Surrender A Section 8 Novel

Chapter Fifteen





After getting Grace safely into the truck, Dare grabbed the flashlight and checked under the chassis and the hood and anywhere else a tracker could’ve been planted. Then he drove faster on the way home, but also circled into the surrounding bayou first before taking a slightly different route in case someone was staking out the house.

No one followed, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more of Powell’s men out here, hoping to get lucky. He covered the bridge up behind them and planned on using only the water routes from now on. He drove with the lights off as he headed toward the house.

He’d spent a lifetime learning to read people, a skill born from necessity to be able to keep up with Darius’s many moods, plus Adele’s and other S8 men he spent time with. There were also numerous authority figures he’d needed to lie to in order to keep up appearances, especially when he was older and Darius would disappear. Dare got tired of staying with Adele or random neighbors when she was on a mission with Darius, and so he’d learned to avoid child protective services or overly interested teachers.

Grace was a slightly more difficult read because of whom she’d grown up with. She’d built a nice wall around herself, but being near the place she felt bound to—Darius’s house—was helping to break her down.

He tried to tell himself he was doing her a favor, that carrying all that damned baggage around forever wasn’t good for anyone.

There was no way he could turn her back over to Rip and live with himself, but he wouldn’t tell her that and give up his bargaining power.

And she was hiding something from him. Maybe it was for self-protection; maybe it was to screw him over. But sooner or later, she’d spill. He knew it because he always got people to spill. He was the best interrogator the SEALs had—his gift, they’d called it.

It was what he did, but it was a gift he kept well hidden because it kept him in good stead with everyone . . . until the damned jungle.

Next to him, Grace remained still and silent, her arms wrapped around herself. She was partially in shock, her breathing fast and jerky.

She was also close to panicking, and panicked people made bad decisions. Grace would be no different. And he hadn’t bothered to try to calm her down.

When he stopped the truck outside the house, Grace bolted. He didn’t think she’d planned on doing so, figured it was more instinct mixed with grief, but it didn’t matter.

She was running. Predictably. He’d given her other chances, backed her against the wall to see what she was made of. Sometimes forcing someone’s hand made them reveal their entire battle plan, ensuring he could take the element of surprise away from their future interactions.

He gave her enough rope to hang herself. With any luck, she’d get lost and scared shitless enough to rethink running again, and then he’d go track her, prey to predator, stalking the dark bayou the way he had as a teen, ensuring his inner compass was as finely tuned as it could be.

Even now, years later, he knew it like the back of his hand. Spotted her by the harsh breaths and rush of skin against clothes, against brush, signs and sounds that could be honed in on only after years of fine-tuning himself to be the perfect machine for stealth and secrecy.

The job. He’d started to lose track of the fact that this was still exactly that—nothing more, nothing less—no matter how pretty or tortured his self-proclaimed leverage was.

He moved silently behind her, threaded through the brush and brambles in the soaking rain alongside her for a while without her noticing.

She was crying, although he had a feeling she’d never admit it.


* * *

Grace barely knew she was running. She was overwhelmed and couldn’t see beyond the tears blurring her eyes.

All she knew was that she needed to escape—didn’t matter whom or what she was running from—because really, she knew deep down in her heart that it wasn’t only Dare.

She took off through the small backyard that was once a garden and straight into the depths of the bayou grand that lined the back of the house beyond. There were maybe twenty feet of high grass before she’d hit the water. At one time, she could always find a pirogue or two floating next to the small dock, as though drawn to it.

As though they knew whoever stayed here was always looking for an escape route.

All the while she ran, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d let her run, that this was all part of his damned plan. But Dare needed to know that she’d never gone down without a fight before and she wasn’t about to start now.

She couldn’t escape him, but if she didn’t try, she’d never forgive herself. When faced with the opening, she’d taken it, though she was moving through the darkness that couched the bayou more slowly than she would’ve liked.

In the daylight, she knew every square inch of the place. At night, she’d refused to step outside, remained huddled under the covers, terrified first that Rip would find her and then, later, terrified that she’d be alone like that forever.

She’d never told Marnie anything about her past, or asked her for help, even though Marnie’s self-styled underground railroad could easily have helped Grace get lost forever.

But she was already so lost—she couldn’t bear to have it be for forever.

Finally she got her bearings, her breaths coming so hard she felt as though her lungs were ripping out of her chest. She slipped and slid in the tall grass and then caught the path down to the water and her energy revived.

Dare was waiting for her on the dock, facing her, arms crossed. She barely saw his outline, his arms crossed loosely over his chest.

This time, there was no pirogue in the water.

She held her hands up, the international I surrender sign, wondered if that would be enough.

He walked toward her, brushed past her and said, “Follow me and don’t pull this shit again.”

She struggled with everything she had so she could keep up with him and walked by his side as much as possible all the way back to the house.

True to his word, he called the police as soon as he’d locked and alarmed them back inside the house. Then, while she continued to listen, he made another call with instructions for Marnie’s burial.

Grace busied herself making strong coffee. He supplied the bottle of whiskey and they sat in their wet clothes and drank the mix and she tried to blur the edges of the night’s memory, if only for a brief moment.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he told her, his voice sounding slightly hollow. In his line of work, she knew he saw dead bodies all the time. But this seemed to affect him more than it should have.

“If I hadn’t been with you . . .” She trailed off and he laughed a little.

“My kidnapping saved your life, yes.”

But he didn’t say that she was no longer kidnapped. Nothing had really changed . . . nothing and everything.

She fished in her pocket and held out Marnie’s phone to him. “I took it off the table by the door.”

“It’s best that you have no contact with any of these women—for your safety.”

“Isn’t there a way you can secure the phone line or forward the calls? Please, Dare, this is important.”

“What’s more important than your life?”

“The lives of the women who are saved by what Marnie does,” she told him. “She might not have been able to put me together, but she damn well tried. And she did more for me on that front than I’d ever expected anyone to.”

“Forget it. We’ve done what we could. I have other things to worry about.” He took out the battery, broke the SIM card and broke the phone in half before chucking it into the garbage.

She was out of her chair trying to stop him, but he was too quick.

“If you’d let her come in earlier, this wouldn’t have happened,” she told him, gave him a hard slap across the face. He didn’t flinch, merely grabbed her wrist to stop her from doing it again.

“You know that’s not true. They were lying in wait for her.”

“We don’t know who killed her—maybe it’s someone working with you.”

“Maybe it’s someone working for you. Maybe you’re in contact with Powell and you’re not telling me,” he said.

“I would never— I told you I’d rather die than go back with him, and I meant it.”

“Why should I believe you?” he demanded.

“Why shouldn’t you?”

He didn’t answer that, told her instead, “You need protection.”

She hadn’t realized S8 had been unable to provide that any longer. Adele had been her last hope, and whatever she’d put in place to keep Grace off the grid was wearing thin. Something dangerous was bound to happen.

“I was supposed to move a few months ago,” she admitted.

“Why didn’t you?”

“I’m supposed to build something and then leave it every six months for the rest of my life.” She stared at him. “That’s as bad as being imprisoned by my father.”

“You’d be alive.”

“You know that’s not living.”

“Some people would take it any way they could. Some people would fight for survival,” Dare said fiercely.

“Some people . . . or you?” she asked, and he pulled back with a muttered curse. Instead of answering her further, he told her to go goddamned shower and get out of the wet clothes. She knew she needed to get warm and dry, did as he said, all the while knowing he was right on the other side of the partially open door.


* * *

The steam escaped the bathroom door, swirled around Dare like a goddamned tease. When he walked by, he could barely see the outline of Grace’s naked body through the frosted shower door, but he’d seen enough to feel like a dirty old man.

“What the hell am I doing?” he asked himself out loud.

Saving your sister. Avenging your father. Saving himself too, but that mattered to him a hell of a lot less than the first two.

Avery didn’t deserve any of this. Maybe Grace didn’t either, but sometimes sacrifices had to be made, and there was always collateral damage involved. He’d learned that from a very early age.

And while he had made a call about Marnie, it wasn’t to the police. He wasn’t alerting anyone about anything. Instead, he’d asked his own voice mail to make arrangements for Marnie’s body and clean up. Later he’d ask Gunner to help him out.

He stitched his arm up quickly, put on a T-shirt to cover the gauze so Grace wouldn’t see. Thought about telling her what he’d found at Marnie’s but decided against it for now.

The water shut off and he heard the shower door open and Grace moving around. Then she came toward the open door, saying, “Dare?”

She peeked out. She wore a heavy towel wrapped around her, her bare shoulders dotted with water droplets. She smelled like lavender and hibiscus and sunshine, her hair wet and tumbling over her shoulders.

He handed her some of his clothes to borrow—a T-shirt and some shorts that would be huge on her—plus a pair of socks.

He glanced down at her toes and saw that her nails were painted a deep plum color that suited her. She had sexy toes. And they weren’t retreating.

“I won’t try to escape again. There’s nowhere for me to go—you know that already.”

He met her gaze. Her eyes held an honesty that nearly broke him. “Then why run?”

“To know I can.”

He couldn’t argue. “Get dressed and come into the kitchen.”

She blinked at his trust, smiled and then went back into the bathroom and shut the door. He changed out of his wet clothes and showered in the other bathroom. Found her sitting at the table waiting for him.

She’d made more coffee. Handed him a cup, which he accepted.

After a long beat, she told him, “Your father and Adele trusted me.”

“They knew I wouldn’t take their word for it.”

“You don’t trust your father?”

“Do you trust yours?” he asked, and she sat back and wrapped her arms around herself.

“Okay, yes, I get it. This world—it’s different. It’s not about trust. It’s about what you can do for someone.”

He went to the stove, turned the flame on under a pan and went to the fridge. Butter, bread and cheese and a few minutes later, he put a grilled cheese sandwich in front of her. Followed by a small glass of whiskey.

“You’re still shaking,” he informed her.

She nodded as she bit into the sandwich, closed her eyes and gave a soft moan of appreciation, like it was the best thing ever. He remained standing, eating the gooey, warm sandwich barefoot while leaning against the counter. He caught the sounds of tornado sirens in the distance.

She heard them too.

“Storm’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he observed.

“Well, if that’s not a metaphor,” she murmured, and he shook his head.

“We’ve got a hell of a lot to get straight here.”

“Yes. But I think we’re off to a better start this time.”

“We’ll see about that,” he muttered. “Why don’t you tell me more about your time with Darius and Adele? I know you weren’t here for six years straight.”

“No, at first for about six months. And then I lived in Alabama for a year,” she admitted. “And then Houston, Tampa. London for several months.”

“And you came back here two years ago?”

“Yes. And I haven’t seen either of them for a year.”

“Why back here?”

She glanced up at him with those big dark eyes. “Because I asked them to. I missed it.”

She’d wanted stability. He couldn’t blame her, and obviously Darius and Adele didn’t want to let her down.

Was Grace using them, or had it been the other way around?

“Did they know something about you, Grace? Some reason you’d be valuable to Rip?”

“Beyond being his daughter?”

There was something else going on. Dare was going to get to the bottom of it, for all their sakes.