Time to dig into the DC agent. He set to work. A short time later, he’d gotten the basics but dove deeper.
An hour later, he’d found lots of interesting information. The agent was from a wealthy family, had tons of political ties. He pulled up a photo of the guy’s lacrosse team. At least three of his teammates were from political families.
Dusty expanded the picture to look at each of them. Nothing remarkable. Except maybe Porter Rush—and only because he had her on his own mind.
A lot of people had red hair and green eyes. Still, Rush could’ve been Gracie’s brother. They looked that much alike.
Dusty paused with his fingers on the trackpad. When he’d looked into Gracie’s biological mother, Sheila, hadn’t there been something about her involvement in politics? Born in Tasmania, she’d come here interested in the American political system.
She’d worked on a campaign back in the day. If he remembered correctly, it’d been Senator Rush’s, right?
It was a coincidence, had to be. Yet…
He set to work. Two hours later, and he had a firm connection between the Rush family and Gracie Parish. Specifically, her biological mother, Sheila Marie Hall and Rush.
A photo of a young Sheila at Senator Rush’s campaign headquarters, thirty-some years ago, when he’d first run for and won his seat.
Dusty sat back. Did Rush’s son Porter know his dad had an illegitimate daughter? Could be. Porter was running his father’s bid for the presidency. He was probably involved with vetting his own father.
So Porter finds this out somehow and then asks his old friend and teammate, the DC agent, to find out what he could about Gracie.
Why?
Could this be the reason a sniper had tried to kill Gracie? The way these political boys got around an illegitimate kid didn’t seem so bad, but add in the fact that Gracie’s mother had been young, Rush’s conservative background, and the weird mythology that had sprung up around Rush’s daughter Layla—like the good Lord himself had blessed the family with a girl after five boys—then maybe.
But the agent had also asked about Mukta.
Mukta and Rush. They ran in some similar circles. And she’d adopted his illegitimate kid. Did Mukta know it was his kid? He’d bet she did. Made for some awkward party talk, surely.
Come to think of it, Gracie’s adoption was an anomaly. Gracie had been adopted as an infant, but Mukta Parish adopted only older kids, damaged kids, kids with some sad backstory.
Might be the sick way his mind worked, but it seemed Mukta could benefit a lot by holding this information over Rush’s head. Politically a lot. Businesswise a lot. What might a man do to get that kind of monkey off his back?
Fuck. Gracie was in serious danger.
Dusty jolted at the annoying beep, beep of the alarm he’d set to go off whenever Gracie left the club.
He checked his phone. Sighed. Was it too much to hope she’d sit still for one night? What are you up to, Gracie? He rolled out of the chair, grabbed his bat-belt and his keys.
A quick visit to the bathroom, and he headed out of the private entrance and down the wooden steps leading from his room to the driveway.
He jumped into his car, turned the ignition, and checked the tracker on his phone. He’d slipped one onto her phone last night. Huh. She was headed toward the turnpike.
He left the driveway and glanced at his gas. Shit. He’d forgotten to fill it. Damn. This woman was running him ragged.
Chapter 23
Gracie steered her Ford down the well-lit North Philly street lined with duplexes and parked cars. She drove slowly, hoping Cee would respond to her text and run out.
She didn’t. Fishing her cell from the cup holder, she tried calling. No answer, but as soon as she hung up, a text popped up on her phone: I’m still inside.
Really, Captain Obvious? She was tempted to double-park, run up and drag her out. No. Her training wouldn’t let her hang her car out to be marked by anyone who came along.
She circled the block and pulled into a space that hadn’t been vacant the last time around. Parking karma. After locking her car, she quickly jogged back to the house.
Baseball hat and sunglasses hiding her face, she skirted the small metal gate and reached the ajar front door. Ajar?
Her adrenaline woke up like a spooked pit bull. Hearing sharpened. Awareness increased.
Ducking her head, she reached under the brim of her hat and yanked down the silver, light-distorting face mask sewn into the lining. With her face covered, she pocketed her glasses, slipped on her gloves, unholstered her gun, and crept inside.
Three people, two men and one woman, blindfolded, tied up on kitchen chairs that had been dragged into the center of the living room. All three were out cold. She rushed over and checked pulses on each. Steady. Looked like they’d been drugged.
What was going on? The entire floor was a mess, strewn with thumb drives, laptops, and piles of DVDs.
She scanned the area. The room smelled like skunk weed. And ramen noodles. Where was Cee? A startling crash from the basement cranked up the pace on her already pounding pulse.
Gun raised, she stalked into the kitchen—four half-eaten Styrofoam cups of ramen noodles on the table, and the basement door wide open.
Soundlessly, she approached the door, crouched, and sighted around it. The steps down were wooden, thin, worn, and dark. She couldn’t see the bottom. Going down there would be stupid. Dangerous.
Her breath hot against her face mask, she started down the stairway. Instead of using a flashlight, she let her eyes adjust. The worn boards creaked under her feet no matter where she stepped or how lightly she trod. Halfway down there was a chill. And the sour, overwhelming stench of layered body fluids. Piss. Sweat. Vomit. Blood. Cum.
Her heart raised an all-hands-on-deck, all-units-report-for-duty, SOS, and Mayday alarm all in one. It was pitch-black on the last step. Tentatively, she reached forward and hit a heavy felt curtain that hung across the basement entrance.
Pushing it aside, she entered quick, quiet, and ready. The room was large but broken up in sections of wood framing. A red light hung from the rafters.
She scanned what looked like a small studio. A bed and camera were set up with lighting, obviously for filming. A computer monitor on a tall table flashed obscene pictures, screaming women, bloodied, sexual torture.
And by the back door, a heavyset man in all black wearing a face mask trying to get out. He wrestled open a series of locks, including a rusty lock chain.
Gracie aimed at his head. “Hands up.”
Her voice came out as deadly serious, as angry, as she felt. The man froze and slowly raised his hands. Gracie ordered him down onto the cement floor. He backed up and got onto his belly.
How many other people were here? Where was Cee? Gracie moved over to the man and began to check him for weapons. Pressing along the sides of his back, her hand sank into padding. Padding?
“Gracie, it’s me.”
Gracie jumped back. Cee? She pulled her sister to her feet and leaned in close enough to see her fire-brown eyes through the black mask. “Is anyone else here?”
Cee shook her head. “No. Just those perverts upstairs.”
Perverts? Oh God. It all fell into place. Cee was on a mission. The stacks of DVDs on the floor. The people tied up. Cee had set them up. Set them up for who? “What—”
Heavy pounding on the front door ricocheted down into the basement. Cee looked at the back door. “It’s the police.”
Police? She’d called the police while she was still in the house? The sound of police entering. Their loud footsteps echoing on the floorboards.
Toots on toast. They could not get caught here. In a house obviously used for seedy activity, with three people tied up. It would be all over the news. Momma would kill her. Them.
Gracie reached out and q
uietly undid the rusty chain, opened the basement door. A quick scan of the area showed no police. She looked back at Cee, who nodded that she was ready.
Flinging the door open, Gracie ran, with Cee a step behind. She heard a gruff female voice call from somewhere behind her. “Police. Don’t fucking move!”
Chapter 24
The officer’s command echoed around Gracie and Cee as they sprinted across the fenced-in backyard.
Dodging refuse—old sink, mattress, a toppled birdbath—Gracie pivoted so she ran behind Cee, offering her body as some protection to the teen. Not much. The kid was taller.
Cee grasped the rusty fence handle and slid open the six-foot-high wooden gate. The cop yelled again, then shot.
They slipped into the alley. Blue lights flashed at one end. A police cruiser. They turned and ran the opposite way. Police lights bounced into the alley at that end.
Sitting ducks.
They were between two approaching cruisers in an access alley lined with tall wooden fencing. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
The cruisers inched forward. Had to go over. She turned to tell Cee. She was already scaling the fence, huge fake torso and belly halfway over.
Mad skills. Terrible teamwork.
Spotting an old tire, Gracie ran, hit the rim, and hoisted herself over the fencing. Thank the powers that be she didn’t have her belly ring on right now. That would’ve hurt.
She flipped over the side and landed inside a rectangular patch of yard. Hearing the low warning growl, she had just enough time to grab Cee and yank her back hard. The bull mastiff jerked against his chain. Through her face mask, Cee’s eyes were as wide and surprised as someone woken from a nightmare by ice water to the face.
The dog barked and growled like it hadn’t eaten a person in three weeks. A light went on in the house. The sliding door screamed open, and a slender man in boxers rushed onto the deck.
Crud. Gracie pivoted and ran. A step behind Cee who was already running. The man’s eyes must’ve adjusted, because he two-finger whistled and yelled, “They’re over here!”
Gracie put on her speed, jumped up, way up, and grabbed the edge of the fencing. She swung herself over and landed on the other side a second before Cee. They sprinted across the next yard, over the next fence and the next.
When they had a little distance, she grabbed Cee before she sprinted away again.
“Is the padding dissolvable?”
Cee nodded. Good. She’d done that right at least. Gracie pointed toward a covered boat in the yard. “Take off your clothes, ball them in the padding. We’ll shove it under the tarp, let it dissolve away any evidence.”
Cee crouched by the boat, pulled off the top layer of her clothes, balled them in the padding, and used a penknife to break the seal inside the padding, releasing the liquid.
She shoved the package under the boat’s cover. It was already breaking apart in her hands.
Cee wiped her hands on the grass, looked to Gracie. “What now?”
“They’re searching for two people, one short, one heavyset. You’re neither of those.” Gracie pushed her car keys into Cee’s hand. “White Ford Fusion. Hail-damaged.” She stopped for a minute. “Can you drive?”
Cee’s sweat-drenched face looked offended. “Of course.”
Of course? Kid was fifteen. Gracie pulled her jacket sleeve over one hand and scrubbed Cee’s face, brushed out her hair with her fingers, then pushed her toward the gate. “Wait for me at my club.”
Cee pushed back, slowing herself. “I can’t leave you.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I don’t…” Cee trailed off as the flash of a cruiser’s lights bounced off the fence. They crouched face-to-face. For the first time, Cee looked like a kid. Scared. Vulnerable. Stubborn. “How will you get back?”
Now she was going to try and be a team player? Would’ve helped if she’d told Gracie what she’d be walking into. “Uber. Now go.”
Cee stood, peeked out of the gate to make sure it was clear, and walked out, looking nothing like a big, fat felon and everything like a wayward teen in jean shorts and army boots.
Gracie stood and ran in the opposite direction.
Chapter 25
The numbers on the dented and dinged Exxon gas pump ticked rapidly up. Dusty’s attention was split between that, the homeless guy wandering the gas station muttering and cursing, and the tracking app on his phone. Gracie hadn’t picked up on this one yet. Though she had found the one he’d put on her car.
Tank full, he handed the homeless guy a couple of bucks, climbed into the driver’s seat, pulled out of the lot, and headed toward where Gracie had stopped a minute ago. Only a few blocks away.
He turned up his police scanner. It had been filled with casual law enforcement chatter when he’d pulled into the gas station, but things had grown serious. An anonymous phone call. Suspicious activity at one of the duplexes rented by college kids.
Someone had called in an incident on the same block Gracie had gone to. He’d bet money Ms. Gracie Parish was heavily involved and that this had something to do with her family’s illegal activities.
For such a little thing, Gracie sure was a big pain in the ass.
He drove past the street she’d been on and spotted a police cruiser. For a split second, maybe a half second, he considered and then made the decision, the box checked.
If she needed him, he’d be there. He’d do whatever he could to help her get out of whatever situation she found herself in. And he’d make damn sure she knew who’d helped her. This could be the thing that got her to open up to him.
* * *
Coasting around the North Philly block, Dusty wasn’t sure how he’d ended up going from a comfortable, if slightly hot, bedroom two hours ago, to running interference for a woman whose family he was trying to stop.
There was that shaky edge of undercover morality again. Help the bad guys escape the good guys to stop the head bad guy. Confusing.
But here he was. He’d just seen Gracie and a heavyset guy vaulting six-foot fences like Olympians, while the cops began to give chase.
Couldn’t have the cops catch her. Not just because she didn’t deserve to be in jail, but because it would send her family into further lockdown. He’d never get anywhere near them, and months of investigating would go down the toilet, just when it was getting interesting.
He continued to weave his way through the neighborhood and spotted a cruiser backing out of an alley. It took off. Pulling the wheel left, he slid up to the curb in front of a fire hydrant—no other place to park around here—and flicked off his lights.
With a bit of hope-this-doesn’t-come-back-to-bite-me-in-the-ass, and gratitude he wasn’t technically on the job, he took his radio jammer off his bat-belt.
To get extra juice, he plugged the black box, with its four antennae, into his car’s power outlet and switched it on.
The chatter on his radio instantly died down. Okay, Ms. Parish, you do the rest.
Chapter 26
Gracie flung herself over another fence and dropped to the sidewalk. Two cops were nearby. She waited to be spotted. One of the officers looked over.
She ran. Not too fast. Behind her she could hear the creak of leather gun belts and the clink of metal and the orders to stop. She picked up her pace.
Through yards and across streets, she ran. Jumping fences and zig-zagging to change direction, she ran.
The footsteps of those behind her began to grow distant. Blood whooshed in her ears. She kept her eyes focused ahead, knowing at any moment the reinforcements would arrive and cut her off.
She rounded a corner and saw no one. Somewhere behind, she heard one of the officers curse and with heavy breath radio in her direction. She climbed over another fence. There was a shed by the edge of the yard. Jumping up, she grabbed the edge, hoisted herself onto t
he low roof.
Squatting there, sweat plastering her face mask to her skin, her disbelieving eyes searched the area.
Where was the cavalry? Sure, they couldn’t keep up, but she’d heard someone call in her direction over the radio. No reinforcements?
This was too good to be true. Patience. Hold. Forcing herself to take slow, deep breaths, she waited. A minute later and still nothing. If she waited longer, they might stumble upon her.
Crawling across the roof, she jumped and landed outside of the yard, in another access alley. She ran.
At the end, she altered course on instinct, heading toward another neighborhood. No one behind her, no one ahead. With a sense of detachment, she picked up her pace. This was almost fun.
Not almost.
She vaulted a hedge, ran across the yard. Muscles burning, she ran until she exited the neighborhood, ran down the road, and came out onto Bustleton Avenue.
She stopped beside a boarded-up corner store. Hidden in the dim area behind it, she pulled off her hat and face mask, set them on the ground. She yanked off her long-sleeve shirt and vest, balled them up, and tucked them in her hat. She shoved the whole thing into a packed Dumpster.
Now wearing a white tank top and black cargo pants, she shook out her long hair and started walking. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Expecting to see Cee’s number, hoping the kid was okay, she unzipped the pocket and pulled out her phone.
The number on the screen wasn’t one she’d expected. Dusty? Her newest employee must’ve saved his number to her phone. Curious—make that suspicious—she picked up. “Yeah.”
“I’m in North Philly. Near Red Lion and Northeast Ave. Need a ride?”
Huh. He was no more than a half mile away. Better than Uber. “Yeah. I’m on Bustleton. Head north. You’ll spot me.”
Jaw tense, she hung up. There was only one way he could’ve known she was in Philly. He’d put a bug on her. Not just her car. She’d spotted that one. Spotted it and hadn’t bothered looking for others. Sloppy.
The Price of Grace Page 9
