Saving Grace. RaeAnne Thayne

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Five minutes.

      That’s all it took for her world to shatter.

      If she had been five minutes earlier—if she hadn’t stopped to buy a Coke from the vending machine at the station house or to exchange jibes with the desk sergeant on her way out the door—her daughter would have been just fine.

      They would have been at the little house they’d worked so hard to fix up, catching up on long division homework or watching TV or taking a bike ride through the park.

      But she had stopped for a Coke. She had stopped to ride the desk sergeant about his pot belly and his junk food habit.

      And she had arrived at the school five minutes too late to protect her eleven-year-old daughter from being caught in the crossfire of rival punks fighting over drug territory.

      Her stomach pitched and rolled as she relived driving up to the school and seeing the two squad cars already on the scene, their flashing lights piercing the long afternoon shadows. Already a crowd had gathered on the playground. She’d picked out the principal of the school, the gym teacher and the lanky, tow-headed boy Marisa had a crush on, the one probably responsible for her missing the bus.

      Their faces had been taut with shock, and she had known. Somehow she had known.

      She remembered stumbling out of her car and rushing toward the crowd, then the horror—the devastating horror—of seeing Marisa there, covered in blood and completely, terribly still.

      “You still there?” Beau asked in her ear.

      She couldn’t answer him, lost in the nightmare she couldn’t seem to wake from.

      “Say something, Gracie,” he demanded, and she could hear the concern roughening Beau’s voice.

      She cleared her throat and felt the pain of the action through vocal cords suddenly thick with emotion. “What…what do you want me to say?”

      “Hell, I don’t know. Anything. Just don’t freeze up on me like that. I hate it when you do that.”

      “I didn’t know any of this. About Dugan, I mean. You shocked me. I’m sorry.”

      He swore viciously. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. It’s Dugan who should be sorry. And he will be. Trust me, Gracie, if he’s dealing in illegal weapons—if he played the slightest part in providing the assault weapons Spooky and his crew got their hands on for their little turf war—Jack Dugan is going to be very, very sorry.”

      With monumental effort, she managed to gather the memories and shove them back into the corner of her mind where they usually lurked. They wouldn’t stay long, she knew, would soon be scratching and clawing their way out. But for now she forced herself to tune them out, to become detached and clinical. The hard-nosed cop sniffing out a lead.

      “How strong is the case against him? Who’s working it?” she asked.

      She could almost see the shrug of his broad shoulders. “Who’s not? Customs, ATF, FBI. Five of us from the Seattle PD. Everybody wants a piece of it.”

      “So do I.” She stared out at the water. “I want in.”

      He snorted. “Absolutely not. No friggin’ way.”

      “I’m part of this, Beau. I want in.”

      “You’re too close.”

      “And you’re not?”

      He swore again. “Dammit, Gracie. You turned in your badge.”

      For the first time in a year, she felt the loss of it, of the gold detective shield she had worked so hard to earn. She had been so proud of it once, amazed that she was finally doing the job she’d dreamed of since she was younger than Marisa.

      Her father had worn his own uniform with such dignity. Manny Solarez had loved being a cop, the honor and the integrity and the ceremony of it. In the end, he had given his life for the job.

      Her own passion for becoming a peace officer had been born that day when she was eight years old, after her father’s partner and best friend had come to the house bearing the news of Manny’s death in the line of duty.

      Her job and her daughter had been the only things that mattered to Grace. Without one, though, the other had seemed pointless and she had surrendered her badge without protest.

      Now she wanted it back, if only to make Jack Dugan pay.

      “I don’t have to be official,” she said now. Excitement clicked through her, the almost forgotten buzz of bringing a criminal to justice. “I’m in the perfect position. I’m staying at his house, Beau. You can’t get any closer than that.”

      “Which brings me to my original question. What the hell are you doing there?”

      She debated how much to tell him, then shrugged. “I told you, it’s a long story, but he thinks he owes me right now. What do you know about his daughter’s kidnapping?”

      “Holy cow! That was you?”

      She frowned into the phone. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all.”

      “That’s all? You’re a damn hero, Gracie!”

      “Drop it, Riley,” she snapped. СКАЧАТЬ