Grace Anne (22 page)

“Mr. Patterson, there’s a call for
you at the desk. It’s Washington, sir. They said it’s urgent.”

Trace looked up at the man who was
dressed in the nicest uniform he’d ever seen.

“There’s been a crisis and you’re
needed.”

“There’s always a crisis
somewhere.” David glanced over at him before he spoke to the man again. “Take a
message. Then call the President. Tell him that I’m at the hospital with one of
my men and that I can’t be bothered right now. Tell him I’ll call him back when
I can.”

Trace stared wide-eyed at the man
sitting next to him as the man saluted and walked away. “You can do that? I
thought you had to do whatever he wanted you to. Wow, you just told the
President to take a hike.”

Trace flushed again when David
laughed. “So I did. He’s not so bad, you know. He and I go way back. Your new
family, they know him as well. I think your Aunt Alyssa has told him to
fu…well, she’s told him to take a hike a few times as well.”

Trace looked over at his aunt. She
was very pretty, but she too could cuss like a sailor, his grandma said. He
grinned at her when she winked. To be honest, she was kind of scary too. Not
like his Aunt Sin was, but close. He looked over at his new uncles. Two of them
were detectives and another was a lawyer. His Uncle Nathan was on a trip in
Japan on business and was flying home today, they’d told him. And Uncle Cain
was a doctor. He had just about any kind of help if he ever needed it. Grinning,
he looked over at David. “I never seen so many people come around for somebody
being hurt before. When I broke my arm last year my dad and grandparents were
there. Grace sure is loved, isn’t she?”

“It’s not just Grace, but your dad
as well. He impressed them a great deal by barging into that house to get her
for them. And the fact that he got hurt doing it makes them love him all the
more.” David nodded toward the people sitting on the couch next to the rest of
them. “There are the Grants. Couldn’t ask for a better group of people either. You’re
getting yourself a good family, son. They’ll do right by you.”

He certainly hoped so. He wanted
them to like him. He was afraid they’d want them all to go back to New York and
not return. This was scary stuff. Thomas had been a bad man for a long time,
almost as long as Trace had remembered. He was always drunk or high too.

There were things he knew they
tried to hide from him. The fact that Thomas was a drunk was one of them. He
was also mean to some of the people who worked for his grandparents. He didn’t
know why he was, but Uncle Thomas seemed to have enjoyed being mean, like it
was his job or something. Trace bowed his head. He shouldn’t be talking about
him like this, he realized. He was dead, after all.

Trace looked up when David stood
up. The doctor was coming toward him and right behind him was a wheelchair with
his dad in it. Trace tried not to cry, but seeing his father, even as bad as he
looked, was the best thing he’d ever seen. Rushing toward him, he started to hug
him when he stopped suddenly. His dad pulled him close and wrapped his good arm
around him.

“Christ, I missed you,” his dad
said and Trace started crying. He didn’t realize how scared he’d been until
that minute. Holding him and being held by him was the greatest feeling.

“Mom is still in surgery. The
doctor said that she had been beaten up pretty bad. They won’t tell me anything
‘cause I’m just a kid.” Trace wiped at the tears and moved back so that
everyone else could get a hug.

“Let me see what I can find out,”
Cain said. “I’ve been up to check twice now and all they’ve been able to tell
me is that she’s still in surgery.” He walked away and to the desk.

“Calling her Mom now, are you? You’re
moving faster than me.”

Trace laughed at his dad.

“Next thing you know, you and she will
be eloping and I’ll be left holding the bag.”

“Then you’d better get your game
on, old man. I need a mom and you’re slacking.” Trace laughed when his dad
cuffed him lightly on the chin. “She said it was okay. Should I have asked you
first?”

“Absolutely not. You and she are
going to have to work on your own relationship. I’ll just try real hard not to
piss her off too much.” His dad was moved over to the couch where he’d been
sitting. “You still okay with her and I marrying?”

Trace nodded, then leaned in to
whisper to him. “I told you I’d protect her and I didn’t. I told…if I had gone
to the airport with her instead of staying at the house with her family then—”

“Then you’d be hurt too. Don’t
think like that. You did what needed to be done. That woman would have had you
both and I would have been insane without knowing. Well, insaner anyway. I need
you as much as I do Grace, son.”

They sat for another two hours
before they got to see Grace. Cain had told them that she was in recovery and
would be for a bit. She came through surgery like a trooper and they didn’t
foresee any problems with her injuries. Trace laid down on the couch and fell
asleep. He’d had a really long day.

Chapter 22

Michael tried to get comfortable
in the chair, but his ribs hurt and his arm was aching again. He looked
longingly at the bed Grace was sleeping in. What he wouldn’t give to crawl in
it beside her and sleep for the next hundred years. Smiling, he wondered if
that would be long enough.

“Come over here,” she whispered to
him. “I want to feel you close to me. If you don’t hog all the covers I think
we can just manage it.”

“I was thinking the same thing. I
want to just stretch out beside you for a little while.” He glanced over at his
mother on the fold-out couch. “She wouldn’t leave. She said she needed to be
here in case you needed her.”

“I need you both. Please? Just
until they make you leave.”

He moved toward the bed, toeing
off his shoes.

They needed to talk, he knew that.
Things had happened in that house and the police, along with several agencies,
had been trying to get him to come to their respective offices for the last few
hours. He’d gone to Patterson to see if he could get them to back off and he’d
not heard a single word from them since. He pulled the covers back and gently
laid beside her. She turned around and laid her head on his chest, careful of
his cast.

“How are you feeling?” he asked
her after a minute or two. “The doctor said you’d be okay to go home in a few
days. But you’ll have to take it easy. And stay off your leg for a bit.” He’d
told him a great deal more, but he didn’t want to share that with her right
now. He was happy she was alive.

He felt her laugh. “Cain came in
and told me what the doctor said. You can’t give me half-truths when I have a
doctor at my beck and call.”

“Your brother and I are going to
have to lay down some ground rules where you’re concerned,” he told her with a
pouty tone. “You lost a great deal of blood, but they gave you some to replace
it. He said that the bullet wound in your leg is going to be your biggest
concern. He said that there is some deep muscle damage and that you’ll need
physical therapy for a long time. By the way, Sin said she’d run with you in
the mornings if you want.”

She nodded before speaking. “She
said you and her have been to the range and that she outshot you nearly every
time.”

“She and I shot three clips and
she hit the target once more than me,” he huffed. “You know that she has a gun
on her all the time? I’m betting that she’s in her daughter’s room right now
reading her the
Three Little Pigs
with a Glock strapped to her ankle. She
is one scary woman.”

She laughed like he hoped she
would. Then she was quiet for so long he thought she’d fallen asleep. When she
started talking he didn’t interrupt her, but let her say whatever she wanted.

“They wanted me dead at first. They
said that as soon as I was dead my ‘mother’ would have a nervous breakdown and
that she’d be unable to attend my funeral. There was going to be a bomb in the
casket with me and it was going to take everyone out.” He felt a tear hit his
chest. “They were going to kill the children as well so that they could inherit
all of the money.”

Michael had figured it had to do
with the money. He’d been told by all of them that Roscoe had gone so far as to
kidnap one of his own daughters and hold her at gun point to get what he
wanted. It seemed that Guinevere had wanted the same thing.

“Guinnie was trying to help me
escape when Verrie came back. The house…I was getting out of the house when she
hit me with the door. I was trying to get out and get back to you, but she hit
me with… Oh, Michael, the things she said she’d done, the things she said she
was going to do.”

And that was what the police
wanted to talk to her about. They’d been to the empty apartment building that
Guinevere had been staying at. So far they’d found four bodies. They’d been mutilated
almost beyond knowing what sex they were. It seemed that at least one of the
women had an MO that was going to make it easy to close a great many cases.

“They won’t tell me what happened,
only that you and Sin came into the house like some sort of avenging angels and
saved the day.” She shifted so that her hand was on his chest and her chin
resting on it. “Did you and Sin come in with your weapons drawn, ready to be my
saviors?”

He leaned up and kissed her
briefly on the mouth. When she moaned he cupped the back of her head and
brought her to his mouth again. He decided she was the best sort of drug and
found he didn’t want to stop kissing her. She pulled back only because the door
opened.

“I’m sorry, Miss Waite, but we
really need to get some questions answered. Your lawyer is right outside and he
said that if you want him here he is ready, and if you didn’t then, as your
brother, he was coming in. Either way, he was ready.” The agent looked back at
the door before he spoke again. “You have a very protective family. That big
man said if I made you upset he was going to castrate me and make me…well, as a
doctor I thought it was his duty to help people, not harm them.”

Michael laughed and started to get
up, but Grace tightening her body to his had him staying. He glanced over at his
mom when he heard her stirring. He wasn’t sure what she wanted to know or not so
he gently said her name until she woke.

“Oh my, I’m so sorry. I’ve
been…oh, the police.” His mother looked over at them before speaking. “I need
to know. I know I have no right to ask you, but…well, Thomas was my stepson and
I want to know if he…did he…” Michael got up then and went to her. “He didn’t
hurt her, did he?” she asked him softly.

“I don’t think so. I’ll find out
and let you know. Why don’t you—”

“He didn’t. He wasn’t helping me,
but he didn’t hurt me. I think they might have promised him things that he
thought…I don’t believe it was necessary what they did to him, but if it’s any
comfort at all he was gone before he was thrown from the car.”

Michael looked at Grace as she
spoke to his mom. He didn’t know how, but he absolutely knew she was lying. And
he loved her all the more because of it.

Joey moved to the bed and hugged
Grace. They were both crying when his mom left, and it took a few minutes for
Grace to get herself back under control. Michael doubted that very many things
bothered her and knowing that her feelings for his mom were this deep made him
feel very good.

The agent, Jeffery Roy Weber, and
he did use his full name, asked if he could sit down. “It’s been a real long
day. I doubt that I sat down for more’n five minutes all day.”

He stretched out his legs and made
a production of getting settled. Michael had used the same “good old boy”
routine many times before. Both in business and in the service. He was about to
point out that he could cut the crap, but Grace beat him to it.

“Agent Weber, let’s call an apple
and apple here and cut to the chase. I’m a New Yorker. Not born and bred, mind
you, but pretty close. So how about you ask what you want and I’ll answer to
the best of my knowledge.” She looked over at him. “In case it escaped your
notice, this man and I were into some serious necking when you walked in and I,
for one, would like to get back to it.”

Michael looked at the agent’s face
and thought maybe if there was a more shocked-looking face in the world he had
to see it. The agent looked over at him like he wanted to say something. But
Michael agreed with Grace. They had more important things to do than to answer
questions.

“I agree with her. Ask or don’t,
but make it quick or you might get a few things known to you that you might not
have bargained for.” The man blustered for several seconds. “You’re eating at
your time, sir. Get to it.”

~~~

The next morning, they had her
sitting in a chair and Grace started feeling sorry for herself. She was black
and blue over most of her body. Her forehead had fifteen stitches and both her
eyes were blackened. She could get around slowly with the help of a walker, but
it hurt like hell and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d washed her hair,
much less her entire body. When the door to her room opened she nearly snarled
at the person to go the fuck away.

“You know you look like you want
to shoot someone,” Sin said in way of greeting. “I’m armed if you want to make
someone here a good target. There’s that little shit in the lobby that I wouldn’t
mind making skip a few times.”

Making a person skip had been
something that the two of them said about shooting someone. She had said she
didn’t want to kill everyone that pissed her off, but she would like to make
them dance a bit by shooting at their feet. Sin had told her that would be more
like skipping than dancing and it had stuck.

Grace burst into tears as her
other sisters came into the room. They each took a seat and sat on the bed as
well. Grace took the tissue that Alyssa handed her and none of them said a word
until she’d blown her nose twice more.