Guarding Grace Read online

  When they stepped inside, he saw her inspecting the place and wondered what she would think of his decor. Although he hadn’t paid a lot of attention to fashion details, the furniture was comfortable.

  But it seemed she wasn’t interested in his decorating skills. Instead she walked to a window and looked out. “We’re too high to get out this way.”

  “We don’t have to.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You think you’re in the middle of a conspiracy?”

  “I know I’m in the middle of a cover-up. I know Wickers thinks I’m a loose end.”

  He wanted to argue that this was America, not the Gulag Archipelago. But he remembered his own recent confrontation at gunpoint in the driveway of his brother’s estate. Something was going on, and this woman could help him get to the bottom of it. But she was also in trouble, and he was going to keep her safe. At least until he knew the real story.

  “You want some coffee?” he asked.

  She looked at her watch. “At two in the morning?”

  “Well, maybe decaf.”

  They both walked into the kitchen, where he remembered his previous encounter with his larder.

  “Sorry, there’s no milk.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I forget to buy groceries,” he said, wondering why he felt compelled to explain.

  “That’s okay,” she answered again, and he thought from the tone of her voice that perhaps she knew he’d had a wife and daughter—until they’d been killed in a car accident.

  Determined to switch the focus back to her, he asked, “You’re a freelance researcher?”

  “My day job is at the Smithsonian.”

  “It’s a big place. Where exactly?”

  “The Air and Space Museum.”

  “You have an engineering background?”

  She laughed. “No. But I can research any subject. I was working on an exhibit that will showcase World War I–era planes. I was recommended to your brother and decided to take the assignment. The autobiography was legit and the pay was good, but I just didn’t know I’d also be covering for his…habit.”

  He ignored the observation as he filled the kettle and set it on a burner. Maybe it was true. Maybe not. He knew John Ridgeway hadn’t been a particularly nice guy. But that was no excuse for murdering him. If it had been murder.

  “Did you know Karen Hilliard?” he asked. “I mean, outside your contact at the Ridgeway Consortium.”

  “We knew each other.”

  “Were you friends?”

  “We traveled in some of the same circles,” she answered, and he thought she was skating around the truth.

  “Which circles?”

  “Young DC professionals.”

  “The bar scene?”

  “Sometimes. And parties. Some of them on the Hill. Some at people’s houses. Anywhere from basement apartments in Columbia Heights to Georgetown mansions.”

  “You from DC originally?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “Chicago.”

  They were standing close together. He could reach out and hold her the way he’d done in the car. To comfort her, he asked himself, or because he wanted to feel her body against his? He wondered if that was the real reason he’d initially decided not to bring her here. Staying in a public place meant he couldn’t start anything with her.

  He stopped that line of thought. Getting intimate with this woman was the last thing that should be on his mind.

  He wondered what she saw in his face when she suddenly said, “You don’t have to be tough all the time. It’s all right for you to feel…sad about your brother.”

  “I don’t need advice, thanks,” he answered quickly, all too aware of the last time he’d let himself give in to grief. But that had been very different. Losing Carol and Lisa had been a body blow. He was still coming to terms with John’s passing, but it didn’t feel the same. He’d loved his wife and daughter. Fiercely. When he’d learned of John’s death, he’d been shocked, but not plunged immediately into a black hole of devastation. He’d miss his brother, but his death wouldn’t leave a gaping wound in his life.

  “We’re not going to talk about me,” he added, making his voice firm.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not relevant.”

  “You get to make the rules?”

  “Yeah. Because I’m the one who drove you away from certain captivity.”

  “Well, that was very noble of you, but it doesn’t mean I can’t walk away from you now.”

  Tension crackled between them. From the look in her eyes, he was sure she would dump him if that suited her plans. He felt a pang he couldn’t explain. He wanted to keep her with him, and he didn’t even know if it was for the right reasons. For that matter, he didn’t know what the right reasons were. He’d started out thinking she was sleeping with his brother. Now he thought she was telling the truth about how she fit into the picture. But the whole truth?

  He’d damn well better find out and damn well better keep his head on straight while he did it.

  “Where would you go?” he asked.

  He was glad to see she looked uncertain. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  “Where were you going when I caught up with you in the alley?”

  “Away.”

  “No specific destination in mind?”

  Before she could answer, a knock sounded at the front door.

  They both stiffened, and he looked at the clock again. It was just after two. No time for a social visit. Or any kind of visit.

  “Maybe you should ask who it is,” she whispered.

  Yeah, that was the logical first step. He walked toward the door and called out, “Who’s there?”

  “Ridgeway Security.”

  He’d smugly assumed that Grace was safe in his apartment. And Grace had been acting as if she didn’t need his protection. But when she turned frightened eyes to him, he knew they’d both made major miscalculations.

  He kept his voice steady. “Go into the bedroom. It’s at the end of the hall.”

  As she hurried to the back of the apartment, a second knock sounded.

  “Just a minute,” he called out, rubbing his hand through his hair to muss it up. He walked to the door and looked through the peephole. Through the distorted lens, he saw two tough-looking men standing in the hall. Although it was hard to be sure, he thought he’d never seen either one of them before.

  “Open up.”

  “I’m getting dressed,” he answered, undoing the top two buttons of his wrinkled dress shirt.

  When he opened the door, the men pushed their way past him and into the apartment.

  “Aren’t you supposed to ask for permission to enter?” he asked.

  “Didn’t you just give it to us?”

  “No. I want your names.”

  The one who had been speaking said, “I’m Mosley.”

  “Kessler,” the other one offered.

  “Can I see your credentials?”

  They both reached inside their suit jackets and brought out small leather cases with their cards and Ridgeway IDs. Unless the creds were fake, both of them worked for his brother’s consortium.

  “What’s this about?” Brady asked as they put the credentials away.

  “Your car was spotted in the vicinity of Grace Cunningham’s apartment earlier this evening. Is she here?”

  He gave the speaker a quizzical look. “I think you’re mistaken. Who is Grace Cunningham?”

  “She had an appointment with your brother tonight.”

  “And?”

  “Given the untimely demise of Mr. Ridgeway, we want to ask her some questions.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Do you mind if we look around?”

  “Yes, I mind.”

  Despite that, Mosley walked past him into the living room. After opening the closet and looking behind the furniture, he searched the kitchen, then started down the hall. Kessler stayed with Brady by t
he front door, probably so he couldn’t escape or make a phone call, Brady guessed.

  Brady stared after the man heading for the bedroom. He’d spent a lot of time with his brother, which meant he’d spent a lot of time around his security detail. They always followed procedure, and these guys were acting out of character.

  His mind switched from the men to Grace. Had she found a hiding place where the intruder wouldn’t discover her?

  Unlikely. Unless she’d climbed out the window again. Only, as she’d pointed out, they were too high up for her to find an escape route, unless she also worked as a circus performer or a cat burglar.

  He rolled his shoulders, trying to give the impression of fatigue rather than tension.

  If they found her here, what the hell was he going to say about it?

  He barely knew Grace Cunningham. Yet if she was telling the truth about what had happened this evening at the consortium, he understood why she wanted to avoid falling into the clutches of these men. They’d said they wanted to ask her some questions. She’d said they were in the middle of a cover-up.

  “I appreciate your going all out for my brother,” Brady said, angling for an opening to… He wasn’t sure what. “You seem pretty loyal. How long have you worked for him?”

  “How is that relevant?” the man snapped.

  “I haven’t seen you at the consortium.”

  “I haven’t seen you, either.”

  Down the hall, Mosley made a grunting sound.

  He’d found her. Damn!

  Kessler reached into his jacket and pulled out an automatic pistol, then dashed toward the back of the apartment, intent on aiding his partner.

  Without making a conscious decision, Brady stuck out his foot and sent the man sprawling. He landed on the wood floor, halfway down the hall.

  While the guy was catching his breath, Brady lunged for the desk, grabbed a glass paperweight and brought it down on the back of Kessler’s head. He went still.

  As he watched blood seep from the man’s hair, Brady knew he’d just stepped over an invisible line from harassed citizen protesting a home invasion to criminal. Scrambling over the limp body, he sprinted toward the bedroom.

  Mosley was also on the floor—at the side of the bed. He was on top of Grace, trying to wrest his gun from her grasp.

  Brady grabbed the man’s coat collar and yanked him backward, just as the gun discharged, the sound reverberating in the confined space.

  Chapter Five

  Mosley went rigid. Brady yanked him off of Grace, tucked the gun into the waistband of his own slacks and rolled the man to his back. A bullet hole marred the upper arm of his gray sports jacket. When Brady pulled aside the guy’s coat, he saw that a bloodstain had spread across the fabric of his dress shirt. But it was seeping, not pumping from an artery.

  Grace pushed herself up off the floor, saw the blood and gasped. “The gun… We.” She gulped. “I didn’t mean to hit him! I was just trying to keep him from shooting me.”

  “It’s just a flesh wound,” Brady answered, wondering if it was true.

  Grace’s eyes had taken on a glazed look. “I hit him.”

  The security guy stared at her. “You bitch.”

  Working methodically, Brady reached for the handcuffs clipped to the back of the man’s slacks and cuffed his wrists through the wooden bed frame.

  Then he dashed back down the hall. Kessler looked dazed, but he was sitting up and fumbling for the weapon that he’d dropped when he went down.

  “No, you don’t.” Brady grabbed his gun arm and twisted. The man yelped.

  “I have your gun. Just don’t do anything stupid, and we’ll all be okay,” he ordered. Raising his voice, he called to Grace, “Get in here.”

  When she didn’t appear, he called her again—more sharply.

  She came around the corner of the hall, walking like a drunken sailor, and he knew she was still reacting to the scene with Mosley. And reacting to the knowledge that the whole situation was spinning out of control very quickly.

  Did that mean she really was innocent? Regardless, he had to keep her functioning so they could get out of here—because now he was in this as deeply as she.

  “His getting shot wasn’t your fault,” he bit out. “You were fighting for the gun, and it went off.”

  “In court, that will sound like resisting arrest,” she answered, then made a strangled sound when she saw the blood dripping from the other man’s head onto the floor.

  “Yeah, me too,” he muttered. “And they’re not cops.”

  “But they can get us both for assault.”

  “Maybe they won’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Depends on who they really are.” He looked at the man on the floor. “Head wounds bleed like a son of a bitch, so it looks worse than it is. Cover him while I make sure he’s not going anywhere.”

  She held the gun in a two-handed grip while he got the guy’s cuffs, then helped Kessler to his feet and led him down the hall, where he secured him to the radiator pipe in his office

  The security guy glared at him. “You’re doing something pretty stupid here. She’s in this up to her eyeballs.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She was there.”

  “But that doesn’t make her guilty of anything. She could have been at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “You her lawyer?”

  “Something like that. I’ll worry about legalities later,” he tossed off as he began grabbing items from his desk.

  When he was finished, he turned back toward Kessler. “Did Wickers send you?”

  Kessler pressed his lips together.

  “For what it’s worth, I know Wickers is trying to cover up what really happened.” Turning to Grace, he said, “Wait for me in the living room.”

  She nodded, and he hurried back down the hall. The bloodstain on Mosley’s sleeve wasn’t much worse, but Brady stopped to grab a tie and make a tourniquet.

  The man winced but said nothing.

  Returning to Grace, Brady saw she still looked dazed and sounded alarmed when she asked, “What are we going to do?”

  “Get out of here.”

  When she didn’t move, he grabbed her arm and hustled her out of the apartment.

  She seemed to come back to herself as they hurried down the hall. “Sorry you got caught in the middle of something nasty,” she murmured.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he answered, determined to find out what was really going on.

  IAN WICKERS SCRUBBED a hand over his face. It felt as if he’d been up for a week of Sundays. In reality, he was still within his normal workday.

  Normal. Yeah, sure.

  He bent to the preliminary autopsy report that the DC Police Department had rushed through the system, given the celebrity of the dead man. To Wicker’s relief, it confirmed that John Ridgeway had died of a heart attack. At least he wouldn’t get caught in a lie over that.

  It also listed the drugs in the man’s system, with a notation that more might be added to the list after more extensive tests. He recognized them all except one, sildenafil.

  When he looked it up, he found it was the active ingredient in Viagra.

  Son of a bitch. At least it wasn’t illegal. But had Ridgeway been stupid enough to use it when he knew it was contraindicated with the alpha blockers he was taking for his high blood pressure? Or did the woman give it to him without his knowledge? Maybe she’d said it was something else.

  He picked up the phone and dialed Yarborough’s pager. A few minutes later, the man appeared in his office.

  “How is the interrogation going?” he asked.

  “She claims she was hired by Middle Eastern terrorists.”

  “Is that credible?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What’s their motive?”

  “She says she doesn’t know.” The security man shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “What is it?” Wickers snapped.
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  “The longer we keep her here, the riskier it gets. I suggest we move her.”

  “To where?”

  “To the facility we have in Northern Virginia.”

  Wickers weighed the pros and cons. Starting this cover-up had been a knee-jerk reaction to protect John Ridgeway’s reputation. Now they were dealing with unanticipated consequences. Like what if the cops wanted to search the Ridgeway Consortium? That would be a little inconvenient if he was keeping a woman captive in the basement.

  He sighed and looked up to find Yarborough watching him. “Move her.”

  BRADY WAS TEMPTED to sprint to the back stairs. Instead he took Grace’s arm, and they walked sedately down the hall to the elevator.

  “You could have turned me in to those guys,” she whispered.

  “Would a bodyguard turn in the woman he’s guarding?”

  “You’re serious about that?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, still not sure which way this whole thing was going to go. Or was he already in too deep to get back on the right side of the law? Until a few minutes ago, he hadn’t done anything illegal. Then his instincts had taken over.

  “Thanks,” she murmured. When they reached the basement level, she said, “They already spotted your car once. They’ll be on the lookout for it again.”

  “I won’t be driving anything they’ll recognize.”

  Her head snapped up. “What are you going to do—steal some wheels from one of your neighbors?”

  “No. I have several vehicles down here—for undercover assignments.” He mentally considered his choices and decided on a gray Ford. The body had seen better days, but the engine was in excellent condition.

  They strolled into the garage as if she was his houseguest and they were going out for groceries. But when he looked at her pale face, he couldn’t stop himself from pulling her into his arms.

  She clung to him, and he held her tightly.

  “You feel better?” he asked her.

  “No, but at least we got out of there.”

  He nodded, but he knew in his gut that there was more to come. They’d be looking for him and Grace.

  He eased away—it was dangerous to linger in the garage.