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Then she heard it, the familiar ring tone of her cell phone.
She dumped the contents of her handbag onto the counter, ignoring the lipstick and keys that fell to the floor. She snagged her phone, saw the displayed name and punched the button.
“Pusher?” She flipped the overhead switches on. Lights flooded the room, making her blink. A glance to the doorway told her Jacob hadn’t moved. She ran back to his side, checked the pulse at his neck.
“Grace? Thank God.” Pusher Davis paused on a shaky breath. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine but I need you to—”
“Then you haven’t talked to anyone?”
“Talked…” she said, momentarily off balance. Using the cuff of her sweatshirt she wiped the blood from Jacob’s forehead, trying to get a good look at the injury beneath. “Pusher, I don’t have time for this.” His skin grayed in the porch light. She had enough experience to know he’d lost too much blood. “I need you to—”
“Helene’s dead.”
“Helene?” Tension fisted in her chest. “Dead?”
“Grace, I found her body outside The Tens. In the back alley.”
Helene, dead? The fist tightened, catching her breath on a short choke of surprise. It couldn’t be true. She’d just seen Helene earlier that day. They’d met at their favorite sidewalk bistro for a farewell lunch.
“It’s Monday night. The bar should’ve been closed. She shouldn’t have even been there this late. What happened?” The question slipped from her lips, but a prick at the nape of her neck told her the answer.
“She’d been shot,” Pusher answered, then paused. “Grace, last time I saw her she was with Jacob Lomax.”
She studied the wound in Jacob’s shoulder, forced herself to inhale. Hide, Grace, before they kill you.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes,” she answered, then took another breath to steady herself. “Are the police there?”
“Not yet. But I’ve called them.”
“Pusher, listen to me.” She nearly screamed the words. “I need you to stall them when they get there. They’re going to want to talk to me, but I can’t right now.”
“I don’t think you understand, Grace. Helene has been murdered—”
“I understand.” She cut him off, not trying to stop the urgency of her words. “Jacob Lomax collapsed on my porch a few minutes ago. He’s been shot, too,” she added, deciding to put her trust in Pusher. “And until I find out why, the police will only complicate things.”
“But if Lomax is there—”
“I told you, he is.”
“Then why the cloak-and-dagger, Grace? If Jacob has been shot, this could have been a robbery. A simple case of wrong place, wrong time. I’ve seen it before.”
“I don’t think it is and I need some time to make sure.”
“Why? Do you think he shot Helene?” He said the words almost jokingly. But when she didn’t respond, he swore. “You do, don’t you?”
“No,” she snapped. “I think his life is in danger.”
When the manager didn’t say anything, she added. “I can’t explain right now. And I can’t do this without your help, Pusher. Please,” she whispered.
“Okay, okay. Lord knows, I owe you,” he answered, the uncertainty thickening his Texas drawl. “I can probably stall them until morning. A little longer if they get ahold of my rap sheet. Will that work?”
She could trust Pusher to take care of the police. The ex-con had certainly sold her on hiring him a few years back, against Helene and her father’s wishes.
“Yes, that will work,” she said. “Thanks, Pusher.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve been in an interrogation room. Was feeling a little homesick, anyway,” he mused before his tone turned serious. “Grace, watch your back. The cops aren’t your only worry. I won’t ask again why you think Jacob’s in danger. But if you’re right and he is a target, you could become collateral damage.”
“I’ll be careful.”
She hung up the phone. Calling an ambulance was out of the question now. Not until she found out what was going on. She glanced at Jacob before hitting the speed dial.
The phone clicked on the fourth ring. “Hello.”
“Dad, it’s Grace.”
“Grace. Do you realize what time—”
“Dad, I need your help.” Jacob’s wound couldn’t wait for her father’s lecture. “Your medical help.”
Suddenly, his tone turned sharp. “Is something the matter? Is it the baby?”
“The baby?” She gripped the phone tighter. Deceit warred with desperation inside of her. “Yes, it’s the baby.”
“Are you spotting again?”
“No,” she answered, not wanting to add that possibility to her father’s worry. “But I can’t explain over the phone. I need you to come over here now. And don’t tell anyone where you are going. I want to keep this private.”
“Don’t tell…Grace Ann, maybe you had better explain—”
“Not now, Dad. Please,” she added to soften her order. She moved her hand over Jacob’s heart, took reassurance in its steady beat against her palm. “And bring your medical bag.”
“I will, but I want to know what’s going on when I get there.”
“I promise full disclosure,” she agreed. “And Dad, do one more thing for me?”
“What?”
“Hurry,” she whispered.
Charles Renne hesitated for only a split second. They might not understand each other’s views, but he was a father. One that understood fear. “I will.”
Grace snapped the phone shut and shoved it into her sweatshirt pocket. Her father would take a good hour to reach her from Washington, D.C. Jacob couldn’t wait that long.
“I can do this but you need to be easy with our baby, okay big guy?” It took some shifting, but she managed to maneuver herself behind him. Rain soaked her sweatshirt, plastered her hair to her forehead. Impatiently, she brushed the blond strands away, then slid her hands under his arms and around his chest.
Jacob was a good six inches over her own five-eight frame, and had well over fifty pounds on her. He was built lean, with the firm muscles and long limbs of a distance runner. Grateful her taste didn’t run toward male bulk, she settled him back until he rested against her chest and shoulder.
The clatter of metal ricocheted in the night air. She glanced down. A pistol lay on the cement, its barrel inches from her feet.
His? Once again, her mind rejected the idea that Jacob had shot Helene. No matter what secrets he carried, he wasn’t capable of murder. From the moment Helene had introduced Jacob to Grace, there was no doubt about the close friendship between the two.
Ignoring the weapon, she gripped him between her thighs. Slowly, she scooted him back through the doorway. Using the strength of her legs and arms, she tugged and pulled in short bursts of energy. The struggle took more than twenty minutes. Twenty minutes in which she pleaded, prayed, begged and swore. But she managed it.
Once inside, she scooted back toward the fireplace and lowered his shoulders gently to the floor. Quickly, she closed the door, grabbed a pillow and placed it under his head.
For months, she’d worried about him, raged at him—yearned, grieved, loved him—silently through the long, dark nights.
But not once had she been terrified for him.
Until now.
His face was pale, stark against his deep brown hair, now darker with rain, sticky with blood. His features cut in razor-thin angles. Sharper, leaner since the last time she’d seen him. A four-inch gash split the hairline above the middle of his forehead. Blood and bruises covered most of his features.
She knelt beside him, saw him shiver. Cursing herself, she threw a few more logs on the fire.
But it was his shoulder that worried her the most. Blood was everywhere. His face, neck and arm were coated with it. From his head, or shoulder, or both. She couldn’t be sure which.
Her pulse thickened with fear, making her hands heavy, her fingers tremble. She shook them, trying to settle them and her nerves, then removed his suit jacket. A shoulder holster crowded under his arm. Something she hadn’t noticed when dragging him in. Quickly, she unbelted the holster and tossed it aside. Within minutes, she had him stripped to his underwear and covered him to the waist with her comforter.
The bullet had torn a hole through his right shoulder, leaving an exit wound on the back side.
Fear and confusion warred within, but right now she had time for neither. Instead, she crossed to the linen cupboard and pulled out a clean, white hand towel.
After running the cloth under warm water, she returned to his side with it and her biggest pan filled with hotter water. She tucked the blanket around him, knowing she couldn’t do anything other than clean the wound until her father got there.
With gentle fingers, she brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, then systematically dabbed the blood away from the gash.
“I’ll give you one thing, Lomax,” she whispered. She rinsed the towel out in the water, watched it turn pink, before she switched her attention to his shoulder. “You sure as hell know how to make an entrance.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_19831a17-4449-5f1f-bb5b-d8c5b3d8b553)
“He’s coming, Mr. Kragen.”
Oliver Kragen sat on a park bench as dawn broke over the Chesapeake Bay. His enforcer, Frank Sweeney, stood no more then ten feet away, his bulky frame eclipsing the sun behind him. Dressed in an Armani suit, the man appeared more like a pro football player ready to renegotiate his contract than the mercenary he was.
And that’s exactly why Oliver had hired him.
“I’ll give you odds the bastard screwed up.”
Oliver didn’t acknowledge Sweeney’s comment. Instead, he waited until the click of shoe soles sounded behind him. Rather than turn in greeting, Oliver tossed the remainder of his Danish to a nearby pigeon. After all, Boyd Webber wasn’t a peer, he was an employee.
“She’s dead.”
Oliver glanced at Sweeney, a silent order to leave. Once the big man stepped away, Kragen spoke up, but his focus remained on the pigeons at their feet. “How?” The question was low, pleasant.
Boyd wasn’t fooled. But he didn’t care, either. The exmarine had more than two dozen kills under his belt and had survived more horrors than the bloodiest special effects ever created. Nothing on this earth made him afraid of dying. Least of all a weasel like Kragen. “The Garrett woman had a gun. They both did. It forced my hand.”
“They forced your hand because they were armed? They’re government operatives. What did you expect, Webber?” Kragen’s voice hardened. “If I remember right, I told you it was imperative that the Garrett woman was to be brought to me. Alive.”
“It was a mistake. They killed one of my men, wounded another. The third man targeted Lomax, but somehow the woman took a stray bullet in the chest.”
“And this third man?”
“I killed him.”
“To save me the trouble? Or him the pain?”
“I was…angry.” More than angry. Infuriated. Enough to lose his cool and shoot until the woman was dead. Enough to murder another man—one of his own—who had witnessed his transgression. “My man should have been more careful,” he lied.
In Webber’s opinion, Helene Garrett deserved no better than to die in a gutter. She had betrayed Senator D’Agostini. Slept with him, used him, stolen from him. End of her, end of story. Or it should have been. But the files were still missing.
“Did you clean up your mess?” Kragen’s eyes shifted to his coffee cup. He took a sip, burned his tongue and swore.
“I thought it better to leave things.” Resentment slithered down Webber’s back, coiled deep within his belly. He studied Kragen’s profile with derision. Kragen was the poster-boy politician. The meticulous, trimmed blond hair that enhanced the high slant of the cheekbones, the aristocratic forehead. A nose so straight that Webber would bet his last dime that Kragen had it cosmetically carved. All packaged in a five-figure topcoat and custom suit. All done to hide the trailer-park genes that ran through Poster Boy’s veins.
“You killed your man without consulting me first.” Oliver glanced up then. Twin metallic-gray eyes pinned, then dismissed the mercenary in one flicker.
“I consulted with the senator beforehand,” Webber responded.
Oliver noted the verbal jab, but chose to ignore it for the moment. “Did you search the bar? Her apartment?”
“She’d moved out of her apartment days ago and left nothing behind. And we had no time to search the bar. Lomax was the priority.”
“The woman had the files and the code,” Oliver insisted. “I want the bar searched. And I want Lomax found.”
“Shouldn’t take long. We winged Lomax before he slipped away. We found his car wrapped around a light pole.”
“Did you follow the blood?”
“Witnesses told the police he took off down the street but the rain washed away any bloody trail.”
“And the police? What do they say?” Oliver prompted, his annoyance buried under a tone of civility. More than the Neanderthal deserved, in Oliver’s opinion.
To say that Webber was ugly would have been polite. He had the face of a boxer, flat and scarred from too many alley fights, and a bulbous nose from too much booze. Like Sweeney, he wore a tailored suit, had no neck and too much muscle. Unlike Sweeney, he sported a butch cut so close it left the color of his hair in question.
“The police are questioning the bar manager. An ex-con by the name of Pusher Davis.”
“If the man is an ex-con, they’ll suspect him first,” Oliver observed. “Tail him, just to be sure. I don’t want any loose ends.”
“There won’t be. The police won’t get anywhere. Helene Garrett will become just another statistic in a long line of unsolved homicides,” Boyd explained.
For the moment, Oliver ignored the arrogance underlying Webber’s words. “They have Lomax’s blood on the scene.”
Webber snorted. “Won’t do them any good if they have no records to match it with. Right now, the cops don’t have any information on either of them. Or the senator’s connection to her.”
