Surrender (11 page)

Chapter Ninete
en

G
unner stayed
with Grace for the better part of an hour. When he came back out, Dare noted that she was sleeping comfortably.

“No narcotics, right?” he asked.

Gunner nodded with a small frown. “She told me the same thing. Bad reaction?”

“Something like that.”

“How long have you had her here?”

“Less than forty-eight hours.”

“And you almost killed her,” Gunner said furiously.

“I didn’t cause her fever.”

“Might as well have. She’s dehydrated too. What the hell?”

Ah, fuck.
Dare ran a hand through his hair. “I think she might’ve had a panic attack.”

“Did she black out?”

“No.”

“Sometimes high fevers can cause seizures.”

“She saw a friend get killed. Not by me.”

“You might possibly be the worst kidnapper ever,” Gunner told him. “And that’s not a compliment.”

“Get off my back, Gunner.”

“You were the one who called me in to babysit your sister.”

“Babysit me?” Avery interjected from behind them. Shit, Dare hadn’t even heard her coming. “Is that what you’ve been doing?”

“Not very well,” Dare muttered, but Gunner wasn’t having that. Because he knew about Powell—Avery had slipped and told him. Even though Avery hadn’t mentioned the mistake to Dare, he could see the look of pure ice in Gunner’s eyes when he’d come into the house.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Gunner asked quietly now, his voice a razor in the dusk. “You’re calling me to help you. You care about Grace.”

“So?”

“You now care about the only thing standing between you and certain death. Do I really need to explain that?” Gunner asked Dare. “Fuck you for dragging me into this.”

“You’ve been in worse,” Dare informed him, and Gunner’s fists clenched.

“Richard Powell’s kid? Really? You thought you could take Powell’s kid and walk away unscathed? You’re in some serious shit with this, and you sent your sister to fool me.” Gunner turned to Avery. “You realize how much trouble you’re in? Quadruple it from what I told you last night.”

“Back out now if you want,” Dare told him.

Gunner threw his bag across the room. “I’d rather beat the shit out of you.”

“Go ahead—but get Grace better first.”

“I already gave her prescription ibuprofen for the pain and fever; that will make her sleep it off. Antibiotics won’t do shit. As for the rest of it, fuck. Just fuck.” Gunner ran both hands through his hair, and Avery felt a thin trickle of sweat bead up between her breasts.

She told him, “Dare said you were like family. I need family.”

“Ah, come on, Avery, don’t pull that guilt shit with me.” Gunner sounded so frustrated that she wondered why he was in the business he was in if he didn’t deal well with danger. Somehow this was different, and she needed to figure out why. There was apparently a huge learning curve that went along with being Darius’s kid. She needed to shorten her educational time.

Gunner stormed out onto the porch, and both she and Dare followed him.

“Powell’s not invincible,” Dare pointed out. “Obviously, he’s got a weakness, and she’s inside that room.”

“We’re all fucked. Everything Powell comes in contact with, he destroys. That’s why I never took any jobs that concerned him. And now I’m involved up to my goddamned neck.” Gunner sat down heavily, let his legs dangle off the porch. Even though there was only a brackish trickle of water, and tall grasses and twenty feet between the porch and the water, Avery wondered if there were any gators that wandered up here. She’d seen them, their sleek heads sliding through the dark waters as Gunner’s Kodiak cut through the brackish murk easily, and she didn’t want to get any closer.

“If we’re all fucked, then maybe sticking together’s the best thing to do,” she said.

Gunner looked up at the sky and laughed quietly, resigned. “Key’s involved in this somehow,” he told her. “So whatever’s going on between you two—”

“Key?” Dare said slowly.

“You know Key too?” she asked. “He and Jem were asking about you.”

“Jem’s his brother—former CIA,” Gunner clarified for Dare, and then it was Dare’s turn to curse.

“What the hell’s going on between you and Key?” Dare demanded angrily.

“Nothing. Will the two of you concentrate on the business at hand and not my love life?”

“Love life?” Dare asked, and she sighed.

“Forget it. That’s not what I meant. Can we focus on what’s going on here, please?” Avery asked.

Dare nodded. “You guys will stay here tonight,” he said. “Avery, in the morning, I need you to go to Grace’s house. Use her key—say you’re her cousin if anyone asks. She went out of town unexpectedly and she asked you to grab a few things of hers.”

“What do you really want me to do?”

“Find anything that proves to me she’s on the up-and-up,” Dare said.

“And if she’s not?”

“I’ll deal with her.”

She wanted to tell him that he was so far beyond dealing with her that it wasn’t funny, but she didn’t. Not now, anyway.

“I think Powell’s guys are around the bayou,” Dare told Gunner.

“That dead friend of Grace’s you mentioned earlier?” Gunner asked, then continued without waiting for an answer. “What about Key and Jem? They’re not going to stop poking around for you. Want to share what that’s all about?”

“Not especially.” Dare stared up at the porch’s old ceiling beams before looking back at Avery and Gunner. “After you check Grace’s house for me, you two go back to the shop, find Key and Jem and bring them here.”

“We are being herded together—I just can’t tell if it’s you or Rip who’s doing it,” Gunner told him angrily.

“Neither can I,” Dare said. “Neither can I.”

Chapter Twenty

A
very slept res
tlessly that night, keeping an ear out for Dare and Gunner. Grace appeared to be having a rough night. She’d peeked in and seen Grace lying in bed, flushed and crying.

She didn’t think Dare was going to be able to use Grace in the way he’d originally intended—and Avery was glad. She didn’t want him to have what appeared now to be innocent blood on his hands. They’d find another way to fix things.

Now she made another pot of coffee for all of them and drank hers on the screened-in back porch. The security lights were on around the property, the rain had finally stopped and she could hear the bayou teeming with life.

She curled up on one of the chairs for a while, her hands wrapped around the mug, until Dare came and sat next to her.

“Grace is holding something back,” Dare said.

“Maybe it’s not what you think—maybe it’s something personal,” Avery pointed out.

“I need to know everything in order to make a decision about what I’m doing with her. She needs to be doing everything she can to stay out of Powell’s grasp. Instead, she’s . . . Fuck, I can’t decide what the hell her game is.”

“Maybe because there’s no game.”

“Powell’s daughter has a game. You live with a guy like that long enough, it bleeds into you.” He paused. “Heard you’re stealing wallets now.”

“It’s an old hobby. How’s Grace feeling?”

“Fever’s breaking again. I think she’ll be better by tonight. Gunner’s with her.”

“You’re not going to tell me about Key, are you?”

“You’ll know more soon enough. But he’s in the same kind of trouble we are.”

“Because of Darius?”

“All roads do lead back to him,” Dare affirmed, then drank the rest of his coffee in two gulps. “Gunner will take you to Grace’s.”

“He should stay with Grace.”

“You’re not going alone.”

“Isn’t it more suspicious with the two of us breaking in, though?”

“Fine—he’ll wait in the car along the back path. You go in by yourself. Fast, though.”

“What exactly am I looking for again?”

“Anything to help us.”

“Suppose it ends up hurting Grace?”

“I’m beginning to think that’s the only way any of this is going to work,” he said. He wasn’t happy about it, though, or else he wouldn’t have the dark circles under his eyes or the worry in his face.

She’d never kidnapped anyone, but she knew that you weren’t supposed to care about your kidnap victim’s well-being. Not to the extent he seemed to.

“She’s been through hell,” he told her gruffly before he got up to leave. “She’s been through goddamned hell, Avery.”

When he went back inside, she followed him. She showered and dressed—she’d slept in one of Dare’s shirts, but he’d washed her clothes overnight—and got into the old truck with Gunner.

“You’d get lost out here,” he told her.

“I do have a sucky sense of direction,” she agreed, and they drove the rest of the way in silence, about a thirty-minute drive, since Grace’s house was on the other side of the bayou. She was pretty sure Gunner doubled back a few times to make sure they weren’t followed.

She concentrated on the job ahead of her. She had Dare’s gun, a knife and her cell phone in her pockets, along with Grace’s keys.

“You remember your cover story?”

“Yes—I’m Grace’s cousin, going to grab her mail and a few other things.”

Gunner nodded, pulled off the road and pointed. “It’s that one. Go in the back.”

She looked through the keys and found the one marked for the back door. She threaded through the path so as not to step on what were beautifully planted greens and flowers leading up to a small back porch. There were two white chairs and a small table there, with hanging baskets of flowers, all of which were shining, thanks to the rain.

No neighbors were close enough to see her now, but people around here looked out for one another, and she had no doubt a suspicious neighbor might stop by before she was through searching.

She used the key and closed the door behind her. Gun drawn, she went through every room quickly and then gave Gunner the
everything’s okay
wave out one of the back windows.

Then she went on to searching more carefully.

It wasn’t large—a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living room—but it was fastidiously maintained.

By the bed, there were two large suitcases that were open—and full. There was a small bag on the bed that was also packed, with toiletries and airline tickets under the name Adele Manners.

But the odd thing was, the tickets were for three weeks earlier. Avery put the tickets in her pocket and wondered why Grace had missed her trip. Three weeks ago didn’t correspond to anything for Avery or Dare, but she’d bring them to him anyway.

Beyond that, there was nothing—no photo albums or journals—but the house still felt like a home, thanks to the glassware and plants and quilts. There was a small TV in the living room—lots of books, a mix of classics and popular fiction.

This was a woman who still lived like she’d have to pick up and leave at any time. There was not even a scrap of paper, beyond the tickets, that could incriminate her. Not even a shopping list.

She heard a car pull up out front and glanced through the window while ducking. The man who got out didn’t look like a neighbor. He was dressed down, in jeans and a T-shirt, and carried a piece of pipe along his thigh that would’ve blended in if Avery hadn’t been looking for weapons.

The car was an old one that looked like it belonged in the bayou.

She backed away carefully, got herself out the back door and hid in the mass of trees to the right of the house. Gunner must’ve heard the guy too, because he’d rolled the truck out of sight. She saw him standing in the trees, camouflaged until he gave her a short wave.

She remained as still as possible and realized she still had a good view into the house through a back window.

The man either picked the lock or used a skeleton key, because the door wasn’t kicked in. He closed it behind him and walked around. When he didn’t find anyone, he made a phone call, and then he began to smash everything he could.

She stopped watching, put her forehead against the cypress bark and tried not to wince as the woman’s only possessions were ransacked and her house destroyed.

Grace had put a lot of care into that house.

The destruction seemed to last forever. Real time, maybe five minutes. When she heard the slam of the front door, she moved carefully and watched the man get back into his car and leave. She committed the plate to memory—it wasn’t a rental—and then she turned to check on Gunner.

But he was no longer there. She shifted to look toward the house and saw him coming around the side from the front. She hadn’t seen him move from the trees and made a mental note to ask him to teach her that trick. If she was going to be skulking in the bushes, she might as well make it fun.

“Were you trying to catch him?” she asked.

“I would’ve caught him if I’d been trying,” he said, and she rolled her eyes.

“Okay, Cajun Superman, so what did you do?”

“I’m not Cajun, and I put a tracker on the car,” he explained patiently, holding up his cell phone to show her the moving dot. “If he doesn’t find it, we can see where he’s staying.”

She noted that he didn’t say anything about the Superman part. “Think it’s around here?”

“Pretty impossible. It’s a tight-knit community, even after Katrina. If someone like him set up shop in an abandoned house, we’d hear about it. I’m going to grab some security buttons from the truck. I’ll plant them in the house and then dust for prints—keep an eye out for me. And text Dare—tell him to be on the lookout in case that guy has his address.”

She did both, half melting from the sun and the stress, but her adrenaline surge more than made up for it. Nothing came or went, including a breeze, as Gunner did his work inside Grace’s ruined house, and when he came out they moved quietly into the truck.

When they got back to the house, Dare was waiting on t
he porch, shotgun by his side. “No one’s driven by.”

“No other tracks but ours,” Gunner agreed, and told Dare about the break-in.

“You’re all right?” Dare asked her.

“I’m fine—he didn’t spot me. But he was definitely a pro and looking for Grace.”

“He sure sent the message,” Dare muttered.

She handed him the tickets. “Are you going to tell her about her house?”

Gunner brushed past her and said, “I’ll do it,” and when Dare didn’t stop him he went inside.

* * *

Grace had dreamed, but it wasn’t the drugged kind of dreaming from earlier. She fought the fever and the bad dreams and instead focused on Dare. It helped that he barely left her side all night.

At times, she heard him talking to another man. She knew the blond man had come to help.

Now, when she woke, she was alone, and the blond man with the tattoos was sitting next to the bed, checking her vitals.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” he told her. “But you’re doing better. I’m Gunner—you were pretty out of it when we met.”

“I’m much better,” she said, and he nodded and took her temperature before agreeing, “I think we finally broke the fever. But you’ve still got to rest and drink lots of fluids.”

“Are you some sort of traveling bayou doctor?”

“Medic in the Navy for a while,” he told her. “A pretty good crash course.”

“And you’re friends with Dare?”

“Depends on the day.”

She laughed, but he remained serious. “You have something to tell me,” she said.

“Something to ask you,” he corrected as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and showed her a picture. “Do you recognize him?”

She glanced at the picture, then took Gunner’s wrist to move the phone closer. Then she pushed his arm away just as fast. Her throat tightened, breath left her body, even as her adrenaline raced. She heard Gunner mutter, “Shit,” as she tried to leave the room, tugging on the doorknob.

She couldn’t get far enough away from that picture.

“Grace, come on, honey . . . please—he’s not anywhere close to here,” Gunner told her, over and over in a soothing voice, until finally she was able to meet his eyes. “You are safe.”

“For now,” she told him. “Where was he?”

He hesitated for a long moment before telling her. “At your house.”

“Why?”

“Avery and I went there to check on things. While we were there, he broke in. Smashed it up when he couldn’t find you. We assumed he was a pro.”

“Yes, he is. I know him.” In her worst nightmares, she could still see his face hovering over her. His wasn’t the only face she saw, but it was by far the most sadistic of the bunch. “He works for . . .”

“Your father,” he finished. “Dare told me. I’m here to help.”

“And here I thought you were just a doctor.”

“I’m not just anything,
chère
.” His half grin pulled her back from the lingering shock at seeing Rip’s bodyguard. She nodded, hugged her arms around herself as he continued. “We weren’t followed here, so you’re still safe. No matter how this started . . . look, it’ll end differently if you stay with Dare.”

“I think we need each other,” she said, and he glanced up at her, his brow furrowed. “Did you know Rip too? Did he hurt you?”

“You can’t let yourself be hurt without your consent. Take back your life, Grace—and don’t ever let him close to you again.”

When he left, she realized he’d never answered her question about whether he knew her father.