“I agree, and when we’re done investigating, I hope to rack up a few more counts against the Morehouse camp, but for now, I need you on vacation.” He held out his hand. “Keys please.”
“You’re serious?”
He waggled his fingers.
A cold tightness stole across her chest. Ten years ago when her personal life had taken a beating, this job had been her refuge, a safe place to land.
“Work with me on this,” Travis said with a cajoling smile. “Take a few days’ vacation.”
Her computer stared up at her with its giant, unblinking black eye. In the ten years she’d worked at the SA’s office, she hadn’t taken a single vacation day. “Exactly what do people do on vacation?”
Travis laughed. “Doesn’t construction on Graceland begin soon?”
Graceland. She hadn’t heard that one, but she liked the sound. Grand and stately. There’d been plenty of talk in Cypress Bend about her new home project, a two-story Greek revival slated for construction on the old Giroux place, twenty prize acres of land on the Cypress Bend River near Apalachicola Bay. Grace had been a player in a bidding war for the plumb parcel, and she’d won.
Another win, Daddy. See it?
Travis had a point. It might be good to be home for a few days to oversee construction. “Earth movers start clearing tomorrow morning,” she said.
“So go home, drink champagne, and celebrate that you, dear Grace, are living the dream, that you are one of the privileged souls who get everything you ever go after.”
For the briefest of moments a face with eyes the color of a summer sky flashed into her head. No, not everything. She flattened her hands on her desk, but before she could say anything, her phone vibrated again. With a frown she sent the call from the restricted number to voicemail.
“Another crank?” Travis asked.
“Seven calls this afternoon from the same restricted number.”
“And you’ll report this to the sheriff?”
“Of course.” She was independent, not stupid.
“Seriously, Grace, be careful out there. Your new place is remote, and with Morehouse in jail, his people are riled. As someone counting on your continued brilliance to boost my career, I need you safe.” Travis hopped off the windowsill and slung his jacket over his shoulder. “Keep me and the sheriff’s office posted, and even though you’ll be on vacation, I’m expecting you at the oyster roast on Saturday. Amanda would tie me up and roast me over the coals if you didn’t show.”
“I’ll be there.” She was a member of the SA team, and this was the annual get-together where all were expected to attend, and she was certainly good about living up to expectations.
“With or without a guest?” A grin slid across Travis’s lower jaw.
Like he didn’t know. “Just me.”
Travis chuckled. “You’re being forewarned. Amanda will be in game mode. Finding Grace a man is one of her favorite games.”
“I don’t need a man.”
“Of course you don’t need anyone, but my lovely wife thinks you need a bit of light and color in your drab gray life.” With a widening grin, her boss flicked off the light. “Now get out of here and start vacationing.”
Her boss’s footsteps fading, she reached for her mouse. If she was going on vacation, she’d take a few files on baby-killer Helena Ring with her to tackle during down time. She keyed in her log-in information and clicked enter.
Denied.
She rekeyed the information.
Denied.
She laughed. After ten years, her boss knew her well. “Okay,” she told the doorway where her boss’s footsteps faded. “I’m going on vacation.”
Grace grabbed her jacket, her fingers digging into the gunmetal gray fabric. This morning when she picked it out, she thought the shiny gray contrasted nicely with her charcoal-colored silk tank and pearls, but in the faded afternoon sunlight seeping through the window blinds, it looked flat. For a moment she stood motionless, surrounded by a veil of gray. Was her life a drab, monochromatic gray?
She gave her head a shake. Far from it. She pictured her new land, lush and green, and of course there was Allegheny Blue. A growl rumbled in her throat. Who could forget her new roommate?
As she headed for her door, her unknown caller buzzed again. Cranks thrived on reaction, but she might as well see what information she could get for the sheriff’s office. “Hello.”
A pause stretched along the line followed by a sharp intake of breath, almost a gasp. She was about to cut off the crank call when a voice said, “G…g…grace…is…is…that y…y…you?” The voice was soft and female, low and raspy.
“This is Grace Courtemanche.”
A muffled sob answered her.
“Who is this?” Grace demanded.
“I…I’ve been trying to reach you, b…b…but no one answered. Got your voicemail. Over and over. Why didn’t you p…p…pick up the first time? Why?”
“Who is this?”
A wheeze rattled, followed by another sob. “L…Lia Grant.”
“Listen Lia Grant or whoever you are, I—”
“It’s cold. And dark. I can’t breathe. Help me, Grace. Help meeeee!” Hollow rattling sounded, like stones rolling about a wooden box.
Grace’s irritation gave way to anger. “I don’t know who you are or what you want—”
“Help. I want help. I’m in a b…b…box. Underground.” What kind of sick joke were Morehouse’s minions playing now? The voice softened to a whisper. “Help me, Grace. Please…help me…”
The breathy words rushed through Grace, cold and dark, an icy shade of black. Maybe this wasn’t the Morehouse camp orchestrating another crank call meant to unnerve her. Maybe this was a woman in serious trouble. The cold puddled in her feet, freezing her in place.
The caller coughed then let out a labored sigh. “Tell Momma I…I tried to be a g…g…good girl. I tried…” Seconds ticked.
“Lia?” Grace asked.
No words, just a faint, whisper of breath.
“Lia!”
No one answered.
Grace slid a finger along the scattered pearl necklace circling her throat. She didn’t know Lia Grant, had never heard of Lia Grant, and there was absolutely no reason for Lia Grant to call her if she were in any kind of trouble.
Help meeeee!
The call ended, cutting off the faint breathing, and her cell phone face went dark.
In Grace’s ten years with the State Attorney’s office, she’d heard fear and terror in the voices of victims who’d been violated and in the whispered truths of the witnesses who’d come face-to-face with evil. And there was something about that voice, something grave and desperate and to her horror, real.
Her fingers quaking in an uncharacteristic tremor, Grace dialed the sheriff’s office.
Chapter Two
Gulf of Mexico, Off Florida Coast
Hatch Hatcher adjusted the jib, propped his bare feet on a five-gallon bait bucket, and tilted his face toward the sun-soaked sky. He had steady winds, low chop. Should be straight-line sailing. At this rate, he’d arrive in New Orleans with time on his hands.
He ran a hand through his hair. Too long. He should probably get a trim before his presentation in the Big Easy. He was giving a talk to regional law enforcers on crisis negotiations and would be representing Parker and the team. He reached into the cooler at his side and pulled out an icy longneck.
Or maybe he’d skip the haircut and visit old friends. Natalia lived in New Orleans. Clara, too. Yeah, Clara, a woman who loved to laugh…on the beach, on the dance floor, in his bed. He loved to hear a woman laugh. He loved everything about women, the sounds, the smells, the taste. He uncapped the beer. His was a good life. A job he loved, beautiful women in every port, and plenty of free time to travel the world on a boat called No Regrets.
He raised his longneck, toasting the sun and sea, when his satellite phone rang. Caller ID showed a number from Cypress Bend. The bottle froze midw
ay to his mouth. He knew one person in Cypress Bend, but she wanted nothing to do with him. She’d made that clear ten years ago when she’d sent him sailing from Apalachicola Bay. His fingers tightened around the beer bottle, the veins in his forearm thickening and rising.
Nope. Not going there.
He pushed away the past. Gathered in the peace.
Always peace.
Whoever was calling from Cypress Bend was not Grace Courtemanche, and whoever it was could wait. He took a long draw of the icy brew. Mackerels would be biting at sunset, and a slab of butter and frying pan waited in the galley below. As he reached for his fishing pole, the call went to voicemail, and he noticed the blinking light on the phone, indicating other messages, including one from the Box, headquarters for the FBI’s Special Criminal Investigative Unit. His team. That call he couldn’t ignore.
“Hey, Sugar and Spice, miss me?” Hatch said when his teammate Evie Jimenez answered the phone. Evie was the SCIU’s bomb and weapons specialist, and he loved getting her fired up.
“I refuse to feed your gargantuan, testosterone-fueled ego,” Evie said. “You may have every woman east of the Mississippi charmed by that syrupy drawl, but not me, amigo. Speaking of feeding your ego, we got a call from Atlanta PD. The kid you talked into giving up his boom box at the high school got a seriously mentally ill designation. He’s in a treatment center and getting his life back together. One of the Atlanta news stations also called. They want to do a feature on you.”
“Tell ’em I’m on assignment.” Hatch’s role as a crisis negotiator was simple. Get in. Defuse. Get out. He didn’t need media attention that often came with his line of work. “Park around?”
“Yep, but he’s in the communications room with some techie. Computer crashed again.”
Hatch grinned as he took another swig from his beer. The Box was a huge glass, chrome, and concrete structure on the rocky cliffs of Northern Maine, and while the SCIU’s official headquarters looked like a high-tech, ultra-modern marvel, it had a notoriously cranky computer system.
“I’m returning his call,” he said. “You know what he wanted?” Evie paused, which sent warning sirens blaring through his head. His hot-blooded Latina teammate rushed into life like a firestorm. Evie never paused for anything. “Okay, Sugar and Spice, what’s up?”
Another beat of silence. “Have you checked your e-mail?”
“Not today.” Honestly, not for a few days. His work often featured long, intense moments of negotiation with men and women in the throes of crisis, insanity, rage, or a soul-sucking combination of all three. So when time allowed, and, hell, even when it didn’t, Hatch set sail, which is why he ended up with Parker Lord’s team. His boss understood his need to disconnect and recharge. He’d just spent the past week anchored near the sugary sand dunes of Islamorada in the Florida Keys hunting for buried treasure and fishing for mahi.
“Then you haven’t heard about Alex?” Evie continued.
“Alex?”
“Alex Milanos.” The quiet stretched on. “Your son.”
A burst of laughter shot over his lips. “Good joke.” He was careful about these things, and he had been since the age of fourteen when he’d discovered the gift of a woman’s body. He had no desire to be tied down by anything or anyone. He simply didn’t do long-term commitments, and his disastrous relationship with his old man had cured him of any parental longings.
“This isn’t a joke, Hatch. A woman from Cypress Bend contacted the Box and insisted on talking to you. Parker finally took her call. Her name is Trina Milanos, and she claims her daughter, Vanessa, knew you, as in the biblical sense, and that Vanessa’s thirteen-year-old son is yours.”
Hatch studied an icy bead on his longneck as if it were a tiny crystal ball. Vanessa Milanos? He couldn’t picture a face. The name didn’t ring a bell either, and he certainly didn’t associate it with Cypress Bend.
Cypress Bend was Princess Grace’s kingdom.
Grace Courtemanche was royalty, and he told her that every night as they lay intertwined on the deck of No Regrets, drenched in sweat and moonlight, too impatient to make it to the berth below.
But this call from Cypress Bend had nothing to do with Grace Courtemanche. Some other woman was setting forth the claim that he had a thirteen-year-old son. He did the math. The timing could work. In his college days, he spent a number of summers on St. George Island, one of the barrier islands below the Florida Panhandle. He taught sailing to kids at a posh summer camp, and before the summer of Princess Grace, he had a string of women on his boat and in his bed. But he was careful about these things. He didn’t do children. Hell, ten days out of the month he didn’t do responsibility.
“With the risk of being blunt, I don’t leave bits and pieces of me around,” he told Evie.
“That’s part of the problem. It sounds like Vanessa Milanos wanted a piece of you, any piece, and she admitted to her mother that since she couldn’t have you, she’d settle for a part of you. She sabotaged your efforts at protection. Take a look at the picture in the e-mail. Kid’s your spitting image. Same shaggy blond hair. Same baby blues. Same killer dimples. Plus Parker, being Parker, had a rush DNA test done.” Evie paused. “It’s a match, padre. He’s your son.”
Your son.
Hatch’s throat constricted, and he stretched his neck, trying to ease the way for words. As a crisis negotiator, words were his tools, his constant companions, always at the ready.
“Hatch, you still there?” Evie asked.
He forced the rest of his beer down the tight, dry column of his throat.
“There’s more, Hatch,” Evie added. “The granny needs you in Cypress Bend pronto. It appears your son has gotten himself into serious trouble. He’s in jail.”
* * *
Grace needed a bomb. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. Just something with the ability to blow up the attitudinal Ford compact she now called her own.
“’Nother dead battery, Miss Courtemanche?” The security guard that prowled the government buildings clucked his tongue as he walked up beside her.
“This month it’s the starter.”
“Man, you didn’t have problems like this when you owned that fine Mercedes. Now there was a car.”
Grace didn’t want to think about her Mercedes, a late-model, high-powered, mechanically sound silver coup. She’d sold it earlier in the year along with her luxury condo and her parent’s estate, all so she could afford the Giroux place.
No. It was the Courtemanche place now. Her place.
“You need some help, counselor?” the security guard asked.
Help meeeee!
Grace shook off the voice. After four months with her persnickety compact, she’d become a master of cheap DIY car repair. “I’ll take care of it, Armand, but thank you.”
She took the hammer from her glove box and banged on the starter. After a half dozen tries, her car turned over, and she puttered out of the parking garage, all the while the voice echoing through her head.
Help meeeee!
“I did,” she said as she pulled onto the highway. She’d given details of all nine calls from “Lia Grant” to Deputy Will Fillingham, stressing that the girl genuinely sounded distressed. Then she’d checked her personal and work contact lists but didn’t find any Grants. She didn’t have a callback number. What else could she do?
Five miles outside of Cypress Bend and with Lia Grant’s voice still echoing through her head, Grace turned her car onto the rutted road that wound into the swamp and led to a one-bedroom shack with a sagging front porch and rusted metal roof. Feathery cypress branches filtered the retreating sun, but even the seductive cover of lacy shade couldn’t soften the wretchedness of her new home.
She made her way up the rickety porch steps and tripped over a knobby column of white. Another bone, this one a grisly joint speckled with bits of dried flesh.
“Dammit, Allegheny Blue, how many of these things do you have?” An ancient blue tick hound sprawled in front o
f the door opened a cloudy eye. Upon seeing her, he heaved himself up, plunked across the porch, and rested his head against her leg. Drool dribbled onto her foot. She nudged him away with her knee. “Don’t even pretend we’re friends.”
With the tips of her index finger and thumb, she picked up the bone and tossed it into a trashcan on the porch. It clunked and rattled among the dozen already there. She slammed on the lid and turned to the dog. “No more bones.” The dog licked his lips, sending a line of drool whipping across her legs. “And stop drooling. You’re making a mess.”
The dog followed her inside where she reset the alarm, not that the tiny shack held anything of value. Most of her furniture and home electronics were in storage. But her boss was right that her home was remote, a good half mile from her closest neighbor, hence the security system. Smart women watched out for themselves.
Was Lia Grant smart? Did she fail to watch out for herself? The walls of her shack moved in closer, and she shrugged out of her jacket. Was the terrified-sounding caller really in a box, underground?
Grace set her jacket and computer on the kitchen table, forcing herself to stop thinking about the woman. With Blue at her heels, she filled the dog’s food dish with dry chow, softened with warm water. When he looked at her with drooping eyes that had seen way too many doggy years, she sighed, went to the refrigerator, and took out a piece of cooked bacon. “You’re going to die of clogged arteries.” She crumbled the bacon into his bowl. “You realize that, don’t you?”
Allegheny Blue plopped his nose in the food dish and started eating. Slow and steady. She didn’t dislike animals, but she didn’t have time for them, especially those that took an ungodly amount of maintenance.
She opened the refrigerator door again, a wave of icy air washing over her.
It’s cold…Help meeeee!
Grace slammed the door. If that cry for help wasn’t real, she’d been played. And the chilling fact that no one played state attorney Grace Courtemanche swept through her decrepit kitchen.
“What now?” she asked Allegheny Blue.
The Broken Page 33
