Page 92 of Oath
Not that any of us cared when we dropped his ass off in the middle of nowhere, about three miles from no one gives a fuck and ten miles from anywhere Google maps had pictures. Not killing him was the only favor he’d earned by helping us get Bones back.
“Anyone of note at that resort?” Bones asked.
“No one we care about. But I have a program running to flag the people checking in and out, running it against a list of known problems. We’ll see what we see.”
One nod. “Then leave it for now. If he sticks his head out again, we’ll blow it off. If he keeps his distance, he can keep his skull.”
Gracie grimaced, but she didn’t look green.
“Now,” Bones continued. “Here is what we know and what we need to decide so we can go forward…”
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
GRACE
Even with food and their attempts at being light-hearted, the evening had settled into a heavy, almost oppressive quiet. The panic from earlier clung to me like static under my skin — a low, relentless hum that wouldn’t quit. It wrapped me in scratchy wool, tightened at my throat, and made every small sound feel like a threat, so that smiling felt like wearing a costume I couldn’t breathe in.
I curled up on the sofa in the unlit living room. The place’s sparse furnishings and spartan aesthetic kind of appealed to me. Light crept in via the slats in the blinds and around the edges of the curtains. Not a lot of light, just the dim glow of the street lamps.
After dinner and the briefing, we’d split up and I’d gone up to sleep. It was the first time in a while that I’d just gone to bed by myself. I hadn’t asked any of the guys to join me and they all seemed pretty busy. Staying in bed though, proved even more challenging. My thoughts kept racing, piling on each other until they threatened to break out of my skull while the knot in my stomach refused to go away.
Each time I closed my eyes, I kept seeing Amorette but only from the corner of my eye. Each time I tried to look at herdirectly, she just… disappeared like so much smoke. We were finally in Virginia, finally going after her boss, and maybe, just maybe, going to get some answers.
So why was I actively dreading meeting Mark Sinclair? Why did I just want to leave? I never wanted to abandon Am. So what was my problem?
Bones found me there, curled up on the sofa, my knees drawn to my chest. The soft click of a door opening upstairs and another closing barely registered. I didn’t even look up until he spoke.
“Grace?” His voice, a low, concerned rumble cut through the silence like a knife.
The last thing I wanted to do was talk and I really didn’t want to break down again. Even as I met his gaze, I couldn’t figure out how to verbalize that. How to?—
“Grace?” The way he said my name when he repeated it, soft and questioning just added to my heart ache. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this, all vulnerable and broken. It was too late, however, he crossed the room, his steps not making a sound because he moved like a ghost.
His presence draped me like one of those weighted blankets. Glancing upward, I met his gaze and the concern reflected in his eyes damn near undid me.
“What’s wrong, Dollface?” he asked, his voice gentler than I’d ever heard it. Kneeling in front of me, he placed his hands lightly on my knees. Warmth radiated out from him alerting me to the chill that iced over me.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I managed to say. My voice barely climbed above a whisper, rough like sandpaper. “Tried for a while. Gave up. Came down here to think.” The words tasted like ash in my mouth, bitter and hollow. Bones nodded, his expression unreadable, and for a moment, we just sat in silence.
“About what?” he finally asked, his gruff tone a gentle prod.
I hesitated, the words catching in my throat, but something in his eyes urged me to continue. “About everything,” I said. That seemed so—lame somehow. Everything could mean the pizza we had for dinner as well as the tracker they had to dig out of me a few months earlier. "About us. About what’s happened. What comes next. What might happen.”
I pressed my lips together to stop the damn tremble when it started.
“I’m scared,” I said, trying to encompass the “everything” in one emotion and I wasn’t all that positive that word was even right. “Scared to go back. Scared to go forward. Scared about what I’ll find.”
Chickenshit never got anyone anywhere and yet the quaking inside of me seemed to increase with each word. Curling my fingers into my palm, I tried to still the trembling vibrating its way through me.
“Tell me?” The entreaty was a request, not an order. That alone made me want to tell him.
Blowing out a breath, I let one my hands settle over his. “I’m probably just overthinking it…”
“Maybe,” he said, with a shrug. “But until you talk about it, I can’t really give you an informed opinion.”
There was just something about the rough timbre of his voice as he saidinformed opinion, that made me smile. “You and I usually yell it out.”
