33. Grace
THIRTY-THREE
Grace
The jet landed in Colorado around noon the next day. Dane’s Range Rover was waiting there at the private airport, freshly washed and gassed up. That was the amazing thing about having an assistant like Margot. Someone to make those little details happen, even when she was still thousands of miles away.
I couldn’t believe how much had changed since I last set foot in my home state.
Dane reached across the center console to take my hand. “Good to be back?”
“It is.” But even better to have him with me.
After so many weeks in New York, I was surprised to find myself already missing Margot, who I now counted as a friend. Not just because of her incredible admin skills, of course. I admired her dry sense of humor and no-nonsense attitude. I missed Dane’s apartment too, even with its bland decor, just because I’d spent a lot of time with him there.
But as we drove across the border into Hart County, a feeling of completeness washed through me. As much as I had enjoyed NYC, this was where I belonged. With the mountains and broad expanses of sky and evergreens. Most of the fall color had faded, and there was a fine layer of snow coating the branches of the pine trees.
We wouldn’t head to Silver Ridge until later, though. First we had to find Nina Badowski, and we had no idea how that would go. If she would be willing to talk to us at all.
Only a few trucks passed as we drove toward the address that Warren had provided for Nina’s motel. Sun glittered on the recent snowfall. We were in a less populated area of the county, surrounded by national forest land and hiking trails, with hot springs not too far away.
“This is it,” Dane said. He turned onto a short drive that ended in front of a one-story motor court straight out of the 1960s. A retro sign said Spring Valley Motel , and proclaimed below, Vacancy .
The parking lot was nearly deserted.
Dane pulled his SUV into a spot near the middle and switched off the engine. “Warren said she’s in number 12.”
That was at the far end. The curtain on that unit was pulled closed, no sign of activity.
“We know she’s hiding here,” Dane added, “and she must have a good reason. That could make her dangerous if she sees us as a threat.”
“If you’re trying to talk me out of going to the door with you, we already had that conversation.”
On the flight, Dane and I had debated which of us should approach Nina first. Dane didn’t want me going up to her door by myself. And I was afraid that she wouldn’t open up to some strange guy. Maybe even less so if she recognized him as a member of the Knightly family.
“You agreed we would do this together,” I said.
“I did, and I’m not going back on that. But we don’t know what to expect. If I tell you to get out of there, there’s not going to be time for long explanations. I need to know that you’ll trust my assessment without question.”
“I will.” He had years of training as a soldier. Ashford had taught me plenty of self-defense, but the only time I had faced real violence was when Vincent had attacked me a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t looking for a repeat of those injuries.
Yet at the same time, I wasn’t afraid, either. I could do this. I needed to do this. Whatever the true story turned out to be, I was convinced that Nina was a victim here. If she lashed out, it would only be in self-defense.
Dane reached over to touch my face. “I just can’t let anything happen to you.”
“Because you made some manly promise to my brothers?”
“No, because you’re the best thing in my life. I would rather die than lose you.”
“When you put it that way…” It was impossible to be annoyed at a man when he made declarations like that.
We got out of the car, closing the doors softly. Dane walked in front of me as we approached number 12. The curtains in the window didn’t twitch.
The whole motel was so quiet. Unnervingly so.
But as we got closer, I heard the low murmur of voices along with music. A television.
Dane paused, keeping me behind him. “You ready?”
I nodded.
We stepped in front of the door together, so when Nina looked through the peephole, she would see us both. He started to reach out to knock.
Then I saw the scratches around the lock plate, and I grabbed his arm. “Dane, look .” It was like my brain had flashed back in time by several weeks, to the night I had walked up to my house and realized someone had broken in.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Stay back, Grace. We need to call the police. If we don’t have cell service, the front desk will have a landline.”
But my safety was the least of my concerns at this moment. “Nina could be hurt!”
Dane rapped hard on the door. “Nina? You okay?” The door swung inward. It hadn’t been latched.
Someone with red hair was sprawled on the carpet. A dark pool spread out beneath her.
No .
“Stay out of here,” Dane barked. “Call 911.” He lunged forward to check for vital signs. I couldn’t move, my limbs frozen as I stood in the doorway.
There was no way Nina could lose that much blood and still be alive.
* * *
“I’m Sheriff Owen Douglas.” He held out his hand to Dane, then to me. “Thanks for waiting.”
“Took long enough,” Dane grumbled.
“I assume you have questions for us,” I said.
We were in the tiny lobby of the Spring Valley Motel. The plastic chair I was sitting on was possibly the least comfortable in existence. Outside, the motel parking lot was crawling with sheriff’s department vehicles. The front desk clerk had nearly gotten hysterical when he heard one of his guests had been attacked. I was pretty sure he was being interviewed by a deputy.
Nina was dead, and I felt sick wondering if there was some way we could’ve helped her. If we had gotten here yesterday instead of today…
I had no idea how long she’d been lying there, but Dane and I both guessed no more than several hours. She’d probably been killed overnight.
Sheriff Douglas nodded. “I do. A lot of questions. I trust you’ll both be cooperative.”
I had never met the sheriff of Hart County in person before, though of course I knew Douglas by reputation. I had voted for him in the last election. He was around Ashford and Dane’s age, mid-thirties, wearing a white cowboy hat with his uniform.
My brother had spoken well of Sheriff Douglas in the past. Ashford had led some martial arts trainings for the department. But the deputies had kept us waiting in here for a while, even trying to separate us until Dane threatened to have his lawyer on the next flight out.
The sheriff dragged over one of the uncomfortable chairs. “I really should be questioning you separately.” He held up a hand like he was trying to head off our protests. “ But , I understand you’ve already raised objections to that. So I’ll make an exception just to speed this along. Last I spoke to your brother, Miss O’Neal, Ashford mentioned you were staying in New York for a while. Yet here you are.”
“We flew in today to find Nina Badowski.”
“Do you know when exactly she was attacked, Sheriff?” Dane asked.
“We’re in the process of determining that. It’s one of the questions I have for you, in fact. Wasn’t planning to start there, though.”
“Grace and I have no idea. We weren’t even in Colorado until a few hours ago. We came straight here. Found the door open and Nina on the floor inside.”
“We explained that to the first officers on the scene after I called 911,” I added.
Sheriff Douglas took off his hat, scratching at the buzzed hair beneath. “Yes, but I’m going to need to hear a lot more about why a rich New York businessman and a Silver Ridge local wound up here looking for a woman who turned out to be… Well, there’s no way to put this delicately is there?”
“She had her throat cut,” Dane said.
The sheriff squinted at him. “How do you know that?”
“How do you think? I have eyes.” Dane had already told me that was what it looked like. But I suppressed another shudder and a wave of nausea. Dane’s hand went to my thigh, a reassuring weight.
“A woman has been murdered,” Douglas said. “I recommend cutting the sarcasm.”
“We want to help,” I interrupted. “But we already know who did this. His name is Vincent Brady.”
“Did you see him here?”
“I haven’t seen him since he attacked me in New York. But I’m sure it was him. We’ll tell you everything we can.”
I started with meeting Nina at the hotel’s grand-opening party, though of course I hadn’t known her name at the time. I shared how Nina had given me her mask. How Dirk Lancaster had mistaken me for her, and later Vincent approached me trying to find her.
Nina had disappeared that night. Whatever she’d been running from, she must’ve already known the danger by then. Why else would she hole up in this motel under a fake name?
Yet I didn’t believe she’d wanted to put me in danger. The strap on my mask broke simply by chance. Nina made a snap decision to give me hers. She’d probably thought I might attract Dirk’s and Vincent’s attention, but then they’d forget about me once they realized I wasn’t her. Even after the break-in at my house when the mask was stolen, Vincent left me alone.
Until, of course, I showed up in New York and saw him threatening Lexi. And got myself involved again.
I’d heard Vincent threaten Nina when he was talking to Lexi Sanders. Lexi was probably in extreme danger too, and I hoped she was staying hidden. But Nina had tried to hide, and Vincent had found her, just like Dane’s investigator had.
Vincent had made it here first.
But what we still didn’t know was why . Why Vincent would want to kill Nina to silence her. Why any of this was really happening.
Sheriff Douglas listened to all of it with a serious but impassive expression. “So Vincent Brady was searching for Nina, and so were you. Mr. Knightly’s investigator tracked her down, and that’s why you arrived today. To have a chat with her. But you haven’t explained what you hoped she could tell you.”
“That has to do with my father’s company,” Dane said. “Knightly Global. And a possible high-end escort business being run at my family’s hotel properties.”
The sheriff’s stoic expression finally broke, revealing his shock. “Escorts?”
We answered the rest of Douglas’s questions, but there wasn’t much else we could add. There were so many gaps in what we knew. Finally, the sheriff fit his hat on his head and stood. “I would appreciate if neither of you leaves the county for the next week at least, in case I have more questions for you.”
“Not a problem,” Dane said. “We’re planning to stay in Silver Ridge for a while.”
“Chief Landry at Silver Ridge PD might also want to speak to you, since the break-in at Grace’s home was his jurisdiction. I’ll keep him updated on my side of things, and he can let you know.”
After Sheriff Douglas left the motel lobby, Dane turned to me, his gruffness melting away. “How are you doing? This has been a lot.”
“I’m pissed off. And I hate the thought that we might’ve stopped this. If Warren had found Nina sooner, or maybe if we’d tried to call her yesterday as soon as we figured out she was here, I could’ve told her Vincent had been looking for her.”
Dane put his arm around me and rested his cheek against my temple. “She was in hiding, baby. She already knew. There was no way to predict if she would talk to us or if we could’ve made any difference at all.”
I didn’t want to accept that. I had to believe there would be some kind of resolution to all this. Some kind of justice .
“We passed a pizza place down the road,” Dane said. “Let’s get some food, and then we can head to Silver Ridge. I’m sure you’re anxious to see your family.”
“I am. I want to hug Maisie and I just… I just want to be with them. And you. I haven’t even asked how you’re doing.”
“I’m alright. Next to you is the only place I want to be.”
* * *
I was too nauseous to be hungry, but food did seem like a good idea. At the very least so that we weren’t jittery for the drive.
We passed beyond the police cordon and through a small crowd of curiosity seekers on our way out of the motel. Word was already spreading about a murder. Not a common occurrence anywhere in my home county.
The pizza place was a five-minute drive away. When we walked into the restaurant, with old-school country music playing from a jukebox and vintage skis and snowshoes decorating the walls, I did feel calmer. Like we had slipped out of a nightmare world and gone back to almost-normal life.
As soon as we sat down, Dane ordered us a couple of sodas. Which turned out to be perfect. The first few sips got my blood sugar back up and settled my stomach.
When the pizza arrived, though, my nausea returned. The image of Nina’s hotel room surfaced again in my mind, and I pushed my plate away.
Dane frowned, seeming to look past me before his gaze returned to my face. “Grace?—”
“I know I need to eat something, but I can’t right now.”
“No, it’s not that.” He was keeping his voice low, not even moving his lips much. “Don’t turn around. There’s a man who came into the restaurant about five minutes after us who’s sitting at a table in the corner. He’s fidgeting like he’s nervous. And he keeps looking over here.”
I stopped myself from glancing back, using the reflection in the decorative mirror behind Dane to scan the room. I spotted the guy he meant. Sandy blond hair, wire-rimmed glasses, a neatly trimmed beard. A gingham button-down shirt tucked into jeans. He didn’t have the look of a local, especially someone living in a more rural part of Hart County.
Adrenaline roared through my veins again.
“I saw him outside the motel, too,” Dane murmured. “The crowd that had gathered outside the police cordon. Know him?”
“Never seen him before.” But the energy coursing through me wasn’t fear. It was excitement. I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What if he has information about Nina?” I whispered.
“Either that, or he’s the one who killed her and he’s looking for his next victim.”
I scoffed, glancing at the guy in the mirror again. “Maybe we should talk to him.”
“Nope. I’m going to pay, and then I’m getting you out of here. We’ve had enough surprises for one day.”
“Wait. I have an idea.”
Dane paused, waiting as he frowned.
Earlier, Nina’s death had left me feeling defeated. But I couldn’t just give up and walk away from this. I had been sitting still for the last couple of weeks, healing in a luxurious apartment with an incredible man taking care of me.
And during that same time, Nina had been all alone. Terrified. For her, the worst had happened. But I was still here.
I was finished with being passive. I had to act .
“I’ll go down that hallway toward the restrooms,” I said. “Maybe he’ll try to follow me. If he does, you come up behind him and we’ll confront him.”
“Use you as bait? Absolutely not . You’re still not healed, but even if you were, I’d still say no.”
“We either go with my idea, or we head to his table right now and ask in front of the whole restaurant why he’s staring. But given how anxious he is, that might scare him away.”
“I’m not putting you in harm’s way again. I’m planning to call Douglas and report it. Let the sheriff talk to the guy.”
“Report what ? That the guy’s looking at us funny? Douglas and his deputies are busy at the murder scene. This guy doesn’t look like a killer. He wants to talk to us. This could be an easy way to get him alone so we can find out what he wants.”
Dane groaned. “I never should’ve told you how brave you are. Shouldn’t have encouraged you.”
I smiled, knowing I’d won. “You’re the guy who once compared me to a superhero.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Dane wiped his hand over his face. “Okay, we’ll try it your way. But if the man makes any sudden moves toward you, I’m not going to mess around. I’m knocking him out, and we’ll have to chat with him later when he wakes up. Assuming Sheriff Douglas doesn’t have me in the county jail for assault.”
“If that happens, I promise to bail you out.”