Falling Grace

by Melissa Shirley

  “I heard it, Jamie. I called you and I heard you answer.” A tear I neither expected or welcomed slipped out the corner of my eye.

  “It wasn’t me, Grace.”

  I shook my head, closed my eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Not now.”

  He continued to stroke the top of my head until we arrived and he climbed out. Separated by more than the flimsy curtains between our cubicles, I strained to hear his voice as he explained how he’d banged his arm on my doorframe as he carried me out. He coughed twice and I resisted the urge to climb from my bed and throw myself into his arms. He’d lied to me. I needed to keep reminding myself or I’d end up being some piece in the game he played with his brother.

  The whir of the oxygen blowing up my nose, the beep of the monitor attached to me measuring my air quality levels, did nothing to drown out the sadness in his tone. After a few minutes, a nurse pushed back the curtain, edged toward the bed. With a tube of cream in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, she took a seat next to the bed. After a couple of attempts at small talk--did I have any idea how the fire started, would I like her to call someone for me, I was a lucky girl--she gave up and worked quietly.

  Removing the bandage, she exposed my charred, peeling skin. I turned away as she cleaned the wound, then spread the cream gingerly over my wrist. It would scar, but I hadn’t died, so a little scarring didn’t bother me so much.

  After a few hours, Dr. Too-young-to-have-served-his-time-in-med-school signed my release papers and I was free to go home. With a sinking heart, I realized I had nowhere to go, no home, no clothes other than the smoke soaked ones I had on. My cash, whatever I had left, my credit cards, and my ID, along with the evidence I’d collected at the Quinn’s had all burned up in the fire. The evidence to clear my client was gone. Shit.

  A hundred or more swear words floated around my mind and I brushed them all back. Logic. I needed a big fat dose of logic, someone to help me put this mess I’d made into perspective. What I needed was a plan.

  I stepped out into the waiting room and Rory shot up from her seat, rushed forward, and threw her arms around me. “Oh my God. Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’m fine, aside from smelling like I slept in a barbeque grill.” She pulled me through the door, but I dug my heels in, stopping our progress outside the emergency room entrance. “I have to talk to you about the Quinn case. It isn’t what I thought.”

  “Okay, but let’s get you home where you can relax.”

  I shook my head. “No. I can’t. I need to call my sister, go see Gabby, talk to Blane’s wife. Gabby’s innocent.” Well, mostly. She had helped cover up a crime, but considering the circumstances, I could argue extenuating circumstances, capacity diminished by grief…oh hell. Either way, the situation plain old sucked.

  “Okay. We’ll talk about it, but let’s get out of here.”

  I followed her to her car, climbed in, and waited as she backed out. “I went to the house, Gabby’s house, today. In the closet behind the toy box in the boy’s bedroom, I found a panel.” No one I’d ever met used decorative wall coverings in closets. It was what bothered me about the room.

  I reached into my back pocket, pulled out my cell, and smiled. “Oh, thank God. I forgot I put it there.” I scrolled through the pictures, found what I was looking for, and held it up for her to see. “Look. She didn’t do it.”

  Rory glanced at the screen, whipped the car onto the shoulder of the road, and grabbed my phone from my hand. “I would bet any money she’d rather go to jail than tell what happened in that house, pictures or not.” She frowned. “Where are the pajamas now?”

  “Burned up in the fire, is my guess.”

  “You took them from the house?” I nodded. “Jesus, Grace. There’s no chain of custody, no way to establish they existed before you walked in there and took them.”

  I shrugged. “I think you’re right about her. There’s no way. Even if they would have been admissible she would never let us use them. Would you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Let’s go to the jail.”

  “It’s three o’clock in the morning, Grace.”

  She was right. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

  Chapter 26

  I woke up to a text and the idea I could somehow convince Gabrielle Quinn to save herself at the cost of her child.

  The text from Jamie, either he’d found his phone or lied about losing it, simply said, Meet me. I need to see you.

  I typed quickly. Where’d you find it?

  Jamie: In the place I left it. Meet me.

  Me: When?

  Jamie: Now? At the lake.

  He’d lied, one way or another, but even the cynic in me wanted to know why. What was behind the switches that put him with Blane’s wife?

  I shook off the hurt, left a note for Rory, and borrowed her car for a quick drive. The sky, to the east, was full of orange and gold as the sun peeked over the horizon. On the other side, darkness and stars. I pulled into the lot where I always parked and made my way to the trail.

  The tall grasses brushed across my legs as I battled the semi-dark while wearing Rory’s shoes and a pair of sweatpants that left my calves bare. Frogs, flipping fish, crickets, the sounds that made scary movies scary, sent shivers along my skin. I didn’t concentrate on the eeriness of the moment, but focused, instead, on not falling face first into the mud.

  He stood at the edge of the water, facing down into it. He threw a rock with his right arm, the one that should have been in a cast. It wasn’t Jamie. He stood too casually, trying too hard to suppress the subtle differences between them.

  Fear screamed through me, begging me to run away. I turned to walk back to the car as he called out. “Going somewhere?”

  I stopped, his accent didn’t quite mesh with the one that whispered such sweet words in my ears. “Nope. Just wondering why here?”

  “I wanted to be alone with you.”

  “Why here?” I stalled, took two steps toward my car as he advanced toward me.

  “To make sure you’re okay. That fire was rather scary. I thought I’d lost you.”

  This slipped over the border to plain ridiculous, his bad Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins accent, the super-secret meeting, and the full moon glittering through the fog. I smiled in spite of myself. Jamie could fake being Blane, but that road only traveled one way. “I guess you haven’t seen or talked to your brother. When he carried me out of my apartment, Jamie broke his wrist.”

  He chuckled. “Did he? He didn’t mention it.” He’d dropped the charade and his regular voice mingled with the melodies of nature.

  “Yes. So, you should have a cast on if you want to play him with any kind of conviction.” I shook my head as he lowered his, almost appearing bashful. “Why not call me and ask me to meet you? Why pretend to be him?”

  “Would you have come? If I’d been the one who called?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “Because of him?” Something about the way he’d shoved his hands in his pockets, kicked at the grass, and peered up at me from beneath long lashes, said the answer meant something to him.

  “Because of Valerie.”

  “I was honest with you about that. She left me, Grace, and she didn’t come back until they took my cases away and brought her back to town.”

  “You only told me because you had to, because you didn’t have a choice.” Someday, I would sit back and decide how I felt about it, but I had a feeling he hadn’t called me out there to discuss the end of our one minute affair. “It doesn’t matter, Blane.”

  “It mattered. You mattered to me. More than you know. More than I showed you.” He stepped close enough to run his fingers though my hair, to cup my cheek, to force me to look into his eyes. “When your daddy died, I was with Val. She came home, wanted to be with me, and all I could think about was you, you hurting, you alone.
It took me two days to realize you’d called Jamie, not me.” His eyes changed. “Everybody calls Jamie.”

  Shaking off the clouds wrapped around my brain, I stepped back, shifted away. He hadn’t done a single thing to make me want him, no romance, simply a few quick interludes that had left me unsatisfied, but he piqued my curiosity. I wanted closure to this whole nasty little redneck love triangle. I wanted to be free to see Jamie, at least, hear his explanation for answering his phone as Blane.

  He sighed and backed off. “He’s the one, my brother?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “But not me.” I almost believed the sadness in his voice. Until he looked up. His face twisted, his mouth pulled taut. “Never me. Always Jamie. Better basketball player. Better grades. Always better.” The air around us changed. I reeled back a few steps. The ice in his stare chilled me and fear gripped my heart.

  “Why am I here, Blane? What do you want?” I silently willed him not to notice the falter in my bravado, to ignore the waver in my voice.

  He closed the distance between us quickly, grabbed me by the wrist, squeezed, and pulled me forward. “I know what you found in the house. I can’t let you use it to free Gabby Quinn. I gave my word.”

  Maybe it was the terror, or the pain in my wrist, or maybe the fact he’d lied to me to get me out there, but… “Your word? Your word means shit, Blane.”

  “That’s not nice.”

  “I’ve had a rough couple days, and you keep toying with me.”

  “I’m not toying with you. I meant what I said.”

  I shrugged, not believing one damned thing that came out of his mouth. “Well, then let’s chalk it up to my life falling apart one piece at a time ever since I got here.”

  “I know. Dad died, house burned down, one boyfriend is a big fat liar and the other is married with a baby on the way. Poor, poor Grace.”

  He clucked his tongue and I struggled against his grip. The hold tightened. He pulled me forward until we were chest to chest and his aura of evil glowed bright in the moonlight mixing with the sunrise. My emotional pendulum swung between anger and fear and his words grated on me. “He’s playing you. He’s a liar and he’s trying to take me down with him. I didn’t plant evidence. I hid it for him. I helped him, because he’s my brother, but he’s the one, Grace.”

  “Get away from me.” I jerked away hard, fully prepared to make a run for it, but he reached out, dug his fingers into the bandage covering my burn. “I don’t believe you. You can’t lie well enough to make me believe he is the bad one and you’re the one protecting him. I’ve been with both of you enough to know who the asshole is and isn’t.”

  “Asshole?”

  “That’s right. And if you can’t bluff any better than this, I would have kicked your ass in court.” I jerked free, bit back a whimper, maybe a scream, of pain and called on all my confidence to see me through.

  “You know what I think?” At that point, even I had no clue what was going to come pouring out of my mouth. “I think you’re jealous of everything about your brother. He’s good, and clearly you’re not. He’s kind, and let’s face facts, Tex, you’re anything but kind. You’re selfish and, I’m thinking, kind of evil.” I shrugged a nonchalant shoulder. “But, I don’t know if you’re smart enough to pull this off without him. I mean”--and this was only a guess--“you had to cheat off him through law school, right? You weren’t pissed off he ruined your happily ever after with your brother by your side. You were pissed you were gonna have to do a little studying yourself. You couldn’t have planned it without him, because you wouldn’t have been able to figure out how.” I wasn’t sure if I believed my words or had resorted to baiting him to buy precious moments before my own impending death.

  “You think you’re so smart.”

  “Oh, Blane. I am so smart.” I shook my head in mock disappointment driven by real fear. “And I don’t hear you denying anything.”

  “I don’t need my brother to plan anything.”

  “Really? You need him to pretend to be you with your wife.”

  “Oh, you are gullible, aren’t you?” He yanked Jamie’s phone from his pocket. “I recorded a voicemail, set your calls to go straight there.” He tinkered with the screen for a moment, then held it at arm’s length, speaker on. “Hello…hello.” It disconnected after a second. “Now, who’s the dumbass?”

  “Oh, bravo. It doesn’t take a genius to pull the wool over the eyes of a semi-drunk.” Lord, the things my mouth came up with. It was a wonder I’d ever won a case.

  “Nothing halfway about you. You’re actually a full-blown drunk.”

  “But I’m not going to jail.” I looked around for an escape route that would get me the hell away from him. He blocked my way back to the car, and it was too dark under the canopy of trees to haul ass into the woods. “I might be a drunk, but you’re a bad man, Blane. And in my world, bad men suffer.”

  “Ooh, that’s real scary coming from someone who can’t keep her lips off a bottle for more than a couple hours a day.”

  “Hey, we’ve already established I might have a drinking problem. No need to beat it to death.” While it might not have been the time to haul out the humor, I didn’t see a reason to back off, just yet.

  “Witty. I’m gonna be sorry to see you go.”

  “Joke’s on you, bud. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Unless you have a weapon and a shovel, I’m pretty sure the only place I’m going is home tonight.”

  “You don’t have a home.” He lowered his gaze, looked up at me from beneath batting eyelashes. “Sorry about that.”

  “You? You burned my house down?” I should have known. My first real, honest-to-goodness moment of panic flared through me, and my heart pulsed fear through my veins. He’d burned my apartment down with me inside. Clearly, he didn’t bring me out here for fun and games.

  He shrugged and a knot of apprehension tightened in my stomach. I already knew the answer, but I needed to hear the words.

  I yelped as he drew me in close enough I could smell his cologne. “I can’t let the boy go to jail, Grace. Nathan Quinn is a vital part of my operation. How the hell do you think that piece of hair disappeared?”

  “You did that too?” Evil didn’t begin to describe this asshat.

  He nodded. “I had to. If the Quinn kid goes to jail, Nathan will spill the beans on this whole thing. Do you have any idea how long it took to get everything in place? The right people on each end, the scouting, the man hours I have invested in this whole enterprise?”

  “Did you bring me out here to brag about your frequent flyer miles or is there something you want from me?” Pretend courage was still courage, right?

  His chuckle turned vicious. “Oh, I don’t want anything from you. Had my fill. Remember?”

  I’d fallen for some dumb tricks in my life, things that shamed me and my self-proclaimed brilliance, but not seeing through to his inner devil provided the exclamation point at the end of my stupidity. Seriously. Some counselor, somewhere, was rubbing her hands together with glee at the thought of getting a hold of the turmoil in my brain. “How could I forget the most unpleasant fifteen seconds of my life?”

  As a reward for my sarcasm, he hauled me in close, pressed his lips against mine. I pushed with everything I had, and he didn’t budge. Another uh-oh feeling crawled in my stomach.

  “You taste kind of smoky. Probably all that fiery air you inhaled.” With one hand still wrapped around my arm, the other pushed a piece of hair behind my ear. “We could have been great together. I wanted to share all of this with you. All of it. The money, the things it can buy. When you strolled into town, all hell-bent for justice, it was my love at first sight moment. I don’t believe in that crap, but I saw you, and somehow, I couldn’t imagine another day without you.”

  “So you burn my house down? Wow. That’s not exactly country music kind of love. It’s sick. The hol
y-crap-you-need-therapy-and-a-bedroom-that-has-padding-on-the-walls kind.”

  He blinked his answer as he slipped both arms around my waist, pressed me against him in a hug that felt anything but tender. “I like that you’re thinking about my bedroom.” His chin rested against the top of my head, and I fought the urge to resist. I didn’t have the strength to break free on my own and needed him to release me so I could run away.

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “It’s nothing personal, Grace, but I need Nathan Quinn on his game. His kid goes to the big house, I lose my shipping coordinator. Can’t have that.” He pulled back a few fractions and looked down at me. His wolfish smile tore the beauty of his face into one half decidedly evil and the other plain mean. “You’re right, though. I am a bad man.”

  “Tell your priest, pal. I don’t care.” I shoved him again, but he only tightened his arms around me. Air pushed out of my lungs along with a yelp as he gave a hard squeeze, then relaxed.

  I couldn’t break free, and the darkness in his eyes caused a shiver to skitter over my skin. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone. I thought the gods smiled on me when your daddy died and you rushed back home. But no, you couldn’t wait to get back to Texas. You were so sure you could get Gabby out of jail. I can’t have that, Grace. She has to go away. Or my goody-goody brother will keep the case open. He doesn’t believe she did it either. God, that was a battle.” He shook his head, dropped one hand, and pulled a small pistol from his waistband. “It’s not personal, but now that the kid’s clothes are gone, you’re the last loose end I have.”

  He kept a hand wrapped around my arm, hauled me toward the lake path. My stomach flopped and my mind raced. I had to get away from him, had to. This situation, yet another result of my poor decision making skills, had spiraled right out of control. “I was kidding about the weapon and the shovel.”

  “Too bad I’m a good planner.”

  “Blane, you don’t have to do this. I’ll be quiet and step away from Gabby’s case.”