Page 148 of Guarding Grace

Winston pulled open the back door on his side.

The driver held up a small box. “She was my fare, going all the way up to Magic Mountain, a sweet ride. But then she got out back in town and told me to take this box up to Magic Mountain.”

“Found it.” Winston held up Grace’s phone. It was her personal phone, not the encrypted one I’d given her.

“Where in town?”

“Whippleson Drive,” the cabbie said.

I held out my hand. “I need that box.”

He pulled it away. “I can’t. My job is to deliver it.”

Opening my wallet, I pulled out three Benjamins and offered them. “Now you’re being paid to deliver it to me.”

He snatched the bills and handed over the box.

I shook it, then opened the box. It was empty.

We let him go and piled back into the Porsche.

The phone line to Jordy was still open. “She ditched the cab back in Santa Monica,” Winston told them.

I accelerated back into traffic. “The driver said Whippleson Drive. See if you have any cameras in the vicinity.”

“You got it.”

“Also, Jordy, you were tracking her personal phone, right?”

“Of course.”

“I also gave her one of our encrypted ones. Number seventeen, I think.”

“Hold on,” Jordy said.

Grace had complained about the phone and Taser when I’d given them to her. I hoped she hadn’t left them behind.

“It’s off,” Jordy reported. “It was last active at her building. I’m going to switch to traffic cameras.”

Shit. Grace didn’t have the time that would take.

CHAPTER 34

Grace

I was at an intersection,waiting for the pedestrian light to come on. Mr. Evil had demanded that I get out of the taxi, and so far he’d had me walk three blocks without telling me where I was going.

“Now what?” I asked him as the light turned and I started across the intersection.

“Turn right. Go to the third building. Tell me when you reach the door in back labeled Montgomery Automotive.”

The third building was a creepy abandoned warehouse with fading paint and no windows at ground level—a movie-perfect bad guy’s lair.

As I walked by the second building, my stomach turned sour and my mouth went dry. This was it. Looking up, I didn’t see anybody hanging over the edge, so when I reached the side of the third building, I didn’t think he would be able to see me—or so I hoped.

Hugging the building wall as I walked, I pulled out the Pain Pen Terry had forced on me and checked the feel of the switches as I recalled Terry’s instructions on how to use it—turn on, jam into attacker, and press button. If it hurt half as much as the Taser barbs I’d gotten, this would do nicely.

A crow cawed at me from above. Was that a good omen or bad? I had no idea.