Page 42 of Guarding Grace

She stared at me. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want. I can’t lead you to him, because I don’t know where he is.”

She held up her phone again. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.” She flicked back and forth between the pictures. “Which one of them dies to save your cousin?”

“I—” I half yelled before lowering my voice, “don’t fucking know.” My hand started trembling. Why was it always my right hand?

“You should be quieter. If your assistant gets suspicious, Lorenzo will have no choice but to act. To make it easier on you, I could flip a coin. Would you like that?”

I sucked in a breath. “Look, you can threaten me all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know where he went after this morning. You leave my people alone.”

“Their fate is in your hands. Where is your cousin?”

This was the first time I’d felt like I was in the presence of pure evil, the kind of person my brother had been sent overseas to dispatch from this earth. “I don’t fucking know.”

She appraised me for several silent seconds. “Let’s say I believe you.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding. She had to believe me. I couldn’t betray Elliot to someone as evil as her, I couldn’t let her harm my people, and the truth was, I didn’t know where Elliot was right now.

“Then the equation changes.” She slid me a business card across the table. “Take this.”

Gingerly, I did. It had only her name and a phone number on it.

“If he contacts you again and you don’t call me, it will be very bad for you.” She pulled out a knife and slammed the tip into my pretty mahogany table. “Because Lorenzo will be forced to deal with you. It may not be the same day or the next, or even in the next month, but it will happen because he enjoys his work too much. And when he finds you, nobody will save you. Do you understand me?”

She left the knife stuck in the wood. My gut twisted.

“Grace, do you understand me?”

I nodded. What else could I do?

“That’s right. I’m not a bad person. I don’t want to see you get hurt. That’s why you have that number. One call, and all of this ugliness goes away.”

I nodded again. She had a screw loose. I needed Terry so badly. He’d know how to handle a psychopath like this. I almost puked when I glanced at the knife again, but refused to give this horrible woman the satisfaction.

“Good. Now we wait.”

I narrowed my eyes, not sure I’d heard her. “Wait? If you think Elliot’s just going to call out of the blue, you’re nuts.”

She merely smiled and put a finger to her lips. “We wait for instructions.”

As the minutes of silence dragged on, I managed to calm my hand under the table, and my breathing, looking for a play.What would Terry tell me to do?

If she got distracted when her phone rang, maybe I could lunge for the knife. But then what? Even if I got control of her, how did I get the upper hand on Lorenzo outside? Maybe I could yell to Zane.

But that would alert Lorenzo to Zane and put a target on his chest. What if Zane didn’t understand me and Lorenzo got the drop on him? Then everybody in the office would be at risk.

A half hour later, I jerked when her cell rang.

She laughed at my reaction, then answered without moving away from the knife stuck in the table. “Yes? I’ve got her with me.”

It had to be her bad-guy boss on the other end, whoever that was.

“Come now? Okay.” She hung up.

“Sorry you have to run,” I joked. “I’d say it’s been a pleasure, but I don’t want to lie.”

She stood, pulled the knife from the table, and waved it with a smile. “Very funny, Grace. You’re coming with me.”