Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
GRACE
It seemed to take months, though it had really only been a matter of weeks for the guys to wrap up their mission for Doc. Even when I wanted to pace the walls, I fought against my own restlessness and impatience. They were doing exactly what they needed to do.
And me? I was keeping my promise… I stayed put when they needed me to stay put. I worked with Alphabet when he needed it, locked down when he had to go with the guys. I was never far from them, but I wasn’t on the front lines. I wasn’t a distraction.
Every single day I kept that promise felt like a betrayal to Amorette.
One thing to come out of all that time, I found out how to haunt Reddit, Substacks, and more.
I found all these nooks and crannies that dug into attorneys, their work, and their ethics.
I learned things about the firm Amorette worked for that puzzled me.
They weren’t bad exactly, but their reputation in the area of law she focused on wasn’t the best. If anything, they were more known as high-powered criminal and corporate attorneys.
The kind of work Amorette did for women in bad situations—almost all of it pro bono—was just public relations for the firm.
Something they could use to scrub up their image.
Former associates who worked for them shared deep cuts on buried subreddits that AB found for me with his bots. The more I read, the more it pissed me off. Most of them were socially conscious, morally upright people—at least based on their posts. They’d gone into law looking to help others.
They were the Amorettes of their time.
Most associates were expected to put in eighty hours a week, they had to also deliver on minimum billable hours and most of that was doing grunt work for the other senior attorneys in the firm.
The pro bono was a carrot to keep them sweating up the hill and so the firm could bank their sweat equity in both directions.
But when it came time for promotion? They weren’t the ones invited to buy in and eventually, they figured it out. They were phased out or driven out so the next crop of idealists could be put through the grindstone.
A knock on the desk next to me jerked me out of my reverie where I was doom scrolling through the subreddit. My heart hammered against my ribs, the shock more than a little jarring. Bones stared down at me, his expression unreadable and his eyes almost glacial.
Nobody deserved to be that damn good looking. None of them. But Bones? He needed to get laid but since the only time he touched me was to get me off—and who thought I’d ever think that was a bad thing—but he never let me touch him. At this point, I’d stopped offering.
You could love someone and not like them. Most of the time, we got along. But lately? I swore, being around him was like wearing the itchiest, cheapest polyester. “Yes?”
“We’ve got a date. Let’s go.”
I blinked slowly and then leaned back in the chair.
I scrolled through my mental calendar, it being so full and all that, but I didn’t recall even the suggestion of a date.
After leaving Braxton Harbor, we’d ended up at some new safe house, this one in New Mexico not far from the Colorado border.
I almost asked them if there was a bingo card for their various domiciles. Almost.
Ultimately, I’d decided against it. They were all tired, bruised, and more than a little battered. They’d been running on vapors, and I wanted them to rest even more than I wanted back on my own search.
“I’m going to go with my first thought,” I said after a beat. “What date?”
Instead of answering, he nudged the rolling chair back and closed the laptop that Voodoo had sourced for me and AB set up.
“Let’s go, Dollface.”
“Go where?”
Rather than answering me, he just held out a hand. The silent demand of let’s go just rolled off of him.
Blowing out a breath, I clasped his hand and let him pull me out of the chair. I was in a pair of marble colored yoga capris and a black Y-back sports bra. “I’m not dressed to go anywhere.”
He swept a cool look over me. “What you’re wearing is fine.” A beat. “You need shoes though. Put them on.”
Just… shoes.
Helpful.
“Okay, gimme a minute.” I sent him a bright smile.
It was one I’d worked on for the camera.
The one that would light up my eyes whether I was feeling it or not.
When his eyes narrowed in suspicion, a little burst of joy filled me but I made a beeline for the bedroom they’d given me in our new place.
The square—well rectangle really—sprawl of the adobe structure surrounded a center lap pool, that in itself, surrounded a meditation garden with a koi pond.
It was kind of tranquil. The spill of the water into the lap pool circulated it and added a soothing rhythm.
The koi were lovely and I could tan if I wanted to, but I made sure to use plenty of sunscreen the two times I’d been out there.
It was better at night. The house was far enough out that we had a decent night sky, but nothing like the view from “Base.” A wistful sigh escaped me as I found the shoes I wanted in the closet.
I slid into the four-inch heels. We hadn’t actually made it back to their Montana after returning to the States.
More and more it looked like we wouldn’t and—I was in this odd place of wanting to both go there and find Amorette simultaneously. Shaking off those competing sensations, I headed back out to where Bones waited for me at the end of the hall.
He dragged his gaze over me as I sauntered toward him. Despite his earlier wariness, his expression barely shifted. Oh well, I still had fun wearing the shoes. “Ready to go.”
“Follow me.” He was already striding away. Though for a split second, I thought I caught a hint of his lips curving. Probably just the light. Instead of the front door or even the garage, he headed toward the opposite wing where another structure jutted off from the main house.
I hadn’t been out there, no reason to and as far as I knew, they weren’t using it. When he opened the door to a full-on gym right down the free weights, weight machines, and mats, I raised my brows.
Lips pursed, I shook my head. “Well played, Boney Boy. Well played.”
With a light snort, he curled his fingers in a beckoning gesture. “The heels are a good choice. You often wear them, so learning to do this while in heels will be effective.”
Caution flooded me and I slowed my pace. “Learning to do what?”
He was at the side of the room and he stripped off his shirt—which in and of itself seemed a party foul.
The man was exceptionally ripped and he had an inordinate number of scars.
They all did, but I never got a chance to really map his.
Even if he slept without a shirt on, he always woke up before I did.
“To fight,” he said over his shoulder.
“Excuse me?” Arms folded, I crossed the room. The clip of my heels was muffled against the different flooring.
“Self-defense, Dollface,” he continued. “Come here so I can wrap your hands.”
That made me stop dead. “First of all, stop giving me orders. I didn’t join the army and I don’t report to you.”
He fixed those cool gray eyes on me. “No, but you are continuously going into dangerous situations and you have a mission you want to undertake.”
A mission…
“That’s just to play Am, while I fake out her boss to find out what the hell he did.” That didn’t seem even remotely as dangerous as the other challenges we’d faced. “I’ve done way harder stuff already.”
“I know.” Clipped. Terse. “You’ve handled yourself well, even if you’ve also been hurt.”
Mouth open to argue, I blinked. The compliment threw me.
“However, there’s luck, and then there’s training. Relying on luck will get you killed. You will not die on my watch. So, we need to train you.”
I stared at him and it genuinely took me a moment to find my voice. “You’re serious.”
“Yes,” he said, crossing toward me with what looked like a roll of red gauze. “Deadly serious.” The man towered over me as he took my right hand in his then began to wrap it. “We don’t have enough time to put you through an accelerated combat course.”
That made me picture both of us in fatigues with streaks of black to keep down the glare and… This close, the muscles in his chest rippled with each movement of his hands as he wound the tape over my knuckles then across my palm.
“You’re going to learn a handful of moves, then repeat them until they are second nature—until your muscle memory has you responding before you even think about it.” The measured tones jerked my gaze upward to find him not looking at me but at my hands.
“And we have this kind of time?” The leads were getting colder and colder. That was one thing when we were fighting a battle for Doc and his friends. This was different.
“We’re making the time,” he said, checking the tautness of the tap. “Flex your hand. Now make a fist.”
The manicure I’d gotten while in Braxton Harbor had grown out.
So, I’d filed them and just gone for shaped at this point.
The guys had picked up the polish I asked for, and the simple pink gave them the suggestion of length.
Asking for another manicure so soon seemed a really bad form all things being equal.
He made some adjustment then went to taping up my left hand. “Your target has almost eighty pounds, and eight inches on you in height. Physically, you are not only smaller, you are weaker. If he decides to blitz you, and you don’t at least know some manner of real defense—he could kill you.”
It was only the hoarse note that crept into his chilly tone at the end that kept me from being a real bitch back at him. However… “Newsflash,” I said softly. “I’ve always been small and men have always been a threat.”
Pausing when he finished taping my left hand, he fixed those stone-gray eyes on me.
“Yes, they are. While I don’t think you’ll ever be able to take down a fully trained combat veteran or even a lightly trained one, particularly if they outweigh you and are much taller—there are things you can do that can incapacitate and buy you time.
Even a few seconds can mean the difference between them getting their hands around your throat and us getting to you. ”
My heart fisted for a moment, the squeeze making it kind of hard to breathe.
“You’re a lot bigger than Am’s boss.”
A faint smile touched his lips. “So, we know if you can stop me, you can definitely stop him.”
Blowing out a breath, I tilted my head. “You know, I know how to walk with my keys slotted between my fingers to create claws if I have to be on the street. I’ve carried mace before then pepper spray.
I also know that if you kick a man in the balls, he’s going to be too busy holding them to hang onto me. ”
“Those might be fine for a mugger, but they won’t stop someone truly determined to hurt you. Sometimes, it will just piss them off.”
“I’ve never seen a man shake off having his balls meet my knee.
” Honestly, the first time I slammed my knee into the balls of a guy had been behind the bleachers when I was fourteen and a senior named Hampton had gotten really friendly.
He also didn’t take no for an answer. The best part beyond the explosion of air he released had been him actually slamming into one of the struts as he doubled over.
Two hits for the price of one.
Not that I was going to bring that up right now. Am had always been big on self-defense and so had Eleanor—
All of my mirth dissolved. Eleanor was dead.
“Kick me in the balls,” Bones said.
Wait— what?
“I’m sorry, I think I misheard you.”
An actual huff of laughter left him. “You didn’t.” He’d finished taping my hands and tossed the roll back toward the bench. “Kick me in the balls.”
Of all the things for him to say, I just stared at him. I wanted to touch him, not hurt him. “You know that might be going a bit—”
All at once, he grabbed my biceps and hauled me up off my feet. His pitiless expression arrested every single thought I had as he glared at me and put his face right up to mine.
“What would you do now?”
Since he was asking…
I kissed him.