The Price of Grace

by Diana Muñoz Stewart

  “A week before you were shot at. Think you can use your cyber skills to track it down?”

  Probably. “Yeah. Send me what you have.”

  “Will do. How’d you do with your list?”

  “One dead. One in jail. One happily married and on a reality TV show. That leaves your two.” It can’t be either of them. It can’t. “I need to go back and see who I’m missing.”

  There was a weighted silence. “About that. What do you know of your biological father?”

  “My father? Not a thing.” The import of that question hit her. “What do you know about him?”

  He sucked in a breath through obviously gritted teeth. A snake made less of a hiss. “Well, that’s the interesting part. When Sandesh was trying to discover who the family traitor was, he asked me to look into Justice’s closest siblings. You were on the list.”

  She was probably top of that list. She’d been pretty mean to Sandesh. But it hadn’t been her. It had been Tony. “And you found out about my dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  She felt a twinge of expectation. Growing up in a dynamic household full of adopted kids, many of whom didn’t know or didn’t want to remember their families, it seemed almost wrong to ask where she’d come from. And when her bio-mom had come back into the picture, it seemed twice as bad to ask. She’d had an embarrassment of riches, after all. Two mothers who loved her. And though she had wondered over the years, she’d instinctively known that if that information hadn’t been painful for her bio-mom, she would have shared it. So she’d told herself she had way too many family members to go looking for more. But now? “Tell me about him.”

  “First go to CNN. They have a live feed, click on it.”

  Her fingers flew over the keys. At the site, she clicked on the live feed button. The screen burst into action.

  The scroll below the video said, “From the Hyatt Bellevue in Philadelphia, Senator Andrew Lincoln Rush to announce his bid for president.”

  A man with a lean physique walked onto a stage filled with a group of people as backdrop. He wore a classic blue Armani suit. Music played. His supporters clapped and cheered.

  She leaned close to her monitor. Her stomach squeezed. He had red hair and green eyes. Fudge. “Is that him?”

  “Yes. That’s your father.”

  She wet her suddenly dry lips. The clapping, cheering, clicking of cameras, and talking slowly died down. Rush welcomed everyone. His microphone squawked. He adjusted it with a smile.

  “Are those his kids behind him?”

  “Yeah. Five boys. One girl. And his grandkids. There’s ten.”

  “So many.”

  He snorted. “You can’t be serious.”

  “They’re so clean-cut. Kids and grandkids.”

  “Yeah, it’s like a Fashion Week photo shoot back there. The blond woman, the older one, nipped and tucked, she’s his wife. The boys range from your age, thirty-two, to the oldest, forty-two. They all have some presidential name, either middle or first name.”

  “And the girl?”

  “The youngest. Layla Eleanor Rush, twenty-seven. Mom kept trying until she had that girl. Parenting magazine did a cover story on it, years ago. The article’s over-the-top, acting like the mom was Sarah from the Bible and the kid was sent from heaven.”

  Layla was beautiful. Dressed in an iridescent green silk baroque-style dress. The kind of dress that took confidence and money.

  Gracie ran her hand over the monitor. Would they have been friends? Would the boys have teased her? Like Tony?

  Unexpected emotion tightened her throat, moistened her eyes. The senator began to talk about one of his sons, Porter Jefferson Rush, who was also his campaign manager. The camera zoomed in on the tall man in the back, who looked exactly like his father. Honestly, it was like they were twins.

  Unlike his father, Porter did not appear to like the spotlight. Sweat ran down his face. He wiped at it, leaned back, waved off the praise. But as his father encouraged the crowd to clap louder, Porter left the stage.

  Whoa.

  Looked like some family strife. How tight-knit was the family? Could they be one bad news day from falling apart? “Do you think an illegitimate kid, an illicit affair over thirty years old could…” She stopped. “How old is Andrew Rush?”

  It was hard to tell. He looked very young.

  “Sixty-eight.”

  Sour saliva flooded her mouth. “My mom was barely nineteen when she had me. Rush would’ve been thirty-five.”

  “Okay. So she was a lot younger than him, but still of age. And an affair isn’t the reputation killer it used to be. You add in three decades and the fact that you landed in a good place…it’s weak motivation.”

  True. She’d been adopted into a wealthy and respected family. “He’s conservative. Maybe he wouldn’t want ties to the Parish family.”

  “Could be. Your lot does have a reputation. But he’s dipped a toe into the feminist waters a bit over the years. It hasn’t really stopped his career.”

  If it wasn’t fear over the political fallout, assuming Rush was the one who sent the hitman, maybe… “Maybe he’s worried about his wife, his family. Maybe they’d turn against him if they found out. That would make running for president a lot harder.”

  Victor made a noise of agreement. “Good point. That’s a big family. Lots of personalities. I’ll investigate the lower half.”

  “I’ll take the upper half. Thanks, Victor.”

  She hung up. A lot of ifs and buts, but enough possibility to send her gut churning. Her list had just grown by eight. She’d have to enter their faces into the club’s facial recognition software. If any one of them ever came through her front doors, she wanted to know.

  What a crazy morning. First the money transferred from John’s account. And now it turned out she might be someone’s dirty little secret.

  Chapter 16

  Porter knelt and cleaned up the vomit from the floor of the hotel bathroom. Great. A thousand-dollar gray plaid suit absorbing gruel from his stomach.

  His father knocked on the door again. “Porter? Porter? Are you okay?”

  Porter stood. “Go away, Dad.”

  God, he sounded like a teenager, not a man of forty-two. He tossed the soaked washcloth into the wastebasket and went to the sink to wash his hands. Wetting a hand towel, he bent and wiped the knees of his suit pants.

  “Porter?”

  “A minute.”

  God in heaven. The problem with running his father’s campaign was that he had to deal with the man whether he wanted to or not. And right now that meant dealing with his father’s dirty laundry.

  Things had gone from bad to worse to worst. Bad. After Porter had intercepted the phone call with Mukta, his father had admitted that he had an illegitimate child. Worse. Mukta Parish had a video recording of the woman, girl—now dead—detailing how the senator had drugged and raped her. Worst. Mukta had been using the existence of this recording to blackmail his father, influencing how he wrote policy for thirty years.

  His father had confessed to the content of the tape this morning, moments before the press conference. Porter’s stomach still rocked.

  The handle to the bathroom door jiggled. Porter rinsed with the hotel-brand mouthwash, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

  He pushed past his father and went straight to the suite minibar. He grabbed a bottle, twisted the cap. He drank without looking. Scotch. He exhaled the heat of the drink. Grabbed another.

  Even if people could forgive the “affair,” there was no way his father’s supporters would ever forgive the fact that Mukta Parish had been initiating policy, directing research and funding for her causes for decades.

  A man who was supposed to be strong and principled had been the puppet of a rich, outspoken woman. Porter shuddered.

  And Mukta had be
en devious in the way she’d blackmailed his father. She’d cherry-picked—on votes, personnel decisions, even the focus of the many committees he’d chaired, including Senate Appropriations. Nothing overt enough to cause someone to raise an eyebrow. But if someone went looking for it, knew what they were looking for, they’d see the pattern.

  His father grabbed his arm. “Porter, what were you thinking, leaving like that? You have the entire family worried. Layla wanted to come up here. I convinced her and Mother to stay downstairs and entertain at the luncheon.”

  Porter jerked out of his grasp. He would’ve preferred Layla. “Go downstairs, Dad. A five-thousand-dollar-a-plate lunch. You need to be there.”

  “Your sister will handle things. Half the people there are her hipster Twitter followers anyway. Let the campaign go for now. I want to talk to my son, not my campaign manager.”

  Porter let out a breath. “Trust me, Dad, you don’t.”

  A long moment of silence filled the room. That pause was long enough for Porter to get up his courage. “It was just the one, right, Dad? You didn’t do it to anyone else?”

  His father took a step back. He visibly composed himself. Sure, the man had had three decades to get used to the idea.

  “Just her. Your mother and I were… She wanted a child, a girl. You know. She didn’t want me. She needed me. I felt like a tool. Not a man.”

  “I can’t hear this.” His poor mother. This would kill her. The personal and social humiliation. Not to mention the national and global scandal.

  His father shook himself, shook off the memory or the confession or the guilt. His voice came out as the candidate’s voice. “I sincerely regret the decisions I made as a brash young man.”

  A brash young man? He’d been fifteen years older than the woman he drugged and raped. Next, he’d tell him everybody makes mistakes or that she shouldn’t have been alone with a married man.

  Porter had to get himself together. Manage stuff. “When was the last time you heard from Mukta Parish?”

  The blackmailer, the woman who, when Andrew Rush was elected president, would own him.

  “Yesterday. She continues to insist on a cabinet position for her eldest daughter.”

  Not just a cabinet position, a crucial cabinet position. And why not? She didn’t need the money, but she sure as hell needed the power. Especially after learning, through much personal sacrifice and humiliation, there’d been an investigation by the FBI into the Parish family. Suspected vigilante activities. Global vigilante activities. Christ.

  As if he could read Porter’s mind, his father said, “Thank God that FBI friend of yours discovered the case against Mukta was closed. Who knows what secrets would’ve crawled out of that kind of investigation.”

  True. The daughter was one problem. Mukta an entirely different one. One that needed a different strategy.

  “That’s it. We press there, the investigation. Threaten to expose Mukta if she doesn’t back off.”

  His father shifted his stance, massaged his temples. “I’ve told you, Porter. I can handle this. There is no reason for you to get involved.”

  Involved? God, the man had no idea. Porter was already involved. Involved to the extent that he had sold his soul. His mental health. For a country that might never appreciate it. But he’d come this far. There was no turning back now.

  Chapter 17

  Having changed into a blue-print summer dress under a light-blue blazer, Gracie made her way through her bar to the corner table.

  Dusty sat there wearing cargo shorts and a hunter-green T-shirt. He was eating a burger topped with plantains—the chef’s special. Looking so hot. That hotness, also a problem. His cute disabled her intellect. She moved a chair and sat next to him at the table. Not because he smelled so darn good.

  It was the best place to observe the entire club.

  The corner of his mouth tipped up when she sat, but he said nothing. Swallowing another bite, he sipped the drink she’d made him and coughed. He eyed the swirly blue mixture with surprise and took another swig. He put the drink on the table and grinned in approval. “Blood and Guts. That’s a game changer. And the burger…unexpected but tastes great.”

  Her heart fluttered, as light and breezy as a butterfly’s wings. “I’m glad you like the drink. And the burger.”

  He lifted the burger to take another bite, stopped. “Thought it’d be less busy during the day, less of an eatery.”

  She looked around the club. Not the same teeming masses as the night but fairly full. “I accidentally hired a great chef. People started coming in for lunch. Knew a good thing when I saw it, so I expanded the kitchen. Hired another chef.”

  He put the burger down, swallowed his bite. “Guess that feels like a problem when you’re under threat.” He nodded toward the front entranceway. “Noticed the new security measures. Metal detector on. Got a guy working security during the day. What else is new?”

  Oh, just that her father was a senator with a huge family who might want to kill her. And John and El had transferred money to an offshore account right before she was shot at. “Security is a little personal. Don’t you think?”

  He stared at her. And heat pushed through her body so fast and hard she was surprised her shoes didn’t blow off. “I wish you weren’t hot enough to melt my panties.”

  And there she went.

  He barked unexpected laughter. “And that’s, what? Impersonal?”

  His eyes gleamed with amusement and more than a little lust—and that heat called to her sense of daring. Her brain felt giddy, drunk on hormones. “I just meant couldn’t you have some gross ear hair or a less perfect rear end or a less masculine nose or a horrible Philly accent instead of that killer Southern one?”

  He wiped his hands on his napkin. “The accent. It always gets them.”

  “Yeah.” She played along, running her eyes up and down his muscular chest. “The accent is what gets them.”

  He leaned toward her, licked his lips, and in a voice that dripped sex, said, “Smart move with the entrance. Get any info from the security camera footage out back?”

  Sheesh. That accent was the devil. She leaned back. “Before you leave, I’m going to insist you come to my office and let me pay you for working last night.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. They exchanged a long look. His said he understood she was dismissing him. Hers asked what he was going to do about it. The red in her face said something entirely different.

  He nodded, crumpled up his napkin, and stood. “Man should never turn down an honest day’s pay. Lead the way.”

  Gracie led Dusty through the club to the back hall. As they passed the men’s bathroom, a man came out and nearly crashed into her.

  She backed up, reached for a weapon that wasn’t there. Customer, she told herself, and forced her hand back down.

  The man, a big guy, shaggy, grease-darkened hair, an unruly beard, dressed in a hoodie and jeans, eyed her with an intensity that set her heart racing. He drew up short to let her pass.

  She watched his big hands flex in his pockets. Every intuitive nerve in her body tensed, readied to respond.

  The man’s eyes jumped over her head to Dusty. She saw something visibly shift in him. “Sorry,” he mumbled and walked past them with an oddly disjointed gait.

  What had that been? Maybe she was being paranoid. She turned to Dusty. He was turned, watching the man, who was walking away. Maybe not.

  Boxing off the moment for later, she led Dusty through the swinging door that read Staff only.

  He followed, and in a voice that might’ve been a bit strained or distracted, said, “Shame about losing both night bartenders. What are your plans on that?”

  Another worry. She’d hired back a bartender who’d worked for her a few years ago, but that wasn’t going to cut it. “Still forming, actually. At least I learned my lesson with
the last two. Never hire people who are romantically tied.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him. His eyes jumped from her backside to her face. He’d been looking at her butt. A thrill of delight rolled through her, but she reprimanded him with her eyes.

  His face warmed. He shrugged in apology. “Ah, so they broke up and neither could take showing up for work?”

  “No. The opposite. They called me from the airport. So sorry, but it was the opportunity of a lifetime. They won a two-month cruise.”

  “Two months?” Dusty choked. “That sounds awfully expensive.”

  She laughed. They passed the corridor with the steel door that led upstairs, and she hoped he wouldn’t notice.

  “Steel door? Security pad? That’s high-tech.”

  Of course. Hard to hide the fact that you were a spy from a spy. She grinned at him. “I live upstairs. There are drunk people downstairs. I like to protect myself.”

  And she had a bunch of servers up there that stored and sorted information for the League. Her only connection to her family right now seemed to be computerized.

  He gave an exaggerated, skeptical nod. “Tell me, for that security pad, do you have one of those under-the-skin do-hickies? Some kind of access and tracker, right?”

  Ugh. Tony. He must have told Dusty about the Parish GPS, monitoring, and security clearance all in one. And, yeah, she had one embedded in her wrist.

  The familiar smell of fried food in the air, she stopped at the door leading into the kitchen. “What else did Tony tell you? You wouldn’t happen to know anything about my embarrassing teenage drama?”

  He shook his head. “Naw. He was tight-lipped, that one. A good man who seriously wanted to do good. You know he wanted to keep you all safe, right?”

  She knew. He’d betrayed the family to stop Justice from making lethal mistakes. It hadn’t helped. In the end, he’d sacrificed himself. And Gracie’s last words to him? She’d called him a traitor.