Exposure

by Susan Andersen

  Then his mouth curled up in a one-sided smile. What the hell. He wasn't sorry about that. The truth was, he wanted to see her all decked out like a bride, because that's what she was going to be. His bride. Giving up on the unscratch-able itch, he grinned at the thought and sat forward to attend to the paperwork.

  Ten minutes later, Sandy's voice, low and urgent, cut through his concentration. "Elvis," she said, ripping off her head gear and leaping to her feet. "Your mom just called in. We've got big, big trouble."

  * * * * *

  Clare was driving past Nadine Donnelly's place when she knew she had to do something more constructive than just follow Woodard's car. Granted, she was keeping a tab on the Sandses' location, but what good was that going to do anybody if she didn't get someone out here to help them? She stomped on the brakes and threw the car in reverse, roaring back to the driveway she'd overshot.

  The car was still rocking on its shocks when she jammed it into park in front of Nadine's back door. Thrusting open the driver's door, she shot up the back steps and pounded on the screen door. She could hear "Love Me Tender" playing in the living room. "Nadine!" she shouted, banging on the wood framing the screen. She cupped her hands around her eyes to peer into the dim kitchen. "Nadine!"

  "I'm coming, I'm coming!" Nadine's exasperated voice increased in volume as she drew closer with each word. "For heaven's sake, keep your shirt on." She shoved the screen door open. "Well," she said blankly, staring at Clare. "For heaven's sake. Clare Mackey."

  Clare reached out and grabbed her arm, gripping it tightly. "Call Elvis," she commanded tersely. "Right now. Tell him Grant Woodard has Emma and Gracie. This is important, Nadine," she said fiercely when the older woman continued to stare at her blankly. "They're in danger. Tell him if I haven't lost them by stopping here, I'll be following them. I've got four—maybe five—flares in my trunk. I'll set them up where they turn." She squeezed the arm beneath her fingers. "Have you got that? "

  Nadine blinked several times. "Grant Woodard," she babbled. "Emma and the baby. Flares. Turns."

  "Oh, God," Clare moaned and turned the older woman loose, satisfied to see her turn immediately to the phone on the far kitchen wall. Then she wheeled around and raced back to the car. Please God, please, she prayed fervently. Don't let me have lost them.

  * * * * *

  Where are you, Clare? Ah, Dieu, where did you disappear to? Emma let up on the gas pedal a little, furtively checking the rearview and the sideview mirrors.

  She'd been aware of Clare's tail since the moment in town when Clare had first pulled out of the parking lot onto the street behind them. Emma hadn't been certain if Clare were equally cognizant of her and Gracie's presence in the Lincoln, and she'd been afraid to give too much credence to the fact that her friend was trailing them out of town. She was learning the hard way it was more painful to have one's hopes dashed than it was to simply not have any expectations.

  But when, following Grant's terse instructions, they had turned off the main highway onto Emery Road, Clare, too, had turned . . . and then had let Emma know she understood things were not as they should be by hanging back in the favored tradition of some of television's finest private eyes.

  Thank you, Lord, thank you. Emma sent up a silent, heartfelt prayer. And God Bless trash TV, too. She didn't know what good Clare's presence might ultimately do her and Gracie. But it was reassuring simply to know that they weren't out here all on their own.

  Grant's behavior today was so far removed from his usual as Emma had known it that the tension in the car was an almost palpable force. Gracie, in her usual chatty style, had originally attempted several conversational gambits, but even she had ultimately fallen silent on her grandfather's lap. Now her dark, apprehensive eyes were glued to her mother's face; her thumb was tucked firmly into her mouth. Emma sent her a fleeting smile meant to reassure, and Gracie's lips, pursed around her thumb, curled up at the corners.

  It broke Emma's heart at how little encouragement it took to hearten her child. And she wished to hell she hadn't done it when Gracie slowly lifted her cheek up off her grandfather's chest, tilted her head back, and raised her eyes to look into his face. Her thumb slid out of her mouth.

  "Gwandpapa, I'm gon' have a new daddy," she told him, certain it would thrill him as much as it thrilled her and hoping the news would bring back the grandfather she knew instead of this scary stranger who looked like her grandpapa but didn't act like him. "His name is Elbis Don'lee and he's bigoo 'n' anything. He gibbed me a twike, Gwandpapa, and sidewalk chalk and—"

  "Shut up!" Grant snarled, giving her a vicious shake.

  Gracie's eyes rounded in shock, and Emma immediately lost every last vestige of her hard-held composure. "You bastard!" she screamed in outrage. Swerving the car out of its lane, she brought it to a screeching halt, half on and half off the shoulder of the road. Blindly, unthinkingly, she flew at him until her shoulder harness brought her up short, and then her hands flailed at his head. "Give her to me— give her to me!" she demanded hysterically. "You sick sonovabitch. You hurt her again and I'll kill you!"

  The noise level inside the Lincoln became chaotic and eardrum piercing. Grant roared with rage, Gracie screamed in terror, and Emma hurled invectives in French and English as her hands made dull thwacking sounds when they connected awkwardly with his head and upraised arms.

  One of those arms suddenly snapped out to backhand her across the face with enough force to rock her back in her seat. While she sat, momentarily stunned, he pressed two fingers to the top of Gracie's head, slid the palm of his other hand beneath her chin, and calmly wrenched her little head sideways to an awkward angle. "Shut the fuck up or I'll break her neck."

  Emma froze. Ah, Dieu. Dieu! All it would take was one little snap and her baby—

  "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy," Gracie sobbed.

  "Shut her up!"

  "Shhh, angel pie, it's okay," Emma murmured, striving to steady her voice into a soothing cadence, reaching out to stroke her daughter's cheek. "Shhh, shhh, shhh, now, bebe. You have to be quiet, sugar. For Maman. Okay? Okay, sugar? You have to quiet down now."

  "That's more like it," Grant said with a crisp, satisfied nod, and he released Gracie's head as soon as her sobs turned to soft hiccups. She sat as stiffly upright as the seat belt would allow, her little hands stiff-arming her torso away from her grandfather, her big fear-glazed eyes staring up at him while her chest shuddered with the effort not to cry. He didn't even look at her. "Drive," he commanded Emma. "I'll tell you when I want you to turn."

  She took a deep breath and blew it out. Turning to look over her shoulder, automatically checking for traffic before pulling back onto the road, she blinked as Clare's car drove past, going under the speed limit. Emma pulled out behind her.

  Clare slowed down even more.

  "Pass her," Grant growled after several moments of crawling along in her wake. "Goddam country bumpkins."

  Emma passed, grateful for the first time that Gracie was facing in rather than out on her grandfather's—no, Grant's—lap. That man wasn't Gracie's grandfather, and damned if she'd honor him with the title any longer. Then she pushed the thought aside. The point was, the last thing they needed was for Grace to voice her recognition of Clare as Emma accelerated into the other lane and drove past her friend's car.

  Three miles down the road Grant, who had been peering intently out the window, instructed her to turn. A short distance later he had her stop, back up, and turn again, this time into a shade-darkened, badly overgrown driveway hardly wider than a track. Bushes scraped the sides of the car as she slowed it to a snail's pace and its tires dipped in and out of potholes, rocking the vehicle from side to side. They bumped along for forty feet before suddenly breaking out onto a cleared plateau. There wasn't a dwelling in sight, which apparently was what Grant had been seeking. "Good," he said, looking around in satisfaction. "This will do just fine."

  Emma blinked against the sudden glare of sunlight. She continued inching alo
ng until he suddenly ordered her to stop the car about a hundred feet shy of the cliff's edge. Then she merely sat for a moment, taking deep breaths. Finally, she looked over at Grant. "Now what?"

  He blinked as if he were uncertain, and that scared her almost more than his physical threats to her child had. It seemed the control he imposed over his psychotic episodes was dissolving. Was it that she was seeing him clearly for the first time because she now knew what he was capable of or had his mental capacity deteriorated since she'd run away?

  "Get out of the car," he instructed. Unhooking the seat-belt, he opened the door and climbed out himself, with Gracie still held in his arms. "Hand over the keys—and don't try anything cute, Emma," he warned. "My patience is wearing thin."

  That's certainly understating the facts, Emma thought bitterly.

  Gracie was leaning away from Grant at a precarious angle, her outstretched arms reaching for her mother; and he allowed Emma to take her as soon as she'd relinquished the car keys to him. Gracie clamped her arms and legs around Emma and clung like a monkey, her hot little face buried in the curve of her mother's neck, her breath shuddering erratically. Emma's arms came up to clutch the child tightly in return, and she rocked her from side to side with a repetitive twist of the waist.

  She knew she had to do something to diffuse the situation; it had grown too volatile too fast, and Grant's mental state seemed to her iffy at best. Taking a deep breath, she loosened her compulsive grip on Gracie and attempted to smile at Grant, hoping it didn't appear half as sickly as it felt.

  "Let's start over," she suggested, thinking to herself, Oh, ducky, Em, good luck with that one.

  "I shouldn't have hit you," she admitted, and wasn't even tempted to wince at her own duplicity. She would do this man serious injury if she got half a chance; lying herself blue in the face didn't give her so much as a qualm. "But, Grant," she continued chattily, "you know how protective I am of my bebe. Just like you have always been so protective of me."

  Then she mentally cringed. Ah, Dieu, now you've done it, girl; you've gone too far. Dammit, Em! Couldn 't you have come up with somethin' more credible than that? She wanted to scream at her stupidity, but kept her expression carefully impassive. He might be crazy, you fool, but he's not stupid—and he'd have to be severely lacking in any form of intelligence to fall for that horse shit.

  Yet, to her immense surprise, Grant's expression softened. He reached a hand out, and she managed not to flinch when his fingertips gently brushed her cheek. She even forced another wobbly smile and noted how his face lighted up in response.

  It was at that moment she fully comprehended the depth of his madness, or whatever it was that drove him to do the things she knew he'd done . . . and others she could only guess at.

  She realized, too, that his current amiability could be a very tenuous and short-lived thing. She didn't have a clue as to what might set him off, and for a moment was paralyzed by the myriad possibilities.

  She found herself almost hyperventilating, drawing shallow, rapid breaths; and she had to consciously force herself to slow them down, draw air in deeper, and hold it longer before expelling it. Once she could draw a full breath again, she wondered what on earth one said to a sociopath.

  She had to say something.

  Grant's fingers slipped from her jaw to the top of Gracie's head and slid over the child's curls in a gentle caress, for all the world as if he hadn't just threatened her life. "Like I'm protective of her, too," he said, continuing a conversation that, contrary to what it felt like to Emma, had actually only paused a moment ago. "That's why I couldn't allow that cretin who injured her to live."

  Emma barely managed to bite back a sharp cry. "Bill? " she croaked, and then had to swallow twice in an attempt to disperse a meager amount of moisture throughout her mouth. "You, urn, did something to Bill Gertz?" He simply gazed at her, brow raised, and her voice went unnaturally high, cracking between syllables when she said, "Eliminated him?" Eliminated. Bon Dieu. What a euphemistic word.

  "Of course." His tone was a verbal shrug, as if admitting to killing someone were the most natural thing in the world. "He'd harmed my Gracie, hadn't he?" he demanded. "It was mandatory that the injury be addressed."

  "But, I thought ... his heart."

  Grant made a dismissive gesture. "A knock on the door, a shove against the wall, a needle in his jugular. Voilal Quick air bubbles to the heart or brain." He whisked his palms together with the same casualness he might have used to dust them free of sugar grains from a beignet. "One less nuisance in the world."

  Emma didn't bother to inquire how he had learned of Gracie's injury. Quite clearly, when Hackett had departed the island someone had taken his place. It wasn't a surprise; she'd expected as much. She stroked Gracie's hair, the touch reassuring her that her bebe was keeping her head down. Looking into Grant's eyes, she thought almost dispassionately, So this is what a monster looks like.

  All of her vital organs turned to ice at realizing the predicament she faced. How could she prevent him from spilling his madness onto her child? She was going to have a fight to the death on her hands. She could feel it—had felt it building from the moment she'd first seen Grant holding her daughter.

  How on God's green earth was she supposed to effectively fight him, though, with Gracie here? The power in this confrontation was one-sided. Her daughter's presence made Emma vulnerable, and Grant wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of ihat. By holding her daughter hostage. By injuring Gracie. Emma didn't fool herself into thinking otherwise; he'd already given her an ample demonstration of his willingness to use her child in any way imaginable.

  Or unimaginable.

  Oh, God, this was an impossible situation. Win or lose, even if best-case scenario came to pass—defeating Grant and keeping her daughter safe—what kind of mother would she be, having subjected Gracie to being a witness? Hell of a nice heritage that was to leave a child. Not every little girl had the opportunity to see her mother or her grandfather come to harm or—worse, but in reality more probable—to watch one of them die.

  But that was the heritage about to be bestowed upon her child.

  Chapter 20

  Clare moved cautiously through the woods, her heart drumming so hard she could feel it throbbing in her fingertips. She didn't know what the hell she was doing skulking through the bushes; she should be back at the turnoff, waiting to give directions to whomever showed up first to rescue them. If she were smart, that's what she'd be doing.

  Well, only in her dreams did she claim relationship to an exalted intelligence. Maybe this was dumb.

  No, not maybe, most likely it was dumb. She only knew that she couldn't bear to sit in her car and do nothing while Grant Woodard was doing God-alone-knew-what to her friend and her friend's child.

  She came to the edge of the clearing sooner than she'd expected and quickly brought herself up short, squatting down out of sight behind a bush. Cautiously, she peered around it.

  Facing her, not more than fifty feet away, was Emma. She was standing stiffly, holding Gracie, and her face was devoid of color as she stared at the man in front of her. His back was to Clare. The black luxury car was several feet away, its doors wide open.

  His back was to her.

  Slowly, Clare rose to her feet and waved her arms slowly over her head. As soon as she knew she'd caught Emma's attention, she sank back down behind the bush.

  * * * * *

  Emma tried desperately to clear her mind so she could think. Clare was here, right here; this was an advantage she must find a way to make use of. How could she make use of it?

  She looked at the man who had been her longtime guardian, and mentally holding her breath, hoping to God this didn't unlock a set of demons she was in no way prepared to deal with, she asked softly, "Why did you take those videos of me, Grant?" She was careful to abolish any hint of censure from her voice.

  He shrugged. "I like to watch." No excuses, no sly hints of psychosis. A simple statement of fact.<
br />
  It stopped her dead for a moment. "Uh, watch what exactly? Other people's sexual acts?"

  Yes. And no. It was not that simplistic. True, voyeurism was the only way he could function sexually. But the power of control over another person's privacy was the real addiction. He shrugged again.

  "If you looked at those tapes at all, you know it's nothing that tacky. How many were taken in your bedroom, Emma, an eighth of them? A quarter? You're just . . . my special girl."

  "Uh-huh." The vigorous bobbing of her head made Emma feel like one of those ridiculous dogs one saw in the back windows of cars. "Oui," she agreed, praying all the while she wouldn't throw up on his feet.

  "I am." Queasy stomach roiling uneasily, she knew Grant wouldn't find her so special if she allowed the nausea to take its natural course, so she swallowed hard, forcing it back. At all costs she needed to keep him on an even mental keel, his attention firmly on her and away from Gracie.

  "And I like to keep tabs on you, reassure myself that you're doing well."

  A scream was building in Emma's throat, and she gritted her teeth against it. "I didn't understand," she managed to say in a placating tone. "I'm sorry; I shouldn't have left N'Awlins the way I did. I just didn't . . . understand."

  "But you do now, don't you, Emma?" Grant reached across the short distance separating them and touched her hair. "You know now that you have to come back home with me. Don't you?"

  "Oui."

  "And things will be just like they were. You'll have your little house on the Vieux Carre and we'll share beignets at the Cafe du Monde on Sunday mornings. I'll take care of you. And you'll forget all about marrying this Donnelly character. Won't you?"