Finding Grace (3 page)

“Will you at least verify for me that I’m talking to
a man?” Luke’s patience was getting used up fast.

“What fucking difference does it make?”

Thorne’s head swiveled to look at Dagger. “Well, if
it isn’t my pal, Judas. I was just thinking how glad I am that I
trusted you, and in you stroll. How’s it hangin’? No good deed and
all that, huh? Did you muff it or is everybody okay? Who’s that guy
you’re with? Buzz Lightyear? How come you’re partners but he’s the
boss?”

Luke thought Thorne was taunting the devil’s own
until he saw Dagger flinch.

“I’m Lieutenant Rigby. Never mind who he is.” Luke
nodded toward Paul, who did kind of resemble Buzz Lightyear, now
that he thought about it. Paul was a big, muscular man with cropped
blond hair and an honest look to him.

“Just what exactly do you know about Blackridge?”
Dagger seemed to have found his voice and narrowed his eyes as he
leaned forward.

Luke was sure the kid would break now. Who the hell
wouldn’t?

But he just shook his purple head and leaned
toward
Dagger. “If you ask me one goddamn intelligent,
worthwhile question, I’ll fucking answer it.”

It was Luke’s turn to be speechless.

Thank God Paul still had his voice. “What do you
know about the kidnapping attempt? What’s your connection?” Paul
stood up and came around the table.

Luke wished he could hire his friend. Paul was one
hell of an interrogator. Not as scary as Dagger, but that worked
both ways.

Only Thorne looked him straight in the eye, too.
“Finally. Kidnapping? So that’s what it was. There is no
connection. I just see things sometimes. ‘Attempt.’ So no one was
hurt?”

“You’re not the one asking questions here. Have you
always had these
visions
?” Paul bit out the first sentence,
laced the second with sarcasm and took another step toward
Thorne.

“No, not always…” Thorne’s voice went soft and rough
and trailed off, but he didn’t look away.

Luke jumped in, his voice back, patience all but
gone. “What? Do we look like suckers to you? Was your former boss
in on it?”

Thorne flashed a crooked smile and there was just
enough of a pause to make a point before he said, “That dickless
wonder? He couldn’t find his own ass with both hands and a fucking
spotlight.”

Luke heard Dagger’s muffled snort. Was the kid
actually getting to him?

So much for Good Cop. His patience was all gone now
anyway. “You’re making it awfully hard for me to help you. Maybe a
night in lockup will help gather your thoughts, Thorne.”

“No. Please. I can’t stand…I’ve told you everything
I know, I swear. I’ll do community service for Griggs’s little
lesson. Whatever you want. Just, please, don’t lock me up.”

Again, there was something to the tone and change of
attitude that made Luke hesitate. Thorne was sweating again; he was
probably claustrophobic.

Luke pulled out another pair of cuffs and could just
barely see Thorne’s eyes squeeze shut behind the glasses’ dark
lenses. He’d give the kid one last chance.

“Give me a reason why I shouldn’t.”

“Because you’ll regret it.”

“Are you threatening me? Your daddy someone who
thinks he’s important?” Luke straightened, tiring of the seesawing
emotions this little asshole was putting him through.

“No, you’ll regret it because you’re Captain fucking
America. You’re one of the good guys. So I’ll give one for that.
When you hand my laptop over to the tech, make sure it gets hooked
up stand-alone. Under no circumstances do you want it anywhere near
a network you give a shit about. Understand?”

He frowned and nodded.

“Oh, and Captain? Don’t call her. Just kiss the hell
out of her. Talking is what got you in trouble in the first
place.”

Luke looked directly at Paul, who just shrugged and
shook his head. What the hell? Since when had his girlfriend
problems become public knowledge?

“It’s
Lieutenant
Rigby, Thorne.” He was none
too gentle when he cuffed Thorne’s hands behind his back and turned
him over to Griggs.

“Holding, private cell. Men’s side, I guess,
if
it makes any difference
.” He said it sarcastically and looked
over. But Thorne’s head was bowed and turned away, avoiding him.
“And have someone treat those lacerations.”

Why in the hell was he feeling guilty? That little
prick had pushed him, and Luke had every right to hold him. There
was no reason he should be feeling the way he did.

Once they were alone in the room, Luke turned back
to Paul and Dagger. “Thanks for coming. The Tierneys should give
you guys a medal. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

He held up the cuffs in the evidence bag. “Guy in
the DNA lab owes me. If Thorne’s in CODIS, which I expect he is
after that crack about the system, I’ll know the specifics tomorrow
morning. In any case, I expect his memory will improve overnight.”
He winked at Paul and defied the whisper of his conscience. “And
I’ll be damned if I regret it.”

* * * *

The prick of guilt in Dagger’s gut stirred and grew.
Thorne’s “Judas” remark had hit home, had reminded him why he’d
hated working undercover. And there was no question, either, that
the kid was being punished for a good deed, just like he’d said. If
Thorne had kept quiet, the girl would be dead and Thorne would be
doing whatever it was Thorne did.

Damn. The kid
had
to be involved with the
kidnappers. It was the only reasonable explanation. But what about
the other shit Thorne had seemed to know about, like Dagger’s
arrangement with Paul at Blackridge? And what the hell was that
about Lieutenant Rigby’s girlfriend?
What the hell?

Dagger cracked the window and tried to let the noise
of downtown Seattle midday traffic push his thoughts away while the
damp, frosty air assaulted his face. Paul just glanced at him from
the driver’s seat before turning his eyes back to the road,
probably already working through some snag at the office.

But not Dagger. No, he was still wasting precious
brain cells on that damn kid.

Brakes squealed, a horn blared, and someone braved
the weather to tell another driver what he could do with his cell
phone.

Dagger couldn’t stop the grin. One thing was for
sure: the kid was funny. The lieutenant did remind him of the old
comic book hero, Captain America. As for Paul looking like Buzz
Lightyear—well, that was hilarious; but Dagger figured it was best
not to mention that to Paul.

His grin faded. Then there was the whole he/she
thing. Thorne looked like a boy, sounded like a man, and cussed
like a barroom full of bikers, but still…What had him more
mystified than anything, though, was why, of all the people—besides
Paul—on God’s cold, wet, gray earth, wasn’t the little freak afraid
of him?

Chapter Three

Luke scrubbed his hand over the stubble on his chin
and took another swallow of what passed for coffee in his office
while he opened the file on his screen. He’d had trouble falling
asleep last night and the guy at the lab had called early with a
hit in CODIS. Before it was even done loading, one of the geek
squad had walked through his open door. Luke couldn’t remember the
kid’s name. They all looked the same to him.

“Oh good, Lieutenant, you’re in.”

“Yup.” A real Einstein, this one.

“I’ve been here all night.” There was a pause, as if
the speaker was hoping for some kind of praise. When it didn’t
come, he went on. “Thanks for telling me to keep that laptop off
the network. There’s no way we’d even have one if I hadn’t. I doubt
the state of Washington would, either, if it had been connected.”
He paused again, as if for effect this time and Luke found himself
getting crankier, if that was possible.

“Some kind of guard-dog virus, a really vicious
one,” the geek went on, breathless now. “I think it was protecting
an encryption code, but I never had a chance to give it more than a
glance before the virus kicked in. It was so fast.”

The boy looked far too impressed for Luke’s
liking.

“Are you telling me that you don’t have anything for
me?” Luke didn’t even have to try to sound pissed.

“I’m telling you, Lieutenant, that whoever wrote
this was good—like, a-handful-of-people-in-this-country good. I
graduated Stanford, top honors…” Again, he waited for approval that
didn’t come and he seemed at a loss for words until his head bobbed
back up, “Any chance I could meet him? I’d love to pick the brain
that wrote that virus.”

“I have a feeling you wouldn’t get past the front
door, son,” Luke said, and looked pointedly at his door until the
geek left.

Luke returned to the now fully-loaded CODIS file on
his monitor, but stopped reading after the first page to stare out
the window and watch the early working crowd moving down the
street, so blissfully unaware of the monsters that lurked among
them.

Two minutes ago, he’d been one of the good guys.
Just a poor slob trying to get to the truth and put those monsters
away. Now he was wishing Paul had never called him. Wishing even
more he hadn’t become personally involved in the case. Wishing most
of all that he hadn’t locked Thorne up yesterday. He’d said he’d be
damned if he regretted it and now he felt he had been, probably for
all eternity.

A hesitant knock at his open door drew his gaze from
the window. A young officer stood there biting her lip, the smell
of burning coffee wafting in with her, ominous.

Luke’s sigh sounded more like a groan.

“Lieutenant Rigby, sir. It’s Thorne, she’s…”

“She? How did you find that out?” The coffee he’d
drunk was suddenly rolling around his empty stomach and Luke found
himself wishing he’d grabbed a donut or something before throwing
the bitter brew down. The young officer was beside herself. Nothing
about this was good; it could only be bad and getting worse by the
minute.

“Well, sir, Griggs put him—er, her—in Holding.
Private, like you said. There’s a camera in there, you know.”

Luke nodded. For crying out loud, of course he knew.
But he could see that he was going to have to be patient if he was
going to hear this story anytime soon. Was he too young to start
keeping a flask in his drawer?

With a lot of stopping and starting, the officer
went on to tell him that Thorne had just curled up in a ball in the
middle of the cell and rocked herself all through the afternoon,
evening and night, not stopping or acknowledging the food that was
left for her.

“When I came in this morning at four and asked
Griggs, he just shook his head and pointed to the camera, told me
she still hadn’t gotten up. I know I’m not supposed to watch the
private men’s cells, but no one had come in yet to relieve Griggs
and…Well, anyway, when she used the toilet she sat down and it
wasn’t long enough for…and when she got up, I saw…um, didn’t see,
um…”

Luke nodded again. “I get the picture.”

“What with the early hour and all the cutbacks,
there wasn’t anyone around to help me, but jeez, you know, I didn’t
think I could just leave her there. I mean, it’s the men’s side and
there’s no real privacy. The perps in the cell next to her were
still sleeping, but—and no one had treated those cuts on her wrists
yet.” The officer’s voice rose at the end of the statement, making
it sound like a plea.

“I’m not going to like the way this ends, am I,
officer?”

She swallowed. “No sir.”

“Just get on with it, then, like pulling off a
Band-Aid.”

“Yes, sir. I brought the first-aid kit with me,
figured I’d treat her first and maybe by then someone would have
come to help me move her. Her wrists—”

“Yeah, she managed to mangle them pretty bad
yesterday.” Luke was losing the battle on not feeling guilty about
that, even if it was Thorne’s own damn fault.

“Yes, sir, they were cut up and bruised real bad,
but that’s not what threw me. It was the scars.”

“Scars?”

She made a face. “Awful. If I’d have to guess, I’d
say they were made by, um, some kind of manacles. Something with
prongs on the inside.”

“Jesus. How did I miss that? I cuffed her myself.”
That coffee was really rolling now. He remembered how she’d pulled
her sweater sleeves down over her wrists in the interrogation room
after he’d taken the cuffs off. He’d thought it was just a nervous
habit.

“I, ah, I don’t think any of us really watches when
we cuff anyone. We just slap ’em on. There’s too much else that
needs watching, sir.”

He nodded, mentally giving her points while
deducting his own.

“Did you move her, then?”

“Um, well, that’s the thing…” She said the rest
fast, apparently pulling that Band-Aid off as quick as she could.
“The door locks are electric…I still can’t figure out how she did
it. But, you know, it’s not exactly a high security area. I went to
look for someone to help me move her and, next thing I knew, she
was bolting by me. Another officer was just coming through the door
and she slipped by him, too. I swear I’ve never seen anyone move
that fast. She was on the street in two minutes.”

“Have you issued any kind of warrant?”

“No, sir. I wanted to talk to you first.”

Luke was relieved to hear that an APB had not been
issued. Thorne hadn’t been formally charged and with the
claustrophobia and the injuries—though minor, he reminded
himself—and whatever Griggs might have done when he put the first
set of cuffs on her, well, he wanted to finish reading the file
before doing anything else. She wasn’t in the system for being a
criminal, after all. She had been a victim.

“Does anyone else here know Thorne’s a woman?”

“No, sir.”

“Then let’s keep it that way, shall we.” It wasn’t a
question. The young officer nodded and left him to finish reading
up on Ms. Thorne.