Countdown: Grayson

by Boniface, Allie

  Turk thumped his tail and got up to eat. Grayson nudged the kittens away and stood too. He needed a shave and a shower, but then he’d go back to Kara’s and apologize. Ask her for another chance.

  He hoped to hell she’d give him one.

  KARA DIDN’T HAVE A chance to sneak her own gun out of the safe. She didn’t even have a chance to put on a bra. “Let me at least get a pair of shoes.” She tried to ignore the smooth, hard circle of Travis’s gun pressed into her spine, or the way he was breathing unevenly. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know this guy was one step away from losing it, and if he didn’t find Dorrie or Jade soon, he’d take out his anger on whoever he could.

  Which right now, was her.

  “We’re takin’ your car. Anyone comes lookin’ for me, they’ll put out an APB on my truck.”

  She jammed her feet into flip-flops, the closest thing she could find for her feet. “I need my purse. My keys are in there.” She glanced through the living room window. Grayson’s home, less than a quarter-mile away through the trees, was dark. Please come back. Please call. Please suddenly develop ESP and know what’s happening over here.

  “Don’t try anything funny.” He followed her into the kitchen, where her purse sat on the table. She looped it over one shoulder and walked into the garage.

  He pushed her around to the driver side. “Get in. But don’t turn on the car until I tell you.” He waited until she was behind the wheel before getting into the passenger side. In the brief few seconds it took him, she felt around the bottom of her purse for her cell phone. If she had time, she might be able to—

  “Gimme that.” He pressed the gun into her ribs. “Now drive.”

  She handed over her purse. “Where?”

  He licked his bottom lip. “Where’s Jade? An’ Dorrie?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.” Her voice shook, and she hoped he thought it was because she was being held at gunpoint, not because she was lying. “Grayson left my place around one. Last thing I knew, he was going to meet Dorrie. After that, I didn’t hear from him.”

  He didn’t come back here and make me forget my name from multiple mind-blowing, earth-shattering orgasms, that’s for sure.

  Travis took her purse into his lap and dug out her phone. “What’s the access code?”

  “What?” Her voice raced up the octave.

  “To your phone.” He wiggled the gun. “And I told you to start driving.”

  She pulled out. Not a sound from Grayson’s house. Please look outside. Please wonder where I’m going and why there’s someone else in the car with me.

  But he didn’t. Nothing happened. This wasn’t a movie. He didn’t burst from the house and jump in front of the car to save her. She stopped looking and hoping and headed down the road.

  “What is it?” he asked again. This time, he pressed the gun into her leg.

  Kara’s mouth went dry. If she didn’t tell him, he’d probably either run them off the mountainside or she’d end up with a hole in her thigh. Neither scenario gave her a good chance of surviving.

  “One-six-nine-six,” she whispered. Harrison’s birthday.

  Harrison.

  Her son.

  Flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood. The best thing she’d ever done in her life.

  Her hands went slick on the wheel. What if she never saw him again? What if she never had the chance to see Charity grow up?

  She gave the car more gas. She’d moved to the Yawketuck Mountain to live a quiet, simple life, to escape complication and heartache. She hadn’t ever had any intention of getting involved with someone else’s mistakes. Travis wanted her cooperation? Fine. Grayson would have to dig himself out of this mess. She had her own life to live.

  Travis tapped the code into the phone. “Grayson, Harmony, Missy....” He muttered the names aloud as they appeared in her recent call directory. He shot her a glance. “Let’s see, which one is most likely to give me the answers I’m looking for?” He tapped the screen with his gun, little clicks back and forth across the glass. “Eenie, meenie, minie, mo....” A moment later, he was dialing.

  Kara went cold. She didn’t have much time to figure out a plan, even if she drove twenty miles an hour down the mountain. She didn’t know who he’d called, but it didn’t matter. Don’t answer. Maybe if Travis got voice mail, he’d give up, and she could stall and drive in circles until she figured out something better.

  But the person he’d chosen picked up on the second ring. She could hear Missy’s voice on the other end of the line, clear as day. Kara’s heart sank.

  “Hey, girl, I’m glad you called, but you didn’t need to. Dorrie and the baby are here and doing just fine...”

  BY THE TIME GRAYSON emerged from a hot shower, his anger and frustration had lessened considerably.

  Easy does it. One thing at a time. Get clean, get some coffee, get your head around what you want to say to her.

  He toweled off and walked to his bedroom window, where he scanned the long stretch of grass between Kara’s house and his. Didn’t look like any lights were on. Maybe she’d gone to sleep. Or maybe she was sitting in the dark, still pissed off at him.

  He checked his phone, but she hadn’t texted. Why would she? He was the one who’d walked out and broken her front door in the process. No wonder she thought violence was his solution to everything. First chance I get, I’ll fix that. He didn’t like the idea of her staying in a house where the front door didn’t lock.

  He dressed, gave Turk another few pats on the head, splashed on some aftershave, then walked out the back door. The air was cool and brisk, the pine trees fragrant, the sky a brilliant blue—all the details of the day struck him as extraordinary. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Or giving up the booze. Or the power of her. Whatever it was, he liked it.

  He approached Kara’s front porch and stopped. The garage door was open and her car was gone. His truck was still where he’d parked it last night, but at some point in the last half hour, it looked as though she’d left. Without closing the garage door behind her?

  Grayson knocked, then walked inside and stood in the foyer. Something felt wrong. Unsettled. Maybe she’d just gone for a drive. But she’d left both doors unlocked and the garage open, which seemed uncharacteristic for someone who’d lived alone on the mountain as long as she had.

  Grayson’s stomach rumbled as he walked back outside and climbed into his truck. Maybe she just needed some space. Women were like that. Men wanted to forget a fight as soon as possible, but women liked to chew it over, consider all the outcomes, and then talk it to death. That’s probably what she was doing right now: thinking of all the ways she’d tell him off the next time she saw him.

  Okay. He could deal with that. He’d get some breakfast, then head over to the gym and do some paperwork to get his mind off the way things had ended. Maybe he’d even call Briarwood House and see how Dorrie and Jade were doing. He didn’t know if that was allowed, but why the hell not? He cared about both of them and wanted to do right. If he hadn’t heard from Kara by noon, then he’d call her. Five hours oughta be enough time for her to get over being mad.

  Grayson pulled up to the stop sign, glanced both directions, and turned down the mountain. To his left, in a dusty pull-off, sat a truck he didn’t recognize. It looked abandoned, with a broken headlight and a dent in the driver door. Something about it tugged at his memory, and he slowed down to get a better look.

  Then his phone rang with a call from Will at HTC’s front desk, and he forgot all about it.

  8:00 a.m.

  “I ain’t never heard of this place,” Travis said, squinting into the morning sun. Kara slowed at the bottom of the mountain and looked both directions, praying for heavy traffic. Yeah, right. Even if every single person in the valley was on the road at the same time, she still wouldn’t have to wait long. “Briarwood House? That’s where they are?” He punched something into her phone and looked at the screen.

  “I have no idea what you’re talk
ing about. Missy is a friend of mine. I called her last night to talk.”

  “Sure ya did. At two in the morning?”

  “Women talk at all hours.” A truck appeared way off in the distance, ambling along and kicking up dust. Probably going no more than twenty-five miles an hour. Kara waited for it, needing to buy time. Travis had figured out quickly enough that Missy ran a motel. He might’ve been dumb, but he was putting together the pieces without too much trouble.

  Think, girl. Come up with a plan. She couldn’t just drive the madman straight to Dorrie and Jade’s hiding place.

  Travis stared at the approaching truck. “What the hell are you waiting for? He’s a mile away.”

  “I’m a careful driver, and he’s a few hundred yards away. I’m not pulling out in front of him.”

  “Whatever.” He sighed, grumbled, and wiped crusted blood from his mouth. The truck passed, and Travis jabbed his gun back into her side. For a while, he’d let it fall to his lap, loose in his grasp, and she thought she might have a chance to take it. Not anymore. “Git goin’. I wanna check out this place.” He rattled off an address from the phone as the automated directions began.

  Turn left onto Main Street.

  She turned right instead. If he didn’t know where Briarwood House was, maybe she could take the long way there. Follow Main Street out of town and then pretend she’d gotten lost and confused. He wouldn’t know any different.

  “Hey, where you goin?’ You heard the directions.” He jabbed the screen of her phone. “This place is across the river, right?” He looked up. “Why’re you goin’ downtown?”

  Make a legal U-turn, the voice instructed from her phone.

  “Isn’t there a bridge this way?” Kara said, trying to feign ignorance.

  “Fuck, no, an’ you probably know that. Follow the goddamn GPS or I’ll do it myself.” The gun again, jammed into her ribs this time. She was going to have a whole slew of bruises after this trip. Actually, she’d probably be lucky to end up with a few bruises and nothing more. They were still a ways from HTC, but she desperately hoped Grayson was on his way there. Maybe they’d cross paths, or he’d come up behind her and realize she wasn’t alone.

  No such luck. With Travis’s weapon pressing into her, she turned around at the gas station. Heading the opposite direction, they passed a grand total of two cars on Main Street. She didn’t recognize the driver of either one.

  Turn onto County Route Sixteen.

  She followed the bodiless voice, crossed the bridge and headed upriver. Another couple of miles and they’d be at the gates of Briarwood House. Could she feign a car problem? Pretend they’d run out of gas? She took her foot off the accelerator as a thought occurred to her. A long shot maybe, but that was all she had to rely on. “I’m supposed to be opening the food pantry by now. I need to text or they’ll wonder where I am.”

  Travis snorted but typed her access code into the phone again. “Fine. Tell me what to say an’ I’ll send it.”

  She slowed as they reached a bumpy section of road. “Find Harmony in the contacts.”

  If you’re ever actually late, I’ll know something’s wrong, like you’ve been kidnapped or you’re dead in a ditch somewhere...

  “Yep, got it.”

  She inched her way around an enormous pothole. The sun continued to rise. “Just say ‘I got a late start. Won’t be in until....’” She glanced sideways. “How long you think you’re gonna hijack me?”

  “Don’t get smart.”

  “Fine. Say I won’t be in until this afternoon.” She prayed that as soon as Harmony saw the message, she’d know something was wrong. Whether she had the presence of mind to call the cops or Grayson was another story.

  Kara could only hope.

  “HEY, BOSS.” WILL SLID Grayson an oatmeal protein smoothie when he walked into the gym. “Thought you might want this.”

  “Thanks.” He drank it without stopping.

  “Shit. Someone didn’t eat breakfast.”

  “Long night,” Grayson said. “Actually, long day and a long night.” And it wasn’t over yet. He couldn’t stop thinking about Kara, even when Will had called to say a local news station was coming down to do an interview, or when he looked at his training schedule and saw a full day blocked out. The gym was his sanctuary. Always had been, even as a kid. The place to escape life, the place where nothing and no one else mattered except the sweat in his eyes and the ache of his muscles. The minute Grayson stepped inside, all his troubles went away.

  Except today. Today, all he could think about was her. The sheen of her skin beneath him. The curve in her smile. The shake in her voice as she came.

  He rinsed out the smoothie glass and set it aside. He’d been a colossal jerk, and now Kara was avoiding him and he couldn’t even blame her.

  Easy does it. Give her time.

  But he didn’t want to. He wanted to call her, text her, see her and drop to his knees and beg forgiveness. He pulled his phone from his pocket. Wrote a text. Erased it. Wrote another one and erased that too. Shit. Nothing sounded quite right.

  “Boss? Everything okay?”

  He gave up on trying to find the right words. After lunch he’d go to Helping Hands and apologize in person. Right now? He either had to work out his frustration or go in the locker room and jerk off, because that would be the only way to get Kara out of his mind for the next couple of hours.

  The front door opened, and in walked Manny Alvarez. He was one of the few other guys in town who hadn’t grown up in the valley, which meant as soon they met, they’d become good friends. Manny had moved to the States from El Salvador with his mom, lived in Texas for a while, and eventually made his way to Virginia. Now he lived in Greenway, worked as a cop, and trained with Grayson a couple times a week.

  “Hey, Manny. Don’t have you on the schedule today, do I?”

  “Nope, I’m on the early shift.”

  Grayson noticed only then that Manny wasn’t dressed to work out. Instead he wore his full uniform, down to the gun on his hip and the bulletproof vest protecting his vitals. “Gotcha. What can I do ya for?”

  “Got a call this morning, wanted to ask you a couple of questions. Kara McGarrity’s your neighbor up on the mountain, right?”

  Grayson froze. “Yes. Why?”

  But he knew. The open garage door. The missing car. The abandoned truck on Highway 14. His stomach lurched as he remembered now, too late, who it belonged to. Travis. He reached for his phone and dropped it. It went skittering under the desk, out of sight. His blood pressure went from resting to fight-ready in under two seconds.

  “What the fuck happened, Manny? She all right?”

  “Not sure. I thought you might know where she is. Her coworker called in a few minutes ago to say Kara might be missing. She didn’t have anything definite, just a text saying she’d be a few hours late for work, but the coworker said that was pretty unusual. Normally we don’t take any action on a missing person ’til at least twenty-four hours’ve passed, but one of our guys went out to her house an’ it looked like there might’ve been some foul play, so I thought I’d do some asking around.”

  “Foul play?” Grayson hadn’t seen anything like that. Of course, he wasn’t a trained cop, and he hadn’t really been looking.

  “Signs of a scuffle in the bedroom.”

  He felt himself go fifteen shades of red. Oh, there’d been a scuffle in Kara’s bedroom all right, but not the kind Manny was guessing.

  “The front door’s busted open, an’ we lifted a few different prints from the kitchen an’ the living room.” He held up a hand. “It’s too early to jump to any conclusions,” he added. “Could be a perfectly logical explanation. I’m just talkin’ to people who know her, lookin’ for information if ya got any.”

  Grayson cracked his knuckles. He had lots of information. He just wasn’t sure which pieces he should tell Manny first. Images flashed through his mind: Kara hurt and bleeding, held at gunpoint or worse, dead or dying. Tied up, or m
aybe tossed from a vehicle on the side of the road. Unable to speak or blink or save herself.

  And just as fast as those images came, others ran in fast behind them. Jade ripped from her mother’s arms. Dorrie backhanded until her skin bruised and her eyes turned black. Travis brandishing a gun.

  Travis.

  Dorrie.

  Jade.

  For every wrong move Grayson had made in his life, for every person he’d jeopardized one way or another, he was not going to let anyone—anyone—harm that baby girl. He didn’t care if she was his blood or someone else’s. And Kara might be a grown-ass woman with a tough streak, but that didn’t mean she could take on a maniac with a gun. Grayson, on the other hand, just might be able to. He hadn’t been inside a boxing ring in six long years, but he sure hadn’t forgotten the moves that made him a champion.

  He grabbed his truck keys. “We gotta get to Briarwood House across the river. Now.”

  “BRIARWOOD HOUSE,” MISSY’S voice said through the speaker at the front gate. Kara’s heart was pounding so loudly, Missy could probably hear it inside.

  “Hey, Missy, it’s Kara.” Please read my mind. Please know something’s wrong.

  Long pause. “Thought that was your number on the hang-up I got a few minutes ago. Everything okay?”

  Kara didn’t answer. “I just wanted to, um...” To what? How could she lie? What story could she tell that would raise Missy’s suspicions? “If it’s a bad time, then—”

  Travis hissed and drew his index finger across his throat in a sawing motion. She didn’t say anything else.

  “Just pull up to the front door,” Missy said. The intercom squawked off, and a moment later the gate swung open.

  “’Bout damn time,” Travis muttered. He rolled down the window and hung his head outside like a dog, as if taking in the sights.