Chap
ter Fifteen
A
fte
r getting Grace safely into the truck, Dare grabbed the flashlight and checked under the chassis and the hood and anywhere else a tracker could’ve been planted. Then he drove faster on the way home, but also circled into the surrounding bayou first before taking a slightly different route in case someone was staking out the house.
No one followed, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more of Powell’s men out here, hoping to get lucky. He covered the bridge up behind them and planned on using only the water routes from now on. He drove with the lights off as he headed toward the house.
He’d spent a lifetime learning to read people, a skill born from necessity to be able to keep up with Darius’s many moods, plus Adele’s and other S8 men he spent time with. There were also numerous authority figures he’d needed to lie to in order to keep up appearances, especially when he was older and Darius would disappear. Dare got tired of staying with Adele or random neighbors when she was on a mission with Darius, and so he’d learned to avoid child protective services or overly interested teachers.
Grace was a slightly more difficult read because of whom she’d grown up with. She’d built a nice wall around herself, but being near the place she felt bound to—Darius’s house—was helping to break her down.
He tried to tell himself he was doing her a favor, that carrying all that damned baggage around forever wasn’t good for anyone.
There was no way he could turn her back over to Rip and live with himself, but he wouldn’t tell her that and give up his bargaining power.
And she was hiding something from him. Maybe it was for self-protection; maybe it was to screw him over. But sooner or later, she’d spill. He knew it because he always got people to spill. He was the best interrogator the SEALs had—his gift, they’d called it.
It was what he
did,
but it was a gift he kept well hidden because it kept him in good stead with everyone . . . until the damned jungle.
Next to him, Grace remained still and silent, her arms wrapped around herself. She was partially in shock, her breathing fast and jerky.
She was also close to panicking, and panicked people made bad decisions. Grace would be no different. And he hadn’t bothered to try to calm her down.
When he stopped the truck outside the house, Grace bolted. He didn’t think she’d planned on doing so, figured it was more instinct mixed with grief, but it didn’t matter.
She was running. Predictably. He’d given her other chances, backed her against the wall to see what she was made of. Sometimes forcing someone’s hand made them reveal their entire battle plan, ensuring he could take the element of surprise away from their future interactions.
He gave her enough rope to hang herself. With any luck, she’d get lost and scared shitless enough to rethink running again, and then he’d go track her, prey to predator, stalking the dark bayou the way he had as a teen, ensuring his inner compass was as finely tuned as it could be.
Even now, years later, he knew it like the back of his hand. Spotted her by the harsh breaths and rush of skin against clothes, against brush, signs and sounds that could be honed in on only after years of fine-tuning himself to be the perfect machine for stealth and secrecy.
The job. He’d started to lose track of the fact that this was still exactly that—nothing more, nothing less—no matter how pretty or tortured his self-proclaimed leverage was.
He moved silently behind her, threaded through the brush and brambles in the soaking rain alongside her for a while without her noticing.
She was crying, although he had a feeling she’d never admit it.
* * *
Grace b
arely knew she was running. She was overwhelmed and couldn’t see beyond the tears blurring her eyes.
All she knew was that she needed to escape—didn’t matter whom or what she was running from—because really, she knew deep down in her heart that it wasn’t only Dare.
She took off through the small backyard that was once a garden and straight into the depths of the bayou grand that lined the back of the house beyond. There
were maybe twenty feet of high grass before she’d hit the water. At one time, she could always find a pirogue or two floating next to the small dock, as though drawn to it.
As though they knew whoever stayed here was always looking for an escape route.
All the while she ran, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d let her run, that this was all part of his damned plan. But Dare needed to know that she’d never gone down without a fight before and she wasn’t about to start now.
She couldn’t escape him, but if she didn’t try, she’d never forgive herself. When faced with the opening, she’d taken it, though she was moving through the darkness that couched the bayou more slowly than she would’ve liked.
In the daylight, she knew every square inch of the place. At night, she’d refused to step outside, remained huddled under the covers, terrified first that Rip would find her and then, later, terrified that she’d be alone like that forever.
She’d never told Marnie anything about her past, or asked her for help, even though Marnie’s self-styled underground railroad could easily have helped Grace get lost forever.
But she was already so lost—she couldn’t bear to have it be for forever.
Finally she got her bearings, her breaths coming so hard she felt as though her lungs were ripping out of her chest. She slipped and slid in the tall grass and then caught the path down to the water and her energy revived.
Dare was waiting for her on the dock, facing her, arms crossed. She barely saw his outline, his arms crossed loosely over his chest.
This time, there was no pirogue in the water.
She held her hands up, the international
I surrender
sign, wondered if that would be enough.
He walked toward her, brushed past her and said, “Follow me and don’t pull this shit again.”
She struggled with everything she had so she could keep up with him and walked by his side as much as possible all the way back to the house.
True to his word, he called the police as soon as he’d locked and alarmed them back inside the house. Then, while she continued to listen, he made another call with instructions for Marnie’s burial.
Grace busied herself making strong coffee. He supplied the bottle of whiskey and they sat in their wet clothes and drank the mix and she tried to blur the edges of the night’s memory, if only for a brief moment.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he told her, his voice sounding slightly hollow. In his line of work, she knew he saw dead bodies all the time. But this seemed to affect him more than it should have.
“If I hadn’t been with you . . .” She trailed off and he laughed a little.
“My kidnapping saved your life, yes.”
But he didn’t say that she was no longer kidnapped. Nothing had really changed . . . nothing and everything.
She fished in her pocket and held out Marnie’s phone to him. “I took it off the table by the door.”
“It’s best that you have no contact with any of these women—for your safety.”
“Isn’t there a way you can secure the phone line or forward the calls? Please, Dare, this is important.”
“What’s more important than your life?”
“The lives of the women who are saved by what Marnie does,” she told him. “She might not have been able to put me together, but she damn well tried. And she did more for me on that front than I’d ever expected anyone to.”
“Forget it. We’ve done what we could. I have other things to worry about.” He took out the battery, broke the SIM card and broke the phone in half before chucking it into the garbage.
She was out of her chair trying to stop him, but he was too quick.
“If you’d let her come in earlier, this wouldn’t have happened,” she told him, gave him a hard slap across the face. He didn’t flinch, merely grabbed her wrist to stop her from doing it again.
“You know that’s not true. They were lying in wait for her.”
“We don’t know who killed her—maybe it’s someone working with you.”
“Maybe it’s someone working for you. Maybe you’re in contact with Powell and you’re not telling me,” he said.
“I would never— I told you I’d rather die than go back with him, and I meant it.”
“Why should I believe you?” he demanded.
“Why shouldn’t you?”
He didn’t answer that, told her instead, “You need protection.”
She hadn’t realized S8 had been unable to provide that any longer. Adele had been her last hope, and whatever she’d put in place to keep Grace off the grid was wearing thin. Something dangerous was bound to happen.
“I was supposed to move a few months ago,” she admitted.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m supposed to build something and then leave it every six months for the rest of my life.” She stared at him. “That’s as bad as being imprisoned by my father.”
“You’d be alive.”
“You know that’s not living.”
“Some people would take it any way they could. Some people would fight for survival,” Dare said fiercely.
“Some people . . . or you?” she asked, and he pulled back with a muttered curse. Instead of answering her further, he told her to go goddamned shower and get out of the wet clothes. She knew she needed to get warm and dry, did as he said, all the while knowing he was right on the other side of the partially open door.
* * *
The steam escape
d the bathroom door, swirled around Dare like a goddamned tease. When he walked by, he could barely see the outline of Grace’s naked body through the frosted shower door, but he’d seen enough to feel like a dirty old man.
“What the hell am I doing?” he asked himself out loud.
Saving your sister. Avenging your father.
Saving himself too, but that mattered to him a hell of a lot less than the first two.
Avery didn’t deserve any of this. Maybe Grace didn’t either, but sometimes sacrifices had to be made, and there was always collateral damage involved. He’d learned that from a very early age.
And while he had made a call about Marnie, it wasn’t to the police. He wasn’t alerting anyone about anything. Instead, he’d asked his own voice mail to make arrangements for Marnie’s body and clean up. Later he’d ask Gunner to help him out.
He stitched his arm up quickly, put on a T-shirt to cover the gauze so Grace wouldn’t see. Thought about telling her what he’d found at Marnie’s but decided against it for now.
The water shut off and he heard the shower door open and Grace moving around. Then she came toward the open door, saying, “Dare?”
She peeked out. She wore a heavy towel wrapped around her, her bare shoulders dotted with water droplets. She smelled like lavender and hibiscus and sunshine, her hair wet and tumbling over her shoulders.
He handed her some of his clothes to borrow—a T-shirt and some shorts that would be huge on her—plus a pair of socks.
He glanced down at her toes and saw that her nails were painted a deep plum color that suited her. She had sexy toes. And they weren’t retreating.
“I won’t try to escape again. There’s nowhere for me to go—you know that already.”
He met her gaze. Her eyes held an honesty that nearly broke him. “Then why run?”
“To know I can.”
He couldn’t argue. “Get dressed and come into the kitchen.”
She blinked at his trust, smiled and then went back into the bathroom and shut the door. He changed out of his wet clothes and showered in the other bathroom. Found her sitting at the table waiting for him.
She’d made more coffee. Handed him a cup, which he accepted.
After a long beat, she told him, “Your father and Adele trusted me.”
“They knew I wouldn’t take their word for it.”
“You don’t trust your father?”
“Do you trust yours?” he asked, and she sat back and wrapped her arms around herself.
“Okay, yes, I get it. This world—it’s different. It’s not about trust. It’s about what you can do for someone.”
He went to the stove, turned the flame on under a pan and went to the fridge. Butter, bread and cheese and a few minutes later, he put a grilled cheese sandwich in front of her. Followed by a small glass of whiskey.
“You’re still shaking,” he informed her.
She nodded as she bit into the sandwich, closed her eyes and gave a soft moan of appreciation, like it was the best thing ever. He remained standing, eating the gooey, warm sandwich barefoot while leaning against the counter. He caught the sounds of tornado sirens in the distance.
She heard them too.
“Storm’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he observed.
“Well, if that’s not a metaphor,” she murmured, and he shook his head.
“We’ve got a hell of a lot to get straight here.”
“Yes. But I think we’re off to a better start this time.”
“We’ll see about that,” he muttered. “Why don’t you tell me more about your time with Darius and Adele? I know you weren’t here for six years straight.”
“No, at first for about six months. And then I lived in Alabama for a year,” she admitted. “And then Houston, Tampa. London for several months.”
“And you came back here two years ago?”
“Yes. And I haven’t seen either of them for a year.”
“Why back here?”
She glanced up at him with those big dark eyes. “Because I asked them to. I missed it.”
She’d wanted stability. He couldn’t blame her, and obviously Darius and Adele didn’t want to let her down.
Was Grace using them, or had it been the other way around?
“Did they know something about you, Grace? Some reason you’d be valuable to Rip?”
“Beyond being his daughter?”
There was something else going on. Dare was going to get to the bottom of it, for all their sakes.
Chapter Sixteen
G
race stood, brou
ght her plate to the sink so she didn’t have to face Dare. She’d been wondering if she should simply tell him about what happened earlier, about her gift sputtering on and off like a faulty lightbulb.
But what if . . .
That
what if
was why she kept her mouth shut. She was valuable to Rip, with or without her gift. At least she had been at one point. She’d spent so much time with his precious group, he might think differently now. But Dare . . . who was she to say that, even if he didn’t leverage her to Rip, he wouldn’t try to use her gift the way Rip had, defective or not?
For now, she’d keep that secret to herself. Maybe forever.
She ran the water and Dare came up behind her.
“I’ll take care of it,” he told her.
“Least I can do.”
“You can’t pretend Marnie’s death didn’t happen,” he said.
“I can—for as long as I want. Sometimes, it’s the only way to get through things.” She glanced over her shoulder, looked into his eyes and then down at his hands. “I have a feeling you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
She wondered if he’d yell at her again or simply walk away. That last one would be the worst. She wanted him to understand.
She turned around and found herself so close to him. Maybe he’d planned it this way or maybe it was happenstance. It didn’t matter. The wildness in her was so raw—she wanted to break through to this man. Had to, the way he’d already broken through to her.
She didn’t know how to deal with a man like this. Darius had been powerful, yes, but he’d kept his distance, let Adele deal with her most of the time.
She’d still been so broken, a surly teenager prone to sneaking out of the house and drinking with men who were bad for her to prove she could never be hurt again.
She’d been so goddamned wrong; she knew that now. But Adele never scolded. For four years, Grace traveled with Adele, but Grace always thought of this as her home base. This was where she’d first begun to heal.
His hand came up to her cheek. “You’re flushed.”
She felt hot all over. A little dizzy, but a different dizzy than she’d felt earlier, when the vision broke through. She swallowed the tightness in her throat away, wanted to tell him the flush was because of him.
“I’ve been thinking about you for years,” she confessed finally.
“Why’s that?”
“Your picture . . . the way Darius and Adele talked about you. You’re a good man, Dare O’Rourke.”
“A good man who kidnapped you.”
“For your father . . . he told you to.”
Dare reached a hand up and brushed her hair back over her shoulders. Tucked it behind an ear, stroked her earlobe, and she shivered. “You knew he would.”
“He told me he might have to one day. He said . . . ‘Dare will do the right thing, but I’ve never been the type to tell him what he has to do.’”
“True. No one tells me what to do.”
“No one?”
“No one.” He leaned in and kissed her, and she soared, as she had earlier. The threat of danger had dissipated. So had the anger. It was replaced with heat, and she gripped his shoulders to try to gain some quarter.
But there was none in this situation. Her head began to spin, her nipples tightened and she was done fighting him. And that hadn’t ever happened to her.
She wasn’t sure how long they kissed for, lost track of time because he just continued kissing her like that was the most important thing in the world. He’d picked her up at one point so she was sitting on the counter and he was standing between her legs.
He pulled back, murmured, “Something’s wrong.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
His hand was on her forehead, his eyes full of concern she wished would disappear. “I think you have a fever. You’re burning up—I’ll get a thermometer.”
“Don’t bother—it’s well over 101,” she told him. She got these fevers less regularly than she had when she was young, but they tended to come on fast and raise the mercury high. She was growing woozy, and then Dare was carrying her, putting her into the big bed she remembered so well. Darius would send her to bed with tea when they first got here, and it was like having a guardian angel. She’d never had anyone like that before, although she’d longed for it.
But Dare—he would be either her savior or her destroyer. It was yet to be determined.
If she was in her house—she’d been careful never to think of it as home—she could prepare something for the fever. But there was no garden here, no supply of herbs that were as interchangeable as medicines to her and people like her.
She and Momma had grown up in Mississippi, which was why she hadn’t returned there. The community had run them out of town after discovering some of Esme’s scams, and Grace cursed the fact that Momma had run right into Rip instead of continuing on to New Orleans, like she’d originally planned.
Grace’s life would’ve been so different.
But her mother had always believed in what was meant to be. That there was no escaping her destiny, her fate.
Grace longed to escape, and she had, if only for years rather than a lifetime. She was not opposed to fighting for her freedom—she valued freedom over peace; she’d never been convinced it was possible to have both concurrently.
* * *
Grace was
mumbling something about peace and freedom, and Dare had no idea how this fever had come out of nowhere and spiked so goddamned high.
He found a thermometer; her temperature was close to 103 now. He grabbed Tylenol and brought it to her, would find something stronger as soon as he got her more comfortable.
She shivered under the heavy quilts, despite the lack of AC. The fans were only pushing humid air languidly. She looked like she couldn’t get warm enough, and he was tempted to take her to a hospital.
But he couldn’t shake that what had happened to Marnie wasn’t over, that the same people who’d hurt Marnie were now after Grace. With that in mind, he knew what he was going to do.
“I’m going to get you help,” he told her.
“No—no hospital.”
“I’m calling someone to come here,” he told her. She nodded; there was nothing else she could do.
The sun was just about to rise—and Dare didn’t like anyone coming here during daylight hours. Especially not now. And Gunner would be the only one he’d call. Gunner had been a medic, and he was better than a doctor any day and a hundred times more discreet.
He made a quick call to Avery and spoke with Gunner. Avery sounded so damned worried—probably because he sounded worried himself—and he made a mental note to apologize to her when she got here.
He wasn’t used to dealing with the kind of family who worried about him. Hell, he wasn’t used to dealing with anyone like that.
“Get that fever down, Dare,” Gunner told him.
“I don’t have much here.”
“Read me the labels,” Gunner instructed, and Dare went through the medicine chest, which Darius had always left well stocked. “Okay, give her two of that antibiotic—separate them by four hours. I’ll continue with an IV antibiotic that’s stronger when I get there tonight, even though I’m betting it won’t do shit. And get her into a cool bath or shower, or at the very least, wipe her down. And give her the narcotic to knock her out only as a last resort if she fights the bath or if she’s in pain.”
“I’ll do it,” he told Gunner, then shoved the phone
into his pocket and followed Gunner’s instructions.
He filled the old claw-footed tub with cool water and went back into the bedroom.
Grace was so hot, her skin was burning. He attempted to cool her down with a cool washcloth along her face and neck after forcing several Tylenol down her throat. She’d tried to push him away but calmed once he showed her the bottle.
But she was still so restless. Moaning a little in her sleep—and if she dreamed, they weren’t pleasant. Because of that, he’d do anything he could to make it better until Gunner and Avery got here. And then she began to curl into a ball and cry out as if she was in real pain.
He had to get her out of her clothes. She might hate him for it, but it was the best plan for now.
As if she knew what he planned, she turned away from him onto her stomach, buried her face in the pillow, and the T-shirt she’d put on after they’d come in from the rain rose up to reveal bare skin. Bare skin that was abraded with scars.
They were made purposely—someone had beaten Grace—a whip, belt, it didn’t matter. The marks had never healed, and he hissed in a breath when he first saw them. And then, as he ran a finger along them, he realized he was clenching his jaw so hard his head ached. He lifted the shirt higher so he could see how far up they went. And then he noted that the scars went down past the waistband of the sweats.
His throat dried. Carefully, he pushed the T-shirt up over her head and off her body. She’d stopped protesting—too weak maybe, or embarrassed, but he wasn’t about to stop his exploration.
Her back was like a road map of pure pain, made with some kind of leather switch. One of the straps had caught on the tender flesh of the back of her upper arm. When he pulled off the sweatpants, he noted that the scars ran down past her buttocks. This was torture. Nothing less than—meant to be a lesson.
He wondered if she’d learned it—told himself this kind of woman was too strong to bow down to anything.
He wouldn’t use her. He’d have to find another way.
“Did he do this to you? Powell?” he asked quietly, not expecting her to answer.
“Rip,” she reminded him softly. “He had one of his men do it.”
“Why?”
“I wouldn’t cooperate.”
“When you’re better, I’ll take you back to your house—your garden.”
She turned to him, her eyes hazy with fever, her cheeks flushed hot. “I can’t go back there. You’re not the only person coming for me.”
“I’ll keep you with me until I figure something out.”
“You won’t get an argument from me. But why am I naked?”
“Have to break this fever,” he murmured, and whether she heard him or not, he didn’t know, but she stopped fighting for the moment. He took that opportunity to pick her up and bring her into the bathroom. He lowered her into the tub, and she clung to him; the water must’ve felt like ice on her blazing skin. But gradually, she let go of him, more from exhaustion than anything, and he used a cloth to cover her forehead, gave her small sips of water to keep her hydrated.
He couldn’t help but glance down at her body, lush and perfect. Her nipples were the color of a blush, breasts round and high. The dark curls between her thighs made his cock harden.
He could still taste their kisses and wondered if he’d pushed her too far, taken advantage of her without realizing it. “Grace, about the kiss—”
“Wonderful,” she murmured. “If I wasn’t sick . . .”
“Yeah.”
She reached up out of the water to hold his hand. She seemed comfortable being naked in front of him, but maybe she was half-delirious. “This is better. Don’t feel as cold.”
She was actually starting to sweat a little, which was great. He took her temperature again. It had gone down significantly.
“I get fevers like this,” she told him. “Spike really high. Happened when I was a kid but I never outgrew it.”
“Will it come back again?”
She nodded. He gave her the water bottle and she took a big sip.
“Why don’t we get you back into bed? You can sleep, and by the time your fever spikes, my friend will be here with the good stuff to help you.”
She agreed. He helped her out of the tub and wrapped a towel around her. Held her steady while she dried off and got her into one of his T-shirts, which went down to midthigh. He lowered her into the bed, covered her with a sheet and watched her drift off to sleep.
He’d been up for nearly forty-eight hours straight. Good way to keep the ghosts at bay, but this was the best opportunity to rest he was going to get. He set the alarms and prepared to wait the day out.
He lay on the bed next to her, careful not to wake or crowd her. His Sig was on the table next to him, and he flicked through the channels on the TV restlessly.
The last time he was here, he’d been twenty-eight and on R&R from the SEALs for a month. He’d been wounded, and his shoulder still ached when he thought about it. Now the pain in his hands overrode pretty much any other pain he had. He flexed them as he watched the old black-and-white western and thought about how much his life had changed in the space of two months.
At some point, he slept—too soundly, because when he woke, Grace was tossing and turning next to him. Shivering again. Mumbling too.
“Hang on, baby, help is coming,” he told her.
The fever was spiking higher than before. She was resisting everything. He hated having to drug her but didn’t really see a choice. He injected her with the dosage of morphine that Gunnar told him to give, then put her back into the bath, despite the fact that she was shivering uncontrollably.
Shivering while simultaneously mumbling that she was fine. Jesus Christ, she could’ve gone through Hell Week in BUD/S with no problems.
Beyond her fever, she was grieving underneath it all, for her life here, for Marnie.
He was more tied to S8 than ever, through Avery and through Grace. There was no getting around it.