Finding Grace (2 page)

He put his phone back in his jacket pocket and
looked at Dagger. “Love is a goddamn disease.”

“Good thing I’m too ugly to catch it, then.”
Dagger’s lips curled briefly. “Look, Paul, let me handle whatever
this is—or isn’t. You handle the business, as usual. If it turns
out to be nothing, you can smooth over my absence. We have a better
chance of landing the account this way, in any case. Did you see
how he looked at me?”

Paul just shrugged. “I’m more concerned about how
he’s looking at my wife right now. Text me with any news.” Paul
strode purposefully back into the crowd.

* * * *

Dagger communicated with silent motions to his
watchers and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Just some
guy who’d slipped out for a smoke, right? The green van had
tightened its circle from around the block to around the parking
lot. He was glad they’d waited to do that until after his men were
in position. He didn’t just want to prevent a crime, he wanted to
bust the assholes trying to pull it.

A young woman wearing a gown that probably cost as
much as one of Blackridge’s Escalades stepped out the door and
almost turned around when she saw him. He butted out his cigarette
and said, “You’d think it was illegal, the way we have to sneak
around,” as reassuringly as possible before going back inside.

Torn between protecting the girl and hoping she was
the bait they needed, he put in his earpiece and waited. They were
good men and Dagger trusted them.

He didn’t have to wait long. There was a muffled
squawk over the comm link he’d stuck over the door outside. He
slammed through it just in time to snatch the girl and shove her
behind him. He faced two guns. The men holding them looked confused
by his broad and genuine smile until they were on their knees with
matching broken wrists, Farley behind them, a twisted arm in each
hand. He was smiling too.

“Geez, Dagger, why do you always have to take the
fun out of everything? Now how I am supposed to impress this
gorgeous woman with my manliness?” He flashed a bigger smile at the
girl.

Two squads pulled up just then, lights flashing,
sirens off. Lieutenant Rigby got out and gave Dagger a humorless
half smile. Dagger turned and nodded to his men. They slipped back
into the night, all except that smooth bastard Farley who was
already holding the girl’s hand and whispering sweet nothings in
her ear. Dagger slipped back into the ballroom. He shrugged. Better
to leave the princess to a man who could comfort her and make her
feel safe. Hell, she’d looked at him like he was more of a monster
than the creeps who’d tried to snatch her.

* * * *

Standing in the ballroom a few minutes later, Dagger
reflected on how fast it had all happened. It was always like that,
a few slow-motion moments that stretched out in memory but were
over in a blink. Like little waves passing briefly over a pond
while the rock that made them was already sitting at the
bottom.

The general population, schmoozing, drinking and
dancing, never even felt a ripple. Lieutenant Rigby looked like a
cop boss—big, balding, aged before his time and carrying a few too
many pounds—but even though he wasn’t wearing a tux, he wasn’t in
uniform either. No one in the crowd took notice of him when he
walked through the ballroom.

Paul shook the lieutenant’s hand and introduced him
to the CEO. He had obviously seen Dagger’s text and intended to
make the most of it. He’d succeed, too. That was one of the reasons
he handled the clients and Dagger was more than happy to let
him.

Another was driven home for the second—make that
hundredth—time that evening when, even as he told the story and
gave Dagger high praise, the lieutenant managed to avoid really
looking at him, while the CEO just kept trying not to stare.

The lieutenant smiled warmly at Katherine and asked
her to go chat with the Tierney princess, who, Dagger wasn’t at all
surprised to discover, was part of Katherine’s social circle. Then
he went on to explain that, from the evidence his men had found in
the green van, it was obvious they’d planned to kill her once they
had the ransom.

There weren’t even any masks or ropes. Just a small
digital recorder. They’d already admitted they were “just” going to
record her voice begging for her life. But it would have been
enough to get them whatever it was they wanted. Old man Tierney’s
love for his granddaughter was damn near legendary. She probably
wouldn’t have made it out of the parking lot alive.

Dagger considered what greedy sons of bitches they
were; there had been only two of them. Any idiot knew that an
extraction—er, kidnapping—took more than two people.

What he couldn’t figure out—Paul and the lieutenant,
either—was what the purple-haired kid had to do with it.

But, what the hell. The CEO had been so impressed
that he’d hired them on the spot and introduced Paul to some of his
friends and business associates attending the ball. Tierney wanted
them on the payroll, too.

Blackridge was going to get more than one account
out of this. So why did Dagger feel the prick of guilt at being
hailed a hero?

* * * *

Thorne sat in the gloom of the bus, lost in a maze
of thoughts and feelings she didn’t have a schematic for. The
vision she’d experienced, even though it was just a glimpse this
time, wasn’t the problem. Sometimes she just knew things, dark
things. It had been that way ever since—

Stop. Not going there. The nightmares would take her
to that black pit of hell before the sun came up, anyway; they had
every night for the last five years.

She’d seen the green van right there in the
ballroom. That terrible choking, sinking feeling, as if she were
being sucked under, had followed in its wake. Of course, she had to
have been holding an entire tray of champagne glasses at the time.
Fucking Murphy and his damn law. But that wasn’t the source of
confusion, or even the reason she’d taken the risk.

No, that would be the man who’d been standing in the
coatroom, and the undeniable fact that she’d instantly been aware
of him as a man. She still felt the vestiges of that awareness in
places it shouldn’t be, had no business being, had never been.

Thorne had learned early that boys didn’t like smart
girls, and she’d been smart enough to understand there was no point
in wasting focus and energy on unrequited attraction. Of course, it
hadn’t been an issue at all since—

Stop. Not going there. Again. It was just another
road back to hell.

The bus lurched. Thorne saw him again in her mind’s
eye. God, he was big. Big enough to carry all of those ghosts. Men
he’d slain. So many.

But the dark eyes looking out of his rough-hewn face
didn’t belong to a killer. They held honor and horror; they
belonged to a warrior who’d done his duty and believed he’d lost
his soul doing it. The nose below those suffering eyes had been
broken more than once, long ago. No doubt before he was fully grown
and had gotten all those muscles his rented tux hadn’t been able to
accommodate. With his shaved head, the short beard and mustache did
nothing to soften his appearance. She knew the snake’s head tat on
the big paw she’d seen emerging from his sleeve was one of many she
hadn’t seen. No, the only thing soft about the man had been his
barely-detectable southern accent, spoken with a deep voice that
had vibrated in such an oddly pleasant way inside her.

These things she knew. But they didn’t tell her why
she’d trusted him, or why she felt like her life had changed just
as irrevocably as it had that night on her birthday five years
ago.

With a final lurch and a tortured groan, the bus
came to a stop and Thorne stepped off. She looked warily around
her. Low rent neighborhoods had their advantages. There was, well,
the low rent—and the anonymity too. They were worth the
disadvantages one had to keep an eye out for.

Thorne wondered if she’d get any real work done
tonight.

Chapter Two

None of it added up. Maybe they had the wrong guy.
If he was a guy. Griggs had assured Luke that the little
purple-haired terror cussing a blue streak in his observation room
had been male, and Griggs was building a shiner to back that up.
Luke couldn’t help but wonder how his officer had let someone that
small, man or not, get the jump on him like that.

It had taken a while to track Thorne’s apartment
down, once they had a name. After some pressure, the catering boss
had admitted to paying cash for short-term help. That was the first
dead end. But it turned out that one of the waiters was an illegal.
It hadn’t taken too much to get him to admit that he’d dropped
Thorne at a Laundromat after giving him a ride home from a couple
of jobs.

There were a few apartments above the place, but no
“Thorne” on any of the mailboxes or in the DMV database meant
they’d had to find the landlord. The only thing that guy had been
able to tell them was that a person named Thorne rented apartment
number three on the end, always paid on time, always in cash and,
in the almost-five years he’d lived there, had never been any
trouble. One didn’t ask questions of a tenant like that in a
neighborhood like this, the man had said.

Luke supposed he couldn’t blame him for that. At
least they knew where Thorne lived. He’d sent Griggs and his
partner to pick him up for questioning. It only took a glance at
Griggs to see things hadn’t gone smoothly.

The damn kid had to be linked to the attempted
kidnapping in some way or all of this was for nothing. Luke wanted
answers. Why rat them out? Nothing he came up with made any
sense.

He was glad to hear Paul Weston’s voice in the hall.
If anyone could help him get to the bottom of things, it was Paul.
Unfortunately, though, he’d had to bring Jack Daggery with him in
order to positively ID Thorne as the source. That man made him
nervous as hell. Sure, he’d served with Paul in the Corps just like
Luke had, but Dagger’d also worked undercover for the ATF and the
NSA. That alone would’ve made Luke wary of him; it wasn’t just the
years Dagger had spent getting in good with some of the worst
criminals on earth and then turning on them, or even that he looked
like he’d be more at home in a prison yard or a biker bar than he
had in that ballroom last night—even in the tux. It was what his
instincts told him about Jack Daggery. Luke had seen bigger men,
even uglier men, but he’d never been around anyone who
felt
as dangerous as the man whose voice he heard outside the door.

Luke shelved his reservations and ushered the men
into the observation room. “Glad you two could make it. Thanks for
coming down. I’d like you to help me question him.” Turning to
Dagger, he said, “That the fella who gave you the tip? Goes by the
name of Thorne.”

“Fella, huh? You sure, Lieutenant?”

“That’s what my officers assure me. I’d hate to
think a girl gave my man that shiner he’s gonna be sporting full by
tomorrow.”

“Well, that’s who gave me the tip, anyway.” Dagger
nodded. “Doesn’t look too happy to be here.”

The three of them listened to the prisoner invoking
curses that would have made a cowboy blush. The kid was sweating
and fighting the cuffs so hard Luke could see blood on his wrists.
The chair finally toppled with its occupant. The new position
appeared to kick Thorne’s agitation up another notch.

“Find anything at his place?” Paul asked, a frown on
his face as he watched.

“Just this laptop and a few hundred dollars in cash.
No ID or credit cards, nothing. Who the hell lives like that these
days? Doesn’t even have a cell phone. But look at this laptop. I’ve
never even seen one this nice before. You can’t tell me he paid for
this with cash from catering jobs. I don’t care if it was the only
thing of value in that rat trap.”

“Well, I suppose we’d better get in there before he
really hurts himself.” Luke allowed himself an exasperated sigh
while he wondered what had his prisoner so worked up.

When they entered the room, he pulled out the
handcuff key. Besides the lacerated wrists, there were sure to be
some fresh bruises from the fall. Time to play good cop.

“Well, Thorne, if you can behave yourself I’ll
remove these. Think you can do that?”

“Better than that fucking wimp bastard Griggs.”

Luke didn’t like anything about that comment or the
doubts that were forming in his mind about what his officer might
have done. But he said, “Griggs took one for the team as far as I’m
concerned. You were just wanted for questioning, but now you’re
charged with assaulting an officer and I can keep you. You’re
entitled to a lawyer. Want one?”

“I know my rights—”

Shit, Luke hated those words. A lawyer would only
make it harder to get to the truth.

“—
and I know the criminal justice system. A
lawyer? Don’t make me fucking laugh. Please, just take the cuffs
off.”

Something about the tone of that “please” made Luke
feel guilty. Well, the kid had hurt himself; he had no one else to
blame for those cuts.

“That’s a start.” Luke unlocked the cuffs, slipped
them into an evidence bag, and pulled Thorne off the floor. Yup,
pretty damn solid. He was surprised when it was Dagger who stepped
up and righted the chair. “Have a seat, son. Care to tell me the
rest of your name?”

“Thank you.” Thorne perched on the edge of the chair
and pulled the sweater sleeves down to his fingertips instead of
answering.

Luke sighed. “How come you don’t have a driver’s
license? An ID at least. It’s illegal, you know.”

“So write me a ticket.” He shrugged. “I don’t drive.
Too easily distracted, or so I’ve been told. It would be better if
your boys had let me bring my knitting.”

Luke saw Paul and Dagger’s eyebrows raise.

“More practical applications than basket weaving.
More portable, too.” The kid looked perfectly serious.