Grace Anne (20 page)

“Thomas is with someone who is by
far more insane than him. You remember me telling you about Grace’s mother?
Well, she has her too. And Thomas is with them. I don’t know what the outcome
will be, but the Feds are involved and so are the locals. He killed a cop, Dad.
They aren’t going to go easy on him when they find him.”

Lucas nodded. “No. And I hate to
say this, but he’s finally getting what he deserves. He’s been doing things to
lead up to this his entire life.”

The rest of the ride was made in
silence. Michael wanted his Grace back. He wanted to take her to the big
bedroom they’d shared the night before he’d been called back and make love to
her until neither of them could walk. He wanted children with her, lots of them
so that Trace would be a big brother. As soon as they pulled into the drive of
the mansion his son came running out of the house and hugged him tight.

“They found a dead man at the end
of the drive. Aunt Alyssa said this place is becoming a battle ground.”

Michael picked him up and was glad
that he didn’t protest.

“Aunt Sin said as soon as I’m old
enough she’s going to teach me how to use a machine gun. She said that way I
can protect us all when they get too old to do it themselves.”

Michael looked up at the woman in
question and she waved. He was going to have to have a talk with the little
woman before she had Trace as scary as she was. He nodded before he spoke to
Trace. “You might want to take that up with Grace. She might have a few things
to say about that too.” Trace scrambled down and walked with him to the house. “Have
they heard anything?”

Michael had lost the connection
with the call not long after they’d gotten in the limo. He had called Payton
and he’d told him that they still had a bead on the phone and that he would
call him as soon as there was anything different. The closer Michael got to the
steps, the more worried he got. Something had happened and he was sure it wasn’t
good news.

Shamus, Payton, and Sin took him
into the large office. His parents were taken to another office by Alyssa and
Cain. When his father started crying again and his mother too, he knew that
Thomas was dead. He sat down hard in the chair and waited. He didn’t have to
wait long.

“Thomas was found about ten
minutes ago. Single bullet to the head and then rolled from a moving vehicle. He
was dead before anything happened to him,” Sin said in way of starting out. “He
was rolled into traffic off of Seventy. Several other vehicles hit him before
traffic stopped. They only knew it was him because Verrie Waite called the police
station and told them she’d done it and that if they wanted Grace not to suffer
the same they were to back the fuck up.”

“Where are they now? I’m assuming
that we didn’t, right?” At Sin’s grin, he knew that they hadn’t. “I’m not sure
I like that look. What the hell have you done?”

“She fucking knows everyone. And
if she doesn’t, then Alyssa does,” Shamus said with a grin. He turned a large whiteboard
from the books on the shelves lining the walls and pointed to it. “There are
four non marked cars following the limo. Hard to hide one of those suckers. The
dead man here was one of drivers, so we called them. They have GPS in all their
cars so we have a firsthand look at where they’re going.”

He knew there was more, so he
waited.

“We have a van at every exit
between here and wherever. They take turns going to the next exit with a police
escort on the back roads. By the time she passes one of them, there are two
more racing to the next exit waiting.” Shamus handed him a thick file. “This is
how we’re tracking her.”

There were IP, or Internet
protocol, addresses for several different devices. They had a complete picture
of every place the limo stopped, hesitated, and… Michael looked up. “You think
it’s necessary to know when she rolls down her window? I mean, this is all good
shit, but seriously, we know what radio station she’s listening to for Christ’s
sake.”

“It’s not to know what she’s
listening to, it’s to hear what is being said. We have a direct line into the
thing and can control most of the electronics. We could even shut the sucker
off is we wanted.” Sin looked at the two men before she continued. “She’s still
alive. Verrie, or whoever she is, keeps talking to her and Gracie is moaning. I
won’t let anything happen to her, Michael. None of us will.”

“We aren’t stopping it just yet
because we need her dead to rights.” Payton flushed. “I could have said that
better. So far, all we have her on is kidnapping and maybe the death of the
driver, but nothing else. I don’t want her to get off that easily. If she takes
Grace somewhere and is prepared, this is all premeditated.”

“So you’re using my future wife as
bait.” Michael took a deep breath and tried to reign in his temper. They were
playing with his future, his and Grace’s.

“No, we’re using my sister as the
way to end all of this,” Sin said softly. “And just so you know, Grace agreed
to this.”

Chapter 20

Grace hurt. She’d been shot twice
now. Verrie had shot her the first time in the arm and Thomas had shot her the
next time. She glanced down at her thigh and was glad to see that it had
stopped bleeding again. She wasn’t sure how much blood a body had in it, but
she was reasonably sure her dipstick was nearing the end. A manic giggle
escaped her mouth.

The car was still moving. She’d
been moving in and out of consciousness since she’d been tossed inside. She’d
hit her head on something and wasn’t sure what it was until she’d seen the cell
phone shattered on the seat next to her. She had cried then, knowing that
Michael would be worried if he couldn’t get to her.

“Yes. I had to. There was no other
way to get them to back off,” Verrie said from the front. The next voice,
though the same, was slightly different, just enough so that Grace knew that
one of the others was speaking to Verrie.

“You had to throw him out of a
moving vehicle going eighty miles an hour? Yeah, that didn’t draw attention to
us.”

Grace might have laughed if she
wasn’t afraid that Verrie or one of the others might hurt her again.

“He shot her again without my
permission. What the fuck did you expect me to do? Let him just pop her full of
holes before I could get things set up at the house? We have to be as far away
as we can before they figure out where she is,” Verrie’s voice said.

“Yeah. I guess we’re not going to
get to live in the big house.” Grace knew instantly that was her mother. She’d
recognize that whiny tone anywhere. “And all that money. Even after we blow
them all up at the funeral we can’t come back and get it.”

Grace tensed. She knew that Thomas
was dead. He’d been killed right after he’d shot her. She shuddered when she
thought about what he’d been doing to her when she’d awakened. She didn’t want
to think about what he would have done if she hadn’t stopped him before he’d
raped her. And what he’d said…he was as insane as her mother.

“You have to let me take you,
Grace, before she kills you. It’s only fair. You put out for Michael and he’s
nothing but a bastard. Just let me fuck you this once and then she can kill you
and I can tell Michael that I had a piece of you before you died.”

She could only stare at him for
several seconds. It wasn’t until he tried to take her panties off again that
she started fighting him. She managed to knee him in the nuts before he hit her
with his fist. Then she’d hit him with the heel of her hand in his nose and he’d
bled on her. Before she could scramble away from him he’d pulled the gun from
the floor and shot her in the leg.

“Now,” he’d said. “Lay still until
I get you naked. Then you can—”

The car swerved and she fell to
the floor. Verrie was screaming at them. Then the loud pop of another gun and
Thomas fell atop her, blood everywhere. When Verrie had grabbed him by the hair
and ordered her to help her put him in the front seat, she’d done so even when
the pain was nearly too much. What Verrie had done with his body made Grace
throw up on the floor and the back of the seat.

She’d reached over and opened the
passenger door and kicked him out into the street. Grace looked behind them
when she heard the squeal of tires and horns blaring just in time to see his
body being tossed around from the hood of several cars before he was pulled
under a semi. She watched in horror as the truck started to swerve and, finally,
it tipped over onto its side. Grace laid her head back on the seat and wept for
the way he’d died. No one should have to go like Thomas had. She felt the tears
run down her face. Poor Michael. He didn’t deserve this, not his brother being
murdered and everything else. She tried to move her leg a little and felt the
blood seep from it. When the car stopped, she closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure
what was going on, but she didn’t want Verrie or the others to figure out she
was awake.

“Take her inside the house. If she
tries to get away, shoot her. And for fuck sake, don’t hit her again. There’s
been a change of plans.” Verrie again. “There’s a little room in the basement; put
her in there and lock the door. She gets away and I’m going to fucking kill
you.”

“I know what you want me to do,” a
man’s voice said. “Why do you have to treat me like I’m a kid? I got a brain.”

Grace wanted to laugh, but didn’t.
He’s got a brain? Then why the fuck wasn’t he using it? She moaned before she
could stop it and he cuffed her head on the side of the limo. Pain radiated
through her body and she saw stars. When she felt the man throw her over his
shoulder, she opened her eyes and took a look around.

Nothing, actually less than
nothing. No houses, no poles to indicate there was electricity, and the
driveway she was being carried up was overgrown with weeds and grass. Just
making out the mailbox at the end, it was so faded that she knew that she’d
never be able to lead anyone to her even if she could find a way to contact
anyone. She wondered how on earth anyone would ever find her when she heard a
small voice behind her.

“I can’t help you much. I’m
holding her from killing you, but you have to be careful. She’s…they’re
draining me.” Guinnie patted her on the arm as she walked by and just like that,
she was Ginny. “Do we know what we’re doing here or are we flying by the seat
of our pants? I fucking hate this, Verrie. I thought we had a plan and we were
going to stick to it.”

“We did until that fucking bastard
you befriended decided to have the girl. What the fuck was he thinking shooting
her in a moving car? And the fucking idiot nearly shot me when she kicked him
in the family jewels. I could care less that he’d shot her; it was the fact
that he scared me when he had. Fucking idiot.” Verrie faded away as she was
lead into a dark stairway.

Grace wasn’t afraid of the dark;
it was the things in the dark that terrified her. She’d been homeless for a
while and had spent a lot of her time hiding under awnings and other overhangs.
Once, when it was raining really hard, she’d gone to the shelter. When the
lights had gone out the crazies had started roaming around. She’d left the
place at first light and had never gone back. She felt safer on the streets.

He tossed her on the floor. She
supposed that the little cover on the floor was where he was aiming, but he’d
missed it enough that she’d banged her head again. Dizziness swamped her and
she moaned again. She heard the door close and counted to fifty before she
opened her eyes.

The space was small. She was
reminded of the coal bin in the building she’d bought. There was a shoot at the
rear that had long since been bricked up. She tried to sit up, but she simply
didn’t have the strength. Crying softly, she pulled out the broken cell phone
that she’d managed to put into her pocket before she’d been shot by Thomas.

She thought about all the
television shows she’d seen where the phone acted like a GPS thing and someone
was always finding the victim with it. She didn’t know if it was true or not,
but she wasn’t going to take any chances. She was terrified of dying and she
was going to take every opportunity she could find.

She must have slept. She refused
to think that she’d been so weak that she’d slipped away. She nearly screamed
when she saw someone sitting in a kitchen chair across from her. She glanced
around and didn’t see the man, but she didn’t know which one she had in front
of her either.

“You always were an ungrateful
child. Why we had to have you and the others is still a mystery to me. My
Roscoe said that you were going to be the most difficult to handle. I suppose
he was right.”

Her mother. Grace sat up a little
and leaned back against the wall before she spoke. This conversation was too
long in coming and if she was fucking going to die then she’d have her peace. “You
have no right to call me ungrateful. You’re the one who fucked us all up. You
were so stuck up your husband’s ass that you failed to see us for who we were. So,
Mother dear, you can fuck the hell off.” When Guinevere stood up suddenly and
slapped her across the face Grace laughed. “You think that is supposed to make
me hurt? Not likely. I washed my hands of you over ten years ago. You’re
nothing to me.”

“You bitch. You should…I should
just let her kill you and say fuck the money. But we need it now more than
ever. You’re going to make it so that we can leave the country and get a new
start.” Guinevere sat back down in the chair as she continued. “She thought
that I could talk some sense into you. Though why she’d think that, I have no
idea. You never did do what you were told.”

“Say whatever it is you want then
get the fuck out. And just so you know, I’ll do whatever it takes to see that
you spend the rest of your miserable excuse for an existence in a mental
institution.”