Grace Anne

chapter 12



Cain looked down at the file in front of him then back up at Drew. Payton was pacing the room and neither man was saying anything. They were waiting on Alyssa to come back from the meeting. Cain started to pick it up again, but couldn’t bring himself to touch it. It was just too…too much.

“I’m sorry I’m late. I have… What is it? What’s happened now?” Alyssa came to sit near him at the conference table. “Cain? Tell me.”

“The money,” he started, and then cleared his throat. “The missing money has been traced to my mother. And she may be in New York.”

“Oh my God, Grace. We have to call her—what the f*ck are you two doing standing there? Go and get her and bring her back here right f*cking now.” Alyssa stood up, started toward the other two men, and Cain pulled her back.

“We can’t. Not yet at any rate. We need…” Drew looked at Payton before he continued. “He has a plan to catch her in the act. We think she might have been the person all along trying to murder all of us.”

That was the hardest thing to get his mind wrapped around. His mother was a murderer. He thought about all the things she’d been up to, the way she’d been—

“If they catch her in the act of no more than just stealing from you then all she’ll get is a slap on the wrist. If we catch her at trying to get to Gr—”

Alyssa cut Payton off. “If you even whisper the words, ‘I’m going to use Grace as bait,’ I will drop kick you across this room, then out of the building from the highest window.” Her voice was low and Cain knew she meant every word.

“She’ll be watched at all times,” Payton said. “I have a…she’s involved with a buddy of mine. A good friend who served as a Navy Seal. He’s the best at what he does and he’ll keep her from harm.”

“The guy in her bedroom,” Cain asked. “If you pimped out my sister to make this happen, so help me Christ, whatever Alyssa has planned for you is nothing compared to what I’ll do to your sorry ass.”

Payton backed away with his hands up. Cain had a moment to remember he was armed, but kept moving. It wasn’t until Drew stepped between them that he stopped. He glared at the men, but didn’t back down.

“She and Mr. Cunningham hooked up on their own. I swear. Michael called Payton a few days ago to ask him about her and that was before we found out where the money was going. He was asking if she was attached and to tell Payton that he was seeing her. He didn’t know; none of us did.”

“Michael Cunningham of Cunningham and Cunningham? I know him. Well, my father knew him. He is some big deal buyer in New York. He buys and sells…well, everything, I guess. Last I heard he was making arrangements to purchase fallen rail cars as they come up on shore. He nearly had that in the bag, last I heard.” Alyssa sat at her desk and began clicking on the computer. “Here, look Cain. He’s the real deal and almost as rich as we are.”

Cain walked around the desk, but still wasn’t convinced that Payton hadn’t set this up. He liked the guy and he was really good to his sister, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill him if he got Grace hurt. Cain sat in the chair that his wife got up from and started skimming the articles about the man who his sister was seeing.

“It says here he has a son. What happened to his wife?” Cain looked up when no one answered. “Drew? I asked you a question.”

“He never married. Terrance Michael Cunningham is the result of a long affair Michael had with a woman he never really liked.” Payton sat down, took the file, and slid a picture across to them. “She was killed about a year and a half after the kid was born. So far as we can tell, she never had a thing to do with either of them after he was born.”

Cain read over the file again. There was something he was missing, he knew it, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He looked up when Payton cleared his throat. From the look on his face, he knew that whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it.

“Your sister is in deep shit. Grace has been harassed for several months, it seems. Michael said that the calls and the threats have become quite violent. He said that whoever is threatening her has also targeted him and his son.” Payton shifted in his seat. “Has she ever said anything to you about it? Not even a slip of the tongue?”

“No,” Cain said sadly. “She talks with Jazzie the most, but I’m sure she would have told me if she’d said anything. Gracie moved to New York and, as you know, doesn’t come home all that much. She left, literally, in the middle of the night while I was away at school.” He pulled Alyssa into his lap when she came to him. “How bad is it, Payton? Is it as bad as the rest?”

Payton pulled out another bunch of papers. “Michael took the tape from her machine, had a copy made, and sent it to me. She doesn’t know and will probably be pissed at him when she finds out, so let’s keep this between us. He claims she’s not heard the messages. She told him that she doesn’t listen to them, simply erases them as soon as she thinks about it.”

“But you don’t believe her, do you?”

Payton shook his head.

“What does this Cunningham person know? Has she shared anything with him?”

“He told me yesterday that he was taking her to his house and sitting her down and talking to her. Whether or not that happened, I don’t know. Michael said that he would come with her this weekend even if she didn’t invite him. He…he’s in love with her.”

Cain hugged Alyssa tighter. He had to ask, but he wasn’t sure he could without breaking down. He looked at Drew then at Payton. He took a deep breath. “My mother, she’s been trying to kill us all since the beginning, right?”

Payton nodded.

“Why, do we know?”

He shook his head this time.

“Then how do you know it’s her? I mean, maybe she’s taking the money because, hell, I don’t know, maybe she thinks she’s owed it…Holy Christ, my father. She’s taking this because of my father. And we’re all…”

“We’re all paying because she feels we are the cause of his death,” Alyssa finished for him. “What are we going to do to finish this? Because I, for one, want this over with.”

~~~

Guinevere watched the house. Well, she watched the gate. She had been told by Ginny that if anyone got by her without her warning someone, she’d be hurting. Guinevere huffed. Ginny was becoming entirely too full of herself. Closing her eyes against the small pain that was just behind her ears, Guinevere thought about the past few weeks.

Ginny was the least of their problems. Verrie was becoming impossible to control. Her violent outrages were getting to be messy. Just last night it had taken her over three hours to clean up the blood and gore after one of her episodes. And the man…Guinevere felt her stomach lurch at what she’d done to him.

Not only had she eviscerated him, but she’d cut off his cock and every other appendage that he had. His fingers were put into his mouth, along with his cock. But it was what she’d done with his entrails that made her think of going to the bushes and throwing up again. He’d been decorated with them. And if that wasn’t enough, she’d even draped them around the headboard and foot board like a canopy in a little girl’s room. Guinevere hadn’t even known there was that much belly in a person.

“You loved it and you know it. You’re just jealous that I can make murder a work of art.” Guinevere stiffened when Verrie’s voice entered her head. “And don’t be such a prude. You’ve killed your fair share of men over the past few years. Like those idiots you hired to take out the money-grubbing whore.”

“Killing for hire and killing for pleasure are two different things altogether. I killed those ‘idiots,’ as you called them, because they f*cked up. You killed that man because…why did you kill him?” Guinevere watched a car pull into the drive, but not go through the gates before it pulled away. It didn’t enter, but simply pulled in. She didn’t bother making note of the license plate number.

“Because I could. And it sounded like fun. Have you ever stuck a knife into someone’s soft parts and felt the way it slid in? It’s quite invigorating, let me tell you. Then there is the way the guts smell when you unearth them.” Verrie made a noise that reminded Guinevere of kissing and her stomach lurched again. “You need to have a little more fun. Think of the possibilities.”

Guinevere did and she ran for the bushes behind her and threw up. And when there was nothing else she heaved some more. By the time she’d gotten back to her post and settled, she noticed that the gates were coming to a quiet close.

“Well f*ck.” She looked up and down the street and didn’t see anything moving. She didn’t know if someone had come onto the grounds or off of them. She was in so much trouble that she was nearly sick again. Thinking hard, she tried to decide what she should do. If she didn’t report it then no one would be the wiser. If there was someone else on the property, which she reasoned had to be what had happened, then she was clear. She’d been told to tell if someone left, not entered. She sat back down on the grassy area and tried to calm herself. If she was stressed or too upset then one of the others would come back.

She must have dosed, or one of the others came by to check on her, because the next thing she knew she was back at the house they rented. The smell nearly made her sick again. Guinevere sat up on the couch and noticed that her entire front was covered in blood. Her nose had bled again. It was happening more and more and that frightened her a great deal. She went to the bathroom to clean up and found that someone had made a bloody mess in there.

Thankfully there was no body this time, just a lot of blood. It took her twenty minutes to clean it up. Then she stepped into the shower and cleaned herself and her clothes. They didn’t have a washer and she couldn’t take these bloody things to the laundromat.

When she stepped out of the shower and glanced into the mirror Guinevere froze. She’d not seen her for a very long time. Guinnie was staring at her for a long time and, when she spoke, Guinevere had a premonition that scared her more than Verrie ever did.

“We’re all going to die very soon by Gracie’s hand. And when we do, I will be at peace for the first time in all my life.”