Red Ribbons in Her Hair Ch. 02

"Okay, you left the store, where did you go next?"

"I went home, put away my groceries and looked through the mail. I went down to my bedroom, it has its own bathroom." She could feel her cheeks flushing as she thought of what happened next.

Gabe caught the blush. "Then?" he prompted.

"I was getting undressed and saw eyes that were reflected in the mirror above my dresser. I grabbed my shirt and turned around. I couldn't see his face, it was too dark outside. I could just see his eyes. He took off running and I thought about looking to see which way he ran, but by the time I got to the front window, he was gone." Kaylee suppressed a shudder at the thought of that night.

"So he was probably watching you, what two, three minutes?" Gabe asked, writing in his notebook. When Kaylee didn't answer right away, he looked up. She was chewing on her lip again, her face flushed. "Kaylee? It was only a few minutes, right?"

"I don't know for sure. It could have been more like ten to fifteen," she said, not looking at him.

"He watched you for ten to fifteen minutes?"

"I don't know if he was out there for all that time or not." Kaylee wanted to slide under the table, she could feel those gorgeous eyes staring at her and she refused to meet them.

"Kaylee?" Gabe said softly, waiting until she finally looked at him. "Anything you say to me that won't be used on the case will be kept between you and me."

Kaylee nodded her head, smiling ruefully. She closed her eyes and swallowed. "I was..." she hesitated and he could almost see her mind working, "doing yoga."

"Yoga?" Gabe asked skeptically.

"Yoga," Kaylee said again, wondering if the lie showed on her face. "It works better in front of a mirror."

"And do you always do yoga in front of your mirror half naked?" Gabe knew she was lying, but he didn't know why. The expression on her beautiful face gave her away.

"No, but as I said, it was a hell of a day, and I was stressed, I did a few short exercises to get rid of some of it." She looked up and met his eyes, forcing herself to keep staring into the gorgeous blue of his. "Is there some law against that, Detective Hampton?"

Gabe smiled, admiring her gumption. "No, Kaylee. No law against that. And please, call me Gabe."

She couldn't help but smile back. It wasn't fair for a cop to be so damn good looking. "After that, I looked into the mirror, saw him staring at me."

Gabe wrote down something in his illegible scrawl then flipped his notebook closed. "You haven't seen him since?"

"I don't know. I only saw his eyes and only for that brief time." She shrugged. "I've been feeling kind of strange since then though," she said, acting as if it weren't a big deal. She didn't want to come off as a hysterical female. "Which is why I called this morning after I found out about the red ribbons being left. It's like there is someone watching me, following me."

"But you haven't seen anyone?" Gabe asked.

"No, but I feel eyes. How do I put this?" She squinted her eyes shut as she thought, her nose wrinkling. "Like the hair standing up on the back of your neck feeling that someone is out there watching you. That's how I feel."

"Okay. And this is just since the twentieth?"

"Yes. I'm not crazy, Gabe. Really I'm not. I know what I feel and I know that someone is out there watching me." She reached out and grabbed his wrist. "I feel it in the morning when I leave for work. If I go anywhere at night or out to dinner, I can feel it. Sometimes, even here at work, I get that creepy crawly feeling."

"Has any of your friends or co-workers noticed anything? Have you had anything taken from your car or missing from your home?" Gabe was willing to take her seriously. Their unknown subject had been working on an accelerated pace, taking his victims about one every two weeks according to the time line that he had worked up by the dates of disappearances. The medical examiner hadn't been doing very well on time of death.

With the last victim, Allison, they'd had a little more luck. Ambient temperature had preserved the body and animals hadn't had much of a chance to do more than start to feast. Insects had found her, and there they had their luck. Samples taken of insect larva and adults had been flown to the State Crime Laboratory where the state was lucky enough to have their own expert in entomology. They were still waiting on reports back from them.

"My friends think I'm losing it." Kaylee looked up at him. "I think I am too, sometimes. I'm scared, Gabe, and I don't like it."

Gabe reached out a comforting hand and let it rest on the hand she still had on his wrist. "It's an invasion of your privacy, Kaylee, a kind of rape of your own personal space. It's understandable for you to be afraid. But if you take reasonable precautions you should be safe."

He stared into the dark shadows of her eyes, feeling an intense attraction that he hadn't expected. He looked down, realizing that he was still holding her small hand in her own and he pulled away, clearing his throat. "Um, I can set up some defense classes for you and any of your friends that are interested. Sometimes, just knowing a few simple moves can stop an attack dead."

Kaylee smiled, she felt the attraction just as strongly as the detective. When he'd touched her hand, a sharp thrill had traveled through her nerve endings, surprising her. "Sure, Gabe. I'll let you know after I talk to them."

"Are you done for the day?" he asked, stashing his notebook back inside his jacket pocket. He pulled out his wallet to pay for his food.

"Yes. And your food is taken care of, Gabe." She smiled as he nodded his thanks and smiled back.

"Then how about I walk you out to your car, I'd like to see your backyard, the window this man was looking in, maybe if you see me out there, you'll be able to remember more." He stood up next to the booth and waited for her to rise.

"I just have to grab my stuff from the back, if you'd like to wait for me outside?" she asked, smiling up at him. He was a good head taller than she was, and she had to look up at him. One of the waitresses walked by with her arms full of tray piled high with food and Gabe took a step towards Kaylee, pressing against her as he got out of the way.

His body was hard against hers, making her catch her breath at the pleasure it evoked. She heard his mumbled apology and stuttered a reply, shifting away from him reluctantly when he stepped back. She hurried to the locker room grabbing her bag and waving a quick goodbye to Tina who smiled smugly and waved back, flashing her a thumb's up sign.

Gabe was waiting outside. When Kaylee came out the doors, he flipped a half smoked cigarette into an outside ashtray can and met her half way.

Kaylee glanced back at the cigarette still smoldering in the sand left in the can, then glanced up at Gabe.

"I'm trying to quit." He laughed. "I'm always trying to quit." He waved his hand out in front of him, letting her go ahead. She led him to an ancient red Camaro that had seen much better days.

He stopped her when he saw that the door was ajar.

"Wait here," he said, holding her arm back for a second. He reached under his jacket, pulling out a Beretta 9 millimeter and flipping off the safety. He stepped back, looking under the car quickly before going towards the door. Grabbing a latex glove out of his jacket pocket, he reached out and pulled the door open, looking through the window into the backseat.

No one was in the car but sitting in the passenger seat was a square box wrapped in silvery paper with a bright red silk ribbon tied in a beautiful bow on the top. The box was roughly the size of a woman's shoe box.

"Is it your birthday or maybe an anniversary?" Gabe asked, putting his Glock back into its holster.

"No," Kaylee said, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

"Boyfriend with keys to your car who likes to leave you presents?" Gabe asked as he reached carefully into the car.

"I don't have a boyfriend right now, Gabe. What's going on?" She took a few steps closer to the car.

Gabe picked the package up carefully, making sure to not touch it with his bare hands. It was heavy and solid. He pulled it out of the car and placed it on the hood. "There's no card. Do you know of anyone who might leave you presents in your car? Does anyone have an extra key? Of course, I'm assuming you had this locked."

"Of course, I've been locking it everywhere I go since that night. And no one has keys to my car. I have an extra set at home and my parents have a set but they live in Texas." A quick surge of fear flowed through her. "It was him, wasn't it? He broke into my car and left me that."

"Kaylee," he turned and took her arms in his hands giving her a gentle shake. "It's okay. It could just be from a friend." He waited until she looked up at him and got control of herself. "I'll take it back to our crime lab, we'll x-ray it, see what's in it. If that's okay with you."

She was nodding her head before he was even through speaking. "Take it, please. I don't want it."

"Okay, Kaylee. I'm going to call this in, get someone out here to print your car and take this to the lab."

He looked into her eyes, making sure she was calm. He gave her a smile. "It'll just take a little while for them to get out here. And then I'll drive you home."

"What about my car?"

"Kaylee, I might have to have it towed into the crime lab so they can go through it. That's just a maybe though," he hastened to say. "Probably they'll just want to print it."

She closed her eyes and sighed, her shoulders tensing up. "I don't work tomorrow, maybe Ann or Ruthie can bring me back for it." She sighed again when he laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

He walked a few paces away and pulled out his cell phone, calling in for a crime scene unit. He turned as he spoke into the phone, looking back at Kaylee as she stood, her arms wrapped around her waist, her eyes searching the area. He caught her eye and smiled again.

When he was done setting up the lab and calling the techs, he called in for a unit to come and secure the scene. Then he went back to Kaylee.

"This will take a few minutes for the unit to get here. If you'd like to go back in and wait, it would be okay."

"Could I stay out here with you?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, you can. I'm going to bring my car over, you can sit in it and wait while I check out a few things. How does that sound?"

Kaylee smiled, relieved. She hated feeling and sounding like a scared little girl, but she couldn't help it. She'd never been more scared in her life. "Thank you."

He brought his car over, blocking off this end of the parking lot, turning on the blue bubble light that he kept on his dash. Opening the passenger door, he let Kaylee sit down inside, leaving the door open so she could see him. His head kept asking him why he was being so solicitous. But he pushed the thought ruthlessly to the side, taking a small flashlight out of his trunk. After getting a paper bag out, he walked over and carefully put the gift inside the bag, closing the top.

As soon as the first unit showed up, he sent them into the restaurant to do interviews to see if anyone had noticed anything. Though the employee parking lot was around to the back of the restaurant, which meant for a patron to have seen anything would be a miracle. He had them grab the manager and get addresses for all staff that worked that day, and then sent another team of detectives out to ask them if they'd seen anyone around the car.

When the crime scene people arrived, the car was taped off, the scene secured and waiting for them. After speaking to Gabe, they decided to tow the car to the lab where they'd be better able to print it.

"Bad news, Kaylee. I'm sorry, they want to take it to the lab. They'll only have it a couple of days though and they'll call you when they're through." He smiled as he crouched down to talk to her. "I can run you to the store tonight before I take you home if you need anything."

He heard himself offering before he'd thought the words. But when she smiled, and thanked him, he couldn't be sorry for them.

"Thanks, Gabe. That's very nice of you. But I'm fine. If you could just get me home..." she let the sentence dangle.

"We're almost out of here, let me just talked to my men and then we're gone." He patted her hands.

When he turned around he started wondering at himself. He'd always been good to victims, usually though, his victims were dead and the live people he dealt with were either the relatives of the dead or the suspects. He respected the relatives and tore into the suspects. He kept his hands to himself, did what was necessary and did his job, no matter how ugly, how gruesome and grizzly it was.

So why was he acting this way? He glanced over his shoulder, seeing her smile. Kaylee was beautiful. But he'd dated, slept with, had even once been married to a woman more beautiful. She was vulnerable right now, scared and confused, but he was around the vulnerable daily. What was so different about her?

He left orders to be called if anyone found anything, took a quick look around the lot. He was convinced that the person who had left the gift, whether it was their suspect or not, would want to be around for the unveiling. And having the police show up had probably pissed him off.