A short time later, he pulled up to the curb. The car door unlocked with a click. Yanking it open, she slid into the seat, strapped on her seat belt, and saw the jammer settled between them.
Her eyes rose and searched his. He shrugged. He’d saved her? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Well, grateful. And something else. Something she’d think about later. Right now, she was also really annoyed. He pulled away from the curb and began to drive.
She adjusted the vent toward her. “You put a tracker on me?”
“Inside your phone case. Last night at the bar.”
She closed her eyes. Hopefully disguising how much that hurt her feelings. And insulted her professional expertise. She knew he was after her family; how had she forgotten that? It was all that damn hotness and fun. And look where it had landed her.
Where had it landed her? Seated next to him in an air-conditioned car that smelled pleasantly of Dusty’s aftershave. Probably something called Ocean Breeze. She refocused on the jammer. “You ran interference?”
“Yeah.”
He wasn’t very chatty tonight. “I’m going to need you to stop tracking me.”
“I’m not sure I can agree—”
“Promise. Right now.”
He shifted in his seat. “Okay.”
That made her feel better. Stupid, but he sounded authentic. “I need to call my sister.”
“I saw your car take off. Not sure who was behind the wheel. She looked young.”
She leaned her head against the headrest. “She is. She doesn’t even have a license.”
His hands tensed around the steering wheel as the car slid to a stop at a light. He said nothing. Not chatty at all. She dialed Cee’s number.
Her sister picked up right away. “Gracie, are you okay?”
“Yeah. How’s the driving?”
“I can’t move the seat back, but it’s okay. I’m”—she paused as if checking something—“forty minutes from your club.”
“Okay. I’ll be there about forty minutes after you. Don’t talk on the phone and drive.”
She hung up.
Dusty accelerated with the light change and turned up the air conditioner. Felt great. She was drenched in sweat and stank of it. “Thanks.”
“I’ve got you.”
Now why did that comfort her? Like she wasn’t alone. Like he really cared. She closed her eyes, waited for him to say something, question her. He didn’t. He adjusted the radio to a country station, and they rode with the twangy music playing around them.
After a short time, he whispered, “It’s okay to sleep.”
The man was some kind of magician, or vigilante whisperer, because her body relaxed instantly, and she drifted off.
She woke later when she felt his warm fingers against her cheek. Her eyes blinked open. Her head was turned in his direction, and he was close enough to kiss. Smelled good enough to kiss. Like man, that Ocean Breeze, and heat.
As if hearing her thoughts or seeing them in her eyes, he leaned forward, kissed her lightly on her lips.
Fire shot through her body. Something in her called out for more. He pulled back, watched her. His sunburst eyes held her. There was kindness there. And more.
She had to know. “You didn’t ask. Not one question.”
His lips quirked, a little sadly. “I didn’t want to get into it. Not tonight. You know?”
Strangely, she did. She didn’t want to play the game either. The one where she lied and he lied. And they both pretended that the lies, even though the other knew they were lying, didn’t matter.
Without her permission, her heart softened a bit. “Thanks.” She swallowed, but her heart still felt too full. “For helping me. For not asking. Thanks.”
She moved toward him, toward those lips.
There was a knock on her window. His eyebrows lifted. Gracie turned. Cee.
Chapter 27
Stretched out under the plush white comforter of her bed, in a room with air conditioning set to arctic cold, Gracie blinked open crusty eyes. She had no desire to get up. Her handcrafted California king, a gift from Momma, was hard to leave on the best of days. Today wasn’t the best of days. Her body ached.
Mmm, the smell of pancakes and bacon. Her stomach grumbled. With her stiff arms complaining, she dragged off her summer-weight goose down, exposing her white tank top and green silk boxers.
She braced and wrenched herself out of bed. Her legs screamed. Her back screamed. Her butt screamed. Time to head back to the gym.
After going to the bathroom and splashing cold water over puffy eyes, she shambled out to her family room.
Cee had had to sleep on Gracie’s sofa. She felt bad about it, but she didn’t have an adult-sized bed in her other bedroom. Just a crib and tiny toddler bed shaped like a car.
The blanket and pillow she’d given Cee were folded and piled on the arm of the silver leaf couch. In the kitchenette, the white cabinets were ajar. Dishes, bowls, a frying pan, an egg carton, and pancake mix took up the limited counter space. Gracie usually cooked downstairs.
Cee had done the hard work of cooking over an electric stove with only two small burners. And then setting up all the food—orange juice, plates with pancakes and bacon—on the breakfast bar.
Cee sat on a swivel barstool, feet propped on the stool next to her. She was dressed in Gracie’s white cotton T-shirt, staring at her phone. Her hair was jet black, so dark the recessed lights made streaks of purple in it.
Gracie nudged Cee’s legs out of her way and sat next to her with a hiss escaping her mouth and a hot you suck from her thighs. “Good morning,” she said.
Cee lowered her phone. “What took you so long to get home last night?”
Oh, I don’t know. I was busy trying to avoid being captured. Gracie took a strip of overcooked bacon and began to chew. “Don’t cop an attitude.”
Cee’s sharp jaw extended as she pursed her lips. “I thought cop meant ‘police.’ Cop also means ‘to have’?”
Whoops. She kept forgetting English wasn’t the kid’s first language. “Yeah.” Gracie took a couple of the scorched pancakes and added them to the plate in front of her. “Where’s the syrup?”
Cee blinked at her. “I couldn’t find it.”
“It’s in there.” Gracie pointed at the fridge. “I can’t stand without shock waves, so do you mind?”
Cee got up, walked around the bar, and retrieved the syrup. She put it down and flounced back into her seat. “You might need some better conditioning.”
Said the kid who ran a quarter of what she did. Still, she hadn’t been to the gym in…well, since Tony. They’d trained together most weeks.
Gracie poured syrup on her pancakes. “You’re welcome for the rescue, by the way. Who were those people last night?”
Cee began to fill her own plate. The kid had been waiting for her to eat? Kind of sweet.
“Six months ago, the two men you saw drugged and brutally raped a girl. Someone who went to their college. She was lured by a friend, the girl you saw last night. That is their way. They use a girl to lure another. The girl who’d been raped tried to go through normal channels, but she was drunk and using that night. So that disqualifies her from humanity and justice.”
Gracie cut her pancake. “How’d you find out about her?” She put a piece of pancake into her mouth. Not bad.
“Someone who went to the Mantua Academy happened to know the girl. She told Jules about the case. When I heard about it, I did some research. I organized the mission.”
Jules. Another sibling. She and Cee were in the same unit—so they trained, learned, shared a hall, formed a bond. And though Cee was acting like it was all her idea, she doubted that was true. Cee didn’t have the computer skills to pull this off. More likely it was her, Jules, and Jules’s twin, Romeo. Swallowing another bite, she said
, “That’s against the rules.”
“Research showed the victim had filed a police report. The police had interviewed her. It seemed it would move forward, but then was dismissed. My research also uncovered more. The proof I left on the floor of that house. This is not, how you say, a single incident.”
“Isolated. You mean an isolated incident.” Gracie used the bacon in her hand as an accusatory finger. “And I meant you went against the rules of engagement. You went in there half-cocked. Tied people up. Drugged them. You could easily have left evidence that leads the police to us.”
“I was so careful.”
“Was getting me caught part of your ‘careful’? If I had been a little slower, and you a little faster, I would’ve been caught while you got away.”
Cee poured syrup over her pancakes, speared one with her fork, lifted it, and bit the dripping edge. “I didn’t think…”
“Exactly. I need you to send me all of the information you’ve collected. You can’t start a splinter vigilante group within our already illegal vigilante organization.”
“Thomas Jefferson said, ‘When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.’ I was merely doing what I came here to do.”
Great quote. “And that’s why you fought with Momma?”
“I’m not a child. I want to go on missions. I want to do the job. Unlike you.”
Gracie finished chewing her bacon, swallowed some coffee. Whoa. Dark as Cee’s hair. Like Justice’s hair. Cee reminded her of Justice in a lot of ways. All that anger. Too bad there wasn’t an off button for aggression. She wished she could make her new sister understand. Anger was useful on occasion, but when it became the go-to emotion, it poisoned. It ate you up and turned you around and made you see the world as your enemy. And Cee deserved better, an opportunity to live a life free of that. As much as that was possible.
“Okay. So you got mad, pulled out your chip, ran away, and decided to go rogue. So why call me?”
Cee took two large bites of her pancake and took a long swig of OJ. She chewed, wiped her mouth with her hand. She had her attitude set to block and parry. “Because I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning if the one person who didn’t want me anywhere near the League came, then…” She shrugged, swung her legs back and forth.
Gracie’s throat grew tight. The kid had decided that if she could trust the person who had admitted she was openly against Cee being adopted, then she would give the family another chance. That hurt.
“I deserve that. And I’m sorry. But does Momma? Why go through the adoption process, just to run away the moment things get uncomfortable?”
“You do not understand.” With a clang, Cee tossed the fork full of half-eaten pancake on her plate. She curled her hands in her lap and fisted the baggy tee she wore, revealing the jean shorts underneath. “I am here to fight. To rescue. To save. I can’t do that in my bed by ten. I can’t take out the bad guys if I’m studying math.”
Gooseflesh winged across the expanse of Gracie’s skin. She understood how the League could make you feel—not just that you could do something about the injustices, but that you should. Needed to. “The rules are for everyone’s good. This isn’t about you, about one person. If you don’t want to play by the rules, tell Momma you’ve changed your mind.”
She was so young. She should know that she had a choice. She could change her mind. “If you don’t want adoption, that’s fine. It’ll be fine. We can set you up anywhere. I promise. We’ll take care of you.”
Cee’s cell beeped. She picked up her phone, texted something. Was her lip trembling? She looked back up with eyes as fierce as a tiger and as attentive. She stood up. “I am not leaving my family. I am where I want to be. I am a Warrior Woman.”
Pulling off her T-shirt to reveal her jean shorts and the tight blue tank she’d had on last night, she marched toward the front door.
Gracie stood. What had she said to make her so upset? She was trying to help. Cee was the one who’d run away, taken out her GPS chip, said all the stuff that indicated she wanted out. “You can’t leave here without me putting in the code. I’m the only one authorized to allow unchipped people in or out of this level.”
Cee paused with her hand on the door. “What about the elevator? It’s just password protected, right?”
Kid couldn’t find the syrup, but she’d found the secret elevator? Gracie’s eyes strayed automatically to the inset bookcases flanking the window seat. Both bookcases were stuffed to the brim with books. And behind one of them was a hidden compartment.
“No, you can’t use that either. It only leads to the basement.” To the tunnel there that led to the warehouse.
Cee frowned, frowned the way a smart person does when they come across something that makes no sense. Gracie waited for her to ask. She didn’t. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Then let me out. I’ll call Momma. She’ll send a car.”
She wasn’t going to let Cee make her feel guilty. Curds and whey on a big hairy spider. She did feel bad. “You want to do the work? Let’s start with training. I’m going to go through last night’s mission on the way to Momma’s. Step by step. I want you to know exactly what you did wrong.”
“You’re driving me?”
“Yep.”
Gracie wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw the barest hint of a smile, the repressed hope of a hardened teen, flit across Cee’s face.
* * *
Someone in a light-blue Toyota Camry had followed Gracie to the Mantua Academy when she’d dropped Cee off. Thankfully, Cee hadn’t seemed to notice. That would’ve been bad. Cee would’ve asked questions, mentioned it to Momma.
Disaster. Momma and Leland would not only have asked questions, they’d have gotten answers. Answers that would lead them to John and El, to Gracie stalking her son, to the threat on her life, to Dusty and her email. Her betrayal.
Shudder.
Momma and Leland and the League would go on the attack. Gracie had no idea what the blowback might be on Tyler, but it would probably end her attempt to become part of his life. Once her family was involved, this would be out of her control. It would get messy.
She couldn’t let that happen.
Gracie carefully checked her mirror as she continued up the long, winding road. Yep, the light-blue Camry still followed. And whoever drove that car had no stealth. Either he wasn’t very good at his job or he wanted her to spot him.
The disturbing idea that she was being herded flashed through her mind, but she dismissed it as grandiose. Even if someone could’ve worked out her reaction to a tail, few people knew the Mantua Academy owned a hundred acres of heavily wooded, uncultivated land in Bucks County. It was where the family practiced drills, basic survival skills, and tactical maneuvers. And it was where she’d confront her tail.
Crud. Backup would be nice. Challenging this guy in the isolated woods was dangerous. Not as dangerous as letting this surveillance continue. Time for a showdown.
Hands sweaty against her steering wheel, she reminded herself it would be okay. Her knowledge of the land and her stealth—judging by his driving he had none—would give her the upper hand.
She turned her car into the hidden drive. At the lift bar that blocked access to the property’s dirt road, she got out and waved her chip over the lock. It clicked open. She undid the chain, swung up the bar. After rolling her car inside, she put the gate back into place.
If this guy was intent on following her, he’d have to do it on foot.
Her car bounced along the dirt road for nearly a mile. At the barn, a rickety wooden structure worn with age and greened with moisture, she pulled onto the grass and hid her car behind it.
A quick visit to her trunk, where she fished out a camo shirt and hat from her bugout bag and grabbed some zip ties.
Her heart and her hope ticked up
a notch. This was it. An opportunity that felt like action instead of reaction. A real lead, a chance to get answers. She needed this to end. The longer this went on, the longer the threat on her life was out there, a looming unknown, the greater chance things would escalate, the greater risk this could impact Tyler.
Crossing the clearing, she used one gloved hand to push past the archery range netting and into the woods.
The wail of cicadas, buzz of bees, and chirp of birds masked her movements over uneven ground, thick with brambles and heavy with vines that snaked around trunks like anacondas. she had some stealth. She made her way as silently as possible over the uneven ground, thick with brambles and heavy with vines snaking around trunks like anacondas.
With the skill of a cat stalking a mouse, she circled back and snuck up behind the guy.
She heard the man before she saw him. He was big. Not as big as Dusty. But tall and muscular with a peculiar, duck-like way of walking.
Wait. The way he walked… It was the guy from the bar, the one who’d given her the evil-eye after coming out of the bathroom.
Slowing her footfalls, her heart picked up its pace. Adrenaline spiked, her focus tightened on the man. Dressed in nondescript, dark clothing, his hands clasped in front of him. Toots. He had a gun.
She’d been moving up, closing in on him, but drew up short, creating more wind than noise. Still, he stopped, spun in her direction. She ducked behind a tree. Bam, bam, bam. One shot vibrated through the trunk.
He missed every other time. Not a great shot. She could lean out and shoot before he knew it.
But she didn’t want him dead. And if she had to injure him, she wanted to do it in a way that allowed him to still communicate.
She broke from her cover. Zigzagging into the woods, another bam, bam followed her.
The ground dipped, she crouched used the dip to cover her progress. Ahead. A dead tree.
Sometimes being petite didn’t suck.
She dropped down, shimmied inside, through wood shavings, spider webs, and crunch of roly-poly bugs. Gross. Moss laced every inhale. A moment later, he crashed after her, slid down the embankment with a curse. He slowed, scanning, breathing heavily. His loafers wet with grass and mud stopped not more than ten feet from her.
The Price of Grace Page 10
