ring. “Hello.”
“Dad, it’s Grace.”
“Grace. Do you realize what time—”
“Dad, I need your help.” Jacob’s wound couldn’t wait for her father’s lecture. “Your medical help.”
Suddenly, his tone turned sharp. “Is something the matter? Is it the baby?”
“The baby?” She gripped the phone tighter. Deceit warred with desperation inside of her. “Yes, it’s the baby.”
“Are you spotting again?”
“No,” she answered, not wanting to add that possibility to her father’s worry. “But I can’t explain over the phone. I need you to come over here now. And don’t tell anyone where you are going. I want to keep this private.”
“Don’t tell…Grace Ann, maybe you had better explain—”
“Not now, Dad. Please,” she added to soften her order. She moved her hand over Jacob’s heart, took reassurance in its steady beat against her palm. “And bring your medical bag.”
“I will, but I want to know what’s going on when I get there.”
“I promise full disclosure,” she agreed. “And Dad, do one more thing for me?”
“What?”
“Hurry,” she whispered.
Charles Renne hesitated for only a split second. They might not understand each other’s views, but he was a father. One that understood fear. “I will.”
Grace snapped the phone shut and shoved it into her sweatshirt pocket. Her father would take a good hour to reach her from Washington, D.C. Jacob couldn’t wait that long.
“I can do this but you need to be easy with our baby, okay big guy?” It took some shifting, but she managed to maneuver herself behind him. Rain soaked her sweatshirt, plastered her hair to her forehead. Impatiently, she brushed the blond strands away, then slid her hands under his arms and around his chest.
Jacob was a good six inches over her own five-eight frame, and had well over fifty pounds on her. He was built lean, with the firm muscles and long limbs of a distance runner. Grateful her taste didn’t run toward male bulk, she settled him back until he rested against her chest and shoulder.
The clatter of metal ricocheted in the night air. She glanced down. A pistol lay on the cement, its barrel inches from her feet.
His? Once again, her mind rejected the idea that Jacob had shot Helene. No matter what secrets he carried, he wasn’t capable of murder. From the moment Helene had introduced Jacob to Grace, there was no doubt about the close friendship between the two.
Ignoring the weapon, she gripped him between her thighs. Slowly, she scooted him back through the doorway. Using the strength of her legs and arms, she tugged and pulled in short bursts of energy. The struggle took more than twenty minutes. Twenty minutes in which she pleaded, prayed, begged and swore. But she managed it.
Once inside, she scooted back toward the fireplace and lowered his shoulders gently to the floor. Quickly, she closed the door, grabbed a pillow and placed it under his head.
For months, she’d worried about him, raged at him—yearned, grieved, loved him—silently through the long, dark nights.
But not once had she been terrified for him.
Until now.
His face was pale, stark against his deep brown hair, now darker with rain, sticky with blood. His features cut in razor-thin angles. Sharper, leaner since the last time she’d seen him. A four-inch gash split the hairline above the middle of his forehead. Blood and bruises covered most of his features.
She knelt beside him, saw him shiver. Cursing herself, she threw a few more logs on the fire.
But it was his shoulder that worried her the most. Blood was everywhere. His face, neck and arm were coated with it. From his head, or shoulder, or both. She couldn’t be sure which.
Her pulse thickened with fear, making her hands heavy, her fingers tremble. She shook them, trying to settle them and her nerves, then removed his suit jacket. A shoulder holster crowded under his arm. Something she hadn’t noticed when dragging him in. Quickly, she unbelted the holster and tossed it aside. Within minutes, she had him stripped to his underwear and covered him to the waist with her comforter.
The bullet had torn a hole through his right shoulder, leaving an exit wound on the back side.
Fear and confusion warred within, but right now she had time for neither. Instead, she crossed to the linen cupboard and pulled out a clean, white hand towel.
After running the cloth under warm water, she returned to his side with it and her biggest pan filled with hotter water. She tucked the blanket around him, knowing she couldn’t do anything other than clean the wound until her father got there.
With gentle fingers, she brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, then systematically dabbed the blood away from the gash.
“I’ll give you one thing, Lomax,” she whispered. She rinsed the towel out in the water, watched it turn pink, before she switched her attention to his shoulder. “You sure as hell know how to make an entrance.”
“He’s coming, Mr. Kragen.”
Oliver Kragen sat on a park bench as dawn broke over the Chesapeake Bay. His enforcer, Frank Sweeney, stood no more then ten feet away, his bulky frame eclipsing the sun behind him. Dressed in an Armani suit, the man appeared more like a pro football player ready to renegotiate his contract than the mercenary he was.
And that’s exactly why Oliver had hired him.
“I’ll give you odds the bastard screwed up.”
Oliver didn’t acknowledge Sweeney’s comment. Instead, he waited until the click of shoe soles sounded behind him. Rather than turn in greeting, Oliver tossed the remainder of his Danish to a nearby pigeon. After all, Boyd Webber wasn’t a peer, he was an employee.
“She’s dead.”
Oliver glanced at Sweeney, a silent order to leave. Once the big man stepped away, Kragen spoke up, but his focus remained on the pigeons at their feet. “How?” The question was low, pleasant.
Boyd wasn’t fooled. But he didn’t care, either. The exmarine had more than two dozen kills under his belt and had survived more horrors than the bloodiest special effects ever created. Nothing on this earth made him afraid of dying. Least of all a weasel like Kragen. “The Garrett woman had a gun. They both did. It forced my hand.”
“They forced your hand because they were armed? They’re government operatives. What did you expect, Webber?” Kragen’s voice hardened. “If I remember right, I told you it was imperative that the Garrett woman was to be brought to me. Alive.”
“It
