The sharp sting of guilt pierced her chest. “I’m so sorry.”
Delilah shook her head. “It’s not your fault.”
It was.
Delilah held out her hands for the flowers. “They’re beautiful,” she said. “And my favorite.”
Gracie’s too. She handed her the vase of lilies.
Delilah sniffed them. Sliding over the hospital phone and a Styrofoam cup of water, she placed them on her nightstand. Delilah’s eyes creased with concern. “Don’t look so… You didn’t do this.”
That wasn’t true. She had known that someone was trying to kill her. She should’ve shut down the club. She should’ve gone home, hidden behind the gates, told Momma the truth sooner, and organized sooner.
“I’m responsible. I’ve come here to tell you that. I’m taking care of all of your hospital bills, and I’m working with your attorneys to get you the money you need to”—she bit back the word she’d almost used; recover wasn’t an option—“rehabilitate.”
Delilah closed her eyes. “I know.”
It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“You can tell me about him.”
“About who?”
“Your man. At the bar. He’s so hot.”
Dusty? She wanted to hear about Dusty?
She opened her eyes and read Gracie’s hesitation correctly. “I’m sorry, that must seem weird.”
Gracie shrugged. “Kind of.”
Delilah flopped exasperated hands down by her sides. “I’m just so tired of conversations about pain and fear. About lawyers. About interviews for television news and calls for justice. My leg hurts. My back hurts. And I’m bored and anxious. My family barely leaves my side. I had to have the nurse throw them out yesterday. They mean well, but they’re making it worse.”
She wiped a tear from her eye. Oh. Gracie got it. With one single act, Delilah had been blown out of normal life and into abnormal life. She wanted to feel normal again, to talk to someone about everyday things.
Sitting in the closest chair, the burgundy vinyl still hot from the last person, she put her purse on the seat next to her and began her story. “I met him in Mexico.”
Delilah’s gaze sharpened. “On vacation?”
Uhm. Well… “A wild trip, for sure.”
She shared as much of the story as she could—the heat, her first glimpse of him, the banter, and him unexpectedly showing up at her club months later. She waxed on about his Southern charm and his way of making everything better. When she was finished, Delilah thanked her. Gracie squeezed her hand, took a business card and a pen from her purse, wrote down her personal number, and told her she could call any time. Day or night. Then she apologized again and left.
As she slipped out of Delilah’s room, she felt worse than when she went in. Twenty-six. Delilah’s entire life had been dramatically changed at twenty-six.
Should’ve closed the club.
In the hallway, she spotted the man she now realized was Delilah’s father. He stood by the nurse’s station.
She acknowledged him with a nod, and he approached her. She tensed, fisted her hands, waited for him to say the club should’ve been more secure, for him to ask how she could’ve let this happen, for him to ask—as so many in the media now did—if her family had enemies.
He stopped in front of her and said, “Stop blaming yourself.”
A sob escaped her, and much to her shock and horror, tears flooded from her like water over an overwhelmed dam. He gathered her in a hug. He smelled like tobacco and spiced tea.
He let her cry. “It’s okay,” he soothed. “There are fields where we run and fields where we crawl. And Allah looks over them all with eyes tinged in joy.”
Gracie pulled away, wiped her eyes. “I’m so very sorry about your daughter.”
He shook his head. “You confuse empathy with guilt. You are not responsible. This is something I have learned. Others will use what you hold dear to commit crimes. They are not your crimes. They would make you feel responsible, like you caused their bad actions. Don’t let them deceive you. Fight them in this. Fight them where they would lay roots.”
He tapped his head. “Here.”
And tapped his heart. “Here.”
Fight them. He was right. Fight them she would.
* * *
As she left the hospital, Gracie found him exactly where he said he’d be. Sleek, dark hair and roving, dark eyes, Victor sat on a bench outside the hospital doors, his right arm in a sling to help his clavicle heal. He wore black-and-white checkered slacks and a white shirt, unbuttoned enough to see his naturally tan skin.
She sat beside him on the white wooden bench, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, avoiding his sling. “Got your text. Seems an odd place to meet though. I thought you’d been released.”
“Came back for a checkup. Figured you might be around and was hoping to talk with you for a minute. I was so out of it the last time we spoke, I forgot to ask you about the Tony stuff.”
“Tony stuff? What are you talking about?”
Victor’s voice dropped low. “FBI didn’t tell you?”
Blood rushed to Gracie’s suddenly pounding head. “What is this about?”
“The security footage you gave me.” He made a fist. “You know how I’d been looking through it for anyone suspicious?”
She nodded.
“Well, after I’d spotted El, I kept looking. That’s when I spotted him. At first, I couldn’t believe it, so I asked to see more footage. Hoped I’d see him again. Sure enough, I did. Got up close. Double- and triple-checked. It was him.”
He’d spotted someone at her club? What did this have to do with Tony? Chills ran up and down her spine. “Tony’s dead.”
Victor shook his head. “Where’s his body?”
She opened her mouth and shut it with a snap. “Dusty. Dusty…buried…”
More chills. As if she’d plunged into Lake Michigan in November. Had Dusty buried Tony? How would she know? She wouldn’t. She hadn’t examined Tony’s body. Hadn’t tried to stanch a wound. Why would she? He’d been poisoned. Or so they’d thought.
How hard would it have been for him to have taken a drug that night that mimicked death? Not hard. And it would’ve been easy to fool both her and Justice. Everything had been so chaotic. Emotional.
Her stomach soured. Tony was alive? Her heart leapt with joy. Tony had faked his death—with Dusty’s help? Her heart thrashed with anger.
But she had no more tears left. Not for the relief she felt. Not for the grief. Not for the rage. Dusty. Her hands curled into fists.
“I’m sorry, Red. Fuck. I should’ve told you sooner.”
“Don’t do that, Victor. You won’t put up with me blaming myself for the club, and I’m not putting up with you blaming yourself for not telling me sooner.”
Her mind raced. Was Tony working with Dusty? Was he providing the FBI with information on Momma? Was the family in worse danger than she’d suspected? Had Dusty been collecting information on her family, on Momma, on her, last night?
Tony was alive. Anything seemed possible.
She’d been an idiot. Dusty had asked her, in bed no less, if he could meet Momma. And then what had she done? She’d brought him to the house. That had worked out great. He’d shown disgust when he’d listened to Momma’s story.
Stupid, Gracie. So f’ing stupid! “Can you let me be the one who tells my family? It’s my responsibility.”
“Sure.” He squeezed her knee. “And if you want, I’ll kick FBI’s ass for you.”
Standing, she slung her purse over her shoulder and said, “I’ll kick it myself. Thanks.”
Chapter 53
Watching where he stepped, Dusty picked his way through the burnt debris, staying out of the way of the remediati
on workers who—given the go-ahead by the authorities—were loudly breaking things apart and clearing Gracie’s club.
Not much to salvage as far as the front part of the club went.
The furniture had been singed with fire and smoke and soaked with water and foam. The walls were covered in soot, the decorations destroyed.
He’d be interested to read the reports, to see what the authorities and what Leland and his crew had found in here. Clearly a professional job.
Three explosive devices had been planted around the club, near the dance floor, sitting areas, and bathrooms. They’d been designed to keep the action out here, so that whoever had tried to access the servers upstairs could do their job without interruption.
He gave the bar a thank-you pat as he moved past. It had served as a buffer for him and Gracie during the explosion. The same kind of buffer her family had provided when they’d rolled onto campus a few days ago. Damn.
He shouldn’t have left her last night. That mistake had cost him a good night’s sleep. He’d realized, sometime between midnight and four a.m., that Grace had been right. The kids needed to share their stories to connect. He’d seen that connection.
Truth was, his problem hadn’t been with the sharing, but with how the story had made him feel. At first, he’d been moved by it, but then he got to analyzing, interpreting, remembering. Then it had felt like manipulation, reminded him of his father. It had felt like being herded.
He’d sworn to protect people from lunatics like his father.
But—and this was the thing that let him finally get some sleep—Mukta wasn’t his father. He’d seen the care she’d taken with her children. And not one of Mutka’s children was afraid of her. Respectful, yes, fearful, no.
That was the difference. His father wanted power over people, wanted and needed them to fear him, see him as a god, so he could take their money and live off them.
So as soon as Gracie walked in this morning, he intended to sit her down and apologize for leaving, explain why he’d walked out.
He headed toward the back of the club. He stopped at the burnt-out hallway, the area that had once had a door separating the club from the back of the club. This spot had taken the brunt of the explosion. It had been some kind of miracle that no one had been entering or exiting the bathrooms.
He squatted by the blackened closet across from the bathroom. The door had been torn clean off and the contents inside turned to ash. He reached into the back, to the ash-darkened wall, and wiped his fingers through the soot.
He rubbed his fingers together under his nose. A chemical smell. A controlled explosion. That would take some money.
Grace had security cameras back here. But he doubted whoever it was had been sloppy enough to be caught on film. Still, Gracie had given the security footage to the inspectors and a copy to Leland. If there were any valuable clues there, they’d find them.
He stood up as the back door to the club opened with a creak of dry hinges. A blast of morning light and Gracie walked inside, pulling her hair from a tight bun and shaking out her head. Sun-blinded, she didn’t seem to see him, but he saw her…unguarded and in terrible pain.
His fists clenched, his heart sank. He needed to go to her, try and make it okay. He stepped from the shadows.
The moment they made eye contact, her face reddened into a volcano of anger. Whoa. Time to make this right. “Grace. I’m sorry for leaving last night.”
Wearing a gray suit that seemed to highlight the fact that she meant business, she stalked toward him. She wasn’t messing around. She definitely would have her say, but he also sensed she was considering throwing a punch. He’d been in enough fights to recognize that intention.
“Sorry!?” She wiped a tear from her eye.
She was crying? His heart started to pound. His nerves jumped to careful attention. “Darlin’, what’s wrong? What happened?”
“You are a liar. You lied.”
Her accusation slammed into him hard enough to wind him. Made him want to babble, explain away whatever had caused that anger, but he had no idea what she was talking about. So he stood there, mute for probably the first time in his life.
The back door to the club opened again. Dusty’s eyes shifted from Grace to the door. Oh. Shit.
Chapter 54
In the back hall of her club, hands fisted at her sides, Gracie wanted to know what had caused Dusty’s eyes to widen as if the devil and the grim reaper had walked in behind her.
She spun on her heels, ready to fight or flee. Entering her club was the last person on earth she’d expected to see.
John?
Power-walking through the corridor, the hard set of his jaw a clear rebuke, John avoided the construction equipment and tools. He wore a black suit, black as his mood. Must’ve come from work.
He stopped a few feet from her. “I need to talk to you.” His eyes traveled to Dusty—whose Lyle’s BBQ T-shirt was snug against his huge chest. All his American Ninja Warrior fierceness was on full display. John’s eyes widened a little. “This is private.”
Dusty crossed his arms, biceps bulging, and leaned against the wall. She could feel the weight of him, the weight of his protection. It was as if he was saying to her, with the absolute strength of his body, that he was the one she could trust.
Liar. Liar. Liar. Trust no one.
“What’s this about?”
“Gracie Divine…” John cracked his neck, as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “It’s about Tyler.”
Tyler? Where was privacy? Her ground-floor office was filled with construction equipment. But the upstairs was fairly safe. And thanks to the fire marshal’s request to leave the security door open, accessible to him. Heck, to everyone.
“Let’s go upstairs.”
As they moved to go upstairs, Dusty followed. “Grace.”
She turned to him. Anger surged through her chest. “No. This isn’t about you.”
He jerked, looked sincerely hurt. And confused. But he was an f’ing special agent of the F.B.-tootin’-I. She had no doubt he’d figure out why she was so pissed.
Pulling a Jolly Rancher from her pocket, she slipped it into her mouth and led John upstairs.
Chapter 55
Gracie stopped and turned to John. The hallway upstairs of Club When? was private enough. “What’s going on?”
John glanced down the row of open doors. She gave him a get-on-with-it stare.
He did. “Where’s Tyler?”
“Ty’s missing?”
“Stop it, Gracie. I know you were supposed to meet him today.” He looked down the hall again. “Is he down there? Is he in your apartment?”
Why would Ty be here? “I haven’t been talking to Ty. I wouldn’t go behind your back like that. Why are you asking me this?”
“Look, we both know that’s not true. You lied to me for years.”
So not the time to dig up those old wounds. “John, is Ty missing?”
“Yes.”
For a moment, as his dark eyes drilled condemnation and anger into her, panic washed through Gracie’s body, but that was quickly replaced with her training. A detached calm, cool and capable, focused her mind and sent her into action.
She led John into the computer room, kicked the chair out of her way—sending it spinning on its wheels. Dropping her purse onto the desk, she booted up the computer. If Ty had his cell she could track it from here.
The sound of fans and technology coming online filled the room. “How long has he been missing?”
“El went into Ty’s room early this morning to ask him if he wanted to hang out at the station while she performed her radio show, but he wasn’t there.”
He’d been missing for hours, then. It was after noon. “Is that normal behavior? When was the last time you saw him? Have you called the police? Did he have his ph
one?”
“What’s normal? He’s a teen. El dropped our other son off at daycare and went to work, figuring Ty would show up eventually. She called him a few times but no answer. She came back around ten to check on him and found his cell in a drawer. That’s when she really started to panic.”
No phone. That made it difficult. “Have you called the police yet?”
“If you cooperate, I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” John said.
Again he focused his rage on her. The space between them suddenly felt too small. She took a step back.
He noticed, stepped forward. “I know what’s going on, Gracie. After El found his phone, she called Ty’s girlfriend. She said Ty has been communicating with your sister Cee. And that Cee had set up a meeting between you and Tyler for today.”
“Cee? My Cee knows Ty?” No. That made zero sense. And… Tyler wanted to meet her? Her heart jumped. Focus. Focus. “If Cee is involved, I know nothing about it.”
“If?” He looked mildly nauseous. “Don’t you have some kind of tracking system for your people?”
He was right. “Yeah.” She turned back to the computer and its still-dark screens. Was this due to the fire? Had something been damaged? Leland had said the security was working, but she hadn’t asked to have the computers checked. Crud.
“As soon as the computer kicks on, I can access family GPS information from here. It should only take me a minute or two to figure out where they are. Until then, anything else you can tell me?”
Now John looked uncomfortable. “Years ago, Momma set up a money market in my name for Tyler. I don’t really think about it except at tax time. Today, El searched Ty’s room looking for clues as to where he went and found bank statements he’d been intercepting.”
Ice rolled down Gracie’s spine, straight over her feet, freezing her to the spot. Never once had she considered the idea that Tyler had been taking money out of that account. “So there was money missing from the account and you think Tyler took it and gave it to Cee?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? Cee is…” He trailed off. But she understood what he hinted at. She was a Parish. A broken kid taken from the streets, who didn’t play by the rules. She pushed aside her annoyance at that and concentrated on the facts.
The Price of Grace Page 21