Saving Grace (Serve and Protect Series)

by Wilson, Norah

  “Explain?” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up. “Hell, I don’t even know what happened. We’ve got all this money we can’t explain. IAD’s breathing down my neck. And now I’ve got somebody trying to shoot me, and a friend who thinks I tried to get him killed.”

  “Wait a minute, how did the shooter know where you’d be? He couldn’t have followed us, or he wouldn’t have had time to get set up.”

  He looked at her. “Hell if I know.”

  Grace held his gaze. “Maybe Tommy set you up.”

  “No way.” He rejected the idea forcefully. “I’m the one picked the meeting spot. Besides, I saw his face. The shock.... No, he really thought I’d betrayed him.”

  “Then how?”

  He swore. “Wiretap.”

  She gasped. “You think your own shop would tap our phones?”

  “The same department that’s apparently been investigating me? Oh, yeah. And I can think of any number of judges would be happy to sign the wiretap order, too. But who’s to say it’s a legal tap? It’s more likely the handiwork of whoever sabotaged my truck, whoever just shot at me. Hell, they could have the whole house wired.”

  “You think someone has been listening in on us?”

  “On our telephone conversations, at least. Whoever was on that roof had to have known in advance. Which means they knew where I was going, who I was meeting, even why we were meeting.”

  She sucked in a breath as a thought occurred to her. “What about...?” She held her hands up to indicate the interior of the car.

  “No. It’s clean. The boys swept it this morning.”

  For a few minutes, they were both silent, thinking. Grace took a deep breath. “I think we should go in anyway. You didn’t do anything, so the money can’t hurt you, right? And sooner or later, I’ll remember where it came from, or they’ll figure it out for me. Either way, you’ll be in the clear, and in the meantime, we’ll be safe.”

  “No. These people I’ve pissed off....” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I just don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Chances?” She blinked at him incredulously. “How could going in be riskier than sitting out here in the open?”

  “If we go in under the circumstances, they’re gonna want to detain us while they check out our story. Which means we’d be sitting ducks for whoever did try to fill me full of lead.”

  She sat silent a moment, absorbing his words. “You think they could reach us inside the station?”

  “On our way into the station, inside the station, in transit to another location.... Yeah, these guys, I think they could reach us almost anywhere, if they want to bad enough.”

  She’d thought she’d reached the limits of fear when the gunman opened fire from the school’s rooftop, but Ray’s words showed her otherwise. They flooded her nervous system with new dread, leaving an acrid taste it in her mouth.

  With sudden clarity, she knew she’d felt this way once before. Desperately, she grasped at the wisp of memory, but it was gone before she could trap it.

  “What kind of people are they, Ray?”

  “Connected people.”

  “The mob? Here in New Brunswick?”

  “Organized crime is everywhere, and Canada is fast becoming a prime location. Borders are porous, manpower’s stretched thin, and our banking laws are laxer than American laws.”

  Another silence. Grace turned to watch a man in a suit cross the parking lot, throw his bags in the trunk of his Saab and drive away. She turned back to Ray.

  “We can’t go home, can we?”

  Something of her desolation must have shown on her face, because his mouth softened.

  “I like our chances better if we stay on the move.”

  Grace digested that. “Is that why we’re here, to ditch the car in a parking lot that never empties?”

  “That’s right. With any luck, they won’t find it for a few days, or even weeks.”

  Weeks. “And now we beg, borrow or steal another vehicle and slip out of town?”

  “Bingo.” Ray flipped the glove compartment open and dug around inside, extracting a flashlight, some maps and a first aid kit. “Though borrowing is out. We don’t wanna lead men with guns to anyone’s doorstep. And we don’t have to steal. Not as long as we have this.”

  He lifted the shaving kit from the floor and dropped it on his lap with the other stuff he’d dug out of the glove box.

  The money! For the first time, Grace was grateful for the tremendous wad of bills. They could pay their way without leaving a credit card trail.

  Of course, if it weren’t for the damned money, they wouldn’t be in this fix.

  “So, what now? Do we rent a car?”

  “Buy one. To rent, we’d have to produce ID, credit cards, that kind of stuff. So we’ll buy a clunker. Something cheap but mechanically sound enough to get us around.”

  She frowned. “Won’t you have to register it, insure it and all that stuff before you drive it off the lot?”

  “With the right incentive, on top of no arguments on the grossly inflated sticker price, I expect a used-car dealer could be persuaded to delay the paperwork a while.”

  Grace blinked thoughtfully. “Half of this incentive now, half later, to make sure he doesn’t change his mind?”

  “Yep.”

  “And in the meantime, it’ll look dealer-owned. We’re just test-driving a used car.”

  “You’re pretty good at this,” he said. “Seems like your talents were wasted at that paper.”

  His praise caught her off guard. She ducked her head and laughed. “Yeah, well, that’s what I’ve been telling them for years, but nobody’s been listening.”

  Grace started as he put two fingers under her chin and tipped her head up to meet his gaze. His eyes were soft and liquid enough to drown in.

  “Well, maybe you’ll get a story out of this, hmmm?”

  Don’t, she thought. Don’t touch me. It hurts too much when you stop. Which you’ll do in about a millisecond when you remember what I did.

  Keeping her face carefully blank, she said, “Story? I’ll be happy if we can just get out of this without getting shot at again.”

  He pulled back, his eyes hardening. “You’re right. It’s time to move.”

  He climbed out of the car and she followed suit, grabbing her purse. From the back seat, he retrieved his gym bag. Removing his racquetball gear, he replaced it with the money, the things he’d scavenged from the glove box, and an emergency road kit from the back of the truck.

  “Got a pen in your purse and something to write on?”

  Grace dredged up a smile. “You might catch me without a lipstick or coffee money, but you’d never catch me without pen and paper.” She produced a coiled notebook and handed it to him. “What do you need it for?”

  “To make a shopping list.”

  Already his hand was racing across the page. She leaned closer to read what he’d written. Hair dye, self-tanning lotion, barbering kit.... The stuff of disguises.

  “Hey, I don’t see ‘car’ there. Shouldn’t that be at the top of our list?”

  “That’s because I’m shopping for the car. You’ve gotta get this stuff.”

  “We’re going to split up?”

  “It’d be a lot quicker.” He looked up from his list. “Unless you’d rather wait here? I can do both.”

  Don’t leave me alone. “Why can’t we go together?”

  “Because if someone takes another shot at me, I don’t want you at my side.”

  “Oh.” Her mouth went dry at the thought of more gunfire. Yet the idea of being separated from him brought its own brand of panic. What if she got picked up by the police? What if he got picked up? There was no point arguing, though. “Okay.”

  “You should be able to get everything at the mall we just passed.” He scrawled a few more things on the list and handed the note pad back to her. “If you can’t get a barbering kit, just get some good scissors. Oh, and buy lots of other unr
elated stuff, and spread your purchases around. You don’t want to stick in some clerk’s mind like you just robbed a bank and need a disguise.”

  “Do we meet back here?”

  “No.” He pulled his cell phone from his coat pocket. “I’ll call you on this when I’m ready to roll, and you can meet me at the mall’s north exit.”

  She looked down at the cell phone in her palm. “Can they trace this?”

  “They can locate it, once they get organized to look for it. The cops, that is. I don’t know about this other crowd. In any case, we’ll ditch the phone before we leave town.” He picked up the Adidas bag and slung it over his shoulder. “We’d better get moving.”

  “Wait, Ray.”

  He turned back toward her.

  “You’ve cut a small cut on your face.” She pointed to her own right cheek to help him locate it. “Better clean the blood up before you go car shopping.”

  He lifted a hand to the nick. “Right.”

  An hour later, Grace entered the ladies’ restroom near the north exit of the mall. With supper hour approaching, the mall was emptying out and she found herself alone in the washroom. Alone wasn’t good enough, though. Not after the feeling of exposure she’d endured since entering this mall.

  She slipped into a stall, placed her bags on the floor, perched on the toilet and tried to stop shaking.

  God, she was such a coward. Everything had gone better than she could have hoped, yet here she was trembling.

  No one had challenged her. Heck, the clerks had pushed her purchases over their scanners and made change without even glancing up. But she’d still felt as though a thousand eyes were watching her.

  The phone shrilled in her purse, making her jump. Ray!

  Or maybe not Ray. Maybe someone phoning for Ray, someone who could track her to this very washroom, this very stall....

  Oh, stop it! She fumbled for the phone, pulled it out.

  “Hello?”

  “You ready?”

  She sagged against the stall’s wall. “I’m ready.”

  Five minutes later, she stepped outside and scanned the street. There he was, in a battered old blue Toyota Corolla. As she approached, he reached back and popped the rear passenger door open. She deposited her bags on the back seat, then climbed into the front. They pulled away from the curb smoothly.

  Inside, the car’s upholstery was worn. A crack in the dashboard had been mended with duct tape. She laughed.

  He glanced at her. “What?”

  “Nice ride.”

  “Isn’t it just?” Ray merged with traffic, then stopped behind a black sedan at a red light. “Two-hundred-sixty-thousand klicks, but there’s a new motor under the hood. It shouldn’t die on us.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifteen hundred.”

  She smiled. “I think you got ripped off.”

  His mouth turned up at the corners. “That was the plan, remember?”

  Grace’s smile faded. “Did you have any trouble?”

  He shook his head. “It’s amazing what service an extra five hundred’ll buy you.”

  “Cash transaction, too. He’ll probably pocket another five hundred and claim you beat him down on the sticker price.”

  “Naturally.”

  Traffic was moving again. She glanced at the street signs. “We don’t seem to be headed toward the highway.”

  “I’ve got a stop to make first.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here.” He signaled and turned into the bus station.

  “Ray, are you crazy? If the police are looking for us, they’ll be all over this place.”

  “Relax. I won’t even have to get out of the car. I just need to find a ... look, here comes our man.”

  She whipped her head around, scanning frantically for anyone they might know, but there was no one. Just a thin, tough-looking teen in baggy khakis and a hooded jacket crossing the parking lot, duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

  “Quick, Grace, the cell phone.”

  She dug the phone out of her purse and slapped it into his open palm as he rolled his window down.

  “Hey, kid,” he called.

  The young man, who Grace could now see was probably no older than seventeen or eighteen, turned toward Ray’s voice.

  “How’d you like to make a quick twenty bucks?”

  The young man snorted. “In your dreams, old man.”

  Ray swore, drawing Grace’s attention. To her surprise, a blush stained her husband’s face.

  “I’m not looking for that.”

  “Yeah?” The teen stepped closer, his lean face wary but interested. “What are you looking for, then?”

  “See this phone?”

  The young man nodded.

  “It belongs to my soon-to-be-ex-wife.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’d like you to take it with you on the bus.”

  “To Manitoba?”

  “Far as you’re going. As long as you promise to run the phone bill up. Hell, call 1-900 sex lines, if you want to. Just so long as you use it at least once a day.”

  The kid stepped closer to the vehicle, and Grace had to lean toward Ray to keep his lean face in view.

  “Won’t it stop working when I get out of the province?”

  Ray bared his teeth in vindictive smile. “It’s got roaming.”

  “You’re not jokin’, are you? I can really call sex lines?”

  “You can call anywhere you like.”

  “You look like a cop.”

  “No kidding? You think cops don’t have messy divorces?”

  Grace could almost see the kid’s thoughts.

  “No one’ll come after me?”

  “Not if you dump it at the end of the line.”

  The kid inclined his head. “Twenty bucks, too?”

  Ray folded a bill, clamped it to the phone with his thumb and offered both to the kid.

  “Deal.” The young man took the phone and money, slipping them into his coat pocket. “Way to stick it to her,” he said approvingly.

  “Shut up, kid. There’s nothing admirable about this.”

  Grace sucked in her breath at the ferocity of Ray’s tone. Even the young tough took a step back.

  “Then why you doin’ it?”

  “’Cuz I’m an asshole.” Ray sighed. “Just make the daily calls, okay?”

  “She musta done you pretty bad, huh?”

  Ray looked straight ahead. “I’ll live.”

  Grace watched the skinny teen in his oversized clothes disappear into the bus terminal, the echo of that last exchange reverberating in her head.

  She musta done you pretty bad, huh?

  I’ll live.

  Grace blinked fiercely. Oh, Ray, I’m so sorry. Because she couldn’t say that, she adjusted her seatbelt and said instead, “So, if the cops try to find you through the cell phone, they’ll think you’re headed west to Manitoba?”

  “Let’s hope,” he said, pulling back into traffic.

  She swallowed to ease the ache in her throat. “Where to now?”

  “I think we should stay right here in town.”

  “Here? When everyone is looking for us?”

  “Because everyone is looking for us. It’ll be safer to travel in disguise, so we need to check into a motel and transform ourselves.”

  “But I thought switching cars‌—”

  “A different car won’t help us if they’ve already thrown up roadblocks. There’s not a cop in town wouldn’t recognize me at a checkpoint.”

  They chose a no-tell motel just inside the city limits. A row of dingy-looking units hunkered on one side of the small office building, and a handful of cabins squatted on the other side. Ray pulled up in front of the office, the Toyota stuttering a few times after he shut the engine off. When he made a move to get out, Grace grabbed his arm.

  “Wait. Shouldn’t I do this? Your face is bound to be more familiar than mine.”

  He sat back. “You’re right. Okay,
let’s get you some cash.” He reached into the back seat and retrieved the shaving kit. He passed her a wad of bills. “That should do it.”

  She was tucking them into her purse when Ray cursed.

  “What?” Heart thudding, she scanned the parking lot, expecting to see cops, but it was deserted.

  “In the window. The desk clerk is watching us.”

  She glanced up to see a slender man watching them from behind the registration desk. For a moment, she had a flash of Norman Bates from Psycho.

  Grace, get a grip. “So?”

  “So he knows there’s two of us, and the guy always does this part. It’s the man’s job to protect the woman’s reputation, even in a place like this. Especially in a place like this. If you go in there alone and ask to pay cash, he’ll figure you’re trying to protect my identity. Then he’ll figure you’ve got our happily-married mayor out here, or maybe a councilman at the very least. If we arouse his curiosity, I can guarantee you he won’t rest until he gets a glimpse of me.”

  She nibbled her lip. “We could pick another motel.”

  “No, this is the best location.”

  “So what do we do?”

  He thought for a moment. “Give him that glimpse he wants.”

  She tried to read his face in the light cast by the motel’s flickering sign, but half of it was in darkness. “What if he recognizes you?”

  “He won’t.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because he’s a man and we’re gonna give him something else to look at.”

  Grace’s pulse jumped. “What do you mean?”

  “As soon as you tell him you want to pay cash, he’s gonna jump to some conclusions. We might as well play into his presumption, act hot for each other.”

  Her heart seemed to stop, then leapt to thudding life again. “I don’t see how that’s going to keep him from recognizing you.”

  “Let me worry about that, okay? You just play along, act like you can’t wait to get horizontal.”

  Could she do it? Could she let him lay hands on her when he so clearly loathed touching her? And could she bear it when he dropped the pretense, once they were safely inside?

  “What?” he demanded. “Think that kind of performance is beyond you?” He twisted toward her, but she didn’t need to see his face to read his anger. It was there in his voice.