Her throat squeezed tight—overcome by her brother’s losses, while she lived and was able to get on with her life. Maybe it wasn’t the life she dreamed of for herself, but one on the side of the living nonetheless.
Grace raised her hand to cup the crystal pendant on a thin gold chain around her neck. She was in the habit of leaving it close against her skin to charge over time. She focused her will on the stone. As she did, it warmed to her touch and began to glow faintly.
Releasing the pendant, she picked up a fallen twig from the grass and absently pushed it into the ground, making small abstract patterns with the holes. She paused for a moment, raising her head to watch the white clouds slide across the pure blue sky.
“I got a call from DL last night. He wants me to help him with a case,” she said, finally getting to the pressing topic at hand. She walked through the details of the previous late-night phone call and the breakfast meeting that morning, giving herself a chance to absorb the conversations a second time.
“I have a bad feeling this won’t be a simple case. I sense there’s more going on than I can see right now.” She noticed the twig still in her hand and started poking the ground again, this time in frustration.
“I’ll call Billy and see what he has to say about it. I want to find out if this situation is something he can help us with—see if there’s some way he can figure out what’s going on through his connections on the force.
“DL isn’t too keen on working with the police after they’ve been so dismissive about the missing girls. Hopefully, with me as mediator, he can put that aside long enough to meet with Billy and find out what can we can do.”
She paused, gathering herself before admitting softly, “I’m afraid to go visit Beth at the hospital.”
She closed her eyes in shame at her own cowardice, knowing the fear was justified but feeling weak since she couldn’t suppress it. “I haven’t stepped inside a hospital since my last surgery.”
And she had been planning to keep it that way for as long as possible. The mere thought of the hospital immediately brought back the smells of antiseptic cleaners adding to, instead of covering, the taint of blood, sickness, and death. Brought back the sounds of pain and despair. Recalled the overwhelming presences that crowded her room and nearly drove her over the brink of insanity. It was as vivid as if it happened yesterday, rather than months ago. The idea of facing all those things again was terrifying.
“I’ve got no choice if I’m going to help DL understand what happened to Beth and the other girls. I have to be there in person to touch Beth and get a good reading from her. I need to get her story directly, with no unintentional modifications by DL.”
Determined to conquer her personal demons, Grace sighed and dropped the twig, dusting off her hands as she stood. She removed a neatly folded cloth from her pocket and took some time wiping off the gravestones. Satisfied they were clean, she turned and walked back to the car.
“Danny, time to get going.”
Danny glanced up at her from the bottom of the hill and waved to show he heard her.
“Last round,” he promised, racing after Joshua, who was expertly using a stick to keep the hoop upright. “I’ll meet you at the gate.”
Grace smirked. It would take more than one more round for Danny to catch up with Joshua.
Chapter 5
Grace hit the autodial for Officer Billy Winiarksi as she drove home from the graveyard. It was time for her to get feedback from another professional about her case.
Billy had several relatives on the force—brothers, uncles, and cousins. His dad was a decorated officer killed in the line of duty. Billy dreamed about being a cop like everyone else in the family. Starting from the time he could make his hand into a pistol and say, “Put ‘em in the air!” He was earning a promising reputation for his dedication, intelligence, and dependable calm. He was hoping to become the youngest detective in city history.
Billy was also Grace’s best friend since childhood. He was the one there for her after her parents died and as she learned how to be a parent to Danny. He helped her piece her mind and body together after the accident. Billy was by her side through all the chaos her new abilities brought with them. He was a rock. He had a reputation for being a no-nonsense, down-to-earth, literal guy. Despite this, he was the only person Grace shared her and Danny’s situation with after the accident.
He picked up on the third ring. “Hey, Gracie.”
She could make out the noise of the busy station in the background. “Hey, Billy. Are you done with your shift?” She raised her voice to be heard above the background conversations.
“Yeah, just finished and was stopping by to see how Uncle Gerald’s case was coming before heading home. Did you finish your case?”
“Yeah, but it looks like something else landed on my plate.”
Grace walked through her conversations with DL. Billy would want to hear everything she had learned about this case in order to consider it from all angles.
“Grace, this sounds a bit farfetched. He’s already gone to the police, and they haven’t found anything. Are you positive you’re not trying to turn a few homeless kids’ skipping town into something more to appease DL?” Annoyance tinged his voice.
Grace let out deep breath. “Billy, you’ve known me too long to believe I would go on a wild goose chase, even for DL. I don’t think it’s only his kids disappearing. I suspect something bigger is happening. I want to see if there’s a connection with other missing persons, maybe prostitutes, in the area.”
“Did you have one of your visions?” he asked with a lowered voice, his tone taking on more focus.
“No. No visions, no flashes, no late night visits with words of inspiration. It’s my good ole investigative instincts. Although, a vision is coming on right now of my foot up your ass if you don’t take me seriously on this one.”
“Okay, okay, Grace. I got it. Your ‘spidey sense’ is telling you that more is going on here.”
Grace ground her teeth, working hard not to come back with a retort that would piss Billy off.
“I’m coming to you as a fellow professional with a problem I need help with. I’m asking you as my friend to do a little bit of work for me and meet with DL about his concerns.”
“So you want me to take advantage of my current position to go around official channels and meet with DL about this wild theory?”
“Basically. Dig a little for me and share what you find.”
Silence met her request.
Shit. She didn’t expect to get this much push back from Billy. He must be in one of his particular straight and narrow moods today.
“Okay, Billy. If you won’t do it for me, I’ll have to play the ‘Stella card’.”
“What!” A strangled sound followed as Billy worked to get his voice back to a normal volume. “You can’t be serious. You’re bringing the Stella incident into this?”
“Sorry, but it has to be done. I really need you to do this for me. If it takes the ‘Stella card’ being played, you only have yourself to blame.”
“I should never have asked you to get me out of that. I knew you wouldn’t let me forget it.”
“That’s me, the proverbial elephant. Now will you help me?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. “What do you need from me?”
“I’m hoping you can get me information about missing prostitutes, reports about women between their early teens and late twenties who disappeared over the last three years.”
Billy grunted. “Grace, when something happens to these girls, the police rarely hear about it. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to find out anything.”
“I know, but I’m hoping we might get lucky. Even if it’s their rap sheets showing a hard stop on arrests. That might be an indicator.”
Grace imagined the look on Billy’s broad face at the thought of working through three years’ worth of records, computerized or not. It wasn’t a small bit of work she
was trying to convince him to do for her.
“Check if you can get Stan in records to dig into it for you. He should be able to check out anything on this age group of females faster than you could do it on your own.”
“Grace…” Billy sighed deeper this time. “The records guys are resources used to work on active investigations, and this is not a real investigation.”
“Not yet, but I’m betting it will be,” she said. “Call it ‘a preliminary investigation based on evidence brought forward by a reliable witness’.”
“You want to name DL as the ‘reliable witness’?”
That would not help their case because DL had spent time in jail for crimes committed in his youth while part of a gang.
“Good point,” she admitted. “Use my name to avoid unnecessary questions. I’m still on friendly terms with Stan. Saying it’s a request from me should help. I’m asking you to put your eyes on this for me, to give me your thoughts on what Stan finds.”
“Okay, I’ll do it. When do you need this by?”
“Yesterday,” she said. “But I’ll take it as soon as I can.”
Chapter 6
Grace took a deep breath as she stood outside the main entrance of the hospital. Danny slipped next to her and wrapped his arms around her waist, giving her a tight hug.
“Don’t worry, Gracie,” his voice was rough in its seriousness. “This won’t be like before. You’re healed, now, and you have control over your abilities that you didn’t last time. I don’t notice you from even a few feet away. No one else will sense you’re around when we go into the hospital.”
“I guess all the practice we did to get this thing under control was worth it, huh?” Grace’s uneasiness colored her thoughts.
“You were a slow learner, but you figured it out.” Danny poked her in her ribs with one finger.
Grace grinned despite herself, letting Danny’s attempt at humor bolster her for what was coming. She turned with renewed determination to look down at his earnest face, careful to focus on the situation and not her underlying emotions.
“Can you go on up to Beth’s room and make sure no one but DL’s around?” she asked.
“Sure. I’ll do the preliminary recon and meet you up there.” Danny gave her a final two armed squeeze then moved through the walls into the hospital.
Grace gave him a five-minute head start before she walked through the sliding doors that led to the hospital’s interior. She breathed through her mouth in an effort to reduce the impact of the multiple nausea-inducing smells. After a few minutes navigating through the maze of floors and nurses’ stations, Grace found DL standing outside Beth’s room.
He was talking to a short, uniformed police officer who was taking notes on a pad. DL was rocking from heel to toe and back again in his black Converse tennis shoes, a scowl on his face.
Grace waited a few feet away until their conversation was finished. She exchanged nods with the policeman as he walked by her, recalling his face from her time on the force but not placing a name with it.
DL moved to meet her a few feet from the door. “Everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “What was that about?”
DL let out a noisy breath, shaking his head. “They’re still trying to track down Chris. They’re convinced he did this and think I might be protecting him. If I thought he had done it, I would be the first person to try to bring him in. But he’s long gone after the scare he got the other night.
“Right now, I need to focus on Beth, and protecting the other girls.”
DL turned, gesturing for Grace to follow him into room. He approached the bed where a small, bandaged form lay, tubes connecting to both her arms. Grace followed him, stopping at the end of the bed. Danny shifted from the back of the room to stand near the door. He gave her a quick nod to confirm no one else was around to interfere with their conversations.
“How’s she looking?” Grace asked him.
“Good for someone attacked a few days ago. Her aura is stabilized, but there’s something…”
“What are you seeing?” She peered at the sleeping figure, wishing she was able to catch what Danny could see.
“There’s some sort of black ‘stain,’ I guess you could say, moving around the edges of her aura. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Do you think it’s from her attack somehow?”
“I’m not sure. But be careful when you touch her. I don’t know what this stain is or what it might do to you.”
Grace nodded her agreement then turned her full attention to Beth.
“Beth, honey?” DL whispered.
The girl’s eyes opened sleepily, revealing a pair of brilliant, emerald green irises and large pupils.
“Beth, honey,” DL said again, putting one hand on her head as he bent close to her. “I’ve brought a friend I’d like you to talk to about what happened.”
Beth’s eyes focused on DL and then moved to take in Grace at the end of the bed.
“Is she a cop?” Her voice, husky and dry, carried a note of worry.
“I’m a private eye, not a cop,” Grace said.
Beth managed to appear skeptical underneath all the bandages covering her face.
“I was a cop before my accident, but now I’m a PI,” Grace amended.
“What accident?” Beth asked, her voice growing stronger and taking on some energy.
“I was in a car accident that killed my little brother and put me in the hospital. Took six months and a dozen surgeries to get my arm and leg working again.” Grace made a point to keep her eyes focused on Beth, despite the urge to glance over to where Danny was standing. She sensed his eyes on her, realizing it wasn’t easy for him to hear this part of their story.
Grace stepped to the side of the bed opposite of DL and rolled up her sleeve for Beth to see the scars covering the skin of her right arm. Pulling away the collar of her shirt, she pointed to her neck, where a thin white line ran from behind her ear to her collar bone on the right side. She was aware of Danny shifting uncomfortably by the door, focusing his gaze on Beth rather than on Grace’s scars.
“Will my scars look like that?” Beth raised a bandaged hand to hover near her face, her voice heavy with concern.
Grace shook her head. “From what DL tells me, the doctors say your wounds will heal well and won’t leave too much scaring. But you will have some scars to deal with.”
No sense pulling punches for the kid. She would need to learn to deal with perceptions of disfigurement in order to move on with her life. Personal experience told her the psychological scars would be more difficult to handle than the physical ones.
“I know how scary it feels being hurt and alone in the hospital. But would it be okay if I asked you a few questions about what happened to you?”
Beth stared at DL, fear clear in her eyes.
DL stroked her head a few times. “It’s hard, Beth. But I believe Grace can help catch the man who did this to you if she can get information about what happened. I’m hoping she’ll be able to stop him from doing this to anyone else. Do you think you can help her?”
Beth swallowed then shifted in the bed.
“Okay,” she said, with a tremor in her voice, not meeting DL’s eyes, “but can I talk to just her?”
DL removed his hand from her head and reached down to squeeze her arm once. “Of course.” He turned to walk to the door. “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
“Is it okay if I sit down?” Grace asked once DL was out of the room.
“Oh sure, uh, sorry.” The tops of Beth’s checks flushed pink over the bandages.
Grace grabbed a chair from the corner and brought it over to the edge of the bed.
“Where do you want me to start?” Beth shifted again, grimacing with the movement of her arms.
“I know about you and Chris and why you were on the street that night. We don’t need to talk about it—I don’t think it’s relevant to the case.” Grace hoped to put Beth at
ease by moving past that point. “I want to learn as much as I can about the man who attacked you and why he did it.”
Beth hesitated for a minute, digesting what Grace said.
“Okay, well, I was on the street, doing this ‘favor’ for Chris.” Her eyes begged Grace to accept this version of the truth.
“You were looking for a man who’d help you get the money Chris needed.” Grace prompted Beth to continue.
“Yeah, right,” Beth said. “I saw a car cruising along, checking each of us out, like they all do. The weird thing was when he’d stop the car, someone would go over to chat with him, and he wouldn’t even roll down the windows to talk to them. He would pull back into the road and continue checking us out. It was creepy, but you get all kinds down there.”
Grace nodded, encouraging Beth to continue with the story but making a mental note of the deviation of behavior Beth noticed. Danny would pay particular attention to what Beth was saying and would be able to repeat everything back later when they got home.
“He had a sweet ride, one of those fancy sports cars. I figured he’d have a bunch of money to spend,” Beth continued. “When he came to my spot, I went right up to the curb to meet him, and this time he rolled down the window.”
She took a shuddering breath. “‘What beautiful eyes,’ he said and gave me this huge smile. But something felt off, ya know? I don’t know what it was, but the guy was definitely giving off a major creep vibe.”
Beth’s face crinkled up, followed by a wince when the movement tweaked her wounds.
“I started to back off, but then it felt like something grabbed a hold of me. It was pushing me toward his car, and I couldn’t do anything to fight it, no matter how hard I tried. That’s when I got scared. I wanted to yell for Chris to come stop this guy, but I couldn’t even open my mouth.” Beth began crying, heavy sobs racking her body.
Glamorous: A Grace Bishop Novel (Grace Bishop Novels) Page 3
