Saving Grace

“You’ve got a phone call.”

She straightened from the rocking chair. “There must be some mistake. No one knows I’m here.”

Lily shrugged. “It’s some man. Want me to tell him you don’t want to talk?”

“No. No, I’ll take it.”

Lily handed her a cordless phone and then slipped from the room, respecting her privacy. Still thinking the housekeeper had erred, she spoke hesitantly into the phone. “Yes?”

“Dammit, Grace. Where the hell have you been?”

She relaxed at the familiar voice. “Nice to talk to you, too, Riley.”

Her former partner bit out a curse. She could just picture him, clothes slightly rumpled, dark hair characteristically messy, hawk-like features twisted with irritation as he glared at the phone he hated.

Beau Riley was the closest she had to family. Six years of being partners, first on patrol and then as detectives, had made them closer than blood. Brain clones, Riley called them. They knew how the other thought, felt. They even finished each other’s sentences half the time, which was exactly why there could never be anything romantic between them.

In the hell of the last twelve months, he had been the only person she had stayed in contact with, although even that had been as sporadic as Seattle sunshine.

“You got any idea how worried I’ve been?” he snapped now.

“No.” Suddenly, unaccountably, famished, she speared a strawberry with a fork. “But I’m guessing you’re about to enlighten me.”

“You don’t answer your phone for a week. I go by your apartment and you’re not there. I go to that crummy job of yours on the docks. You’re not there. I go back and forth between the two until I feel like a stinkin’ yo-yo. Finally, I get one of your stupid neighbors to answer the door, only to learn some guy carried you out the door and into some fancy car a week ago. A stranger hauls an unconscious woman into his car and not once did the idiot think to call the police. What the hell is this city coming to?”

She settled back into the rocking chair and nibbled at the fruit salad while she listened to his familiar rant about the pitiful state of society.

When it finally sounded like Beau was beginning to wind down, she interrupted him. “How did you find me?” That seemed to be the question of the hour.

“The idiot neighbor at least had the brains to remember part of a license plate and the make of the car, although why he didn’t contact the police before is a complete mystery to me. Took me two days but I finally traced it to Dugan. What the hell are you doing there, Grace?”

Good question, one she’d love to answer if she only knew. “It’s a long story,” she finally said. “Why were you looking for me?”

The silence stretched thin between them, a few beats longer than was comfortable. When he finally spoke, he sounded almost sheepish. As sheepish as macho-man Beau Riley could sound, at any rate. “I was worried about you.” He cleared his throat. “What with the anniversary and all. Afraid you’d do something crazy.”

Crazy like taking a little stroll into traffic on the interstate. He didn’t say it, but she knew exactly how his mind worked. Hers had worked the same way, which is probably why he’d been worried about her.

Sitting here in Jack Dugan’s sleek, elegant guest room with a bowl of luscious food in her hands—with the waves licking at the shore and gulls crying out overhead—the desperation and despair of that night seemed as far away as the moon.

She felt a deep guilt at her weakness, that she had even considered ending her life. That she had almost succumbed to the pain.

“You okay?”

She blinked away the shame, knowing there would be plenty of time for it later. “I’m fine,” she lied. “You?”

Beau cleared his throat again. “Yeah.”

She heard the raw emotion in the single word and drew a shaky breath. She should have known the anniversary would hit him hard, should have tried to reach out to him.

Beau had loved her daughter, too, and had relished his role of honorary uncle. She thought of birthday parties and piggy-back rides and lazy Sunday picnics in the park.

Before she could answer, though, to offer whatever kind of meager comfort she could, he changed the subject.

“So tell me what you’re doing with Jack Dugan, of all people.” His tone shifted suddenly, edged with a suspicion that hadn’t been there at the beginning of their conversation. “What are you up to? Dammit, Grace. Don’t you dare tell me you’re playing Lone Ranger on this one.”

She frowned, puzzled by his anger. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t try to con me. I know you better than that. There’s no way I’ll believe it’s purely a coincidence you’re staying with the owner of Global Shipping Incorporated.”

The first glimmer of unease began to stir within her and, suddenly restless, she rose to return the empty bowl to the tray on the bed. “Should that mean something to me?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone line, then Riley swore softly. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what? I’m too tired to play games with you. Spit it out.”

“Global Shipping, Inc., and your friend Jack Dugan are smack dab in the middle of a multi-jurisdictional investigation for smuggling.”

The lingering taste of the fruit turned to ashes in her mouth and the glimmer of unease became a riot of foreboding. “Drugs?”

“No, big, bad nasty assault weapons. Name a kind of illegal weapon and he’s suspected of bringing it in.”

Somehow this had something to do with her, otherwise he wouldn’t have been so suspicious of her reasons for staying with Dugan. She frowned. She must still be woozy from her illness because, try as she might, she couldn’t figure it out. “It’s been a year since I turned in my badge. Why would you think I’d suddenly develop an interest in some petty smuggling ring?”

When he spoke, Beau’s voice was as sharp as a switchblade. “You need me to spell it out for you? Weapons, Grace. GSI and Jack Dugan are suspected of bringing in most of the assault weapons on the street today, including the AK-47 favored by our mutual friend Spooky Lawrence. The same Spooky Lawrence currently serving fifteen-to-life for killing an eleven-year-old girl named Marisa Solarez in a drive-by shooting outside her school.”

Chapter 4

Grace couldn’t speak for several seconds after Beau’s announcement, couldn’t think straight, could only stand there, an empty bowl in her hand, while an awful, cold numbness began in her stomach and spread out through the rest of her body

Weapons smuggling.

The man with the sweet smile and the green, green eyes and the gentle way with his five-year-old daughter was a weapons smuggler.

She thought she would be sick suddenly. Totally and violently ill all over Jack Dugan’s glossy, elegant guest room.

“Grace? You okay?”

She blinked several times, then set the bowl down gingerly on the table, fearful it might shatter into a million pieces if she wasn’t careful. “I… Yes,” she whispered. “Fine.”

But she wasn’t. Her thoughts had turned black and horrific, to blood and sirens and a child’s shattered body.

Most of the time, she tried not to think about that day—just living without Marisa was torture enough—but with Riley’s words, everything she tried to block from her mind came rushing back.

She hated most that the last words between them hadn’t been spoken out of love but out of exasperated anger. Marisa had called her at work to tell her she’d missed the bus for the third time in two weeks.

“Can you come get me?” she had begged, and Grace—with a dozen cases open on her desk and two interviews scheduled within the hour—had snapped at her about being responsible and trustworthy.

In the end, she had reluctantly agreed to pick her up, but she had been too late.