“Even better—we’ll surprise the hell out of them and focus on our original plan,” Jem argued.
“They gotta come now, before the police get here.”
“That means we stay put for a while,” Dare said.
“I’ll make a call to the police, tell them it’s a false alarm—or a CIA matter. Buy us some time,” Jem told them, grabbed the sat phone.
“Gunner can take care of it,” Dare said.
Grace looked over at Dare. “Gunner’s outside. With Avery.”
* * *
They’d gotten there just in time. They’d seen the bomb go off in the distance, and by the time they’d gotten to the house, it was leveled. As Dare had promised, no one could tell there was a bunker built into it, and the bomb hadn’t been nearly strong enough to take out the foundation of the house, which still stood.
“The men who did this won’t wait for the fire to be out before they search for bodies,” Gunner told her as they sped along the bayou in his nearly silent boat, climbing out along the slippery banks as the smell of smoke invaded her nose and mouth.
Gunner wet a bandana with bottled water and tied it over her nose and mouth, did the same for himself. They moved quickly through the brush toward the smoke, her heart pounding and her weapon
at the ready. She might’ve been nervous before. Now all she had on her mind was keeping her brother safe, no matter the cost. Her body was on autopilot, her mind surveying the distance between herself and the house. She was born for this—until this moment, she hadn’t realized the truth in that statement.
Gunner pulled her next to him. There were men rifling through the wreckage, picking their way along it carefully, no doubt looking for bodies. She didn’t hear any sirens in the distance. This part of the bayou seemed pretty deserted—but still, someone should’ve come.
Gunner moved close to her ear. “They probably called in to the police station and told them to ignore calls. Powell could have someone in his pocket there.”
That would explain it.
“So what now?” she whispered back.
“We can’t take any of them alive,” Gunner said. “Let’s just get rid of all of them.”
“Got it.”
Gunner stared at her for a long moment; then his eyes went first to the rifle and back to her face. “You can live with this?”
She nodded without hesitation. He placed plugs in her ears and in his, then moved so they were shoulder to shoulder. She lifted her rifle when he did the same, leveled it, and began to fire in time with Gunner, letting his powerful body and stance guide hers. She and Gunner were the perfect wild cards. She felt like living up to that name.
When the weapon discharged fast and furious, she fought hard to keep her stance against the kickback. She had a few practice rounds under her belt, but nothing like the sustained fire this promised to be.
They were severely undermanned, but Gunner was taking down men left and right, and she was too. They’d given up on plan A but had gotten here as fast as they could and were now working a Hail Mary situation.
She was shaking. Sweating. Watching the men go down, until finally her clip ran empty. But she couldn’t let go of the gun.
Her ears rang, despite the earplugs. And then Gunner was next to her, his heavy hand on her gun, pushing it down to face the ground, touching her cheek, bringing her back.
She turned against him and pressed her cheek to his chest for a long moment, and then she pushed against him and walked away, not at all sure where she was going.
C
hapter Thirty-one
I
t grew silent outside. Dare stared at the sat phone as if willing it to ring, and then he grabbed for his phone and Grace saw the look of relief on his face.
“They’re okay. They’ll sit tight and then go back to Gunner’s and wait for us,” he said, and Jem and Key nodded in agreement.
Grace sat there with her belly twisting. She knew the time for questioning her had come.
You should’ve told Dare before this,
she rebuked herself. But it was too late for that kind of hindsight. She’d done what she needed to in order to survive.
But she’d trusted him enough to let him in, more than any man she’d ever known. It was time to tell him the whole truth and pray that he understood why she’d been reluctant to do so before.
“Rip must’ve known where I was the entire time.” She looked up to see the three men watching her. “The entire time I was back in New Orleans—I think he knew. God, I can’t go back to him.”
Her last words were a plea to Dare, but Jem told her harshly, “You don’t get to make those decisions. We can’t trust you.”
She needed to prove she could be trusted, but how? All these men—and Avery—their lives were on the line like hers . . . because of her. “I’m not. I haven’t had contact with Rip in six years.”
“Then how did you know his plan?” Dare asked finally, and she told him the truth she’d been holding back from him, from Darius and Adele.
“Because I’m psychic—I know things before they happen. At least that’s what I was able to do at one point in time,” she admitted.
There was dead silence for a long minute as Dare stared at her, brow furrowed. Key was expressionless as Jem pulled up a chair and said, “I think we’re in for a long explanation.”
Dare came up behind him, grabbed him before he could sit. “I’ll talk to Grace alone. You and Key take shifts at the door, just in case.”
“Sweetheart, if you can predict the future, why didn’t you know about Powell coming for you before this?” Jem continued as if he hadn’t heard a word Dare said. “Or maybe you did and decided to play both sides of the fence.”
“I haven’t been able to predict anything for a long time.” And that was the truth. It had all started with that sudden, unexpected burst of knowledge that Dare was coming for her, and continued into the situation with Marnie . . . then predicting the fire.
But was that first a premonition or wishful thinking? She’d been thinking of S8 and Darius and Adele during recent months, surprised she’d heard nothing from them.
“You’ve had one before—at the house, right before Marnie called and we went to her house.”
She wanted to deny it but knew they were past that point, both on her end and because of the trust they’d built between them.
Would he believe her? Or would he believe her and decide she was too much of a liability to him . . . or worse, an asset to Rip?
None of the options were very good. She hated this moment, because once again, her whole life hung in the balance. She twisted her hands together hard as she answered, “Yes. It’s my third this week. Before that . . . it’s been a while.”
“How long?”
“They’re not li
ke they were before, when I was much younger. Now they all seem to come when there’s danger near—they only come to me when there’s trouble. In truth, that’s the way it is for most predictions—the stronger the danger or the joy or the sadness that’s coming, the easier it is to feel them.”
When she said that, Dare moved away from her, and she got up to follow him. Touched his shoulder. Spoke his name.
Fell right into his trap. He turned to her, said, “If you’re really psychic, you’d know we were coming for you.” He pressed her against the wall. Her breath came in quick gasps. “Did you know? Can you predict the future . . . or did Rip predict it for you?”
“I’m not lying about Rip. I’m not,” she swore. “I haven’t been able to predict the future for a long time. That’s the truth.”
“Why now?”
Because I’m healing . . . falling in love. Trusting someone.
“I don’t know,” she lied.
“Did you set me up?” he demanded.
“I didn’t know who was coming first, the white knight or the black one,” she whispered. “I didn’t know until you touched me.”
* * *
Dare ground his jaw so
hard he was surprised nothing cracked. His head throbbed as he ran back all the intel he’d memorized about Richard Powell over the past weeks—it all amounted to shit.
Grace could be pulling the greatest ruse ever. He had to be the one to pick apart the truth from the lies.
How was he supposed to build on a foundation that had never been solid or stable to start with? And yet, everything about Grace Powell begged him to.
Darius took her in.
Then again, his father had done a lot of questionable things in his time. And as much as he hated to admit it, Jem had a point about everything. Trusting a woman after kissing her in this kind of situation bordered on something close to suicide.
Like any man in his situation, asking for help was out of the question. He would figure it out himself and would make sure it didn’t come back to bite Avery in the ass.
He needed to hear more. Apparently, so did Jem and Key—and he couldn’t blame them—but they’d moved off to the side so Grace wouldn’t feel so threatened. Dare moved away from her, led her back to the table. She sat, looked up at him so earnestly when he told her to tell him everything.
You knew the whole time that she was holding something back.
And this was a hell of a thing to hide—but she’d done it for her survival. He understood that.
Still, her survival could mean the rest of their downfall.
“Tell me about this psychic thing.”
“I’m a broken psychic who grew up with a grifter for a mother and a psycho stepfather,” she said angrily.
“And your psychic gift just happens to work now?”
“It’s broken. It’s a fragile gift to start with. If I’d known Marnie was going to die, do you think I’d have let that happen?”
No, he didn’t believe that she’d do that—you didn’t fake grief like that.
“It’s brought me nothing but trouble. I have no idea why it’s called a gift.” She ran a fingertip across the surface of the table, following a crack. “My first vision . . .” She laughed, but there were tears in her eyes as she remembered. “When I was little, I told my mom she was going to marry a rich man who would ruin us both,” she said haltingly. “Esme slapped me and sent me to bed without supper. She said it was for me trying to fool her with her own scam.”
Dare flinched for her. His face and fists tightened, but his voice was calm when he asked, “When did she finally realize you were seeing something real?”
“I kept everything to myself from that point on. I knew when her scams would work and when they wouldn’t, so we moved a lot, because I refused to warn her. That was in the beginning, and then she got better.”
“Because you helped her.”
“She didn’t know, but I’d give her hints. She didn’t realize they were coming from my visions—she thought it was stuff I picked up from the other kids talking.” She took a drink of the tea. “But one night, there was a fire. Later, we found out a wife of one of Esme’s conquests lit it. But hours before, I smelled smoke. That was the strongest prediction I’d ever had, and I guess that’s always been the case for me. I told her, but she told me it was nothing. So I . . .”
“Stayed up all night, waiting for the fire to start,” he finished for her.
“I woke her up and got her outside. She believed me after that.” She paused. “She was far from perfect, but she was all I had. She didn’t know any other way. She’d come from a long line of grifters. But even though she wasn’t honest, I didn’t get the feeling of pure evil I did when I met Rip.”
She shuddered, remembering that day.
“And your mother recalled your visions.”
“It was always meant to be. I don’t think she could’ve escaped him if she’d wanted to. He was a better grifter than she ever was.”
He looked surprised, and she asked, “You don’t know Rip’s background?”
“No. Look, I didn’t even know the guy existed until last month.”
“Right, and Darius wouldn’t have left any information about Rip for you. He said he always preferred firsthand info, and I’m betting you’re the same.” She got up and began to pace a little. She imagined watching Adele and Darius plan in their war room, as they’d called the living room during those times. Occasionally she’d take notes for them, a lot of terms she didn’t understand.
Sometimes she’d ask for an explanation. Sometimes she was sorry she did.
“I didn’t want you to think I was crazy. Sometimes the visions made me feel crazy.”
“And Powell used you because you could predict things.”
She glanced up at Dare, admitting, “I kept him alive for a long time. Esme would sit me down at dinner with her and Rip and then, after, question me if I had gotten any feelings about him. And typically, I would. I would see danger—or death—and later, I realized that she’d have me come into the room before Rip was about to go to a dangerous meeting, for instance. I would know if Rip was walking into traps and was telling her that without realizing she was using me. Not at first, anyway. The thing is, Rip knew whether or not he was in danger before I said a word—his intuition, his survival skills, were strong enough to rival any psychic’s. But Rip’s really into the psychic stuff.”
“I don’t see that.”
“You’d be surprised. He’s a man who wants total control, and he didn’t like that I might know things he didn’t. For a long time after he let his men torture me, I couldn’t see anything but what was directly in front of me, with my own eyes. I liked it that way. But I think he was also always studying me—waiting for me to break. I think . . . I think he liked it that I wouldn’t. If I had broken, I don’t think he would’ve kept me alive.”
“Tell me about Esme.”
“You know she was a fake. A grifter.” She spat the words like they tasted bad on her tongue. “As soon as she knew I was the real thing, she started to use me in her schemes.”
“And Powell was the biggest scheme of all.”
“At first I didn’t think so. I think she liked him and thought he’d take care of us. I mean, he was handsome and rich and she was young and pretty. And they were actually a lot alike.”
“How’s that?”
“They both like control and power.”
“Who doesn’t?” Dare muttered.
“The problem is, I can’t control it. And it doesn’t happen constantly. It’s just . . . a feeling. Like the night your house burned, I started to feel warm, smelled smoke hours before it happened. I couldn’t be sure and I didn’t want you to think I was crazy. So I tried to wait up.”
“You were trying to save me.”
“Trying, yes.”
“Hey, come on, Grace—I don’t blame you.”
“Maybe you should.”