Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
ALPHABET
Voodoo handed her the mug before she’d even made it fully into the room, because of course he did.
She looked… better. Not fine. No one with shadows that dark in their eyes was fine, but she was upright, showered, hair damp around her shoulders, and wrapped in a hoodie that made her look smaller than she already was.
Pale, composed, but with a tremor hiding deep beneath the surface.
A tremor I’d hoped the universe would never put back in her.
Goblin trotted in with her, tail wagging in a tight, almost anxious circle. I hadn’t tried to make him leave her nor did he seem inclined. He was our best barometer for her emotional state. He had been since she joined us, and I was more than happy to share him.
Once she was in the kitchen, she sank down into a chair at the table. Goblin immediately settled his head against her thigh. She rested her free hand against his head, the tension bleeding out of her in slow, grudging increments. Smart dog. Smarter than all of us sometimes.
Bones watched her from near the counter, arms folded, expression a little too carefully blank.
Voodoo hovered by her other side, mug still half-raised like he was ready to intercept if she wobbled.
I stayed behind the table where I’d spread out everything we’d collected—wallets, burner phones, a couple of cheap IDs, and one high-end encrypted comms device that was absolutely not cheap and absolutely not street-level muscle.
I’d been cataloging everything while Bones got her cleaned up. That meant I had enough half-formed theories to fill a whiteboard and no concrete conclusions I’d be willing to bet my prosthetic on.
Grace finally straightened, one hand braced lightly on Goblin’s back as she finally took a drink from the cup of coffee Voodoo had given her.
“Thank you.” Her voice was steady. Mostly.
“Anytime, Firecracker.” He brushed a knuckle under her chin, everything about his contact soft, and careful.
I slid the encrypted comm unit toward Bones without saying a word. He met my gaze over Grace’s shoulder; he’d already gone clinical again. Focused. Cold. He’d need to stay that way for what came next.
“We need intel,” he said, voice low enough not to rattle her but sharp enough to cut steel. “Alphabet’s cataloging the downed men. We still need to question the housekeeper before we deal with the other.”
No one had to clarify who the other was.
Grace’s fingers tightened around the mug. Just a flicker. But I saw it.
“We don’t have to do anything right this second,” Voodoo added. “You can just sit. Drink. Breathe.”
She didn’t just sit, she shifted her attention to the table in front of her, scanning the spread-out evidence. “Are those theirs?”
“Yep,” I said. “Three IDs so fake they might as well have been printed at a high school computer lab. One that might be real but tied to a guy who doesn’t technically exist. And this—” I tapped the encrypted unit with a fingertip.
“This is government-grade. Or stolen from someone government-grade. That’s the fun mystery. ”
Grace’s throat bobbed. She was absorbing information, not flinching from it. That was something.
“What about the housekeeper?” she asked quietly.
Bones answered before I could. “We’ll handle her.”
Grace looked up sharply. “Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Voodoo said smoothly, “we’re not going to traumatize a civilian who might’ve been coerced. We’ll be careful.”
Which was the diplomatic way of saying, Bones will interrogate her without terrifying her or letting her lie.
And Grace understood exactly what we weren’t saying. Her gaze went distant, vanishing somewhere we couldn’t follow. A flicker of nausea crossed her expression—quick, but real.
My chest tightened. I hated that look on her. Hated it more than the swelling around my knee protesting that I’d been on the go too long.
Bones stepped closer, but not too close. “We’ll take care of everything else. You don’t need to worry about him.”
Grace met his eyes and this time she didn’t drop her gaze like she had earlier, wrapped in fear and humiliation and shock.
“What are you going to do with him?”
Bones didn’t answer immediately. Which was answer enough.
“We’re going to get information,” he said simply.
Her jaw flexed. Her fingers tightened again on the mug. Goblin nudged her hip like he felt the spike of tension.
“And after that?” she pressed.
“That’s not your burden,” Bones said. Calm. Steady. Absolute.
Voodoo shot me a look that translated to, We need to redirect before she digs into the part she won’t like.
“If I want it to be?” The question stopped me cold. The shadows had retreated and she was still sipping her coffee, but some color was returning to her cheeks.
“Do you want it to be?” Bones countered her question with one of his own without moderating his tone. Gracie had never backed down from him, even when he was at his most irritated. Now that she wasn’t throwing things at him, it was still fun to watch.
“Yes,” she said slowly and I straightened. “He was one of my captors at the warehouse…where I first woke up.”
That had been my guess based on the fingerprint scan I’d run, but Ignacio Santo Juarez was a mid-level businessman who headed several import/export operations. It wasn’t a stretch to realize he was a player in the trafficking operation that had scooped her up.
“Did he hurt you, Dollface?”
Voodoo’s expression went grim. We all knew the answer. Her reaction had been the answer, but Bones wasn’t making assumptions. More importantly, he was handing her back the power they’d taken from her.
Fierce Gracie had never stopped fighting. Voodoo had told me how they found her. Showed me the evidence of her fear and her physical reactions. I’d also seen the signs of how she fought back in the bruises on her assailants and the scattered objects from the desk flung around the room.
Our brilliant, fierce, impossible-to-contain woman never gave up.
She fought with everything she had and everything she was.
That wounded creature I’d glimpsed in the bathroom was only the aftermath—she was already gathering up her pieces, rebuilding herself with the same stubborn fire that had carried her this far.
“Yes.” Her answer was straightforward, direct. She didn’t try to soften it or explain around it. “He was the one who had me set aside for him.” Her gaze locked on Bones as his expression rippled. For as long as I’d known the captain, I’d also respected his will and ability to contain his emotions.
“Him?” A grim question.
She nodded once. “Him.”
Bones blew out a breath. “You still want in?”
“I have to be in.” Utterly implacable in her determination. “I want answers. I want to hear what he says.” She drained the coffee. “I don’t have to like it. But I have to hear it.”
Instead of responding immediately, Bones glanced at Voodoo, their gazes locking for a pulse before he shifted it to me. Yeah, I got it. He wanted our opinions. Like Voodoo, I nodded.
She was correct. None of us had to like it, but she had more than earned the right to make this call.
“Then you will.” He rubbed his jaw. “Want something to eat? Or more coffee?”
She shook her head. “Not sure I can eat right now. You should have some coffee though.”
Normally, he’d have blown that off. But to my shock, a faint smile curved Bones’ lips and he nodded. “A half cup,” he said and I just stared.
“Gracie,” I said in a stage whisper, snagging her attention, “the Bones whisperer.”
It earned me an expected smack in the back of the head from Bones but Grace’s sudden smile was more than worth it. Even better, the light that flickered back into her eyes. Satisfaction flooded me, but before I could say anything else, my phone rang.
I glanced at the caller ID. “It’s me,” I said, answering. “Go.”
Lunchbox’s low voice cut through the line. “Still on Sinclair. He’s left the hotel and is now at a restaurant meeting four other men. I got photos for you. I’ll send them through.”
“Still taking his time, I see,” I muttered as my phone began to vibrate, but I moved to the laptop to take the messages there so I could run the images.
“He seems very determined to not head home. Think he doesn’t want to spend time with his houseguests?”
Couldn’t blame him for those musings. Voodoo and I had debated a similar thought after I got a look at Juarez. “Maybe.” I eyed the men in the photos. “These look like standard businessmen.”
“Unless he’s running with a different caliber of trash than we think he is, these are the types I’d expect to see with him.” Lunchbox had a point. “How is she?”
“Hang on.” I passed the phone to Grace. “It’s Lunchbox.”
She brightened a fraction as she took it. Her comm was out and when I glanced at Bones with raised brows, he patted his pocket. One nod.
“Okay,” Gracie said in a soft voice, scratching Goblin’s head the whole time in gentle short motions. “Yes.” Another pause. “I’ll be fine.” This time she frowned. “No.” Then again. “No.” A sigh. “We’ll finish here first then let Bones call it.”
She blew out a long breath then lifted her gaze to Bones.
“Yes, he’s right here.” A hint of amusement. Barely there, but still there. “No, I thought I’d make him guess.”
Voodoo’s expression relaxed and some knot of tension in my gut let go. Yes, she was fighting her way back to us. Bones didn’t rush her, just waited until she held the phone out to him.
The time we’d made him take to recover from his capture had paid off in other ways. The pair had developed their own language and Bones wasn’t quite so remote and separate. All good things.
Bones took the phone from her, never looking away from her face until the receiver touched his ear. The shift was instantaneous—the faint warmth he’d let her see blinked out, replaced with that cool, clipped precision he wore like a second skin.
“Go,” he said.
Lunchbox must’ve jumped straight in, because Bones’ jaw ticked once, that tiny twitch he only made when he was thinking three moves ahead.
“When he wraps it, you shadow him out. If he doesn’t wrap it—” Bones paused, listening, eyes narrowing. “One hour. If he’s still sitting there bullshitting with his friends, bag him.”
Voodoo let out a low whistle. “Clock’s ticking.”
Bones ended the call with a soft click, slipped the phone into his pocket, then looked at all of us.
“Housekeeper.”
One word. A directive. And my cue.
I pushed away from the table. My leg protested—more a dull ache than a sharp one, but it was enough to make me adjust my gait as I led the way through the kitchen, past the laundry alcove, and toward the butler’s pantry.
The small room was tucked between the kitchen and the dining area, and when we’d secured her earlier, we’d moved anything sharp or heavy out of reach.
The housekeeper sat on the padded bench against the wall, blindfolded and with her hands tied behind her back.
Not painfully—Voodoo had insisted on that—but firmly enough to keep her put.
She was older, maybe mid-fifties, with a streak of gray through her dark hair and the ramrod posture of someone who’d spent decades serving people who thought “please” was optional.
The moment the door opened, she flinched. Her breathing hitched, rising in sharp, panicked bursts.
Then she started babbling.
Spanish poured out of her in a frantic stream—too fast, too panicked, too tangled for me to catch more than fragments of nouns and a few verbs. Ayúdeme. Something about la esposa. Something about él.
Grace startled me when she pushed past me carefully and crouched right in front of the woman. Her voice cut cleanly through the panic. The soft, calm, and steady tone stroked over my senses as if we all needed her to ease us.
“No vamos a hacerte dano.” She didn’t rush her pronunciation, and I could follow her words easier. We’re not going to hurt you. Good girl. Assure her.
The housekeeper froze mid-sob. Her head tilted sharply toward Grace, like the recognition of a woman’s voice. Whether it was the fact that Grace was a young woman or that she’d been the attorney the housekeeper let in was what soothed her, I had no idea. Either way, the housekeeper’s panic eased.
Grace kept going. Her accent was perfect, and so was her rhythm. Her gift with languages was so damn impressive. “Necesitamos hacerte unas preguntas sobre Sinclair. Sobre los hombres que tenía aquí. Sobre las mujeres que pasaron por esta casa.”
It took me a minute, but she was telling her what we needed to know. We had questions about Sinclair, about the men in the house and about the women who came through.
The housekeeper’s breath hitched again. She turned her head blindly toward Grace, shoulders shaking.
“No puedo…” she whispered. I can’t.
“Yes,” Grace said in English, her voice warm and unyielding all at once. “You can.”
Something in her gentle, if unyielding tone made the woman’s chin wobble.
“They won’t hurt you,” Grace said, glancing back at the three of us. “We won’t let them.”
The woman’s breath steadied—not completely, but enough that she wasn’t moments from hyperventilating.
Bones shifted behind me, the smallest adjustment of his stance, but even blindfolded, she sensed him. A tremor ran down her spine like she’d felt a shadow move.
Grace reached out and took one of the housekeeper’s bound hands, curling her fingers over hers in an offer of contact.
“We just need the truth,” she said softly.
Voodoo leaned against the sideboard, arms folded, his expression unreadable but observant. He was watching Grace more than the housekeeper. I got it. We were all tracking the steadiness returning to her inch by inch.
“We’re not here to punish you,” Bones said finally, voice low, controlled, but stripped of any threat. He knew how to read a civilian’s fear from ten paces away. “We’re here to stop the men who would.”
The housekeeper swallowed audibly, the sound loud in the small room.
I stepped forward and loosened the blindfold so it didn’t cut into the side of her head. I didn’t think she’d be able to see from beneath it, even if she tilted her head back. Still, this was a compromise. Less disorienting. Less terrifying.
Her breathing slowed.
Grace stayed right there with her, hand wrapped around the woman’s, grounding her.
“Tell me,” she said gently. “Start wherever you can.”
In that gentle moment, the housekeeper broke. Relief swarming through her expression. Yet, in one harsh breath her sobs transformed from fear to release. How long had this woman been living under their iron thumb?
“We’ve got her,” I murmured quietly to Bones and Voodoo. “Gracie’s got her.”
Bones didn’t look away from Grace.
“I know.” His voice was almost too soft to catch. “Let her lead.”
Grace took a slow breath, squared her shoulders, and spoke again, steady, sure, and in control.
“Tell me everything.”