Chapter Thirty-Six
Grace
Gone. I’m supposed to be…gone.
If it weren’t for Parker and Belle, I’d be curled in a ball on the floor, sobbing.
For all my talk about wanting answers, the minute the front door opened, the courage I’d worked so hard to gather slipped away. I don’t know Hardison. And until I can remember who took me—and why—how can I trust anyone?
AJ moves through the living room like an unstoppable force. I can’t tear my gaze from the top of Belle’s head, but I sense him. And how everyone else—except Parker—gets out of his way.
She doesn’t leave my side until the last possible moment. Even then, she pauses to give my hand a squeeze, whispering, “You got this.”
If only I believed her.
“Grace? Look at me.” AJ’s voice is quiet. Not soft—there’s too much steel in it for that—but steady and unshakable.
The cushions next to me shift with his weight, and I force my head up to meet his gaze. The concern etched on his face is enough to free the stranglehold fear has on my throat. “I’m…okay.”
I’m not—and AJ knows it—but I can pretend for a short time.
“H-Hardison n-needs to know wh-what we know.” I risk a single glance at the man Parker called a boy scout. He hasn’t moved from next to the coat rack, but the way he’s watching me—or maybe he’s watching how AJ is with me—makes me think he’s trying to get all the puzzle pieces to fit.
He sniffs the air and beelines for the kitchen. “Is there pizza? I smell pizza.”
AJ watches him go, then turns to Parker. “Did he just…?”
“I’m not gonna lie to the chief’s face on an empty stomach,” he calls once he pulls the pizza boxes out of the oven. “And I missed dinner. From the looks of it, I’m not the only one.”
Everyone starts moving and talking like we’re in the world’s most bizarre sitcom. Jasper gets the plates, Parker passes out napkins, and Emi brings me a bottle of Shiner with a whispered, “You look like you could use a beer.”
AJ keeps his arm around me, and amid the bustling room, my mind conjures up the scent of pine.
I blink, and there’s a ghost of a Christmas tree in the front window.
A wispy shadow of Jasper throws a wad of wrapping paper at AJ.
An older woman with AJ’s eyes in a truly ridiculous sweater tells the brothers to play nice.
“Grace?” AJ cups my cheek, urging me to look up at him. “Fuck. You’re crying, darlin’. What’s wrong?”
“We used to put the Christmas tree over there,” I say, pointing at the window, a shaky smile curving my lips. “Your mom has a reindeer sweater that lights up…”
A hush falls over the room. AJ frames my face with his hands, searching my gaze for the woman he fell in love with. God, I wish I could tell him I remember everything. But I can give him the same hope coursing through my veins.
“It was just…a moment. A flash. But it was real.”
He wraps his arms around me. “You bought that sweater for Mom. Of all the things to remember…” A hoarse chuckle rumbles through his chest. “I love you, Grace. So damn much.”
If we weren’t in the middle of all these people, I’d kiss him. I want to. More than anything. But over his shoulder, Nate watches us. So I brush my lips to the shell of AJ’s ear. “Everyone’s staring.”
“Let them,” he grits out.
Parker clears her throat. “Boss, we’ve got work to do.”
With a low, rumbling sigh, AJ releases me. “Fine. Someone bring us a couple of slices. Grace likes hers with extra red pepper flakes.”
Jasper and Emi drag chairs in from the dining room, while Connor doles out slices. Parker sets two plates on the coffee table in front of us.
“Lieutenant Supreme Disappointment reporting for duty,” Nate says, flopping into a chair next to the fireplace and shoving half a slice into his mouth at once.
I catch Parker’s eye, and she huffs. “He eats like that in front of suspects too.”
Nate dabs at his mouth with a paper napkin. “Keeps the blood sugar steady. Plus, the perps let their guard down when you’ve got marinara on your shirt.”
His jokes, Parker’s comebacks—they’re nothing, really. But the way they spar like brother and sister gives me something solid to hold onto. My nerves don’t vanish, but they ease enough, I reach for my plate.
AJ shakes his head. “Enough with the comedy routine. Your little dead zone play won’t keep Harris off your back for long. We need you at the station tomorrow morning. Hell, we need you to call the chief back when we’re done here and apologize. If he shitcans you too, we’re all fucked.”
Nate’s gaze pings between AJ, Parker, and Connor, before landing on me. “Can do. What do I know? More importantly, what don’t I know?”
“You don’t know shit,” Connor says.
“Yeah, that isn’t gonna fly.” Leaning forward so he can grab his bottle of Coke off the coffee table, he nods at Parker.
“She’s been acting squirrely all week. Harris might have bought the ‘food poisoning’ story, but I didn’t.
Maybe I don’t ‘officially’ know anything, but here?
Now? I want the whole truth. Not some FBI-level intelligence briefing with black bars all over the damn place. ”
Silence fills the room, broken only by the pounding in my head that’s been nearly constant since my panic attack.
“Cap,” Hardison says, “you can’t give me a shovel and not tell me how deep to dig the grave.”
With a heavy sigh, AJ drapes his arm around my shoulders and presses a gentle kiss to my temple. “Fine. Last Friday night—”
“Hold up.” Jasper straightens in his chair, eyes narrowed on Nate. “Ground rules first. Rule number one: until the chief spells somethin’ out for you, you don’t know shit. Rule number two: nothing you hear tonight leaves this room. Got it?”
Nate glances in my direction. The urge to cower behind AJ rears up, but I swallow hard and force it away. If I’m going to get my life back, I can’t shrink into a quivering ball of panic every time a man so much as looks at me.
“Got it. But there’s one more. Rule number three,” Nate says. “If it comes down to protecting my job or protecting Grace, my job can go fuck itself.”
Parker chokes on a sip of her beer. “You sure about that?”
Nate huffs. “Listen, Lieutenant Loose Cannon, I didn’t drive all the way across town on a Friday night after a ten-hour shift because I was worried about my pension. Yes. I’m sure.” He picks up his slice of pizza and takes another massive bite.
AJ gives him a terse nod. “Then I’ll try this again. Last Friday night, I got a call from a doctor down in Mexico.”
AJ
“Nothing?” Hardison asks, brows hidden somewhere in his shaggy mess of hair. “Not being taken? Not escaping?”
Anger prickles along my spine. “She didn’t escape. The unsub left her for dead.”
“Doesn’t change the original question.”
I clench my hand around my bottle of beer until my knuckles ache. “For fuck’s sake—”
“Nothing,” Grace says softly. “I have…flashes.” She stares at the plate in her lap, unable—or unwilling—to make eye contact with Hardison. And while her voice isn’t loud, it’s mostly steady. “A wooden door. A man’s voice. Being somewhere…all alone.”
Nate leans forward, elbows on his knees. “What about before? Your life with AJ. Going out for that last run.”
“None of it.” She finally lifts her head, and her gaze finds mine, tears lending a subtle shimmer to her eyes. “Everything I know about my life came from AJ. Without him, I wouldn’t even know my own name.”
She’s so damn strong. If we weren’t in the middle of a clusterfuck the size of Hell’s half acre, I’d beg her to let me kiss her.
So many emotions play across her face—fear, determination, gratitude…and love. She may not remember loving me, but I think—I hope—she’s close to falling all over again.
Hardison runs his hand over his jaw with a frown. “Got it. So what’s the official story then?”
I don’t want to tear my focus from Grace, but this might be the only way to protect her, so I glance over at Hardison. “Everyone knows I run the trail on Saturdays. When I got to her last known location, she was just…there. Barefoot, disoriented, wearing a white dress with her blood all over it.”
“And Harris is supposed to believe you didn’t call 911 because…?” The skepticism in Nate’s tone sets me off all over again, but Parker clears her throat.
“Because he’s an overprotective sonofabitch who’d just found his missing wife after almost three fucking years, dumbass. She was scared, didn’t know who he was, let alone who she was, and could barely string a sentence together. He got her into the car and called me.”
“You? Not his brother. Or Connor. You. How did you land so high on his ‘call in case of emergency’ list?”
“Because unlike you, I’ve actually asked him about Grace before,” she snaps.
Nate flinches, his shoulders curling inward for a beat before he meets my stare. “I didn’t want to open up old wounds.”
“Enough. Both of you. I called Parker because Grace needed another woman there. Because she’d know what to do when I didn’t. Be able to handle things I…couldn’t.”
The story we’re telling now might be a complete fabrication, but what I just said about Parker?
That’s the God’s honest truth. I’ll never be able to repay her for what she’s done for Grace—what she’s done for me.
I always knew she was a good Ranger. One of the best. But watching her with Grace…
protecting her, caring for her, standing guard like she was born for it—the realization cuts deeper than I expect.
She stopped being just one of my lieutenants down in Mexico. She’s family now.
And if I want to keep it together, I can’t even look at her. Not when gratitude and relief are so close to breaking me wide open. Not when I need every ounce of control to keep our ducks in a row—and make sure none of them turn out to be crazed pigeons in disguise.
“Got it,” Nate says, his tone even. “Keeping things simple. Less for Grace to trip up on when Harris does his best impression of a pressure cooker without a release valve.”
I grit my teeth hard enough to feel it all the way in my temples. If the chief so much as raises his voice at Grace, I don’t know how I’ll stop myself from beating the ever-loving shit out of him.
Nate nods, a faraway look in his dark eyes. “It’s a good, clean story. And after you brought her back here, you called a doctor you could trust. Decided to keep things quiet until she got her strength back.”
“That’s the truth,” Parker says. “Just not the whole of it.”
Connor leans forward in his chair, his cold stare locked on Nate. “I got a spare burner phone in my truck for you. If Harris even hints that he don’t believe Grace’s story, you call. If you find out how he knew Grace was here, you call. If he’s comin’ after any of us—”
“I’ll call.”