Five Days Grace (The McRae Series, Book 4- Grace)

by Teresa Hill

  He barely got the words out before he heard a scream, a distinctly feminine scream. If that weren't enough to convince him that his would-be thief was female, her height and small frame would have. She might be nothing but a teenager.

  He planned to wait out the screaming, so she could hear him when he spoke, so he could back this down, slow and easy. He really didn't want to hurt her. But the dog either took exception to the whole thing or got scared and picked that moment to try to huddle against their legs. The girl elbowed Aidan hard, low in his gut, managing to catch a still-healing incision from multiple surgeries.

  Fuck, that hurt.

  She lunged away from him, tripping over the dog, and Aidan went right after her, not willing to let her go but also trying to protect her as they fell. The dog howled in outrage, or maybe fear, and scampered out of the way. Aidan and the girl landed hard on the floor. He managed to twist sideways with her, to take most of the blow on his right side, and his rebuilt hip hurt like a son of a bitch. She landed half on top of him and half on the floor, struggling like mad.

  Did she not realize that if he wanted to, he could have killed her three times over already?

  Rolling her over, he pinned her face down on the floor, straddling her hips as he sat, purposely putting all his weight on her. He pulled one of her arms behind her back, hard enough that if she tried to move too much, it was going to hurt, but if she just relaxed and stayed there, it wouldn't.

  Took her a minute to figure that out, screaming the whole time, the dog dancing around the two of them, seemingly unable to figure out if this was some kind of game or if Aidan was trying to hurt her. He whined, barked, cried and then finally licked the girl's face, bringing forth a howl of outrage from her, and then, finally, blessed silence.

  "God, thank you," Aidan said. "I don't know how much more of that I could take."

  "How much more you could take?"

  She sounded even more pissed than before, started struggling again, and he tugged a little harder on her arm until she stilled. Once she did, he could feel that she was trembling badly and felt guilty about that, but not enough to let her up yet.

  "Who are you?" she cried. "What do you want?"

  "Right now, just to talk."

  "Oh, I'm sure. If you hurt me, you'll be sorry—"

  "I'm already sorry—"

  "My family is insanely protective," she insisted. "They will hunt you down. The whole town will—"

  "The whole town? Think a lot of you, do they, Princess?"

  "Yes, they do. Ahh!"

  She probably would have kept going, but the dog came up and licked her cheek again, effectively silencing her once again.

  So, the dog could be useful. No matter how much of a pain in the ass he was, he was better than having the girl screaming. Aidan had planned to stick the barrel of his gun in her back again, which he had hoped would silence her, but this was better and less threatening.

  "What is that thing?" she asked, breathing hard, but she wasn't screaming anymore. As she turned her head to stare, her face spoke more of stunned amazement.

  Tink danced a bit, coming close and then retreating, barking once, then again, maybe asking her to get up and play. Aidan couldn't be sure.

  "Some people claim he's a dog. I'm not convinced," he told her. "Be still for a second so we can talk about this, and I won't hurt you. Give me a hard time, and I'll order that thing to lick you again."

  Now, if she didn't figure out that he had no control over the dog, they'd be okay.

  "Who are you?" he asked.

  "Who are you?" she shot right back.

  Aidan sighed, exasperated. "I can sit here on top of you as long as you want. You're not going anywhere unless I let you, so I suggest you start talking."

  "My name is Grace, although I don't understand why you'd want to know. Is that some quirk of yours? Wanting to know your victims' names?"

  "Victim? How did you get to be the victim here? You broke in, remember?"

  "I didn't break in. I know where the spare key is. My family owns this cabin," she said.

  "Owns it?"

  "Yes, owns it."

  Could it be that simple? A mix-up in who was supposed to be here when? Aidan shifted his weight so he was still on top of her, but not pushing her into the floor. "I've been here for almost three weeks. Zach told me the place was empty, that I was welcome to use it as long as I want. He said no one wanted to be here when it's this cold."

  "Zach? Really?"

  "Yes, really."

  "Prove it." She was being still at least, and she wasn't screaming. "Call him. I want to hear the conversation, so put your phone on speaker."

  She was giving orders? Did she not understand she was pinned to the floor, and he was calling the shots? Plus, she was dead wrong about one thing, which had him doubting her whole story.

  "Cell reception here sucks on a good day," he said. "Which I suspect you'd know if you'd been here before. In this storm, it's probably impossible to get a signal anywhere on the lake. And there's no land-line."

  "Okay, yeah. I remember that now. It's been a while since I was here."

  "And if it does really belong to your family, what's with you tossing the place? You steal from your own family?"

  "No! And even if I did, there's nothing here to steal. I was looking for something. Not to steal. Just... There's something I need to find, and I think it might be here. Could you get off me, please?"

  Aidan thought about it. His shoulder ached. So did his side and his hip. He wasn't going to be able to move off her quickly or easily, so if she threw another elbow at him—or worse, a knee, a foot—it was going to hurt.

  He pressed the gun between her shoulder blades, just to the left of her spine. "Feel that, Princess?"

  "What? You sitting on me and trying to break my arm?"

  He pressed the barrel more firmly into her skin.

  "Oh, my God! Do you have a gun?"

  "Hell, yes, I have a gun," he said.

  And if she'd spent any serious time in trouble before, wouldn't she have realized that when he'd first grabbed her? But maybe she wasn't the kind of girl who'd been in serious trouble before. Maybe she'd been too startled to pick up on exactly what was going on, like the fact that she had a gun at her back.

  "Okay... Just... What do you want from me?"

  Her voice trembled, and if he wasn't mistaken, she was crying.

  He ran his hands over her as quickly and matter-of-factly as he could, pushing to the back of his mind the knowledge that it had been a long time since he'd touched anyone with curves like these. She was petite and—he sincerely hoped, so he didn't feel like such a letch—at least over the age of twenty-one. She tensed, whimpered, but stayed still and quiet.

  "Good, you're not armed."

  "Of course, I'm not armed. I'm not a criminal. I just didn't know Zach had loaned someone the cabin. Please, don't hurt me."

  "But you didn't ask before you came up here? Why is that?"

  "Because I didn't want anyone to know I was here."

  Aidan laughed, couldn't help it. "Princess, you're just digging yourself in deeper. Why didn't you want anyone to know you were going to be here?"

  "Because... Just... Because I didn't."

  "You're going to have to do better than that," he insisted.

  "Do you have a family?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "Are you close?"

  How to answer that? "Close enough."

  "Do they worry about you? Do you know what it's like to have all of them worried about you?"

  "Yes." Did he ever. He'd kicked them out of his hospital room and the rehab facility more than once.

  "Having them watch you all the time, trying to figure out how you're doing, if they should be even more worried than they already are. I mean... I love them, really I do. I'm just not used to being the one they worry about. And it's exhausting, trying to convince them not to worry so much. I just didn't have the energy to do it anymore, and... This wa
s a totally impulsive move. I was heading north on I-75, saw the exit and decided to go. Didn't tell a soul where I was going."

  "Okay, I gotta tell you, if there was a test about what not to tell the man holding a gun on you, you'd have flunked right there, Princess."

  She practically growled, then turned her head as far to the right as she could, trying to look at him. He thought she'd have slapped his face right then if she could.

  "Oh, stop. I'm not going to hurt you."

  "Then get off me."

  "I will, but this is how we're going to do it." He decided as he spoke. "Slowly, no sudden moves. I'm going to take my weight off of your back completely, and I want you to stay on the floor and slide forward on your belly until you get to the refrigerator. Then you can turn around and sit up. You stay over there. I'll stay over here. Everything will be fine. Got it?"

  "Yes, I do."

  "Good. Here we go." He put one hand flat on the floor beside her shoulder to brace himself and then put his weight on his knees instead of on her. "All right. Not too fast."

  She got her hands up beside her face and used her arms to slide forward, her body catching a bit on his as her hips slid past. He pulled his knees in tighter against her legs and kept a heavy hand on them, to make sure she didn't try to kick him at the last minute.

  She didn't. She slid all the way to her corner and sat down on the floor. The dog followed along, whining and pawing at her side, obviously thinking it was some kind of a game.

  "Tink, no!" he said forcefully.

  To his surprise, the dog stopped and at least looked at him, cocking his head as if to ask, Why not?

  "Tink? The guy with a gun named his dog Tink? As in Tinker Bell?"

  "I know, not very dangerous-sounding, is it?" Aidan said. "The thing is, he's not my dog."

  "Oh. Okay."

  Aidan had gotten slowly to his feet while she was busy sliding across the floor and couldn't see the effort it took him to do it. He walked over to his corner and eased down into the ancient recliner there, still holding the gun but not pointing it at her. Reaching up, he flicked on the light, which wasn't all that good, especially through the gloom of the day amidst all the trees and the stormy sky.

  She was young, but not a teenager. Twenty-something, he decided, and probably beautiful when she hadn't been crying her eyes out. If he knew women, hers was the face of one who'd been crying for hours. She was red and splotchy, with puffy eyes and frown lines on her forehead, but still defiant and mad. He suspected it had been a very bad day for her before he'd grabbed her and scared her.

  The dog was practically in her lap, sniffing all over her and smiling, begging for attention. She made a face at him, clearly horrified by his condition, by the wet and the mud. "Ooh."

  "Tink, sit," he said.

  And the dog did, right next to her, wagging his silly tail and looking like he'd fallen in love with her on sight and was her devoted servant from this point on.

  "Okay. We can be friends, I guess," she said, smiling skeptically at the dog. "What kind of dog is he?"

  "I have no idea. He lives half way around the lake. His owner had a tree come through her roof this morning, breaking her leg. Compound fracture, so she'll be hospitalized for a while, and there wasn't anyone to take care of the dog."

  "You're trying to tell me you're such a nice guy, you volunteered to take care of this... thing?" she asked.

  "I'm telling you I'm not a bad guy, and I got stuck with him. Oh, and I did help get his owner out from under the tree, if that makes you feel any better about... well..."

  "Being held at gunpoint by you?"

  "I'm not pointing the gun at you anymore," he reminded her.

  She pouted a bit. "You have to be careful with something like that. It's dangerous, unless you really know what you're doing—"

  "I really know what I'm doing."

  "Did you put the safety on, at least?"

  He held up the weapon. "It's on, Princess. Let's talk about you."

  "Call Zach," she insisted.

  He frowned at her, but pulled out his phone, changed the settings to speaker and scrolled down to Zach's name. They both heard the phone dialing, the line crackling, and then... Maybe Zach answering?

  "Zach, it's Aidan. Zach?" And then the line went dead. He looked at her. "Try your phone, Princess."

  She gave an annoyed sigh. "No one calls me Princess."

  "Really? Why do I find that hard to believe?"

  "They don't!"

  "Then what do they call you?"

  "Grace."

  He scoffed. "No, there's something else. Come on. What is it?"

  "None of your business."

  "I'm babysitting a giant, goofy-looking dog named Tinker Bell. How bad can it be?"

  She rolled her eyes. "Angel. Sometimes, they call me Angel."

  Oh, yeah. He could see that.

  The golden hair, blue eyes and pretty face she was bound to have if she ever stopped crying.

  Yeah, that worked.

  "And sometimes, people call me Sunshine," she admitted.

  Which was even better. An angel was all well and good, but just a little bit too good.

  Sunshine.

  A woman named Sunshine would have a little heat, a little fire.

  "Although, I doubt you believe the last one," she said. "I'm not feeling very sunny right now."

  Not today, but he'd bet the girl could shine when she wanted to.

  "Call Zach," he said. "Same deal. Speaker phone, so I can hear."

  She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her jeans and dialed, getting the same result, static.

  "So, now what?" she asked as she clicked off the phone. "We just sit here until we get him?"

  "You have somewhere you're supposed to be, Sunshine?"

  "No, I just... People have never really been scared of me. I'm not a threatening woman. There's really nothing here worth defending with a gun. It seems obvious that if you wanted to overpower me, you could easily do that all on your own. So, I don't get it. Why the gun?"

  Great, Aidan thought. He got a woman who could think at gunpoint.

  He sighed, shifted in his chair hoping to get a little more comfortable.

  "Oh, my God, you're hurt! You're bleeding!" she cried, pointing to his side.

  He looked down and saw that she was right. Blood was soaking through his shirt just above his hipbone on his right side, or if he was lucky, a combination of blood and mostly rainwater. Shit. Right over the damned incision. He hadn't even felt it bleeding, because he was soaked through and through and cold as hell.

  "Did I do that? Did I hurt you?" she asked. "I'm so sorry."

  "Honey, I had a gun at your back and my arm hooked around your neck. You're allowed to try to get away."

  Her expression was almost comical then, like the angel-girl couldn't stand the thought of hurting anyone, even when she was scared half out of her mind and trying to get away from a guy with a gun.

  "Relax, it's an old injury. And I might have done it earlier today. I did help pull a tree off Tink's owner, and getting the tarp over the hole in the cabin roof was no picnic."

  She was up on her knees, looking like she just had to get to her feet, couldn't stand to do nothing. "You can't just stay there like that, bleeding."

  "Believe me, I've been hurt much worse than this and survived."

  She looked around the cabin. There really wasn't much to it. "There must be towels in the bathroom. I could get you one."

  "Grace, I'm in no danger of bleeding to death," he insisted.

  "Are you in some kind of trouble? Is there some reason you think someone might be looking for you? To hurt you?"

  Give the angel-girl a prize.

  "I doubt it," he said, because he truly did doubt it.

  "Because, I'm really not scary," she went on.

  "Yeah, I get that. I'm sorry about the whole gun thing. It's highly unlikely that anyone's looking for me or trying to hurt me. But it's possible, so I'm being extr
emely cautious right now. That's all."

  Well, that and the fact that Maeve, injured and pinned under a tree, had brought back some really bad memories, and he was still jacked up on adrenaline from both what had happened today and three and a half months ago. But he wasn't going to explain that to a girl who actually had him apologizing for defending himself against what he had every right to believe was an intruder who'd broken into this place.

  "Okay." She sat back down, as if that made it all seem perfectly reasonable and she'd wait right there, pleasantly even, until he was sure he had nothing to fear from her. "Would you like to tell me what you did?"

  "No." He laughed in spite of himself. "But I'm not a criminal, Grace. The cops aren't looking for me. And I'm not some guy Zach freed from death row and is hiding here until the media circus dies down."

  "Zach told you about that? Because he never actually told me that much. I mean, people in the family suspected at times, but..."

  "I'm not a criminal," he said again.

  "Okay."

  The dog whined and nudged his giant head against her, and she petted him, despite all the mud, happy as could be until she lifted her head and looked back at Aidan.

  No, not him. She was staring at the blood that had soaked through his shirt.

  "This is ridiculous," she said. "I'm not that scared of you anymore, and I really don't think you're that scared of me, are you?"

  "No," he agreed.

  "So there must be some way we can work this out. You're wet. You're bleeding. You've got to be freezing because I'm not as wet as you are, and I'm really cold. Let's come up with a plan we can both live with."

  "You said your family owns this place, which means you must be related to Zach in some way. Why don't you want to tell me exactly what your connection is to him?"

  "Because most of the people who know Zach know me. They have a lot of preconceptions about who I am and what my life is like, and... It's not like that anymore, okay? It's really not like that. It's worse than most anyone knows, and it's hard, to think of everyone knowing and worrying even more and trying to take care of me even more."

  "You shouldn't worry so much about what people think. It's none of their damned business," he tried to tell her.

  She shook her head. "I told you, they watch me. All the time. It's like I can feel them watching, worrying. I spend a lot of time trying to put on this public face, to show everyone I'm okay, when I'm not, and it's exhausting. I'm sick of it."