Forever Grace (9 page)

“Then maybe you could just join me.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Then he frowned. Wait. He
was
waggling his eyebrows, wasn’t he? Damn. He couldn’t feel them. He balanced on one crutch and put a hand to his forehead. Shit. His eyebrows were gone!

Fingertips encountered fuzz and he gave a gusty sigh of relief.

“They’re still there,” he told the Graces.

They stooped to pick up the crutch that had fallen away from him. “I’m not even going to ask,” they muttered, tucking it under his arm again. “Now come on, Wonder Boy. Home and bed.”

He turned his head and nuzzled an ear. “Is that a promise?”

The Graces jerked away. “Oh, for the love of—” They sighed and regarded him narrowly. “If I say yes, will you get your butt in gear?”

“Oh, honey. You have no idea.” Sean swung his crutches forward and followed them eagerly across the clearing, bypassing the Graces and heading for the cottage. “Race you!”

“Slow down, Romeo. We’ll never make it to the bed if you fall, remember?”

He scaled back his speed, but only a little. “I thought I was Wonder Boy,” he said over his shoulder.

“Tell you what.” The Graces reached out to steer him straight as he yawed to the left. “You can be Wonder Boy
and
Romeo if you can get into the cottage in one piece.”

It took three attempts to negotiate the stairs. By the time he made it onto the deck, Sean’s teeth ached from gritting them, and his shirt was soaked with sweat. He paused at the top to catch his breath, waiting for the pain meds to compensate for the meat grinder he was sure his leg had just gone through. A gentle hand covered one of his on a crutch.

“You okay?”

He opened his eyes onto the three Graces. This time, the middle one seemed more in focus, so he concentrated on her. “That,” he announced, “is why I took two pills before coming over here.”

“Bad?”

“Very.”

“Can you make it into the cottage?”

He studied the distance to the sliding glass doors. Four crutch-strides, maybe five, assuming the meds hadn’t skewed his depth perception as well as his inhibitions. He nodded. “I can make it.”

“All right. I’ll go around and open the door. You aim for the bedroom.”

“And you’ll follow?”

“Absolutely,” the middle Grace told him. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

In her absence, he made his way across the deck and leaned against the cottage wall, forehead resting on rough cedar siding. He may have dozed off for a second, because when the door beside him slid open and Grace’s sharp voice called out, “Sean?” he nearly fell off his crutches.

“Here,” he said. “I’m here.”

The Graces stepped out onto the deck. There were four of them now.

“Thank God. You scared the life out of me when I couldn’t see you.”

Four Graces were much better than three.

He grinned. “You care.”

“Of course I care. I’d care about anyone in your current condition.”

“And you called me Sean.”

“What?”

“Twice,” he said smugly. “Sean. Because that’s my name.”

Four sets of hands rested on eight hips, and the Graces pursed their lips as they surveyed him. “Wow. You are getting more blitzed by the moment, my friend. You don’t usually do a lot of painkillers, do you?”

“Nope. Clean as a whistle.” He pursed his lips to follow up with a demonstration, but only a sad, wet hiss resulted. He frowned. “Hm. That’s harder to do than I remember.”

The Graces gave a snort of laughter. “All right, enough is enough. We need to get you into bed to sleep this off.”

“Bed, yes. Sleep? I don’t think so, darlin’s.” He stretched out an arm to snag the Grace nearest him, but they sidestepped in unison and caught the crutches he dropped. Sean scowled. Now there were four crutches, too? That didn’t seem right.

“Darlin’s? Plural?” The Graces leaned in to peer at him, frowning. “Just how many of me do you see?”

Oh, wait. He was still holding a crutch, so that was a total of five. Much better.

“Sean?”

He leaned against the cottage again. “Mm?”

“How many of me do you see, Sean?”

“Four,” he whispered. “Four beautiful, glorious Graces.” He lifted a hand, watched it morph into four, and stroked all the soft, deliciously smooth cheeks before him. “Whoa.”

“Whoa is right.” She caught his hand in hers and slipped the crutch back into it. “Come on, sunshine, let’s move while you still can.”

He wasn’t sure how he made it through the cottage and into the bedroom. One minute he was standing inside the living room while the glass door slid shut behind him, and a heartbeat later, he was flat on his back on the bed. He stared at the ceiling.

“This is weird,” he muttered.

“Which part of it in particular?” Grace inquired, lifting his foot to remove his only shoe.

“How did I get here? To the bed, I mean?”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t piggyback.” With a grunt, she hefted both his feet and tugged them around until his body had no choice but to follow, putting him more or less straight on the mattress…he thought.

He listened to her come around to the side of the bed. Four of her faces swam into view above him. “And the answer,” they said, “is that you walked.”

“I don’t remember.”

Together, the Graces reached down to lift his head and shoulders, and slide a pillow under him.

“I’d be surprised if you remember any of this tomorrow.” They smiled and brushed the hair back from his forehead. “Now close your eyes and sleep. You’ve had a long couple of days.”

He caught one of their hands in his and held it to his cheek. “Stay?” he murmured.

He didn’t stay awake long enough to hear her response.

GRACE STOPPED IN AT THE
cottage long enough to collect her cell phone from the top of the fridge and make sure the kids were safe and settled, and then she headed down to the lake shore. Two Adirondack chairs sat on the grass at the edge of the beach. She turned one so she could look out over the water but still see the cottage. Sean McKittrick’s arrival in their lives had resulted in her eyes being off the kids way too many times over the last twenty-four hours. Between that and Sean’s presence itself, her paranoia had reached all-new levels.

With luck, Luc could put her mind at rest about at least one of those factors. She flipped open the cell phone and auto-dialed her friend and lawyer.

“Lucien Tremaine,” a deep tenor voice boomed in her ear.

“Luc, it’s Grace.”

“What’s wrong?” Luc’s voice turned sharp with concern. “The kids—?”

“The kids are fine. I’m fine. It’s nothing serious—at least, I’m hoping it’s not.”

They’d agreed on as little phone contact as possible, she and Luc. The private detective he retained for his law practice had given her a temporary cell phone to use in case of emergency but cautioned her not to call any of her contacts with it. Not her colleagues at the job she’d taken a leave of absence from, not her friends, not even Luc unless absolutely necessary. She was to disappear, completely and utterly, and to stay that way until Barry was found.

“There’s no such thing as too careful,”
Paul Kingsley had told her.
“Barry’s smart. He’s been a cop for twenty years, and he knows how to find people. You can’t just lie low; you have to be invisible.”

“Hold on,” Luc said now.

Across the connection, Grace heard footsteps, then a door closing. She leaned back in the chair and gazed out over the lake. Fall’s brilliant colors were beginning to fade along the shoreline, and many of the trees now stood bare of leaves. High overhead, a flock of geese winged past in their v-formation, their calls to one another made faint by distance. Grace shivered. As warm as the autumn had been so far, it wouldn’t last forever. The nights had already turned cold enough that she’d taken to stoking the wood stove again most mornings, and snow was likely less than a month off. Then what? If Barry hadn’t been caught—

Lucien Tremaine came back on the line. “All right. Talk.”

“Your neighbor turned up.” She didn’t have to specify which neighbor, because Luc and Sean’s cottages were the only ones at this end of the lake. The seclusion had been one of the greatest advantages to holing up here in the first place.

“McKittrick? I didn’t think he went up there at this time of year.”

“He’s recuperating from a broken leg.”

“And he came to see you?”

“More like I had to go see him.” Grace filled her friend in on the events of the last couple of days, ending with, “I just wanted to know what you and your P.I. thought. Should I sit tight here with the kids, or do I need to worry?”

“Given that McKittrick is one of our finest, I suspect you’ll be fine with him there.”

Grace blinked. Now there was a tidbit she hadn’t expected. “Sean is a
cop
?”

“Fourteen years with Ottawa Police Service, I think he said. So you can breathe again, sweetheart. You and the kids are safe where you are.”

Grace closed her eyes, holding back tears of sheer relief. Until Luc had spoken those words, she hadn’t realized how worried she’d been. The idea of packing them all up and moving them again, of having to find somewhere else that would be safe from Barry…

But still. A cop? Given the kids’ history with their own “finest,” she’d have to keep that information away from them.

“Thank God,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure what I would have done if you’d said otherwise.”

“Rough week?” Luc’s voice was gentle. Concerned.

That didn’t help ease the whole self-pity thing she had going at the moment. Grace swiped at the tears that spilled over. She tried not to sniffle.

“Challenging,” she admitted. “Annabelle is teething, and the girls seem to be taking turns having nightmares. I’m up just about every night with one or the other.”

“Hell, Grace,” her friend muttered. “You can’t keep this up. Not on your own.”

“It’s not like I have much choice. Even if I could afford a nanny, it’s not like I can hire one all the way out here.”

“I know. I just wish there was something I could do to help.”

She laughed a short, bittersweet laugh. “Besides letting us live rent-free in your cottage, you mean? Or having Paul give me a safety rundown? Or looking after Julianne for me?”

“All things that take next to no effort on my part.”

“It’s more than you think, Luc, believe me. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” She took a steadying breath. “Speaking of Julianne…”

“Unchanged.”

A single word, filled with so much.

Unchanged. Still in hospital. Still breathing on her own but attached to tubes and wires and machines monitoring the shadow of life that remained.

Still not Julianne.

She glanced toward the cottage where her sister’s four children sat at the picnic table on the deck with their drawing materials. It took several attempts to force the next question through a too-tight throat.

“And Barry?”

“Every cop in the city is watching for him. The blue line ends with what he did to Julianne, Grace. They want him caught at least as much as you do.”

She curled her free hand into a fist so tight, her fingernails dug into her palm. “I know. But he’s smart, and he knows how they work, and—”

“They’ll get him. Give them a chance.”

“It’s been four weeks, Luc. Every single day he’s out there puts him closer to tracking us down.”

“You’re still following all of Paul’s instructions? Lying low?”

“Of course. We go to Perth no more than once every two weeks, and I never shop in the same place twice in a row.” She extracted her fingernails from her palm and rested an elbow on the arm of the chair. Wearily, she cradled her forehead. “Hell, I don’t even gas up at the same station two times in a row.”

“Then you’re good. The van is rented in my name, Barry doesn’t know about my connection to your sister, you’re using a burner phone, you’re not in touch with anyone you know…there’s no way he can find you, Grace. I promise.”

She nodded, needing to believe him.

“Now, about Sean McKittrick,” he said.

Grace’s heart kicked against her ribs. “What about him?”

“I think you should tell him about your situation. He might be able to help.”

“How? By throwing a crutch at Barry if he turns up?”

“I don’t know. With the kids, maybe.”

“The man is in a full leg cast and on heavy-duty painkillers, Luc. The last thing he needs to be doing is chasing after a two-year-old.”

“Right.” Luc sighed. “Maybe not. Well, at least he makes for adult company.”

“Yes, because he totally came out to his cottage in the woods so he could hang out with a woman who has four young children in tow.” The sun had disappeared behind clouds, and Grace stood up, hugging herself against the chill creeping back into the air. “Seriously, Luc, I’m fine. And the less we see of him, the better. You know how the kids feel about cops right now. Especially Josh.”

“But if you explain your situation to him—”

“No.” The word came out harsh. Strangled. Grace scooped away the hair from her face, holding it back with a shaking hand. “I’m sorry. I know you mean well, but I’m not about to burden a man I don’t even know with my sob story. I just needed to be sure we were still safe here, that’s all.”

Long seconds dragged by, filled with the silence of the lake and the beat of Grace’s heart in her own ears.

Then, his voice quiet with more understanding than Grace wanted, Luc said, “You can’t keep not talking about it, Grace. Sooner or later—”

Without so much as a goodbye, Grace thumbed the disconnect button. She stared at the cell phone for a moment, then pocketed it and started across the lawn toward the cottage. Talking about what had happened was the one thing she and Luc disagreed on. He insisted it was detrimental to keep things bottled up inside her; she was equally certain she would shatter if she gave voice to what she’d seen. What she’d found when she came home to her condo that day to find the front door off its hinges and Julianne lying bloodied and beaten on the kitchen—

Grace sucked in a shuddering breath.

Oh, no. There would be no talking. Not until Barry was caught, and the kids were safe, and she could afford to fall apart. Except even then, if Juli didn’t recover…