She knew this because she’d met his type at the fundraiser. A woman with long, inky hair, the perfect heart-shaped face, and lips like Emilia Clarke had walked up to him. No. The woman hadn’t walked, she’dsashayed. Her hips had swung seductively back and forth and then she’d slipped a provocative, red-tipped finger around his collar while purring,“I didn’t know you were back in town, Hunter. Why didn’t you call me?”
Hunter, ever the attentive and polite date, had been quick to introduce Grace to Kiki, making it clear he’d attended the event with Grace. But that hadn’t deterred the dark-haired vixen.
Barely sparing Grace a glance, Kiki had pursed her perfect lips, gone up on tiptoe, and whispered in Hunter’s ear loud enough for Grace to hear,“Well, you have my number. Don’t forget to use it.”
After the woman had strutted away, Hunter had rubbed a hand through his hair. It’d been the first time Grace had ever seen him look uncomfortable.“Sorry about that,”he’d said.
To which she’d replied,“There’s no shame in the game.”And her stomach had fluttered with awareness when his lips had pulled back in an elusive smile.
Hunter was stingy with his smiles. Which meant she’d hoarded the image ofthatsmile away like a dragon hoarded gold.
“I mean, sure, it looks bad,” Sam said now, once again dragging her mind back to the subject at hand. “But surely your colleagues aren’t fingering you for this based solely on that email. I mean, whohasn’tthreatened to kill someone they didn’t like? It’s a turn of phrase.”
“Well, there’s that. But also it was my knife that stabbed Stewart in the back. And then to add insult to injury, when the police arrived, I had his blood all over my hands,” she told Sam.
He lifted one eyebrow. Eliza cleared her throat. But Hunter? Hunter just wound his watch and eyed her curiously.
“Ummm.” Sam made a circular motion with one hand. “We’re gonna need you to expand on those last two details.”
She quickly recounted how she’d heard Stewart’s bloodcurdling scream from the adjoining motel room. How she’d run to see what was wrong only to find her partner on his side on the floor, the Swiss Army knife her father had given her after she’d completed her training at the academy lying beside him.
And the blood…
Lord, there’d been so much blood. A stomach-churning amount of the stuff, all slick and dark.
“Help me, Grace,”Stewart had rasped, tears leaking from his bloodshot eyes and spit trailing from the side of his mouth.“Please, help me!”
She’d immediately dialed 911. Then she’d fallen to her knees beside him as she gave the emergency dispatcher the address and the room number.
“What happened?”she’d asked Stewart, her heart racing in time with the million-and-one questions swirling through her head.“Who did this to you?”
“D-didn’t see,”he’d panted, his pale lips pulled back in misery.“P-please help me, Grace. I-I think I’m dying..”
Lifting the back of his shirt, she’d nearly screamed at the blood pumping from his body. There’d been streams of it. Rivers of it. Far too much of it.
Everything that happened after that was disjointed and jumbled in her mind, like an old-time movie reel skipping frames.
She remembered putting pressure on the wound only to discover there was no amount of pressure in the world capable of stopping his hot blood from bubbling up between her fingers. She recalled the sound of the last breath that rattled out of him at the exact moment sirens blared in the distance. And there was no forgetting how the cops had peppered her with questions for nearly two hours before three FBI agents from the Chicago office had arrived to take over the interrogation.
“We’ve had an email from the director,”one of the agents had said.
“We understand you didn’t like your partner too much, Agent Beacham,”the other had added.“Even went so far as to say you’d kill him.”
It’d quickly become clear her colleagues considered her the prime suspect. And why not? All signs pointed to her being the one with the motive and the will and the weapon. Had the roles been reversed,shewould’ve assumed she was the culprit.
During a lull in the interrogation, the text had come in.Thetext. The one she could still see if she closed her eyes because it was burned onto the backs of her eyelids.
The instant she’d read those six words, she’d known she was in far more trouble than just being a suspected homicidal maniac.
She’d told the agents she needed to use the facilities. But two seconds after she’d closed the motel’s bathroom door behind her, she’d scrambled through the little window above the toilet and disappeared into the night.
“Wait.” Sam raised a hand. “Orpheus isreal? I thought he was nothing but rumor. Hearsay. A boogeyman conjured up by governments to explain away the more mysterious deaths of their agents and operators.”
“You and me both.” Grace swallowed convulsively. “But the man hunting me through the woods spoke Russian. So…” She lifted her hands and let them fall, trying to act nonchalant even though mentioning the assassin’s name was enough to have the lone bite of quiche she’d managed to choke down threatening to make an explosive, Technicolor return.
“Who sent the text?” Sam asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” She shook her head. “The number was blocked.”
