Saving Grace

Five minutes.

That’s all it took for her world to shatter.

If she had been five minutes earlier—if she hadn’t stopped to buy a Coke from the vending machine at the station house or to exchange jibes with the desk sergeant on her way out the door—her daughter would have been just fine.

They would have been at the little house they’d worked so hard to fix up, catching up on long division homework or watching TV or taking a bike ride through the park.

But she had stopped for a Coke. She had stopped to ride the desk sergeant about his pot belly and his junk food habit.

And she had arrived at the school five minutes too late to protect her eleven-year-old daughter from being caught in the crossfire of rival punks fighting over drug territory.

Her stomach pitched and rolled as she relived driving up to the school and seeing the two squad cars already on the scene, their flashing lights piercing the long afternoon shadows. Already a crowd had gathered on the playground. She’d picked out the principal of the school, the gym teacher and the lanky, tow-headed boy Marisa had a crush on, the one probably responsible for her missing the bus.

Their faces had been taut with shock, and she had known. Somehow she had known.

She remembered stumbling out of her car and rushing toward the crowd, then the horror—the devastating horror—of seeing Marisa there, covered in blood and completely, terribly still.

“You still there?” Beau asked in her ear.

She couldn’t answer him, lost in the nightmare she couldn’t seem to wake from.

“Say something, Gracie,” he demanded, and she could hear the concern roughening Beau’s voice.

She cleared her throat and felt the pain of the action through vocal cords suddenly thick with emotion. “What…what do you want me to say?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Anything. Just don’t freeze up on me like that. I hate it when you do that.”

“I didn’t know any of this. About Dugan, I mean. You shocked me. I’m sorry.”

He swore viciously. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. It’s Dugan who should be sorry. And he will be. Trust me, Gracie, if he’s dealing in illegal weapons—if he played the slightest part in providing the assault weapons Spooky and his crew got their hands on for their little turf war—Jack Dugan is going to be very, very sorry.”

With monumental effort, she managed to gather the memories and shove them back into the corner of her mind where they usually lurked. They wouldn’t stay long, she knew, would soon be scratching and clawing their way out. But for now she forced herself to tune them out, to become detached and clinical. The hard-nosed cop sniffing out a lead.

“How strong is the case against him? Who’s working it?” she asked.

She could almost see the shrug of his broad shoulders. “Who’s not? Customs, ATF, FBI. Five of us from the Seattle PD. Everybody wants a piece of it.”

“So do I.” She stared out at the water. “I want in.”

He snorted. “Absolutely not. No friggin’ way.”

“I’m part of this, Beau. I want in.”

“You’re too close.”

“And you’re not?”

He swore again. “Dammit, Gracie. You turned in your badge.”

For the first time in a year, she felt the loss of it, of the gold detective shield she had worked so hard to earn. She had been so proud of it once, amazed that she was finally doing the job she’d dreamed of since she was younger than Marisa.

Her father had worn his own uniform with such dignity. Manny Solarez had loved being a cop, the honor and the integrity and the ceremony of it. In the end, he had given his life for the job.

Her own passion for becoming a peace officer had been born that day when she was eight years old, after her father’s partner and best friend had come to the house bearing the news of Manny’s death in the line of duty.

Her job and her daughter had been the only things that mattered to Grace. Without one, though, the other had seemed pointless and she had surrendered her badge without protest.

Now she wanted it back, if only to make Jack Dugan pay.

“I don’t have to be official,” she said now. Excitement clicked through her, the almost forgotten buzz of bringing a criminal to justice. “I’m in the perfect position. I’m staying at his house, Beau. You can’t get any closer than that.”

“Which brings me to my original question. What the hell are you doing there?”

She debated how much to tell him, then shrugged. “I told you, it’s a long story, but he thinks he owes me right now. What do you know about his daughter’s kidnapping?”

“Holy cow! That was you?”

She frowned into the phone. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all.”

“That’s all? You’re a damn hero, Gracie!”

“Drop it, Riley,” she snapped. She wasn’t a hero. She was a weak, pathetic coward.

To keep him from making the inevitable leap and start asking her what she was doing there in the first place on the anniversary of her daughter’s death, she changed the subject. “How does the kidnapping play into the whole thing?”

Beau immediately changed gears, and she sat back, with a minor congratulatory pat on the back for still knowing exactly how to work him. “We’re still trying to figure it all out at this point,” he said. “One theory is that a deal might have gone sour or he might have pissed off one of his customers somehow.”

“So they took the kid as payback? Nice. Dugan must run with a real swell crowd.”

“That’s one of the screwiest things about the case. As far as we can tell, he doesn’t hang with any known criminal elements. He comes from East Coast money, but built GSI from the ground up after a well-decorated stint as an air force pilot. Other than a few problems with the law when he was a juvie and one disturbing the peace citation for hosting a loud party when he was in the military, the man is so clean he squeaks.”

“Or at least he manages to put on a good show.”

“Right.”

“I can find out, Beau. I can dig deeper than anyone on the task force. You know I can.”

“Grace—”

“I’m staying in his house. Not only that but he just asked me to handle his personal security. I told him no, but I can go to him and tell him I changed my mind. Think about it. I can work it so I have complete access to everything—where he goes, who he sees. What kind of damn breakfast cereal he prefers. Everything.”

His silence dragged on so long she was afraid she had lost the connection. “I don’t like it,” he finally said, reluctance clear in his voice. “My butt would be toast if anybody else on the task force found out what’s going on.”

“So don’t tell them. Just think of me as any other informant.”

He snorted. “Right.”

“Come on, Beau. Take a chance. You want Dugan and you know I’m the one to help you get him.”