Saving Grace

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Every cop knew that a cornered rat was the most dangerous creature alive. Piper still hadn’t touched the gun and didn’t even seem aware he had it, but she knew that particular state of serendipity wouldn’t last long.

  During her rookie year on the force, she’d been jumped by a crackhead in an alley. By all rights, she should have ended up with a knife to the gut but she’d somehow managed to keep a cool head and ended up talking the junkie down.

  If she could do the same thing here—if she could keep her wits about her—maybe, just maybe, she could protect Emma.

  “Hi, Uncle Piper,” Emma chirped, oblivious to the sudden thick tension in the room. “Grace and me are playin’ house. Wanna play? You could be the grandpa.”

  His gaze flickered to the little girl and there was clear affection there even in the midst of his obvious agitation. “Hi, sugar. I can’t play right now. Maybe later.”

  Well, that was something, Grace thought. She didn’t think he would hurt the little girl, not when he obviously cared about her. On the other hand, who knew what he might be capable of if he was desperate?

  She forced her voice to be low, nonthreatening. “This is certainly a surprise, Piper. What can we do for you?”

  He didn’t answer for several seconds and seemed to be trying to organize his thoughts. He probably didn’t even have a concrete plan, she realized, and the knowledge terrified her.

  Desperate and disorganized weren’t a good combination.

  “I just came to…to get Emma,” he finally said. “Jack asked me to take her to the hangar for him. He, uh, he wants to take her out to a fast-food joint for dinner.”

  She might have believed him if she didn’t know that dozens of law enforcement officers had already descended on GSI. The last thing Jack probably wanted to deal with right now was his daughter.

  Her mind roamed the angles. What would Piper hope to gain by taking Emma?

  He probably had no idea the investigation was focusing on Jack as the mastermind behind the smuggling ring. Or if he did, he likely realized it was only a matter of time before the investigative spotlight would turn in his direction.

  The logical thing for someone running scared from the law to do would be to leave the country, but wouldn’t a five-year-old girl just be more likely to slow him down?

  That must be it.

  Her stomach churned as the implications sank in. Piper was a pilot. He would be looking for a plane to fly out of the country, probably to some country without an extradition treaty with the U.S., and he would have to realize he couldn’t just hop into one of the GSI jets and take off. Not with cops from every possible jurisdiction swarming everywhere.

  But how would the police stop him if he walked into the hangar with a hostage—particularly a five-year-old girl?

  She blew out a breath. She had to stop him somehow. She wasn’t about to let him use Emma as a bargaining chip. But what would be the best way to prevent it?

  Should she tip him off that she knew exactly what was going on or would Emma be better off if she kept up this friendly pretense for now?

  “McDonald’s!” Emma chirped excitedly. “I’m gonna have a hamburger and a big order of french fries.”

  “Okay,” Piper’s mouth stretched into a sickly rictus of a smile. “Let’s go, then.”

  No way in hell was she going to let him just walk out of the house with Jack’s daughter. She considered her options. The man was desperate and he had a gun and she had only her wits. Above everything else, she had to protect Emma and the best way to do that would be to go with them and wait for an opportunity to escape.

  She gave Piper what she hoped was a friendly smile. “Let me just grab our jackets and I’ll come with you.”

  That panicky look returned to his eyes. “No. Not you. Just Emma. Jack specifically said just Emma.”

  “They can’t go without me. I love hamburgers.”

  She could almost see the wheels in his head spinning and she knew immediately when he reached the inevitable conclusion that two hostages just might be better than one.

  “Fine,” he muttered. “Get your jackets. But hurry up. We, uh, we don’t want to keep Jack waiting, do we?”

  The wait to board the ferry and then the trip across the Sound was a nightmare. Through the entire crossing, she tried to engage Piper in idle conversation. About the weather, about the basketball team, about anything she could think of to keep him calm.

  She finally gave up after all her attempts met with that same blank, panicky stare, as if he’d forgotten she was even there.

  Emma, in the back seat, seemed to sense something wrong with the situation. She, too, lapsed into an uncharacteristic silence and didn’t even beg Grace to go with her to watch for mermaids.

  Once off the ferry, Piper turned the car toward GSI and her adrenaline began to pump in a slow, steady rhythm. A quick glance in the back seat showed her that Emma had drifted off for that nap she had been fighting all afternoon.

  Now was her chance. If she didn’t move now, they would soon be at GSI and all hell would break loose.

  “How far do you think you’re going to be able to get?” she asked him quietly.

  He didn’t look at her, just concentrated on the road. “To GSI. So Emma can go to dinner with her dad. I told you that.”

  “You can drop the pretense, Piper. I know what’s going on.”

  “What…what do you mean?”

  “I’m a cop.”

  She said the words without thinking, then realized it was true. For a year now she had believed that part of her life was over forever, that she would never again carry a badge.

  With three simple words—I’m a cop—she realized that even without the badge, she was still at heart the same little girl who used to watch her father don his dress uniform with awe, who had spent all her life dreaming of the time when she could follow in his footsteps.

  Through their many years of working together, she and Riley had perfected the old Good-Cop/Bad-Cop routine. Although her real specialty was the latter, she sensed she’d have better luck with Piper if she tried to show him she was on his side.

  Maybe she could manage to help Emma escape if she appealed to his vanity, could convince him he didn’t need both of them and that he should let the girl go.

  “I used to be a cop,” she corrected herself. “I still have contacts on the force, though. I know about the weapons smuggling. I know GSI has been under investigation for months.”

  She forced a small, admiring laugh. “But you’ve been too slippery for them, haven’t you? You’ve fooled everyone.”

  He glanced over at her and gave a modest little shrug, but she could see him preen a little. “It hasn’t been easy.”

  “You’ve been outfoxing a half-dozen different agencies. I imagine you’re trying to leave the country. Smart move.”

  “You think so?” He seemed desperately eager for validation.

  “Yeah. It’s exactly what I would do in your shoes.” She paused. “There’s something that puzzles me, though. Emma’s kidnapping last month. How does that fit into the whole picture? I can’t figure it out, and I know the police can’t either.”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched beneath his pale complexion and he clamped his lips together. She thought she’d blown it for a minute, then he puffed out a breath.

  “Wasn’t my idea,” he muttered. “I never wanted to use her like that but we needed cash in a hurry. Had a Chinese tang on our backs wanting to see some green upfront before they’d deal. You don’t mess around with the tangs. I thought taking Emma was way too risky, but the others went through with it anyway. Said they knew Jack would pay in a heartbeat to get back his little girl.”

  Others? How many others? Two? Four? A dozen?

  She didn’t get a chance to ask before he continued. “Didn’t do us any good. That damn Vasquez screwed up the whole thing. Stole a car, then the idiot crashed the stupid thing and took off.”

  “Took off where?”

 
He checked the rearview mirror as if he thought he might find this Vasquez person lurking there. “Beats the hell out of me. Anywhere certain people couldn’t find him, I guess. Can’t blame him for getting out while he could, but he left us scrambling to find the cash somewhere else or risk blowing the whole deal with the Chinese.”

  “So this is all about money?”

  He gave her a hard look. “Isn’t everything?”

  “But you’re a partner in GSI. The company is doing well, right? You can’t be hurting for cash.”

  “Listen, I got three ex-wives, each one of them greedier than the one before. Every penny I make at GSI goes to pay their damn bloodsucking lawyers. I’m sixty years old next month and don’t have a single thing to show for it. This was supposed to be my big chance.”

  He looked suddenly older—much, much older—and she was afraid for a minute he would cry. An instant’s sympathy fluttered through her but she quickly suppressed it. He had let his greed cloud his judgment and his morals and he would probably spend what was left of his life paying for it.

  They were beginning to pass landmarks she recognized from her trip to GSI with Jack and she knew they were close to the company’s hangars. Her anxiety level escalated.

  She had to get Emma out of this, and fast.

  “We’re almost there, Piper. Think about what you’re doing now.” She forced her voice to stay calm and unruffled despite the nerves twitching through her. “I don’t really think you need Emma, do you? She’s only going to slow you down, make things more messy than they have to be. Why don’t we find some place we can drop her off, some place she’ll be safe. You can use me for your hostage.”

  For a moment, she thought she had won. Doubt began to creep into his eyes and he seemed to be considering her words. At the last minute, though, that panic took over and his hands clenched on the steering wheel. “No. Nobody’s going to stop me from taking that jet when they see I have her. They can’t.”

  He sent her a quick look. “But don’t worry. I’ll try to make sure neither one of you gets hurt unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  Now why didn’t that shaky declaration reassure her?

  * * *

  Jack stood in the doorway of his office surveying the carnage left by the team of investigators who had just finished methodically searching the room. The place was in a shambles, just like the rest of his life.

  He couldn’t manage to summon much more than mild indignation at them, though. All of his seething, writhing emotions were directed toward Grace, toward this vast, endless betrayal.

  How could he have been so wrong about her? How stupid could he be? Didn’t he ever learn his lesson? He had let her big sad eyes and her soft, lying mouth completely sucker him, completely blind him to her motives.

  No wonder she had seemed so cool, so remote. She had been busy planning her revenge.

  He heard movement behind him suddenly and found her former partner approaching.

  Most of the investigators had left a few moments ago, after they found what they were apparently looking for—five wooden boxes hidden beneath piles of tools in an unused corner of the maintenance hangar. The boxes were filled with row after row of fully automatic assault weapons.

  Jack was sick thinking that this company he had worked to build, given his heart and soul to, had been part of this.

  But he was even more sick thinking about Grace.

  “You all about done?” Jack asked him.

  Riley nodded. “Yeah. Most of the team is on its way to your place.”

  He closed his eyes. What would Lily and Emma think when a horde of cops descended? He should have called earlier to warn them but he’d been too consumed by what was happening here to think of it.

  He reached now for the phone under a pile of overturned files, but Riley held out a hand to stop him.

  “You’ll have to come with me now, Dugan. Looks like we’re going to have plenty to talk about.”

  He tried to summon anger for the man but couldn’t. None of this was his fault. He was doing a job, that’s all. Just a job. Grace was the one who had turned the whole thing into a mission of vengeance, who had wormed her way into his home, into his heart, through her lies and her subterfuge.

  Just because he bore no anger toward Riley didn’t mean he had to like the man, though. Something about the big dark-haired cop set his teeth on edge. Maybe it was that too-handsome face or his rumpled clothes or that cynicism in his eyes.

  Who was he kidding?

  What really ticked him off was knowing that Beau Riley had held a place in Grace’s life he could never hope to share. Even knowing her betrayal, he couldn’t help resenting Riley for it.

  “Am I under arrest?” he asked tersely.

  The detective scowled. “Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  “Then we both know I don’t have to go anywhere with you, don’t we? At least not until I talk to my lawyer.”

  “Look, Dugan,” Riley growled, “we can do this hard or we can do this easy. Up to you.”

  He scowled back. “I’m not refusing to answer any of your questions. I have nothing to hide from you. But I’d rather do it here and with my lawyer present.”

  Riley opened his mouth to respond, but a sudden buzz of activity out in the hangar interrupted whatever he was going to say. He cocked his head, a puzzled frown on his pretty-boy face. They could hear muffled shouting out in the hangar, but Jack couldn’t make out the words.

  Both men headed at the same time for the windows that overlooked the work bay. The detective reached them first and separated the blind. He growled a short, pithy obscenity, whirled around and headed for the door at a full run.

  Jack, just a few beats behind, felt grim foreboding flash in his gut. The sight that met him through the windows was worse—much, much worse—than anything he could have imagined.

  Piper McCall stood near the steps of the jet, his face pale, his eyes wild and frenzied. He carried Emma hefted in one arm and the other hand held a sleek chrome handgun jammed into Grace’s ear.

  CHAPTER 18

  Stay calm, Grace ordered herself. He’s not really going to hurt us. He’s just looking for a way out.

  She forced herself to detach, to disengage, to clinically record the scene like she used to do on the job.

  The sharp, kerosene smell of jet fuel and other mechanical things hung heavy in the huge warehouse-like hangar. The fluorescent lights overhead burned too brightly, sending a glare off the same small, sleek jet they had taken to Hawaii, which was the only plane in the building.

  The only sounds were Piper’s harsh breathing, her own pulse ringing loudly in her ears and the staticky whisper of the uniform cop who had tried to bar their way speaking into his radio.

  So much for the cops crawling everywhere that Piper had expected. The uniform was the only one who seemed to be around, and she prayed he wasn’t some trigger-happy rookie without the expertise needed to handle a hostage situation.

  She couldn’t count on it, though. She couldn’t count on anyone but herself to save Emma, which didn’t fill her with a lot of faith right now. Nothing she had come up with so far had managed to convince Piper to let them go, and her mind raced frantically as she tried to come up with another plan.

  “Come on. Let’s go.” Piper nudged her toward the half-dozen or so steps up into the jet. Hoping to stall, to delay what appeared to be the inevitable, she tried to move slowly.

  She had only ascended one step when she heard the clatter of footsteps in the doorway to the section of the building that housed the GSI corporate offices.

  Piper whirled. Since the gun was still jammed in her ear and she didn’t want to make any sudden moves that might startle him, she forced herself to hold perfectly still and shifted only her gaze toward the sound.

  Relief poured through when she saw Jack in the doorway about twenty feet away, looking strong and dangerous and comforting all at once. She was vaguely aware that Beau was there, too, with his b
ig service revolver in his hand, but she could only focus on Jack.

  She loved him. It poured over her, through her, and she thought it must radiate off of her like heat waves off a July sidewalk. She loved this man, with his sweet smile and his green eyes and his joy for life.

  Not that it mattered. Even if she and Emma made it through this—no, not if, when, she scolded herself—she knew he would not welcome her feelings.

  He had made it abundantly clear he had nothing but contempt for her now. Because she had been consumed by a past she couldn’t change, she had destroyed her chance for a future filled with joy and light.

  She wrenched her mind back to the present. The uniform was gone, she noted, probably on Beau’s orders to keep Piper from doing anything rash.

  “Don’t come any closer,” the pilot called to the two men. His echo sounded distorted as it bounced off the walls in the huge hangar. “All I want to do is get on the plane and take a little trip. As long as nobody messes with me, I’ll let both of the girls go wherever I land.”

  “This is crazy,” Beau barked out. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Emma—who had been half-asleep since Piper pulled her out of the back seat—started to cry as the shouts whirled around her.

  “I want my daddy,” she wailed and Grace saw Jack’s face pale beneath his rugged tan. He took a step forward but Riley held an arm out to restrain him.

  Piper hugged the little girl more tightly. “Shh, baby. It’s okay,” he murmured, then shoved the gun harder into Grace’s ear. She could feel the barrel shaking with his tremors.

  “I don’t want to have to hurt either one of them, but I will. Don’t think I won’t!”

  Jack shook off Riley’s arm and stepped forward. “Piper, think about this, about what you’re doing. Whatever you’ve done in the past, this is only going to make it worse.”

  Her gaze flickered back to Piper. The lines on his face had deepened and he looked completely miserable—guilty and ashamed. “You don’t know, Jack. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

  “I think I have a pretty good idea.”