Chapter Five
Callum walked into the tiny room and took in the pale woman he believed to have died in a fire.
Part of him hurt, but most of him wanted to pull her into his arms and rejoice.
But they were far from there. She reminded him of a scared, caged animal all too familiar with the ways she could be abused. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know that.” She rolled her eyes but didn’t look at him.
Now that the painful effect of the pepper spray had mostly diminished, and with his eyesight back to normal, he could get a look at the woman he hadn’t seen in years.
She didn’t resemble the picture Vivian had shown him.
Without makeup, she wore a thin-strapped tank top and yoga pants.
Braided and beaded bracelets were stacked on her wrists.
Her honey-brown highlights looked more sun-kissed than salon-placed.
She was prettier than he recalled, even if there was a hesitant cloud of worry hanging over her.
“Can I sit down?”
“Of course.” Grace cracked the top open on a bottle of water and sipped. “You don’t have to treat me like a lost child.”
“I’m not. I—uh, Grace, I thought you were dead. I don’t know how I’m treating you. Carefully, I guess.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Honey, you faked your death. So…” Maybe he was treating her like a lost child because she looked like a scared, lost puppy.
He hated that his mind went back to the hurt animal analogy, but her evasive eye contact and hard voice were too much like a fearful dog that growled when offered help. “I’m trying here.”
She rolled the water bottle between her hands and wouldn’t make eye contact. “I should explain, but I need time to think about how to say it.” Her gaze skittered to his face and shot away again. “It’s complicated. You said you’re not in the Army anymore?”
“I’m not.” Callum pulled out the chair across the table from her and eased in.
He leaned back and tried to give her space, tried to give her as many reasons to trust him as possible.
They’d known each other for a long time, but that didn’t mean shit when he only had the barest details on what had happened to her in the years since she “died” and Marino had been imprisoned.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked quietly.
Furious. “I’m figuring it out.”
“That’s fair.” The water bottle crinkled as she toyed with it. “Don’t be mad at Hayden. He had little choice.”
“Everyone has a choice.”
Her half-laugh rang sad and lonely. He thought she was about to defend her brother, but the silence ticked by.
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.” She pushed the water bottle away but immediately toyed with the beads of her bracelet, as if she had to fidget.
“It was probably hard with my face full of pepper spray.”
She cringed. “I’m sorry. I thought you were…I wasn’t trying to hide from you.”
“From me. But you are hiding.”
“I’m supposed to be dead.”
“That’s not the reason you’re hiding.”
Her fingers picked up the pace as she worried over the bracelets. “You look different. Bigger than the last time I saw you.”
Years of working special forces assignments would do that.
She opened the bottle of water and took a slow sip, as if she were using the drink to collect her thoughts.
Grace was wary of him. Of that much, he was sure.
Her eyes darted around the room, on him and off him again, and she rolled the bottle between her hands again.
Nervous tics and fidgeting. He couldn’t recall her ever doing that.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said.
“Sure. Shoot.”
“I get that Hayden sent you, but how did you find me?”
Callum pushed the chair onto its back legs and threaded his hand through his hair. An NSA-like dragnet wasn’t likely to comfort her. Saying too little would add to her distrust.
The plastic bottle crinkled in her hands. “It shouldn’t take you so long to answer.”
“It’s not that,” he said. “Just trying to figure out how to explain it.”
“The problem is, if you can find me, my ex-husband can find me again as well.”
“Not likely.” She didn’t have to live this way. Divorcing Dominic Marino would have set her up financially. She could easily have put security measures in place. If she didn’t want to testify, she could have employed lawyers who would have been able to help. There were so many options.
“Appease me, Cal.”
A memory skipped over him. No one called him Cal except for Grace. He wasn’t sure how he’d never noticed that before now.
Callum rolled his shoulders and focused on her question. “I was unavailable when Hayden tried to get ahold of me. He talked to my boss and basically said you needed help. That you disappeared from the grocery store—”
“I didn’t disappear.”
“I don’t know what you want to call it.” He tilted his head, sizing up her reaction. “Did you know the grocery store manager called the cops?”
She bit her lip. “I should have done things differently there.” Grace fidgeted with her bracelets. “But I left a voicemail for Hayden saying that I was fine. I told him to ignore me. Now I’m telling you, I’m fine.”
Worry shadowed her eyes. Tension tightened the corners of her pinched lips. She was in a defensive position, and he didn’t even understand the threats. “I’ve gotta tell you, sweetheart. This doesn’t look like the life of a woman who is fine.”
Tears brimmed in her eyes until she rapidly blinked them back. “It was easier before Dominic got out of prison. Now? It doesn’t matter.” She shook her head. “Back to how you found me. Hayden called you, then what?”
Then the NSA-like dragnet. “You submitted a project to a client earlier this week. A business card design for a private chef, right?”
Her mouth parted in genuine surprise before the uncertainty in her eyes intensified. “How on earth would you know that?”
“That’s what my company does. We specialize in personal protection and have the technology that allows us to keep our clients safe.”
“I’m not your client.” She didn’t hold back but wouldn’t quite meet his gaze.
“Hayden is.”
“Hayden is being ridiculous.”
“Look, Grace, why are you fighting me on this? Just tell me what the hell is going on. We’ll get everything squared away.
If you want to stay dead, then who am I to stop you?
I don’t know the situation, but there has to be a better way.
You’re causing the people you love stress, and the last thing Hayden needs is to be distracted over there. All right? Give me enough to fix this.”
Her frown deepened. “I don’t even know what fixing this would look like.”
Faking one’s death was a hard problem to overcome. It wasn’t insurmountable, though.
The more pressing issue was Dominic. They needed to confirm that he had been at the grocery store, and only then would Callum know the full extent of the problems they had to handle.
“I want to help you, but I need to know what that means. What the threats are. Where the problems are hiding. Whatever you’re not telling me. ”
She rubbed her temples. “I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you do.” His frustration was piling up. All Grace had to do was spit out the problems so he could fix them. None of this hiding or stressing about an ex-husband.
Callum rocked on the back legs of his chair. She probably needed him to be calm and patient, and those weren’t his best qualities.
When she gave him nothing, he set all four chair legs on the ground and tried a more direct approach. “Why don’t we start at the grocery store? You saw your ex-husband and then what?”
She turned the water bottle over and over in her hands before shaking her head. “I saw his car. Sleek black Mercedes sedan that looked like a million bucks sitting in the Shop ’n’ Save parking lot. That car probably cost more than their inventory of fresh produce.”
“You saw his license plate, or…?”
“I don’t know his plate. Why would I know his plates?” Irritation edged into her voice. “I just know it was him. No, no, do not look at me like I’m an idiot.”
He lifted his hands like a white flag, not wanting to lose the small amount of trust that he’d garnered. “It was him. Marino was in a black Mercedes sedan. Got it. It was him, and,” his eyebrows arched, “you ran?”
Bottom lip between her teeth, she nodded. “Out the back door.”
“Just like the police report said.” She’d ditched her car in a quiet small town in Maryland and ended up in this library.
He wanted to know how she got here. Alicia could have picked her up.
She could have access to another surreptitiously registered car.
Hell, Grace could have taken an Uber. “How’d you get here? ”
“Alicia.”
“Why’d you come here?”
“It’s a safe place. Alicia has helped me on and off for years.”
He could have been the one to help her. Why didn’t Grace reach out to him? “Why does your ex want to see you?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I can’t if you don’t talk to me. Maybe he wanted to set eyes on you, confirm that you were alive?” That would be top of his list if he had a hint that Grace had faked her death. “Maybe—”
“He didn’t want to see me. He wants to take me.”
That had his attention. “Take you?”
“Probably to New York City or Las Vegas.”
“Has he been in contact with you?” Marino’s lawyer had emphatically said no, but Callum trusted them as much as he trusted Marino.
Dean’s report included a summary of their divorce proceedings.
At the very least, Dominic had psychologically abused her.
The details weren’t explicit, but reading between the lines wasn’t hard.
There hadn’t been a restraining order issued while Marino had been in prison.
No need until now—though how could a legally dead person file a restraining order? They couldn’t. “Has he threatened you?”
“No.” She pressed her water bottle between her hands and focused on its cap. “You don’t get it.”
“I might if you give me a chance.”
“You won’t. You can’t.”
“Grace, try me.”