Grace Anne

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 f*ck 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.

“You must think I’m a ninny. I’ve been through all this crap over the past few days and here I am upset because I have a few bruises on my face.” She looked at all of them before she said what she really thought. “I should have told you all. It’s…this is totally my fault that all of this happened to you—”

“That’s enough. You had nothing to do with the insanity of one person. My God, you were hurt just as much as any one of us,” Jazzie snapped. “Had you told us then, I’m sure that the same things would have happened. We were all duped by her.”

Grace didn’t believe that for a minute, but she didn’t say anything. It was hard enough trying to get a grip on what had transpired in that house without adding the burden of trying to explain why she felt the way she did.

“Spill it,” Sin told her quietly. “If you don’t then your head will explode and poor Michael will be all alone. By the way, I kinda like him. He’s an ass most of the time, but I can take him down a peg or two on the range quick enough when he gets out of hand.”

Grace knew that she had to tell them. She looked to the door when the others walked in. She smiled at Cain and the other men in her family now. Most of them she didn’t know very well, but she did know that they loved their spouses with all of their hearts.

“Mother wasn’t always evil like she was toward us. There was a side of her, Guinnie; that was the kindness in her that the others couldn’t…no, that’s not right, the others wouldn’t show. Even Mother couldn’t be what Guinnie was.”

“The child, Guinnie was the child, right?”

Grace nodded at Quinn’s question.

“I met her then. I was really sick. I think I was about ten and Mother came into my room. I had the feeling that Mother was there and when she began to speak I realized she wasn’t acting the same. Like her voice was even different.”

“They all had very distinct mannerisms and voices. Even their dress was different.” Grace smiled at the women who were dressed so differently that it was amazing. Alyssa was dressed in torn jeans and a sloppy t-shirt, tennis shoes with no socks. Quinn had on dress pants, a tailored blouse, and heels. Then there was Jazzie who, even in her glowing maternal state, looked as if a cockatoo had been the color idea for her clothes. Sin was dressed as one would think of a woman who’d spent the last ten years of her life in the armed services—cargo pants, black t-shirt, and boots. Grace was willing to bet that she had a gun somewhere on her person, more than likely two of them. Sin’s twin Lilliane was dress in a denim dress with sandals, and a huge purse.

“Tell us what happened at the house. I know you spoke to the police already and they cleared you. Tell us what happened after you left the house.” Michael came to sit beside her as Lilliane asked her. He took her hand as she began.

“Thomas tried to…he wanted me. He said that I was going to die anyway and that Verrie had promised that he could have me. I was in the backseat with him when he tried to rape me.” She looked at Michael before she continued. “Verrie was driving and she told him to wait. But he wouldn’t. He told her that he wanted his payment now. I don’t know what she owed him for, but he was collecting.”

“Thomas had been trouble all his life. His problem was that his mother hadn’t made him do anything he didn’t want and when he did something that got him into trouble she simply paid off whoever he had injured.” Michael looked around the room before looking back at her. “He hated me. I never understood why until the funeral. His friends…well, the ones that had been his mother’s acquaintances, had told me that they could never understand why she let him get by with so much. And that his hatred toward me was because my mother had always been so good to me.”

“So he was jealous,” Payton said. “I knew that little shit. Sorry, but he was. And the longer I was around him, the more I wanted to kick is f*cking ass. There wasn’t a kid around that had it so easy yet seemed to think it wasn’t enough.”

“I’m not sure. I only met him the one time and that was at the birthday dinner for Trace.” Grace flushed a little. “He made a pass at me then. I didn’t know how to react. It was as if he thought I was…well, it matters little now. But back to the house. I was in and out of it by then. There was this man and he lifted me out of the limo. I’m not sure what his relationship was to the others, but he did everything they told him to. He also seemed to understand that they were four separate people, yet he only listened to Verrie.”

“His name was Bob Smith, if you can believe it,” Shamus told them as he opened a folder. “He took care of your mother off and on over the years. He was her keeper, I guess. Especially when your father spent time behind bars, he’d hire him to make sure she didn’t get into trouble. Or too much trouble, it seemed. She was in a great deal of it by the time she made it back here.”

“That explains a lot. When we got to the house, every time she would become another he would simply start calling her by that name. At one point they had an argument with him and he fought with each of them as if they were three separate beings.” Grace remembered how surreal that had been. “There were times when I would swear that he was more their father than anything else.”

“So he took you into the house, then what?” Cain asked. Grace felt sorry for him the most. He’d been the protector of them all for so long. To have this happen and it be out of his control was probably eating away at him.

“I was taken to the basement and put on the floor. The room was small, but they’d been prepared for me. The plastic on the floor had been the first clue that they planned to actually kill me, but I think something went wrong. Verrie said that they had to keep me or they wouldn’t get anything.”

“They ransomed you,” Alyssa said. “We got a call just after Thomas was killed and she said that she wanted ten million dollars and they’d give you back. We think it was because of the police being on them so quickly.”

“Thanks to you.” Nathan handed Grace the broken phone as he walked over and kissed Jazzie. “You turned it on and activated the GPS. That was a great way to find you and, even broken like it was, it still let us pinpoint you within a few yards. Do we even want to know how it got broken?”

She held it in her hand and looked at Michael. “I was trying to call you. I was sure you could hear me and I actually thought of you finding me that way, but Guinnie told me to run. I forgot it in the car when I took off. After I was shot the first time I also managed to drop my gun.”

“I told you she had the bead on her,” Sin said with a laugh. “Didn’t I tell you my Gracie would get the jump on her and wouldn’t let me down?” She laughed again as she high-fived her husband.

“Yes, you did. Now sit down and be quiet before I have to paddle your bottom. Go on, Grace,” Payton told her. “Tell us what happened next and miss know-it-all will hush.”

Grace burst out laughing. Then she looked around the room again. These people were her family. All of them held her safe when she needed it, and even when she didn’t think she did.

“I love you guys. All of you so very much.” She wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “You’ve no idea how much I wished I could have come home, but…I should have known you’d be there for me.”

“Well of course we would. You’re our family, aren’t you?” Alyssa looked at her, then around the room. “Now let’s finish this up so that we can get this show on the road and get you home tomorrow. And I, for one, would like to know when the wedding is.”

Grace was afraid to look at Michael. She was sure he was going to change his mind about them. Before she could come up with any kind of answer, he answered. But not the way she’d thought.

“If we can hold off until she’s committed then I think we can do it anytime you can get it together. But not too long. I want to be able to claim her before we start a family.”

Grace started to ask him what he meant when she suddenly got what he’d said. “Committed? Who? Mother?”