Chapter Seven
Callum snapped a photo of the note and texted the eerie message to Viv and Dean. Nothing about the previous forty-eight hours made sense, and, rubbing the back of his neck, he wasn’t sure that would change. “It’s confirmation that Dominic knows you’re still alive and where you are.”
The color had drained out of Grace’s face. She dropped onto the couch. “This is bad, isn’t it?”
New intel should have made him more confident, but one glance at the dawning realization of fear on Grace’s face, and he knew he could have handled the FedEx another way.
Hell, he could have bitten his tongue and communicated only with Viv and Dean.
Whatever Grace thought she had under control was obviously not.
“Worse than I expected,” he admitted.
Alicia glared and patted the back of Grace’s head. “Think you could have sugarcoated that a bit?”
“That’s not really what I do.” Lying wasn’t what Grace deserved. The woman he’d grown up with wasn’t a shrinking violet and wouldn’t want him to lie to appease her nerves. Grace had faked her own death. She could handle a stupid fuckin’ note from her ex-husband.
“I can’t believe this is happening.” Grace crossed her arms over her stomach. Her shoulders hunched.
At least, she used to be able to handle it. Anger flared in his chest. So many things should have been different, but he could fix this for her. All he had to do was get his hands on Dominic.
“In your professional opinion,” Alicia muttered. “What are you thinking?”
Callum cleared his throat. “That Grace is correct. Marino has more resources than I gave him credit for.”
“Well, fuck.” Alicia harrumphed and joined Grace on the couch.
His phone vibrated with a text message.
Vivian: Well, fuck.
He concurred with Alicia and Vivian. Their sentiment summed things up, didn’t it? He tapped his molars. He hated being surprised.
“Do we need to dust for prints? Call the cops?” Alicia asked. “Get a restraining order?”
“It’s not against the law to send someone a letter,” he pointed out.
“It’s obviously a threat. Only a moron would miss that.”
“Let’s not forget.” Grace’s unsteady voice barely registered above a whisper. “It is against the law to fake your own death.”
True enough. “Let’s set the faked death issue aside and deal with it later.”
For that, he didn’t have answers. She hadn’t done it fraudulently, and the feds had been involved in her initial plans to disappear.
So long as they weren’t still upset about her leaving them high and dry without testifying—something that would have been infinitely easier for them to swallow before Marino had been released early from prison—all would be okay. Either way, not a problem for today.
He stared at the ceiling as if hidden answers could be found there.
After a few seconds and no answers, Callum rubbed a hand over his face and admitted, “I have no idea about the intricacies of restraining orders when the…” victim wasn’t the right word for this conversation, “…when someone is supposed to be six feet under.”
“That complicates matters,” Alicia agreed.
“But Titan has lawyers. We have people who know people. Important, well-connected people.”
Grace frowned. “That sounds too much like Dominic’s network. Well-connected like the Mafia.”
He turned to her. “Obviously, Grace, we’re not the Mafia. We can look into it quietly. Before the grocery store, had you ever thought that he or his people had found you?”
She shook her head. “When he was first arrested, I was certain he was tracking me. His goons knew where I was and what I was doing, and his lawyers would pass cryptic messages to mine. On the surface, they were fine, but I always understood the deeper meaning.”
“Which was?”
Her shoulders scrunched. “Stay home. Be quiet. Do what I was told. Which was to do nothing.” Her breath shook. “I’m positive he knew when I met with the federal marshals.”
“How?”
“I don’t remember exactly. Relayed messages with hidden meanings. I tried to explain it to my attorneys, to the feds, but I couldn’t prove it.”
“They thought you were being paranoid.”
She nodded. “Even if I were, who was I kidding? I knew Dominic’s reach. If he wasn’t already keeping tabs on me and my family, he would have started before I testified.”
The more Grace talked, the more Callum could see the multiplying effect Dominic had on her. Callum saw why Hayden had agreed to Grace’s fake death.
He paced the living room. He didn’t know everything yet. “I know there was some…” Guilt thickened the blood in his veins. “… strife in your marriage. Your divorce proceedings didn’t go into detail, but—”
“You read it?” Grace flushed. The embarrassed pink colored her cheeks. She shuffled her feet and dug her toe onto the pink area rug that lay over the dark wood floors. “I thought that was sealed.”
“I read a summary.”
“Yeah, there was some strife.”
“Can you give me any more than that?”
“Why?” Alicia snapped.
“I’ve obviously missed a whole lot of what’s happened.” A truth that would probably always haunt him. “I’ve been caught off guard, and if you give me some background, maybe I’ll have better footing.”
Alicia didn’t look convinced. “It was a shitty fuckin’ marriage. That’s the background you need to know.”
“I get that. I do. I swear. I’m just looking for—”
“The divorce attorneys negotiated an agreement that was intentionally vague. I never had a restraining order. I never went to the hospital. I didn’t document anything he did to me.
” She pinched a bead between her fingers, then twisted the bracelet again.
“Given his vast control over everything in my life, there was nothing I could do until they arrested him. When they led Dominic away in handcuffs, a world of possibilities opened up.”
Did to her… His molars clenched. Grace wouldn’t look at him.
Alicia squeezed Grace’s hand and glared at him in a way that said he needed to shut up and move on.
“Take a drink.” She handed Grace her glass of iced tea and then took a long drink from her own glass. “Maybe we need a little bourbon to top these off.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “You don’t drink.”
Alicia snorted. “Well, today seems like a good day for a bad habit.” She poured the simple syrup into her iced tea and used the spoon to smash the lemon and mix the sugar, visibly more angry than with the intent of stirring. “That will have to do for now.”
He focused on Grace. She hadn’t looked at him since he’d read the note aloud. Even as she leaned into Alicia for support, her eyes fixed on the pink rug like it offered her a way out of this mess.
“I don’t need to know any more,” he said.
Her iced tea trembled in her hand. Grace wrapped both palms around the sweating glass and rested it on her knee. “How long has he known where I am?”
The Grace that Callum used to know would not want kid gloves. This Grace? No idea how the truth would hit. This was a balancing act he wasn’t sure how to pull off. “Longer than I did.”
She didn’t react. Silence lingered in the living room.
Alicia broke the quiet, cursed under her breath, and stroked one of her dogs. “I don’t get it.”
Callum dropped into a chair that didn’t look sturdy enough to hold him. “What’s not to get?”
“If he wants Grace to go with him, why didn’t he just knock on the door and take her?”
“You know the answer to that.” Grace rolled her eyes. “What fun would that be?”
Callum tried to see all the moves in Dominic’s 3D chess game. “Alicia makes a good point.”
If Grace were property to be repossessed, the game wasn’t needed. If the game was needed, Grace wasn’t the collector’s item she feared. That made the situation worse.
“Of course I make a good point.” Alicia watched the ice cubes in her iced tea swirl as she twirled her spoon. “All right, Mister Man. What do we do?”
“If he doesn’t know about me,” Callum said, “we need to keep it that way.”
“First you wanted a security system and answered the door with a gun, now you want to hang low? Does that make sense to you, Grace?”
Grace shook her head. “Nothing makes sense.”
Bigger concerns spiraled into his mind. If Dominic had known where Grace was staying, then he could have gone much farther than simply letting her know. He could be watching. Listening. Playing his games. “I need to make some phone calls.”
“How long until Dominic figures out that you’re with us?”
He might already know. Callum shrugged. “Like I said, I want to make some calls.”
“If you explained who you’re calling, what you’re discussing, that would probably make us feel better,” Alicia suggested in a way that brooked little discussion.
“It’s late now, but I’d like to get a team up here to sweep your place. See if there’s anything listening or watching.”
Alicia scowled and glanced pointedly at her dogs and cat. “You’re out of your damn mind. None of my boys would let someone walk in here and hide—”
“None of your boys would be able to tell you if someone tranqued them for an hour and did their business.”
Grace pressed her hands to her temples and dropped her elbows to her knees. “Oh, God. Alicia. I’m so sorry.”
Alicia scooped the cat into her lap. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Grace. You are always welcome here. Psychopath ex-husband or not.”
They were strong words of support, but Callum could see Alicia’s wariness cracking her bravado.
Grace pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. The color still hadn’t returned to her cheeks. “I thought I’d been so careful.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re all safe. No one’s hurt my babies. No one’s hurt you or me. We’re fine.”
“We can’t stop Dominic. You know that.”
Her flat tone worried him. “I don’t know that,” he said. “And I don’t agree.”
“He has more resources than you can imagine.” Grace unburied her face from her knees. “He’s never outgunned. Never outplayed.”
“The man went to prison, Grace. He’s not infallible.”
“Look at the situation now.” She stood up. “I should leave. Just go somewhere else and make it clear that I’ve left.”
“Like hell.” Alicia pushed her back down.
Better her than him. He wanted to do the same thing. “I’m looking at the situation with both eyes open. It would have been a hell of a lot easier if I had known what was going on from the beginning—”
“Callum,” Alicia warned with a careful shake of her head.
“We will get you to a safehouse.” He tilted his head to the dogs and met Alicia’s eye. “We can all go.”
Alicia crossed her arms. “Look, this might be new to you, but she’s hidden from Dominic for years.
If there aren’t listening devices, we should stay put until you have a plan.
We’re comfortable here. You and your big gun are here.
My dogs and cat are here. We stay here unless he’s been in my house.
If that’s the case, fuck it, I don’t know.
Burn the place down. Stash us someplace secret. ”
One dog nuzzled Grace until she petted him.
Callum understood the dog’s instincts. Touching her would soothe a part of him he had ignored for years.
Alicia arched her eyebrows. “Well?”
He wanted to drag both women—and maybe the pets—to a location where he had control. Where only he and his teammates could pinpoint. Grace concentrated on the dog at her side as if she were waiting for two bickering parents to work it out or walk away.
He drew a deep breath and didn’t plan to go in circles with Alicia all night long.
“Okay, decision time.” Alicia petted the dog with Grace. “Neither of us will let you run off on your own.”
“Her leaving alone wasn’t even a consideration. Just so we’re all on the same page.”
“If there’s no listening devices,” Alicia continued, “what do you want to do?”
“Stay here.”
Alicia lifted her eyebrows defiantly. “Fine. We’re staying here.”
“All right.” He’d make that work. It would give them more time to orchestrate a plan with the least amount of upheaval. “Do you want to call your parents?”
“No. Absolutely not. I don’t want them involved in anything related to Dominic. They’ll be needlessly worried.”
“That’s not how they’re going to see it.
” He glanced between the two women, not wanting to admit that Hayden would eventually be given an update.
It wouldn’t be tonight, but soon. Hayden would do whatever he wanted with that information.
Callum nodded. “You’re calling the shots tonight.
” Those were the last words he should be saying. “No parents.”
“And Hayden?”
“I couldn’t give Hayden an update right now even if I wanted to. This goes no farther than my team for the time being.”
She almost met his eyes. “And whoever’s listening.”