-shouldered men who looked at her like that, either. She tended to turn into a complete babbling idiot. Babbly Gabbly—that was her.

  Not a big surprise, really. She’d always had issues with being shy, and hating any attention her way. Was it any wonder she felt like a stupid raging river of babbling?

  That was true even before Sara was killed. And whenever facing that subject, the babbling was worse than a river. “I…wow, you really look like them, don’t you? I remember your dad looking just like you do now.” But there had been laughter in the senior Elliot’s eyes. Laughter and love that had never truly gone away.

  “You knew them well, didn’t you?”

  “I was at their house almost every weekend from the time I was eleven. You were already out of college when Sara and I became friends. She worshipped you and Chance. Did you know that? I used to be so jealous. I didn’t have a sibling. Not then. I have some now. But not then. And they’re kids, but I try to be a big part of their lives.”

  His face tightened. “I used to feel the same way about Sara and Slade. There were ten years between Sara and me. I should have made a point of knowing her better. Slade, too.”

  She could see it, couldn’t she? The real hurt in his eyes? Surely he knew that Sara had idolized him? Had he spent the past ten years thinking that? “Sara understood you were busy. And to be honest, you were old. We had other things to do…Well, sorry. That was incredibly rude, wasn’t it? What I meant was that Sara understood you were older and had your own life. She loved you.”

  “And I loved her. You did, too. I’m sorry for what I said at her funeral. I shouldn’t have, and I’ve regretted it.”

  “You were hurting. I figured that out eventually.” Gabby hadn’t expected that. She would have bet good money on Elliot Marshall never apologizing for anything. Arrogant guys like him rarely did. And he was arrogant, wasn’t he? Well, he definitely had been back then. She remembered a cocky guy drawing all the girls his way. Chance had had the same flare. Even some of her and Sara’s friends had thought Elliot and Chance Marshall were the greatest things on male legs.

  She and Sara had giggled over that so many times.

  He still looked pretty good, though. For a man closer to forty than twenty. He looked...kind of yummy, really. Gabby felt her cheeks heat again. Sara must be looking down on them from heaven laughing at Gabby for that stray thought. There was no way Gabby found Sara’s big brother drool-worthy.

  His face was too hard to get much of a reading on him now. She knew so little about him, and the ten years they’d not seen each other had just widened that gulf.

  What was she supposed to say now? When confused, her standard fall back was to…babble. “So…what are we supposed to say now? Hi, how are you? We don’t really know each other. Personally or professionally. So what do you really want to talk about?”

  ***

  HAD she always been so direct? He honestly didn’t remember. “I wanted to apologize, and wanted to see how you were doing. My family cared about you ten years ago. And it was wrong of me to push you away. I’d like to make amends for that.”

  “No amends necessary. And your family was close to me, but you weren’t. Chance wasn’t. So no obligation there. It was good to see you again. I saw Chance by accident. He was looking good, too. Good genes apparently ran—run in your family.”

  Did she ever stop talking?

  Thankfully the elevator reached their destination at the top. When the doors opened, he waved her through into the hallway just outside his office.

  What was he even going to talk to her about, anyway?

  He hadn’t been thinking when he’d first realized who she was. He’d just recognized her and then acted.

  She went to his office ahead of him and he took a moment to study her from the back. She had definitely filled out from the teenager he’d once known. He waved Officer Journey back to her seat. “It’s personal.”

  Gabby had to be in her mid-twenties now, didn’t she? Like Sara would have been. Was she seeing someone? Did she have a family? A man waiting for her to get home in a few hours? Had things ended up good and normal for Sara’s friend? He damned well hoped it had. She deserved it. He wanted to think of her as being happy over the past ten years. More than he or his brother had been, at least. Gabby settled in the chair across from his desk, then crossed and uncrossed her legs. Long legs.

  She stared at him. “Wow. This is completely awkward.”

  “Maybe. And maybe I just need to see a familiar face for a few minutes.” He grasped at thin threads, just to get some sort of conversation going. “So…you said you had siblings? How many?”

  “Three. Plus my step-sister Elizabeth. Remember Arthur Kendall?”

  “Yes. I kept in touch the first three years after the murders. But he never got anywhere with the case. And so I stopped calling.” Tried to move on. Or at least not make it the entire focus of his life.

  “He married my mother six months after the funerals. They have three kids now. And he had a daughter a year older than I am. Art’s great. We spent some time in Seattle after Sara…and he sent me to his sister in Spain for a little while.”

  “I’m glad things worked out for your mother. I knew Kendall retired.”

  “Yeah. He took an early pension. To…well…to keep me safe.”

  He definitely hadn’t expected that. Elliot leaned forward. “From what?”

  “You don’t know, do you?” She blinked at him, then a flush hit her cheeks again. He had a fleeting thought—did that flush cover her from head to toe? Or did it start right there, just beneath the collar of her purple shirt?

  “Apparently not.”

  “After…well, about a year after that night I started getting emails from someone. Art thought it might be one of the killers. They were threatening, and knew too much, I guess. That’s when I went to Spain. The emails stopped about five years ago. But Art…he still keeps an eye out for similar cases. He’s hoping someone will stop them somehow. I told Chance this that night we had dinner together.”

  “Chance didn’t tell me.” He didn’t like the idea of her and Chance having dinner together. Chance would hurt someone like this woman, simply by being Chance—and taking off in the middle of the night, disappearing for months. The idea that his brother hadn’t told him something as significant as her getting threats from the killers pissed him off. And was something he’d be discussing with his brother the next time he saw him.

  Not that Elliot knew when that would be. Last he’d heard, Chance was somewhere in Missouri working. Chance was a private investigator, licensed in several states surrounding Texas. They didn’t talk much about what his brother did whenever Chance would blow into whatever town Elliot was working in.

  He saw his brother maybe three times a year. And that hadn’t changed since the year after the murders.

  Just another of Elliot’s regrets.

  “Art said it might not be the killers, either. Just some stupid nuts wanting to scare me.”

  “Damn it, Gabby. I didn’t know. If I had…” He’d have what? Protected her? Art Kendall had done a fine job of that. He just didn’t like the idea of her dealing with the fear all alone.

  “It’s ok. I’m safe here. I know I am.”

  CHAPTER SIX.

  ***

  GABBY was glad to be home, and she was glad to be with a friendly face. Her day had been tilted on its axis since she’d left Elliot’s office.

  Elliot Marshall, Junior, in the flesh. Wow, wow, wow. He’d grilled her about the emails until she’d been ready to pull her own fingernails out and scream at him. There was such an intensity in the man and she’d been unsettled from the moment she’d laid eyes on him again. She’d finally claimed Benny probably needed
her and she had to leave his office. Escaped.

  She’d run and hid in the lab where she felt the safest, of course. Gabby had stayed there until her ride home arrived at the door to get her.

  Detective Jarrod Foster was one of her favorite people at the TSP, grumpy though he always was. She knew he cared—about her, about Brynna, and about his former partner, Brynna’s sister Melody. She sometimes thought he’d had a crush on Mel when they’d worked together. Still thought he might. “Thanks for the lift, again.”

  “Hey, it’s on my way.” He lived two floors up from her, and he routinely checked on her after hours. He knew of her…issues…with night time and going places and driving and just about everything else. And in a particularly low moment, she’d told him why.

  There had also been a few hot kisses between them that had gone just about nowhere. They’d decided they weren’t meant to be lovers in this lifetime, but friends.

  Friends worked better for her anyway. Even though those had been some seriously hot kisses worth remembering.

  Friends was a lot less scary than lovers. Gabby needed less scary, didn’t she? There was always the next lifetime for her and Jarrod to hook up. Or so he had always teased.

  “So what’s between you and the new chief?”

  “What do you mean?” Huh? There was nothing between her and Elliot, except the nastiness of the past.

  “Apparently he couldn’t look away from you. And seemed to watch you like crazy when in the room. At least that’s what the rumors are speculating. Because there was something interesting in how he said your name.” His voice showed no inflection, and his face was only mildly curious. But Gabby knew he was definitely wanting to know. Jarrod wouldn’t have asked if there wasn’t some serious curiosity going on in his handsome head.

  “He was Sara’s older brother. One of them. He blamed me for a while, I think. After she was killed.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. I’ve looked over the case files. You acted as fast as you could. And it wouldn’t have mattered—they were dead before you finished dialing 9-1-1. Where they lived no one could have gotten to them quickly enough to stop it. No one. Hell, their driveway was a mile long itself. Add in that they were fifteen miles from the nearest help. Nine and half minutes is the absolute best a well-trained team of responders could have made it. They did make it in twelve. By that point three of the four victims were dead.”

  “And Slade was dying. I know. In here…” She pointed to her head. “I know that. But in my heart…and at night…I still manage to do something different. To at least save Slade, if nothing else.” Slade would probably have survived if he hadn’t been deprived of oxygen for as long as he had. If she’d gotten him help just five minutes sooner. It had taken her a long while to come to grips with that.

  “And you’ll end up driving yourself crazy thinking that. The cards for the Marshall family fell the way they were supposed to. You got to just accept that.” Grumpy, but very accepting of fate—that was her Jarrod, wasn’t it?

  “I know. You’d think ten years would have been long enough, right?”

  “Time heals some wounds, but not all.” There was a dark expression on his face that told her he had a few serious wounds in his own past.

  She knew very little about him when it came down to it. Jarrod kept everything to himself. That didn’t matter—she still loved him. “Guess not. Well…so what are the greatest speculations?”

  “That you and he have a checkered past. Apparently he was a bit of a player back then.”

  “Ten years ago, definitely. Anyone tell you how old I would have been the last time I saw him? Sorry, TSP grapevine, no illicit affair. I don’t know if I could even spell illicit back then, unless it was a tenth grade spelling word. He missed Sara’s birthday dinner because of a last minute date.” And she remembered how hurt and angry Sara had sounded on the webcam that night. Sara had idolized her two oldest brothers, though she was much closer to Slade. That both Chance and Elliot had cancelled on her, for her birthday, had really hurt her friend. “I was going to the movies with Slade the next night. My first official date, Jare. I was hoping he’d kiss me again afterward. Instead, I spent that night in the police station with Brynna’s dad, praying the killers wouldn’t come after me. Or my mother.”

  Sara had originally wanted just her family at a special family dinner. But after they cancelled on her, she’d messaged Gabby to see if Gabby and her mom wanted to join the Marshalls. Gabby had been at her computer, and answered via web chat.

  That was the last conversation she’d ever had with her best friend—Sara complaining about her older brothers. She’d never forgotten that.

  She cherished the three best friends she had now even more. Jarrod, Brynna, and Melody were the most important people in her world, next to her family.

  Her family had moved away two years ago for her mother’s job. She missed them like crazy. Mel, Brynna and Jarrod had become her world here in Finley Creek.

  She’d wondered before why she didn’t move away from her hometown. It would have made the most sense, wouldn’t it? But she just couldn’t. Something kept her in Finley Creek and that was where she was supposed to be.

  Sometimes she really thought she was crazy. And then she’d think and plan to move away.

  Then... she would freak out even more at the idea of leaving her friends behind. They just got her better than anyone else anywhere.

  At least since Sara.

  They were what mattered to her, and she’d never forget that. She knew she clung a little too tightly to Mel, Brynna, and Jarrod, but they understood. “Hey, Jare…I love you, you know that?”

  “Wow. Way to make a man uncomfortable. I don’t have a ring, if that’s what you’re angling for.”

  “Hardly. It’s more like a brother thing anyway. Minus a few silly moments between us, that is.”

  She just wanted to cuddle up on his lap and be safe for a few minutes. She didn’t dare, though. Jarrod would climb the curtains if she even tried. Well, maybe... Jarrod was a healthy guy, after all. Things could happen.

  “Hey, those silly moments have sustained me in my celibacy for a long while now.”

  He seemed to know what she needed, though. He held open his arms and she hugged him tight. Just for a few minutes. No sense tempting fate, after all. Still, if there was ever a guy she trusted enough, it would be this one. If only… “Ha ha. So they really think there was something between me and Elliot Marshall? And I thought I was crazy.”

  “Is it? You’re a beautiful blonde with one hell of a hot body. You have to know that. And that is always a guy like Marshall’s type. And he called you Gabby.” He grinned at her as he turned onto their block.

  “Jare, everyone calls me Gabby. That’s my name, after all.” She would never get it, never understand the way men’s minds worked. Maybe they were from Mars, after all. “And we knew each other when I was a child. Hardly anything romantic there.”

  “And I’ll see that gets around the post. But people probably won’t believe me. Old family friend is far less salacious than former lovers. And there’s the fact that the rumor mill has you and I as lovers for the last three years, at least. Apparently I am doomed because Marshall is more important on the TSP food chain. People are assholes, babe.”

  “Really? You and me? I thought it was you and Mel who were doing the tango on your off time.” She hadn’t known there were rumors about her and Jarrod. Gabby didn’t pay much attention to idle gossip. It wasn’t her way. She preferred the more direct, honest approach. Or hiding. Hiding was her favorite way of life, after all. “Why do they say that?”

  “Because I spend so much time in the computer forensics department, apparently. A man can’t be friends with three extremely hot women without there being some speculation. And since Melody was my partner, and Brynna is…well, Brynna…that leaves you. Beautiful blonde, living in my building, who rides home with me every night. Theory is we spend our nights together, too.”

  Gabb
y thought about it for a moment. If she hadn’t known the truth, would she believe she and Jarrod were lovers? Maybe. It made a sort of sense, after all. “Well, we do. Just not in any romantic way. Oh, well. I don’t really mind, if you don’t.”

  “Hmmm. It does make it a bit difficult to put the moves on other women.” He leered at her. “So I think you and I should just go with it. Give the people what they want.”

  “Been there, talked about that. Decision made, right? Yet you never do put the moves on anyone, anyway. Who would you even try with? I know you. You don’t date within the TSP, duh.”

  “Sigh. All my dirty secrets.” He parked his car and turned off the engine. “All joking aside, you need to be aware that there is speculation. Already. This guy has the younger people curious and the older who remember his father wondering why he’s here. I don’t know what you want to do about it, but you don’t want your name linked with his right out of the gate. That will only make it hard for you if you want to progress. And for him to take over. He’ll need to earn respect. Fooling around with a young blonde tech won’t help him either.”

  “As long as my supervisor and my department know me, I really don’t care what people think of me, Jare. I’m happy doing what I do. And I am happiest when people don’t bother me. There are some days Brynna and I won’t see another soul in there for three or four hours. I like that.” The thought of more than that gave her hives. Seriously.

  “My two favorite hermits.”

  “And you’re our favorite misanthrope.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Now you’re just getting sentimental.”

  ***

  SHE was glad to be alone, both at work and in her apartment. Yeah, sometimes she worked herself up into being convinced someone was watching her through the window, but she knew that was most likely her imagination. But when it came down to it, Gabby liked to be alone—as long as she knew she was safe.