Chapter Five
G
r
ace Powell wa
s dancing in her garden in the middle of the goddamned New Orleans bayou summer night in the rain.
Dare watched her, alternately fascinated and pissed that he was fascinated at the way her dress clung to her, molding to her breasts in a way that made him want to sink to his knees and howl at the moon.
Or lower her to the wet ground and take the dress off.
He wanted her with a longing so deep and dark he didn’t think he’d ever fill it, even if he took her over and over in the hot rain scalding his skin.
So fucking inappropriate. His body was strung too tight for this kind of seductive dance. It took everything he had to stay in place.
Her feet were bare, her long brown hair had coppery highlights and was pulled back in a single braid that shone with water droplets . . . and she was smiling.
Take her now.
After all, why did she deserve to be happy, despite what Avery had tried to tell him earlier? Avery, whom he’d left behind in town to connect with an old friend, only partially because he didn’t want her to take part in this kidnapping.
He’d assumed that when Darius said,
Go home . . . you’ll find grace there,
he’d been talking in a more spiritual sense. Instead, he’d found Grace Powell’s address in the safe at the house Darius kept on the bayou, written in Darius’s handwriting.
Grace Powell.
Dare and Avery had researched Richard Powell, what little there was on him. There was less on his daughter. From what Dare could gather, Grace had been “missing” for the last six years, and somehow, S8 had discovered where she was staying. Might’ve been dumb luck since she’d ended up living in the same bayou parish, but Dare suspected there was more to the story. Because Powell’s daughter was a powerful tool in the S8 arsenal.
Using Powell’s daughter was a brilliant plan on paper. In the flesh, harder than Dare had thought. He’d done worse things in his career—many of them—but this felt right and wrong all at once.
Grace Powell could be his salvation or his undoing. Or both.
No matter. Moving forward was the only option. He slopped through the mud and went to her, knowing his father would hate him for doing this. But for the first time in his life, he didn’t give a damn about what Darius would think.
And while she struggled, she didn’t seem all that surprised.
He grabbed her from behind, pulled her tight against him. A hand over her mouth, another around her waist, and she fought as he carried her to his truck.
She wouldn’t stop fighting.
The garden. She smelled like gardenias long after they’d left her garden. He nearly buried his nose in her hair because the smell drove him crazy, over the edge, out of control.
Goddamn, this had been a mistake. He’d let himself go too long without a woman. This was simple lust.
Keep lying to yourself.
She wore a small cross-body bag, as if she’d been expecting to go somewhere. She shifted against the bindings he’d purposely made tight so she’d hate him. So she’d spit on him, stop staring at him like . . .
Like he was more than her captor.
“What’s your name?” he asked, even though he knew.
She eyed him coolly, and when she spoke, her voice was laden with both honey and steel. “You should just call me leverage.”
* * *
The man who’d approached her had fire in his eyes and looked at her like she was prey. Right before he’d put her in the car, Grace had spoken one final time.
“I don’t know anything about my father’s business,” she lied carefully, because he’d know.
“You are your father’s business. That’s enough for me.”
“What did he do to you?”
His eyes had glittered. “He tried to kill me.”
She’d wanted to say,
Me too,
but she didn’t have the strength. Dare wouldn’t believe her anyway.
She’d spent the day helping one woman gather the strength to press charges against her abusive husband. By the time she’d convinced her, helped her get into the car with Marnie to go to the police station, the tension headache had gotten worse. She’d popped several Motrin and kept going, processing another intake on a woman who needed Marnie’s help.
By the time she’d gotten home, she hadn’t wanted to go into the house, the one she’d built so lovingly—her sanctuary.
It was ultimately what would ruin her, her own fault. And so she’d stayed outside in the garden, until the rain came and the pain in her head receded.
Until Dare came and grabbed her.
White knight or black king . . . it was too early to tell. What wasn’t too early to tell was that she wouldn’t be able to live in her house again.
She’d miss her garden the most, didn’t believe for a second she’d be allowed to go back and tend to it. No, she’d been found and she’d have to let the house, and everything in it, go.
The garden was brimming—August was the time to start picking and freezing the herbs before they withered in the brutal heat and humidity that oppressed everything it touched.
She had been studying this forever, learned a kind of practical magic from her mother. It was a way to keep her close, since she’d left the private island when Grace was twelve. Grace’s last memory was of the helicopter rising above the house.
She’d had no idea that the last time she saw her mother would be the last time.
Don’t go there,
she warned herself harshly. This wasn’t a time to show weakness, despite how very weak she felt at the moment. Soaked to the skin, she tried not to shiver, bit down fiercely on the inside of her cheeks to stop her teeth from chattering as Dare led her from the truck into the house she knew as Darius’s.
The last time she’d been here, it had been on another hot summer’s day and she’d been reluctantly saying good-bye to Darius and Adele. Excited to start her new life, hating the fact that it would include moving around the country every six months for her own safety . . . and yet, two years had passed since that day and she was s
till here, in the Louisiana bayou, hoping the destruction and natural wildness of the place would shield her from evil.
Had it? Dare didn’t look evil—but he also looked nothing like his father, so she was having trouble reading him. It had taken her a year to really believe Darius’s intentions—and to someone who had a psychic gift, that it had taken so long had been almost embarrassing. It was a defective, infuriating gift, damaged and in hiding from years of abuse of her pushing it down and away, denying its existence for her own safety.
If she couldn’t see the future, she’d be no good for Rip. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want her back anyway.
Dare O’Rourke had plans for her too, and she could feel those as surely as if he’d already spoken to her out loud.
She should not feel a flutter deep inside her belly while pressed against the man taking her hostage, but it was undeniable. She fought not to lean in and smell his skin. She detected the scent of the jungle on him.
He’d tied her wrists together, tight behind her back, as if deliberately trying to scare her.
She could pretend, but why bother? She’d always known this day would come, was as resigned to it as she was to her gift eventually returning. But there was a part of her that was afraid of her reaction to this man . . . afraid of what he would do to her.
Her arms ached. This man would hurt her if it meant getting a rise out of her stepfather.
She’d always known it was one of the risks. Had lived the past six years as though the enemy was coming for her at any moment. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept with the lights off. She could fire a gun, knew every self-defense technique and was still on edge. Angry, if she thought about it enough, more than fearful. A good emotion to have behind her, she supposed, but she was tired of being on guard all the time.
If she was lucky, at times she could go a full twenty-four hours without thinking about it. Her house was old, a work in progress, and she’d known from her first moments here that the bayou was a place of magic and a place of lost souls. One could easily get lost.
It was perfect for her. Except she wondered if she’d ever find something to anchor her. Longed for it, but decided it was too much to ask.
In order to escape her father, she’d had to make certain sacrifices. This was much better than living in a house on one of the small islands off Grand Cayman, where she’d been a prisoner for most of her years growing up.
Still, people were always looking for her—both good and bad. She’d been told as much by Darius and Adele. And Grace felt the relentless press of horseman’s hooves at her back now more than ever.
Six years of relative freedom was all that she would be granted, it seemed. It was more than she’d ever thought she’d have.
It wasn’t enough.
Chapter Si
x
H
ours earl
ier, Dare had brought Grace into his house, left her bound but ungagged in a chair in the living room facing the wall. He hadn’t said a word to her since they’d driven away from her place, and the tension had built to a nearly unbearable level.
Moving away from her had been a relief, although he could see her through the porch window from the old swing he lowered himself onto.
He’d brought one of Darius’s old guitars out with him because it had been sitting by the door as if waiting for someone.
Dare still didn’t know if he was that someone, but he set it next to him on the swing and listened to the rain slamming along the old roofing like it was trying its best to break it. His hands ached, as they tended to do in this weather, and no amount of flexing would help that, but he could still shoot and fight, and that was all that mattered.
Pain was always a part of his life—this injury made no difference.
Since he’d left the jungle, he’d exercised his hands constantly to keep them from seizing up, and they’d slowly begun to heal, one better than the other. He’d had to switch from being right-handed to left because the loss of sensation in his right hand made it difficult to handle a gun. Difficult, not impossible, but he was a better shot with his left than he’d ever been with his right. It was a different perspective. Some people said scars made things stronger because that tissue tended to be tougher. Dare wasn’t so sure of that, but he wanted to believe it.
The bayou reminded him of the jungle: hot and noisy and teeming with danger and beauty—just depended on your perspective. Nothing had changed—hurricanes might try to decimate this place, but it always came back.
Bayou living wasn’t for everyone. It tended to be rough, sometimes bordering on unpleasant and downright cruel, but some of his best memories were of this house, the surrounding swamps . . . he’d bet he’d find the same pirogues floating around the dock if he took a stroll that way.
So he was back here, but he wasn’t
back
yet, not fully. His mind was still in that jungle, his soul locked away and his heart, ice. Adele had chipped at it, Avery had broken through, but that was where it had ended.
“I always wanted a big brother,” she’d told him on one of their first of
many days spent traveling cross-country in an attempt to throw anyone and everyone off their trail.
“Now you’ve got one. A little late—”
“Never. Never too late,” Avery told him. She’d ordered room service—cookies and hot chocolate for her and coffee for him,
since he wanted to be boring
, she’d said, and they’d sat and talked. Planned. Watched TV. Two months of that and he’d almost felt human again.
Damn, it had been nice. She was smart, like Darius. He trusted her more easily and completely than he’d ever trusted anyone, even his father. Maybe that was the way it was supposed to be when family was involved.
But now the plans were set in motion, and there was no more relaxing. They both had their jobs.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Avery. Right on time. “You okay?”
“Like you don’t know?” she asked with that hint of laughter in her voice that hadn’t failed to make him smile yet.
Of course he’d watched her go into Gunner’s. He’d never let her take that on alone, no matter her insistence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Thanks for trusting me to get to him on my own,” she said.
“I needed to see how you handle yourself when I’m not around,” he explained. “I didn’t mean to throw you to the wolves.”
“I took care of the wolves.”
“You damned well did. How’s Gunner?”
“Not happy.”
“He’s never happy—get used to it.”
“I had to promise him a tattoo.”
“That better be all he made you promise,” he muttered. But once she stepped inside his shop, Dare knew she was under Gunner’s protection, whether Avery knew it or not.
Gunner was so good, she wouldn’t.
Avery was safe with Gunner, although Dare had no idea how safe that really was. Gunner was out of the business, but there were a lot of people looking to recruit him against his will and an equal number who wanted him dead.
Gunner was in his early thirties, had come by his rep by the time he’d turned eighteen, solidified it in the Navy and got to legendary status during his first year in black ops.
He worked for no one but himself, which was always a risky proposition, but Gunner would never hook up with a group.
He’d been too much of a loner for the teams—no matter how many times they’d tried to recruit him. He’d known his limits, in love and fighting, but no woman ever believed him, which was why he’d married three times. Four, if Dare believed the rumors.
No matter—Avery wouldn’t be his next ex-wife. Dare would kill the guy first.
But that was business of an entirely different order, and Dare had more than his share to handle under this roof tonight.
“Is everything okay on your end?” she asked, changing the subject deftly.
“Darius left nothing on her beyond her address.”
“Is she okay?”
“I didn’t hurt her.”
“I know,” she told him. “You’re not like that.”
He wanted to tell her that she didn’t know him well enough if she could make a statement like that, but he didn’t want to ruin her perception of him. Not yet. And maybe it was because she was so open with him, because her life depended on him, literally, but being her protector didn’t feel like the burden he’d thought it would.
She believed in him in a way that made him want to believe in himself.
“Has she said anything yet?” Avery asked now.
“I haven’t started talking to her yet.”
“Do you want me there?”
That might be the best thing. Easier for him, for sure. “You’re better served where you are. Check in tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow,” she chided gently before hanging up.
He put the phone back in his pocket, fingered the silver pick hanging around his neck and looked out at the dark bayou that lay beyond the house.
He remembered green grass, sticky air, the long, lazy summer days that rolled into easy summer nights when breezes were scarce and lightning bugs floated around like flickering magic.
Darius would play the guitar, the notes wafting along the thick air, and Dare would listen and pick up the guitar the next day, trying to play the notes from memory, sometimes succeeding.
But the days for being lazy were few and far between. Darius always had a mission for Dare, wanted his son to be mission ready, and Dare wouldn’t not be.
His mother . . . he had vague memories of her, singing in the tiny house in North Carolina that was just off base. She had a small vegetable garden too.
Later, all he remembered was the crying . . . and then she was gone.
Darius went off the rails after that.
Darius left the Army, although he’d never stopped working. It was then that the other six men and Adele began to circle his space. They were at various times friendly and angry and serious and silly. But no one ever took anything out on him.
Not idyllic, but he knew there were much worse ways to grow up.
He stared at the back of Grace’s head. She’d turned when he first started tuning the guitar, but she couldn’t see him, no matter how hard she tried.
Interrogation had its uses, but he’d have to soften her up first. She was strong and angry, and she would not go down easily. If she was left alone, her mind would take over. He wouldn’t have to do much more than that, let her get hungry and tired.
By the time he interrogated her, her own fear would’ve done more to her than he could’ve ever brought himself to do. She’d be working over her options in her mind, tiring herself out like a hamster on a wheel.
Will you be doing the same damned thing out here?
He answered himself with a snort and picked up the guitar, balanced it on his thigh.
The choices were pretty simple. If he turned Grace in, he could very well have his life back. More important, so could Avery.
Worst-case scenario: Richard Powell got Grace back and killed all of them. What could Dare do? He couldn’t kidnap and hold her as collateral for the rest of her natural-born life.
No, he needed something else on Powell to ensure this trade went smoothly. Grace had to know something he could use against Powell—and in turn, against her.
She’d spill if she thought it would save her from going back to her father, and that was just what he was counting on.
And then he’d have to decide if he could live with himself if he made that trade. A life for a life, Avery’s for Grace’s.
His palm curled around the smooth wood, his fingers playing along the strings. It would have to be tuned because no one had been here to play it in a long while.
He began to do that, hitting each note, tightening or loosening each string.
He’d never learned to play well with the pick, preferred strumming with his fingers since he could find the rhythm more easily that way. The vibrations under his rough fingertips spread through his hands, causing them to ache a little more. But hell, at least he felt something.
* * *
Grace heard the low
notes of the guitar float through the screen door.
Dare was on the porch. She hadn’t heard him move for hours, but she’d heard him talking. And now this.
She didn’t turn around, hadn’t the entire time, no matter how difficult it was to stay put. Instead, she concentrated on keeping herself together, because he was counting on her falling apart.
What if she could share everything with him? Was he the one she was supposed to tell her secrets to? Didn’t everyone have one person in their lives they could trust, or did that only happen in movies?
The guitar continued now—he’d stopped the practice strumming and was playing a song.
Darius used to play on the old porch, but he wasn’t half as good as Dare was. Dare was a natural—he played from the heart. She listened to the chords as they built to a crescendo. She recognized the song—“Plush,” by the Stone Temple Pilots—and filled in the hauntingly beautiful lyrics in her head.
It was as if Dare was asking her about tomorrow, where she was going with her mask.
It was as if he knew her.
Set to the music, the question was mournful and hopeful, all at once. Maybe it was time for the mask to drop.
She closed her eyes and prayed he wouldn’t come in until the tears had stopped rolling down her cheeks.