Armed With Steele (10 page)

I turned and headed for the front door.

“Wait!” He scrambled after me.

I reached for the doorknob. “I appreciate you helping catch my would-be burglar, but I’m sorry, I can’t do this.”

“Listen to me. I have a surefire way to get us in!”

“I’m sure you do.” I swung the front door open. “But I’m also sure that I don’t want to hear it. Thanks again for stopping by.” I gave his solid back a gentle push across the threshold and started to close the door.

A black hiking boot wedged itself between it and the frame. “Hear me out.”

“Nate, I—”

“I have an inside source at Maxwell. Grace is under investigation. For embezzlement.”

Chapter 7

For the second time this month, my world came to a screeching halt. Embezzlement? Had I heard him right? “What? Are you serious?”

“Serious as a heart attack.”

Everything around me seemed to sprout a foggy haze. I put my hand to my forehead and slowly turned away from the door.

Grace? Stealing money from the company?

I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders. Warm, strong hands that I allowed to steer me toward the couch. “I…I don’t understand.”

Nate maneuvered me to the nearest cushion and waited for me to sit, then knelt down before me. “Rumor has it a substantial amount of money is missing from one of her department’s account lines. It wasn’t discovered until after the accident. When the auditors came in…”

My gaze met his. “Grace wasn’t there to defend herself.”

“No, she wasn’t. Though—”

“Grace didn’t steal that money.”

“What I was going to say was that I don’t know if it would have done her any good.”

“You think she was set up? Maybe run off the road to keep quiet?”

He studied my face for a moment before nodding. “I do.”

“Wow.” I sunk back into the couch, suddenly exhausted. I closed my eyes and tried to process this new information.

“This isn’t just about the accident any more.”

I closed my eyes tighter. Grace was innocent—we both knew that. But she was also comatose, which meant she couldn’t offer a single word in her defense. And if no one did anything, she’d not only be in a coma, but also unemployed.

The floor creaked as he stood, then the cushion next to me shifted. A warm hand settled on my knee.

“She needs your help, Jess.”

I recoiled at the sound of my nickname—the same one Grace always used. “I can’t, Nate. I can’t.”

Nate gave my knee a gentle squeeze. “Do it for Grace. And for me.”

I opened one eye. “For you? Why do you care?”

“I…” His gaze shifted to our front window. “Because. We can’t have someone that demented running around town.”

He was hiding something. “No, we can’t. But that’s what the
police
are for. Not inexperienced, undercover web designers.”

“I already told you. The police were told to stand down. So that leaves it up to you and me.”

“You’re back to this ‘we’ thing again.” I stood, and walked over to the fireplace. Grace’s beautiful smile stared back at me from half a dozen framed photographs. Tugged at my heartstrings, begged for my help. But going undercover? There had to be another way. “If you have an inside source at Maxwell, why don’t they just do this work for you?”

“No.”

I turned around. “Why not?”

“It’s too risky.” He watched my eyebrows shoot up. “For them. They don’t work in the same area as Grace did.”

“Neither do I! At least they’re already in. Besides, who knows how long it’ll be before there’s an opening.”

I glanced over at another photo of Grace and couldn’t help but grin. She’d been so excited the day Maxwell V.P. Michael Frankston made a surprise visit to the medical office where she’d worked. He’d come to see her boss and nearly collided with her in the hallway. They’d hit it off from the start, and he’d more or less offered her the job before he’d left the building.

The grin slipped from my face as I realized their chance meeting was coming back to haunt us. If he’d never walked into her life, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now. Her in a coma, me with a delusional cop in our living room.

“Rumor has it, they’ll be posting her job by the end of the week.”

I spun around. “So soon?”

“Yep. That means you have a few days yet to think it over.”

He stood and crossed the living room to put a hand on each of my shoulders. That damn appealing cologne of his followed him over and wrapped itself around my senses. I momentarily forgot how to breathe.

“Promise me you’ll at least think about it?”

I stared into his deep blue eyes and felt my resolve weaken again. Damn, he could be so convincing. I needed him to leave before I agreed to more than I could handle. “Fine.”

“That’s my girl.”

* * * *

Sleep eluded me for quite some time that night. Physically, I was exhausted. Mentally, my mind felt like it was on a perpetual tilt-a-whirl. Round and around it went, humming with activity while I tried to process everything Nate had said.

Grace had likely been run off the road. The police weren’t going to pursue the investigation. Were told not to pursue it, actually. And if that wasn’t bad enough, now she was also the prime suspect in an embezzlement accusation at Maxwell Office Solutions—one of the region’s most successful organizations, where she held her dream job.

I had no doubt it was a set-up, that she was completely innocent. But how could I prove it? Or should I say,
we
prove it?

I sighed and tried to block out the murmurings in my head.

Do it for Grace, Jessica.

She’d do it for you, Jessica.

Don’t be a chicken, Jessica.

I squeezed my eyes tight and curled into a ball, praying for my mind to quiet. But it was no use. The guilt I’d felt since the accident had reached its boiling point.

Something had to be done to relieve it, or I was going to go insane.

So just tell him yes.

It would be the noble thing to do. This wasn’t about some morbid curiosity to know exactly what happened on her fateful ride home, it was about redeeming Grace’s reputation as a dependable, honest employee. And as much as I hated to admit it, Nate was right—I was perfect for the role. No one knew her better than I, or would fight for her harder.

But was I truly capable of working undercover?
And
holding two jobs at the same time?

How hard can it be?

The plan seemed simple enough. Apply for Grace’s old job at Maxwell, get hired, and then dig for clues while pretending to be an administrative assistant. Only, I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to
be
an AA. Didn’t know how to answer multi-lined phones, or schedule appointments, or write short hand. Heck, I didn’t even know if people still
used
short hand.

Worse yet, I’d actually have to get up at a set time and physically go to work. And socialize with coworkers. Probably even have to pretend I enjoyed it, too.

And if all that wasn’t enough, I’d also be putting myself in the direct line of a coma-inducing psycho. What if I ended up in the same state as Grace? Or worse?

I rolled over onto my other side and tried to silence the out and out war now raging in my head. I didn’t want another job. Didn’t want to deal with cubicles and coworkers, coffee makers and water coolers.

And I especially didn’t want to partner up with an extremely good-looking cop who, if I wasn’t careful, might accidentally pry the scabs off my still-healing heart. I just wanted my Grace back.

* * * *

Nate haunted my dreams that night. And the next morning, I woke to find his stupid cologne haunting my living room and kitchen as well. So when I got the call from Sharon that Grace had gotten settled into her new, temporary home, I jumped at the chance to escape. I doused both rooms with fifty squirts or so of Fabreeze, and headed for the door.

Contrary to everything I’d been told, Metzler, much to my dismay, was
exactly
like a nursing home. Only, without the elderly people. Still, it gave me an instant case of the creeps. The walls were a drab custard yellow, the carpets outdated, and the smell of sanitizer hung heavy in the air.

The nurse who led me back to Grace’s room seemed nice enough, though. She rambled the entire walk about all the updates they’d made to the facilities over the past few years. I just nodded, smiled, and tried not to imagine how much worse it’d looked before.

Nurse Kathryn led me to the last room in wing three. “This is it!” she said, then stepped inside and swept her hand out in classic Vanna style.

“It’s…nice.” The room might well have been upgraded—twenty years ago. Mint green paint had replaced the hallway yellows, accented by pastel chair rail wallpaper reminiscent the 1980’s. The room’s furniture was scant and mismatched. I peered over at Grace and cringed when I saw that even her gown was a nightmare of pinks, lavenders, yellows and greens.

“The call button is over here,” Kathryn said, pointing to an over-sized red button protruding from the wall near a tiny, in-room bathroom just past Grace’s bed. “Please don’t hesitate to hit it if you need anything.”

How about a week-long Hawaiian cruise?
I smiled and gave her a nod. She excused herself then, and I turned my gaze back to the scene before me.

“Wow, Grace. This is…” I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t tell her how awful it looked. How awful it
smelled
. Though, perhaps that was all part of rehab—if you wouldn’t wake up on your own, they’d stink you out of your coma.

I made my way across the faded, dusty rose-colored carpet and lowered myself into the rocking chair beside her bed. Then I took her hand in mine. “I was hoping the move would wake you up. You know, all that moving and bumping around. Guess not, huh?”

My eyes scanned her still, peaceful face. Most of her minor cuts and scrapes were nearly healed, and the swelling along her cheeks and jaw had gone down. The stitches on her forehead had been recently removed, though, leaving behind an angry pink scar. Thankfully, it was relatively close to her hairline, and could be covered up fairly easily.

“I saw Officer Steele last night. He came by to…” I edited a bit, didn’t want her worrying about me and my forgetful ways. “To check on me. And let me know that they’ve closed your accident case. The police couldn’t find any more evidence, so they aren’t going after anyone.”

I leaned in closer and studied her face. “But there was someone else, wasn’t there Grace?”

Silence.

“Was it someone you knew? Someone you worked with? Or was this truly just a fluke accident?”

More silence.

I sighed. “It’d make things so much easier if you’d just wake up and tell me what happened.” And easier to tell Nate no without having to feel guilty about it.

Because that was exactly what I planned to do.

Chapter 8

“Jessica? Is that really you?”

I turned to see Jennifer, my friend from college, rushing toward me. I felt a low heat rise to my cheeks. “Yep, it’s really me.”

On Sunday I’d phoned Nate to tell him I was sticking with my decision not to join his proposed covert operation. Then I spent the rest of the week avoiding his calls. Buried myself in work, determined to stay busy. Because the busier I stayed, the easier it was not to think about him. Or about how I might be letting Grace down.

“I twisted her arm,” Matt said, stepping around from behind me to flag down the bartender. “Found her hiding behind that damned computer screen again.”

He’d appeared on my doorstep just before seven, bound and determined not to let me spend another evening at home.

“I miss her too, Jess,” he’d said, “but Grace wouldn’t have wanted you to stay at home and be miserable.”

He was right. She would have kicked my butt if she knew what a recluse I’d become. And with Matt offering to play designated driver, I had even less reason to argue. So I’d consented and run off to my room to get ready.