She sprinted the five steps to the other side of the tree and yanked at her slipknot.
Another report came from the gun and she saw the dirt go up in a puff where she’d been sitting. Grace didn’t think it was possible for her heart to pound any harder than it was, but it did. But she didn’t stop moving. As she yanked the knot free, the bag she’d tied up dropped suddenly into the space between her and the gunman.
The sight of something dropping down startled the men and Nate took advantage. Grace surprised even herself by managing to clear the several feet and catch the bag with an oof. As she cleared her lungs and looked up, she saw that the gunman had his arm around Nate’s neck.
Doing the only thing she could think to do, she swung the bag at him, grateful she had a shot at the back of his head.
The weight connected and dropped him like a stone, nearly dragging Nate down with him.
Chapter Thirty
Nate heard the thud and felt a sudden change in the arm around his neck. It tried to drag him down though he fought it. The pressure on his neck was going to leave a mark, but his first thought was Grace.
As time stretched out from the adrenaline in his system, he realized the first thing he had to do was keep her from getting shot. Too many stray bullets had already been fired. Moving like lightning, he managed to put his foot on the man’s wrist so that he controlled the gun as he removed it from the lax hand.
He was breathing heavily standing three steps away from the man with the gun aimed before he remembered this man had everything from the phones to car keys on him. Shit.
As fast as he could, he cleared the pockets, hoping to accomplish it before this asshat came around. When Nate had the man’s pockets cleared of his own pilfered stuff as well as a few things the man had brought with him, he finally looked up to Grace. “How are you doing?”
She just shook her head at him. No.
Nate looked her up and down for obvious problems, but she looked intact. She wasn’t speaking. There was no blood, she was upright, she was holding the cloth grocery bag they’d been keeping some of their things in. He seemed to recall it flying through the air.
Looking down at the man and seeing he was still out cold, he felt a little better. He wanted to go to Grace and kiss the living daylights out of her, but he couldn’t let this man escape. So he talked to her. “What did you hit him with?”
She shrugged. “Granola bars?”
That wouldn’t do this. Nate frowned and Grace seemed to shake herself a little.
“Oh, and the spare gun. I didn’t want to get caught with it, so I left you food and the gun tied up in the tree so bears wouldn’t get it.” She looked sheepish.
“You were running?”
She nodded and tears started forming in the corners of her eyes. He was surprised it hadn’t happened before now. Hell, he was surprised he wasn’t in tears right now.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered the words softly into the space between them.
He shook his head at her. “It was the right thing to do with the information you had.” But there wasn’t time for this conversation. Though she’d clocked him with the spare Sig Sauer, and those things would give a good bonk when used that way, their former captor might wake up at any time. “Can I have some of that rope?”
It took a moment for Grace to realize she was still trailing the line from the tie-up for the grocery bag and then to untangle it and hand it to him. As she passed it his way, their fingers brushed and Nate felt the sizzle in the space between them. He smiled at her and was pleasantly rewarded when she smiled back. He tied the man, cut the spare rope with his knife and was pleased that when the man came around he would find himself trussed up like a holiday turkey. He wasn’t even going to holler out to his friends; Nate had gagged him as well.
Only then did he reach for her. Without letting go of the gun, he grabbed Grace with his other arm and hauled her close. His mouth closed over hers and he felt the first river of relief run through him.
She was okay.
Grace’s arms wrapped around his neck and she clung to him. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have doubted—”
“Hey, baby. Shut up.” He grinned at her. “I talked to Brad. I know what evidence he gave you. You made the right decision. If I had been dirty, you could have been dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head as much as he could with her face buried in his neck. Nothing had ever felt better. “It’s okay. I make a good fall guy on this one. I closed your brother’s case with breakneck speed. I made myself an easy mark. I’m not surprised they took it.” Sliding his hand along the side of her face and loving the feel of her skin under his fingertips, he tilted her face up to him. “I’ve had Zaragosa send copies of my old print statements to Brad. Maybe he can help trace things back to where they originated. And it will prove I wasn’t taking money. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
She kissed him then. Hard. And Nate let himself get wrapped up in the need of her pushing closer to him, the searching of her tongue, and the way she clung to him. He wasn’t going to let her go. Lesson learned.
He stayed there until he heard noises from the man on the ground as he finally came around. They had to get out of here, quick.
“Grace, grab the car keys and back the car up to here, please. I’m going to shove him in the back seat and have you drive us out of here.”
She nodded and had the keys in her hand before she asked, “Are we leaving everything?”
Nate stopped for a moment. His hurry couldn’t be so great that he missed things. Leaning toward her, he whispered, “You still have your brother’s ashes?”
She nodded and patted her stomach. Smart. He smiled. “Then think through what we need to take.”
The car was backing up toward him before he could catalog everything. Popping open the back door, he forced his prisoner to wiggle himself into the backseat sideways. It was no easy task for either of them, but Nate wasn’t about to untie him. Without moving his eyes, he called out to Grace.
“We need all the guns and knives. Put them in the trunk or the front seat with us.”
“I’ve got the food, too. And your bag.” She must have pulled it from the trunk to leave it for him. Even when she’d been running from him she was at least kind about it.
“Trunk,” he told her and climbed into the passenger seat where he could turn around and hold the gun on their prisoner.
Grace closed the trunk and the doors and slid in beside him. She’d gone almost half a mile down the road before she said again, “I’m sorry.”
“Stop being sorry.” He grinned at her. She was smart, and she played fair. What wasn’t to like? Pulling out his phone, Nate called Zaragosa one more time. “Please tell me you are somewhere near me.”
“We’re leading SWAT into the National Forest—not their usual game, ha!—to find this place. Why?”
“I’ve got one of their players. No idea how big or small.” Nate glared into the backseat as the man glared back at him. It wasn’t very effective at inducing fear now that his hands and feet were all pulled up behind him.
Nate and Mari worked out the exchange and as Nate was hanging up, he saw the man make a decision. Somehow, he lifted up off the backseat and made a lunge toward Nate, but Nate was ready.
He didn’t want to shoot inside the car, not toward the backseat. He had no fucking clue where the gas tank was in this car. This guy was banking on that. If they broke the car, they were stuck in what Nate was learning was Slater X’s territory. But Nate peeled back his fingers and held the gun on one side. When the man got close enough, Nate slammed his hand down with whatever force he could.
Unlike when Grace had knocked him out, Nate’s gun was not softened by a cloth bag and granola bars. There was blood, and the man slumped forward off the seat and into the footwell. Aside from ruining a borrowed car, Nate didn’t care. He usually could find some sympathy for the people he dealt with. Even the worst gang members not always inhere
ntly bad people. They simply found themselves with few other options and those sucked worse. But any compassion Nate might have found for this man had fled like smoke wisps the moment he saw that gun to Grace’s head.
Now, he leaned over between the seats and watched the man ooze blood onto the carpet. Too bad, so sad. But he couldn’t face forward. That would be a mistake. They bounced down the gravel roads with him stuck in the awkward position, but it was necessary. They stopped a ways from the main road, letting Zaragosa and Masuka, the only two he really trusted, come up to meet them.
When Mari slid out of the driver’s side door, Nate popped out and hugged her. “I have never been so grateful to see someone in my life!” It wasn’t their usual partnership M.O. so he was happy to be hugged in return.
“Jesus, I was afraid something had happened to you.” Mari squeezed him once before letting him go.
Masuka reached out and shook his hand. “Glad to see you’re still in one piece.”
Grace had slid out at the same time he did, or Nate wouldn’t have gotten out at all. He wouldn’t have left her in the car with the man they’d captured. Now he turned and led Zaragosa and Masuka over to the car, where the three of them wrestled the limp body out of the back seat.
Nate looked at him on the ground as the three of them made a motion to get him into the unmarked car his friends were driving.
“Well,” Nate said as he nudged the man and got no response. “If he didn’t have a concussion from Grace cracking him with the Sig Sauer, he’s got one now.”
Zaragosa and Masuka smiled at each other, then at Grace. “You clocked him?”
“She saved me.” Nate spoke up before she could deflect it. “I was doing fine but he got around me and got me in a half-decent choke hold. Grace managed to drop a gun from the sky and beaned him with it.”
She was half smiling now. A much better response. He smiled at her. For a woman who studied violence but didn’t commit it, she’d sure had his back when it counted.
They traded information, and Masuka and Zaragosa both handed him more cash, for which Nate was grateful. “We still have a meeting with Kevin this afternoon. I don’t think this is over yet.”
* * *
Grace sat at a table inside a nearly empty shop that served po-boys and red beans and rice. The tables and curved seats were formed plastic, not a cushion or a tablecloth in sight. Her food came in a basket and her drink cup was large enough to bathe in. No one needed that much soda, but it was a welcome refresher after sleeping in the woods and drinking lukewarm bottled water.
She’d wanted to hug Kevin when he arrived, but that would have drawn attention. As it was, Nate was still surreptitiously checking the small restaurant and parking lot to be sure no one had trailed Kevin here.
“It took me a bit to figure out the ‘G.L.’ and why there was a cheap phone sliding out from under my seat.” Kevin hadn’t taken too long though.
Nate had set him up with a car to trade out. It looked like Kevin had pulled off Nate’s carefully detailed instructions. Using the mail-delivered key, he’d worn a different jacket and hat, exited his work building by a different door and gotten into the car they’d asked Masuka to leave for him.
They were all relatively certain that someone was trailing Kevin. Whether it was just to get to Grace and Nate or because they wanted to know what Kevin knew, no one could yet say.
It had been risky getting him out here. Given that at least two officers in the DFPD were compromised, putting him into security there would have been a bigger mistake than letting him roam free. After their po-boys, Nate called in some officers from Denver to cover Kevin. He didn’t like taking Kevin out of town or needing the Denver PD, but the operation was suddenly much bigger than they’d originally thought.
Grace knew more than she wanted to, and they’d decided not to tell Kevin much, so as not to make him more of a target than he already was.
As casually as he could, Kevin put a present on the table. It was a blue bag, packed with some tissue paper and tied with a small ribbon. “Happy Birthday almost-sister-in-law.”
“GPS?” She asked him, as they’d agreed he’d get Jimmy’s out of his car and bring it to them.
“I thought this was less conspicuous or memorable than just handing you a GPS across the table.”
“Smart.” Nate told him. Then they dove into Jimmy’s emails.
Brad had gotten into Grace’s old phone without her having to turn it back on. She and Nate had already been through the texts Jimmy had sent her, but they wanted Kevin to help them attempt to stitch it all together.
“There’s also a notebook that I found last night.” Kevin took another bite of his meal as all of them were trying to look casual when this was anything but. “I tore the place up. He said he was onto something. This is what I found. It looks relevant, but I don’t know the players. I’m hoping you can make better use of it than I.”
“That’s wonderful. Thank you.” Nate seemed almost as moved by the meeting as Grace felt. Though they’d spoken briefly on the phone several times when Jimmy was alive, and once after, there hadn’t been time to bond like Grace had wanted. This man should have been her brother-in-law. Her heart ached that this was how she was meeting up with him.
It made Grace think of Jimmy bringing Kevin home for Christmas, something that hadn’t yet happened and never would now. She decided right then that she would make the effort to stay in touch with this man who’d loved Jimmy and made him happy in these past few years. But she was getting maudlin and she didn’t notice until Kevin leaned over the table toward her.
“I got a call this morning before I left the house.” He looked both ways as though someone might have sneaked up and to listen in at the Cajun joint at three in the afternoon. When he didn’t seem to see anything that concerned him, he continued. “It was someone in the department. They said someone had stolen Jimmy’s ashes.” He quit acting secretive and started sounding angry. “They wanted to know if I knew anything about it. As if I’d break in and steal them. I think I could have just gone and picked them up.”
Grace didn’t correct him. Then again, the way things were running around here—with Slater X’s men having their hands in everything—he probably could have just picked up the ashes. He and Jimmy hadn’t officially married. That should have made Grace next of kin, but nothing had worked that way with Jimmy’s case so far.
Kevin continued, a little louder now. “It’s a final insult. I don’t get anything of him to keep. I’ve been consoling myself that you might give me some of his ashes to scatter here, though I can live with it if you don’t.” He held up a hand to stop her speaking. “But the fact that he’ll never be laid to rest now is killing me.”
“You can have half the ashes,” Grace blurted out. She should have asked Nate first if she could reveal that she had them, but it was a little late now. Luckily, Nate was nodding at her as if to say, go ahead. “Apparently someone did steal them, but they stole them after Nate and I did.”
“I don’t understand.” Kevin wasn’t even pretending to eat now. None of them were.
It was Nate who cracked up. “We traded them out. Grace said chocolate cake mix is the best substitute. And it looks like it worked as there’s no word on the street that the thief has been had.”
“Cake mix? Jimmy’s ashes are cake mix?” Kevin looked terrified and Grace shook her head at him.
“No, I have the real ones. On me in fact.” She told him how they went to get them drug tested and were waiting on the results. “You can have half of them.”
She turned to Nate. “Shouldn’t we do that now? I was petrified of losing the last thing I have of Jimmy, the last piece of testable evidence, too. Wouldn’t it be safer if it’s in more than one location? It would make it harder for them to destroy the evidence.”
Nate was nodding at her before she even finished.
Despite the fact that she’d tried to flee from Nate, fought off a gunman, and had a secret meeting with he
r almost-brother-in-law, Grace’s appetite had fled. They’d all pushed their food baskets away and Nate said the Denver PD was incoming to get Kevin.
There was no easy way to do it, but Grace got another plastic bag out of the box they’d bought and transferred half of Jimmy’s ashes to Kevin. It seemed disrespectful of the dead to be carrying what was left of her brother that way, but it would be more disrespectful to let him fall into the wrong hands.
Kevin took his bag and stared at his half. “What about your parents?”
“They won’t even notice. Very few people know how much material is supposed to be there after a cremation.” She shook her as if to tell him not to worry. “However, I’m going to tell them that I gave some of his ashes to you. They’ll be glad that I did.”
As the Denver PD pulled up, Nate stepped aside and went through the procedure of calling in their badge numbers and even making the desk clerk give him physical descriptions of each officer. Then he asked each one what their sign was before confirming that with dispatch. He wasn’t letting anyone get to Kevin and, though the whole exercise felt surreal, it warmed Grace’s heart.
Now that they were safe and it didn’t matter as much if anyone thought they were weird, Grace reached out and hugged Kevin. “I hope I’ll see you again soon.”
When Kevin had gone with the officers to a safehouse, Nate offered up a sigh and a sad look. “We need to hit the PO box before we get out of Dark Falls again. And we need to do it before it gets too dark.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Nate felt his heart in his throat. Once again he’d left Grace alone. The last time he’d done that, she’d tried to run. And she’d ended up with a gun to her head.
Clearly, he was completely traumatized by that because just letting her drive around the block while he ducked into the post office box bay was making it hard to breathe. She was in motion, for God’s sake. He consoled himself with the statistical unlikelihood of two hideous things going wrong in one day. But it was too soon for him to walk away from her.
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