Page 11

Chapter

Eleven

GRACE

T he laser focus on Bones’ deep gray eyes demanded all of my attention and that was before he said he was going to answer the one question I’d asked repeatedly. My stomach bottomed out. Amorette. He had to have news about Amorette. I curled the fingers of my left hand into my palm and dug my nails in even when I hugged the tumbler of coffee to my chest with my right hand.

A violent trembling vibrated outward from my core. It was like I was at the epicenter of an earthquake that increased in intensity with each passing moment. Biting down on my lower lip, I sucked it between my teeth. The sharp pinch of pain helped. Just like the ache between my shoulder blades that pulled taut with how hard I was hugging the tumbler.

Discomfort kept me in the here and the now. Still…

“As far as we’ve been able to tell, your sister went missing at roughly the same time as you were taken outside of her place.”

I frowned. “She was there when I was?” My heart sank. Had I led them to her?

“Unknown,” Alphabet said before Bones could answer and I cut a glance to him. He had his right foot up on the ottoman in front of his chair. Goblin sat next to his chair, his attention focused on Bones like he was equally ready for the briefing. I raised the coffee cup, more to give my mouth something else to do before I bit through my lip.

Finally, I managed to push out my next question even if it came out a little hoarser than I planned. “Unknown? How?”

“We don’t know if she was there or already taken,” Bones answered for Alphabet. “He tracked her movements right up until the Wednesday before your weekend away.”

Wednesday.

I frowned.

“Do I want to know how you tracked her?” I cut my glance back and forth between them.

With a sigh, Alphabet sat forward. “First things, first. I still have a host of searches to run. I’ve also got some bot programs I need to repurpose and get out there too. That said…” He blew out a long breath. “I’m sorry, Gracie. As far as I can tell from backtracking her movements, she didn’t go home again after she left Wednesday morning prior to the weekend you two had planned.”

My heart sank farther if that was possible. The Wednesday before—I’d been busy on those shoots. I’d gone out with friends. I’d been focused on my life and looking forward to the weekend. The fact she didn’t answer my messages had been normal . When she had a case or was really busy, she sometimes waited to answer. It was just what she did.

“She left early in the morning, stopped at her favorite coffee place?—”

“Rhythms,” I murmured. “She likes their breakfast sandwiches even more than their coffee—I think.” It was a source of some humor. “They bake their own bread so it’s awesome.”

“I believe you.”

It felt like the kindest thing anyone had ever said to me. Three simple words. Well, those three words and the genuine sympathy in his eyes. I took another sip of the coffee. The flat white seemed to have lost all flavor. The warmth offered some comfort so I’d take it.

“She grabbed a breakfast sandwich then?” Bones prompted, redirecting us back to the subject. I wanted to hate him and thank him in the same breath. If they had more answers, I wanted those too.

“Yes,” Alphabet said before he cleared his throat. Lunchbox appeared in my periphery with one of those refillable water bottles. He pressed it into Alphabet’s hand. “Thanks,” he muttered before unscrewing the top and taking a long drink. He didn’t spend any more time on it than that. “She got the sandwich and while she waited for her coffee, she got a call. The number was a burner—so no idea who it was, but she didn’t seem upset by it.”

“Probably a client,” I said, tracing my finger up and down along the smooth side of the tumbler. It didn’t quite feel real. None of this did. “She would sometimes get them a disposable phone so they weren’t tracked by their partners. Or soon to be ex partners.”

Based on everything she’d ever described to me though, those ex-partners weren’t always likely to just accept a court’s decision. No, Am would protect her clients with everything she had. That included protecting their communications and making sure they had access to her whenever they needed it.

“Possibly,” Alphabet said, as though conceding my point. “I just can’t confirm who or where.”

“You could if it wasn’t a burner phone?” I wasn’t quite sure if that was creepy or cool. Maybe both?

“Yes,” he said, no hesitation marking his answer. “Lots we can find out with a few clicks. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look.”

“So you looked at Am’s phone log?” How else would he have figured out the burner phone? That made sense, right? If the person with the burner was there, he wouldn’t necessarily know they were talking to Amorette?

“Yes.” Alphabet shifted in his seat, a flicker of discomfort apparent on his face. “I know you have a thousand questions. I want to lay this out for you as far as I got—then Bones can tell us what he found.”

Voodoo circled the room, his hands in his pockets and his attention not seeming to be on any of us. I doubted that. The only people sitting at the moment were me and Alphabet. The weariness in Alphabet’s expression offered one answer as to why. Where Voodoo seemed to be pacing the perimeter of the room to sublimate his restlessness, Lunchbox stood with near enough the same posture as Goblin.

He was in reach for both Alphabet and me. Was I imagining the level of concern rolling off each of them? This was bad news. They weren’t sugar-coating it or trying to bury the story. At least, not anymore. Course, before they just didn’t answer the questions at all.

I suppressed a shudder, the sudden quiet around me was telling. Maybe the reason they hadn’t said anything before was they weren’t sure how I would react. That was fair. I had no idea how I would react. The fact I hadn’t started screaming yet seemed like a mark in the win column.

“I can handle it,” I said, focusing on Alphabet again. “I might only be a couple of steps away from throwing myself over the virtual edge, but—I can do this. Tell me what you know.” My throat tightened, a warning against trying to squeeze those words out. “Please.”

Alphabet continued to study me, but he didn’t make me ask again. “After coffee—Rhythms,” he added on the name with a little nod to me. Details mattered. “She left and walked to the courthouse. I thought she’d be going to her office, but she headed to the family court building. Camera coverage inside is a little spottier. Privacy issues.” His grimace was more irritation than disappointment.

“So there’s no way to know who she was meeting with there?” The obvious would be her client. It was a courthouse and there were matters of confidentiality. So that made sense.

“I didn’t say that.” Alphabet lifted his refillable bottle as though toasting before he unscrewed the lid. “Discovering the who is just going to be a bit challenging. Not impossible. That also means it will take us some time. I’ve got her appointment calendar, but all it listed was the courtroom and judge she was in front of. It didn’t offer any other details on the case or the docket.”

Chin dipping, I stared down at my feet. “I don’t remember all of their names. Am is always careful when discussing clients. She takes confidentiality very seriously. Now that doesn’t mean she hasn’t told me a name here or there but… I don’t remember.”

Missing. She’d been missing for two days when I drove to the beach. She’d already been gone while I was being impatient. Then…

“If she was already gone, why did someone grab me at her place?” Did that mean I was the target or she was? A dull pain throbbed behind my eye. A flash of the man who told me he’d been waiting for me danced sickeningly in front of my eyes before he vanished once more.

Alphabet motioned to Bones. “I just gave you everything I had before we had to leave for the job. I’m back on this now.”

“That wasn’t everything,” Lunchbox corrected and when Alphabet glared at him, I glanced between all of them. “She deserves to know.”

“They found her…” My voice cracked and dropped out entirely before I could frame the last two syllables. “…body?”

“No.” That answer came from all four of them in varying degrees of forcefulness. Like someone had cut my strings, I sagged. She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. And she wasn’t.

“Firecracker, if there was a body, we wouldn’t keep it from you.” Voodoo didn’t make it sound like he was trying to placate me. It was just straightforward facts. That said, I still couldn’t resist looking at Bones.

“We wouldn’t,” he confirmed. “The only reason I tabled these discussions previously was we had a job and not enough answers.”

“You have enough answers now?” It landed like I’d thrown down a gauntlet. As irritating as Boney Boy was, it was a lot easier to keep together staring at him than drowning in the sympathy the others offered. The burn of tears in the back of my throat retreated.

“Also, no. We have some answers, a hell of a lot more questions, and issues we need to address.” Bones was tall—all of them were really—but there was something about him standing there, a sentinel locked in place as though daring the world to try and move him. The broad muscular frame added to his intimidation factor so did the lean, hard lines of his face all weathered and rugged from hours outside. His nose had a bit of a bump that told me it had been broken more than once.

That made sense. The four men radiated military precision. Whether they were good guys or bad guys or just trained, Bones was in charge and he presented as such. He also seemed to be the one to make the final calls—or had been until now. The others weren’t as willing to go along.

“What part did A-B leave out?” The nickname soothed some of the jumbled emotions still vibrating under my skin. The agitation was coming back like the tremors I’d already been dealing with had suddenly gotten worse.

“We called her office,” Alphabet answered. “Lunchbox and I both did it, we called, acted like clients of hers and we were told she resigned.”

“Bullshit.” I surged to my feet. “There’s no way she just quit.” Am was the most dedicated person I knew. “She’d never just leave, much less do it without saying something to someone.”

“What if she was forced out?” The question from Bones seemed reasonable except…

“Nobody makes Am do anything she really doesn’t want to do. She’s a fighter. She’d fight with every ounce of who she is and she’s smart as hell. No, if they tried to force her out or do something illegal, it wouldn’t end well for them.”

I had zero doubt about that.

“That fits with the profile,” Bones said. “So what we have is a pair of sisters set up and targeted. One is an attorney and the other a model. Your sister does a lot of pro bono work, she’s not corporate. You do a lot of corporate shoots and brands.”

“So?”

“So, there are only a couple of places your work and hers intersect.” Bones raised his eyebrows as though daring me to deny it.

“Our work doesn’t intersect.”

“Except you paid down her loans.”

I shrugged that off. She had tons of scholarships thanks to graduating at the top of her class and being brilliant. What loans she’d needed for bridging weren’t something she should have to worry about, “There are no debts between us.” There never had been and there never would be. “She supports me and I support her. That’s how it works.” Especially with there only being the two of us now.

“Understood. Then we’re back to which of the pair of you was the primary target.” Bones cocked his head to the side, studying me. “We can’t eliminate your sister being a target particularly after the response from her law firm.”

“Arguably,” Voodoo said. “They could have been misinformed by whomever took her. It could be another method of covering their tracks by eliminating who might report her missing.”

That made a sick sort of sense.

“Kind of hard to do with me.” I had a lot of clients and connections. Then there was Eleanor. She would take a torch and set the world on fire. It had been weeks already. She had to be…

“Hard is not impossible,” Bones said.

“Okay.” I didn’t like the sound of that. Should I ask the question or just wait?

“There are no news reports about you being missing. Nothing local or national. Nothing on web servers or gossip sites—the closest we could identify was a possible blind item and it mentioned yachting.”

Yachting. That was the last thing I wanted to talk about.

I gaped at him. “What do you mean no one reported me missing? Eleanor would be—” My stomach flip-flopped all over again. I had to put the coffee cup down when it sloshed over my fingers. “Eleanor would not buy any two bit excuse and if I scrubbed on a contract, she’d hunt me down herself.”

“There is no easy way to tell you this, Grace. I am sorry to be the one to inform you that Eleanor Hightower was in a car accident. She was declared brain dead. Her family agreed a few days ago to take her off life support and donate her organs.”

If there were more words, I didn’t hear them. I couldn’t. Not when the roaring in my ears drowned everything out. Someone swore. The table was shoved backwards. Goblin barked.

Then it all just shut off.