by April Hunt
“So tell Knox that you can’t do it. He’ll understand.”
“That’s just it. I can do it. I just don’t want to have to, and I know that makes me the worst kind of person.”
“Grace Ann Steele,” Zoey said sternly. “You are not a bad person. You took a horrible experience and used it as motivation to do something good. You’ve saved people. You’ve brought closure to loved ones who without you, probably never would’ve gotten it. You—”
“Down, girl.” Grace bumped her shoulder gently. “I’m not the First Evil. I get it.”
“You’re using Buffy references on me now? Did we swap lives?”
“No, because you’re with Knox and that would just be ew.” She shrugged, smirking. “I just figured it would get me extra bonus points.”
And the change of subject she desperately needed.
A half dozen of her old professors condemned the act, not to mention every therapist she’d seen since the age of thirteen. But words could be weaponized.
Rossbach’s teachings spurred his followers into action. Rebecca Steele verbally denouncing Grace as a daughter killed a young girl’s dream of motherly affection. And sharing bits of her past with Cade all those years ago resulted in the crushing blow of watching him walk away.
Grace needed to get her cousins into the OND, and then she needed to get the hell out of Dodge before her life imploded in front of her eyes.
* * *
There were a lot of things Cade didn’t look forward to. Dentist visits. The time when he needed to go to the gastroenterologist and get a camera shoved up his ass. Now, he could tack on summoning the vice president of the United States to the list, especially since this one involved a Grace-grilling.
And it would be a grilling.
She’d stormed into Steele Ops bright and early that morning, a color-coded timeline clenched in her slender but capable hands. Thanks to the ridiculous hour and his bad idea to sleep in the barracks, he’d been the only one subjected to her tirade—twice, the first time without coffee.
After two cups of stark black down his hatch, he’d finally connected the dots. But not without a lot of hand-holding on Grace’s part and a sarcastic offer of an illustrated storyboard to help him keep up.
Cade now nursed his third cup of coffee and waited in the deserted restaurant section of Iron Bars. After fifteen minutes of peace and quiet, the distinct clack of Grace’s footsteps turned the corner.
She only wore sneakers under duress or if placed in situations where there was chance her footwear wouldn’t come out intact. For example, his boot camp graduation.
According to Liam, she’d complained for days leading up to the ceremony, obsessively watching the weather forecast, and privately cursing his commanding officer for not moving the graduation indoors. Cade had loved every second of that ceremony, and it had little to do with the start of his military career and everything to do with the hot—although soaked to the bone—brunette in the slinky red dress…and his old shit-kicker boots.
“Why are you here?” File folder tucked against her chest, Grace glided over to the table.
“I work here. Cutting it a little close to the meeting time, aren’t you? Or do you really have no clue what it means to summon the vice president and then keep him waiting?”
Grace muttered under her breath and took a seat, her unusual acquiescence making him grin. Any time she didn’t tell him to go to hell put him one step closer to getting that second chance with her. Considering where they’d started off a few days ago, he’d take every inch she gave him.
When he signed that four-year extension with his Ranger Regiment, he’d hurt her. Hell, he’d hurt himself, because despite loving that he got to protect his country and the men he served with, he’d loved Grace more. That was the real reason he’d re-upped for another tour. He’d just never found a way to tell her that didn’t make him sound like a pathetic ass.
Grace sat and drummed her fingers against the table. “You know, if Brandt hadn’t wanted to be summoned again so soon, then maybe he shouldn’t have doctored the intelligence reports he handed over.”
Cade scrubbed his hand over his face. Three cups of coffee wasn’t enough for this. “Are you absolutely sure it wasn’t an oversight? I mean, I get where you’re coming from. I do. But it could’ve been overlooked, right? Or have a simple explanation? Hell, when I first glanced through it, it looked like everything was in order.”
“Because you’re not a profiler. You’re a…you.”
He chuckled. “Somehow I don’t think that was meant as a compliment.”
“Then you thought right. Why are you here, Cade? And I don’t mean in the building. I mean here…in this room…with minutes to spare before I meet with Brandt.”
She studied him from across the table before sucking in a sharp breath. “You’re here to babysit me, aren’t you? Which cousin made the directive? Was it Knox? I’ll kill him—although it might hurt my friendship with Zoey. Oh, well. I’ll help her get over him by introducing her to a few hot FBI agents. I definitely know enough of them.”
An unfamiliar emotion twisted Cade’s insides. Jealousy?
It wasn’t as if he’d deluded himself into thinking that he’d been Grace’s one-and-only. After their split, he’d done his own sulking in the cleavages of various blondes and redheads—never a brunette, because he couldn’t tolerate the memories of the one he really wanted.
But sitting across from Grace and hearing her talk about the men she knew chafed him raw. She hadn’t even said she’d slept with them, or dated them, and it shouldn’t matter to him if she had.
But it did. Way too damn much. “Knox suggested it, but he didn’t call it babysitting.”
“What did he call it?”
“Lion taming.” Cade smirked.
Grace pinched her lips closed before breaking out into a belly laugh. “I hated it when they called me Gracie the Lion.”
“That’s why they did it—along with your tendency to bite heads off first and then ask for an explanation.”
She shrugged, still grinning. “I didn’t need to ask for an explanation because nine times out of ten they were guilty as hell. Remember the time Liam raided my closet for that stupid varsity football hazing and ruined my favorite sweater? You guys thought I was nuts for thinking he’d taken it—but I was right.”
Cade chuckled, remembering that afternoon with perfect clarity. “Couldn’t exactly picture Liam wearing powder blue angora, but you proved us wrong when you got your hands on those pictures.”
They exchanged knowing smiles. For a quick moment, it was like old times. Except nine years ago, he would’ve reached across the table, kissed the hell out of her, and watched that sweet smile turn to a heated look of lust.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth and back as if thinking the same thing.
“Are we interrupting anything?” A deep voice disrupted the moment.
“Yes,” Cade answered.
“No,” Grace replied in unison. She threw Cade a warning look and got to her feet. “Hello, Agent Corelli.”
Corelli nodded for his agents to spread out and check the grounds. “Twice in three days, Special Agent Steele. Is this going to become a habit?”
“You wish,” Cade muttered under his breath.
Grace flashed the vice president’s protective detail a thousand-watt smile. “No offense, but I hope not. Am I going to get to keep Magdalena this time around?”
Corelli chuckled. “Yeah, we’re good this time.”
An agent nodded to the VP’s detail head. “All clear, sir.”
“Send in Papa Bear.”
“Papa Bear?” Grace chuckled.
“The vice president loved reading the Berenstain Bears to his daughter when she was little.”
Pierce Brandt walked into the room. “Corelli, outside the door, please. Everyone else stays farther out.”
“Will do, sir.” Corelli flashed Grace a wink before walking out.
“Special Agent St
eele and Mr. Wright. I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting to see the two of you this soon.”
Grace grimaced. “Sorry, sir. I would’ve come to you but—”
“Not possible.” He nodded toward the table where Cade stood. “I’m gathering you have some additional questions?”
“First, let me begin by apologizing,” Grace pre-empted as they all sat.
“For what? What did you do?”
“It’s not what I did but what I’m about to do. I know your daughter means a lot to you, sir. Your first instinct is always going to be to protect her. But in this instance, that protective streak is doing more harm than good.”
Fuck. Right out of the damn gate.
“Grace,” Cade warned.
She ignored him. “The files on Sarah and her boyfriend are extremely lacking. There are gaps. One I probably could’ve overlooked. Maybe even two, because things happen. But this many? These aren’t accidents. They’re deliberate.”
“I’m not certain I know what you mean.” Brandt’s suddenly cool tone indicated he knew exactly what Grace meant.
She had him.
She’d been right.
She opened the file in front of her and slid a set of printed images toward the VP. “Ten months ago, Sarah posted on social media an average of four times a day. Art. Fashion. Food. Books.”
“That sounds about right. She was very passionate about all of it.”
Grace replaced the older examples with new pictures. “And then eight months ago, after meeting Simon Reynolds, her posts changed. It makes sense. New love has a way of dominating the life of a young woman. These posts focused more on travel. Date nights. Philosophical quotes and existential questions looking for life meaning.”
Cade couldn’t tear his gaze away from Grace as she worked her magic. She knew her shit, and she didn’t pull any punches. It made him awfully glad she was on the good side.
Brandt shifted in his seat, a faint dew forming on his forehead. “I’m the one that gave you all those posts from her social media, Special Agent Steele. You’re not telling me anything that I haven’t already looked at.”
“You’re right. Which means you know that seven months ago, all her accounts go dormant. There’s nothing. Not a post, retweet, share, or like.”
“Reynolds monopolized all her time…and not to mention brain-wiped her into joining the OND. I doubt they’d let her continue on with her life as she once did.”
“Oh, you’re right. They totally cut you off from everyone and everything that you care about. There’s no question about that, sir. But you told me that Sarah disappeared with Reynolds six months ago.” Grace tapped on the timeline spread out in front of them. “That meant she’d gone dark an entire month before she left for the Order compound—and for someone who’s a religious poster, that’s highly unlikely.”
She didn’t say any more. Hell, she didn’t have to. Pierce Brandt had been on two campaign trails as vice president alone, been grilled at debates, questioned by hungry journalists. Through it all, the man didn’t once squirm.
He squirmed now.
He cleared his throat and casually loosened his tie. “What exactly are you accusing me of, Special Agent Steele?”
“Caring about your daughter, sir…and deleting posts that you know wouldn’t have painted her in the best patriotic light.” Grace handed him the last meme quote. “Divided We Stand, United We Fall.”
Pierce’s face lost what little color it had left. “How did you get that?”
“You can delete Sarah’s accounts, sir, but nothing’s lost forever. When the vice president’s daughter posts government distrust quotes and retweets resistance videos, people take notice. They talk. They screen-shot. They blog.”
“Reynolds is the one who filled her head with that nonsense. The longer she stayed mixed up with him, the more the daughter I knew melted away. Before she left, my wife and I barely recognized her anymore.”
“She wasn’t happy with the things happening around her.”
“She wasn’t happy about anything…except him, but I blame myself for not seeing it sooner. I thought it was a phase that she’d get over, and by the time I realized it wasn’t, it was too late.” Tears formed in the older man’s eyes as he relived the past few months. “The way she looked at me before she left? With pure, unfiltered hatred? It still keeps me awake at night. It’s why…”
“It’s why what, sir?”
“I hired someone to follow her prior to her disappearance.” Brandt’s gaze flickered to the closed door and back. “Her mood shifts. Her rants. I needed to be able to stop her before she did something she couldn’t take back.”
Cade’s internal alarm system fired up. “You believed your daughter might hurt someone?”
“Not directly. But you hear about eco-demonstrators all around the world, ready to prove their points to anyone who’ll listen. Even if they don’t intend on people getting caught in the crosshairs, it almost always happens. I didn’t want Sarah to get mixed up in something like that.”
“What happened to the PI following her?”
“He lost her…which is why I’m here.”
Grace slipped out of her badass FBI profiler persona and put her hand over Brandt’s. The vulnerability in her eyes as she looked at the vice president took Cade’s breath away, because she didn’t let it out easily.
Or often.
“None of this is your fault, sir, and Sarah may be very misguided, but it’s not directly her fault either,” Grace assured the country’s second-in-command. “There’s nothing that either of you could’ve done differently. Once New Dawn gets into a person’s head, it’s nearly impossible to get them out. Trust me, I know. It’s been seventeen years since I left, and sometimes I still catch myself falling back on old habits.”
Brandt cleared his throat, fighting back more emotion. “Thank you, Special Agent Steele. For saying that. And I’m sorry about the deleted posts. I gather that they’ll help you get closer to my daughter?”
“They will. Immensely.”
“Then I’ll get them to you by the end of the day.” A lot more somber than he’d been when he arrived, Vice President Brandt stood and shook their hands before taking his entourage out of Iron Bars.
Grace collected her intel on Sarah Brandt and kept her back toward Cade. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that it wasn’t intentional.
He spotted the tremble in her hand. “Grace—”
“This changes things.” She spun toward him, her jaw angled in determination.
“What does?”
“Sarah Brandt went into New Dawn angry at the world. There’s no way they’re not going to use that anger and her position as the vice president’s daughter to their advantage. This entire situation is sitting on a land mine.”
“That’s why we brought you on board. We just needed a little bit of your magic to get us on the inside.”
“We need more than magic, Cade. And more than my thirteen-year-old self’s memory.”
“If you have any other ideas, we’ll take them, because we’re a little short on supply ourselves.”
Grace swallowed audibly. “I have one, but it’s not going to be well received.”
“By who? Your cousins?”
She nodded. “Yeah, them too. But I was mostly thinking of the man we need to talk to. As far as I know, Rhett Winston’s the only person who hates New Dawn as much as I do.”
That name sounded way too familiar for Cade not to know who the hell she was talking about.
And then it hit him.
All the times he’d held her through a nightmare. All the times he’d kissed away the tears and soothed her through the quiet sobs afterward. And all the times he cursed the faceless bastard haunting Grace even when she slept.
The name she’d woken up screaming would always echo inside his head.
Rhett.
Chapter
Four
Although not eager to traipse around a booby-trapped mountain in t
he middle of the night, Grace couldn’t wait to get out of Cade’s truck. He’d gone from sweetly supportive to quietly livid in a snap of fingers…and Rhett’s name.
She’d known the news wouldn’t go over well, but it didn’t change the fact that to get to Sarah Brandt before it was too late, she had to do what she promised Rhett she’d never do.
Find him.
Technically, she knew where he was. Nondescript postcards, written in a Caesar shift cipher, came in the mail twice a year. Always short, sweet, and to the point, they let her know that he remained far off the grid and that their agreement still held.
She’d broken that agreement five years ago, afraid for the older man when he’d missed a check-in, and she’d been glad she had. He’d been sick and nearly comatose, septic from a scratch, of all things. She hadn’t helped him escape seventeen years ago so he could die alone on a damn mountain.
Rhett, as someone who’d once been in Teague Rossbach’s inner circle, could shed some clarity on Grace’s fuzzy teenage memories. Talking with him could mean the difference between bringing Sarah Brandt home or losing her for good, and the vice president didn’t seem the type to accept the latter scenario.
Grace glanced down at the handheld GPS. “We’re almost to the point where we need to park and hike. There should be a turnoff about a half mile up the road, but it’s not going to be obvious.”
“Of course it isn’t. Just makes it fit in with all the other surprises piling up today,” Cade muttered.
Grace sighed. “You can stop huffing about this any time.”
Cade shot her a glare. “I’m not huffing. I’m pissed. How many times did I hear you scream this guy’s name and get told after the fact that—”
“Rhett’s story isn’t mine to tell…and it’s still not.”
“Except it obviously involves you in some way.”
“Still doesn’t mean that you need to know.” Grace folded her arms and stared out the side window as they bounced down an unused service road.
Through the years, she’d told Cade snippets of her life in New Dawn. The structure. The expectations. The ridiculous idea that in order to get to your happy place—or New Dawn—you needed to deal with your personal Obstacles.