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Deadly Grace
Praise for the novels of TAYLOR SMITH
“A former international diplomat and intelligence analyst, Smith uses her experience to good effect in her latest thriller.”
—Library Journal on Deadly Grace
“Taylor Smith combines the best of Grisham and Le Carré into a fabulous suspense thriller that is uniquely her own style.”
—Midwest Book Review on The Innocents Club
“Fifteen rounds of sturdy international espionage-cum-detection…”
—Kirkus Reviews on The Innocents Club
“Taylor Smith…John Grisham. It’s a perfectly plausible comparison—though Smith’s a better prose stylist.”
—Publishers Weekly on Random Acts
“The mix of suspense, forensic science, romance and mystery make this a real page-turner.”
—Orange Coast on Random Acts
“The story line is fast-paced and filled with numerous twists…. Taylor Smith…continues her amazing rapid climb to the top rung….”
—Painted Rock Reviews on Random Acts
“Sharp characterization and a tightly focused time frame…give this intrigue a spellbinding tone of immediacy.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Best of Enemies
“The pace is swift and the action is concentrated…making it a perfect summer read.”
—Orange Coast on The Best of Enemies
“In this absorbing tale…characters are engaging….”
—Publishers Weekly on Common Passions
Also available from MIRA Books and TAYLOR SMITH
THE INNOCENTS CLUB
RANDOM ACTS
THE BEST OF ENEMIES
COMMON PASSIONS
GUILT BY SILENCE
Deadly Grace
Taylor Smith
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A work of historical fiction like this owes much to many people, especially to the Allied veterans of World War II, to whom I offer profound thanks for their sacrifices. Among those, in addition to my father and my father-in-law, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to three people who were kind enough to share their personal memoirs with me: Ben Ward, U.S. Army glider pilot; and Jean Grant and Pam Orford, British nurses.
My dear friend, Holocaust survivor Louis Posner, was unfailingly generous with his extensive research library, as well as his memories of the events of that tragic period. Sadly, he died suddenly during the writing of this novel and never got to see the finished product, but for a spellbinding true-life story of his gripping experiences, I highly recommend Louis’s published memoir, Through a Boy’s Eyes: The Turbulent Years 1926-45 (Seven Locks Press, 2000).
The character of Miss Vivian Atwater is loosely based on real-life British spymaster Vera Atkins. After extraordinary wartime service with Britain’s Special Operations Executive, Miss Atkins (unlike her fictional counterpart, happily) lived to the ripe old age of ninety-two in a cottage overlooking the English Channel where, on a clear day, it is said, she could see the coast of France.
Special thanks to Special Agent Gary L. Price, U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, who graciously answered all my questions on his discipline and his branch of the Service. Thanks also to my writing buddy, Doug Lyle, M.D., for his medical advice, as well as former FBI Special Agent Jack Trimarco, who gives all G-men a good name. Deepest thanks also to my agent, Philip Spitzer, and to my editors Dianne Moggy, Amy Moore-Benson and Valerie Gray, who’ve been incredibly understanding through this past tough year. I’m very grateful.
It may be noted that the town of Havenwood bears a certain similarity to another prairie town I frequent and love, and that some of Havenwood’s colorful characters seem to possess the same spunk as my Lac du Bonnet aunties, who never fail to inspire me and lift my spirits. Thanks to them all (and the uncles and cousins, too) for so many years of love and laughter. And last but never least, love and thanks to Anna, Kate and Richard, who agonize with me through every page and rewrite, poor souls. Lucky me, to have you guys in my corner.
This is dedicated to my Auntie Olly Campbell, who wrote the book on love and loyalty—with thanks from the heart for all you do and all you are.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 1
Havenwood, Minnesota
Tuesday, January 9, 1979
She had no memory of her own death. No idea when it might have happened, or how, or how long she’d lain insensible in the netherworld between life and death. But when Jillian Meade awoke, she had no doubt she was in hell.
It was exactly as Reverend Owens had described in the fire-and-brimstone Sunday sermons that had terrified her as a child: acrid smoke that singed the nostrils and choked the lungs. A dry, searing wind that burned the skin like acid. Flying soot that stung the eyes so that she had to blink back tears to see. She was in a place of utter desolation, the darkness relieved only by the flickering of red and orange shadows writhing in the roiling smoke. A low vibration echoed around her, like the menacing growl of some great beast ready to spring for the kill.
And her bones ached, she realized. She was lying on a hard surface, and something was digging into her hip. Jillian shifted position painfully, and like a dreamer slowly awaking, she began to make out shapes in the murky shadows around her. She puzzled at what she saw. Furniture. She was on the floor, wedged into a corner, a tipped-over chair beneath her. She rolled to one side and pushed it away, the hellish light tracing the familiar spindles of its ladder back.
How many times had she sat on the hard, unforgiving seat of one of those chairs as a child, hands stubbornly behind her, fingers clenched around those spindles rather than around a spoon containing pale, woody lima beans or slimy Cream of Wheat? Stifling a cough, Jillian lifted her head. How was it that hell looked so much like her mother’s kitchen? The simple explanation was, of course, that she wasn’t dead, but back at her mother’s house in Minnesota. But why was she lying on the floor? Why was the house in darkness, except for that odd, menacing red flicker coming from down the hall? And why—
Oh, God! Fire!
“Mother!” Coughing and choking, Jillian tried to rise, but when she placed her hands on the ceramic tile floor, her palms, wet and slick, skidded out from under her. She propped herself on her elbows, instead, and screamed again. “Mother! Where are you?”
Blinking through tears, she could just make out the shapes of the other three kitchen chairs, still upright around the oval oak table. A thick, gray brume was circling the room, wafting across the face of the cabinets, undulating under the ceiling like toxic silk.
Avoiding her slippery palms, Jillian used her wrists and elbows to brace herself as she struggled to her knees. Through the archway leading to the front hall and the rest of the house beyond, the subtle pattern of the flowered Victorian wallpaper had taken on a gaudy orange glow. The fire seemed to be coming from down the hall, toward the living room.
She scrambled to her feet.
“Mother!” Her voice was a strangled bleat. A claw of pain ripped at her lungs, and she doubled over, spitting up thick phlegm, coughing and choking, hands on her knees. When the spasm finally passed, she held her breath and unrolled the collar of her turtleneck sweater, covering her nose and trying to take small, filtered breaths.
“Mother, where are you?”
This time there was an answer, but the voice she heard was deep and male. “Jillian? Are you in there?”
It was coming from behind her, she realized, at the back door. She spun around and saw a shadow at the high window. The door handle rattled, but it seemed to be locked. “Jillian!”
“Here! I’m in here!” She knew she should run and open the door. Or go and find her mother. Do something! a voice in her head bellowed. But she was frozen in place, disoriented and growing faint from the expenditure of scant oxygen.
The door handle rattled once more and then the shadow at the window disappeared. A split second later, a gloved fist slammed through the glass. The smoke stirred, twisting and swirling toward this new escape outlet as a great, padded arm reached through, easily grabbing the inside knob and turning it. As the door flung wide, Jillian was knocked to her knees by the rush of superheated air coming from behind her. The fire, fanned by fresh oxygen, was on the move.
“Jillian!”
A pair of hands hooked under her armpits, yanking her upward, and she found herself looking into Nils Berglund’s worried face. He was dressed in uniform, the fluorescent yellow stitching on his shoulder patches glowing in the dim light. His head was bare, and his cropped, snow-dusted hair sparkled in the flickering light as the flakes melted in the heat. He rose to his feet, lifting her easily along with him.
“What are you doing here? Where’s your mother?”
Jillian’s legs felt like rubber, and she was forced to wrap her fingers in the soft, padded bulk of his bomber jacket to keep herself from crumbling to the floor. “I don’t know! I was out cold, and when I woke up…” Another painful spasm seized her lungs and she choked on the smoke once more.
“Come on, let’s get you out of here!” Wrapping an arm around her, Berglund started for the door, half-dragging, half-carrying her with him, but after only a couple of steps, Jillian locked her knees and braced her feet—bare, she suddenly realized—on the hard tile floor.
“No, Nils! We have to find my mother!”
“I will, after I get you out of here!”
They were almost to the door, but she grabbed the rounded tile rim of the kitchen counter and steadied herself. “No, go now! I’ll wait here.”
“Outside, dammit!” he yelled, dragging her off the counter. He shoved her through the door and out onto the wide wooden back porch. “Get away from the house! The fire trucks are on the way. They’ll give you a blanket. Go!”
Not waiting for an answer, he left her there and ran back into the house. “Mrs. Meade! Grace! Where are you?”
Jillian wrapped an arm around one of the porch’s upright beams and drank a greedy gulp of fresh air, but it was too cold, too rich, and her lungs seized. Doubling over again, she coughed and hacked, gasping for air between each painful spasm that felt like a thousand tiny shards of glass slicing her lungs. Snow was falling around the house in great, feathery flakes, spinning and brilliant white against the black night. As Jillian struggled dizzily for air, the entire world seemed to be swirling.
Then, over the raspy sound of her own breathing, she thought she heard the faint wail of sirens. She pulled herself, hand-over-hand, along the freezing porch rail and looked out into the night through wind-whipped snow, ears straining. The half-acre lot on which the house sat was mostly wooded. At the far edge of the wood, as she searched for any sign of the fire trucks, she thought she saw something move—something or someone. But her eyes, smoke-stung and running with tears, couldn’t make anything out. One of the Newkirks, maybe? Was it the neighbors who’d called in the alarm?
A bang sounded from behind her and she spun on her heel. The storm door was swinging on its hinges, buffeted by the pressurized air from inside the house, slamming against the stucco siding. She reached out and grabbed it on the next swing, peering into the kitchen, blinking as smoke and hot air poured out from the inside.
“Nils! Can you see her?”
The only answer was the splintering of glass as the window over the sink just a few feet away on her left shattered and sent glass shards tinkling across the wooden decking. She ignored the sting on her feet as the smoke inside cleared briefly in the newly formed vortex of air. Nils was standing at the framed archway that led to the front hall, but no sooner had she spotted him than he dropped, disappearing from her sight line behind the kitchen table.
“Are you all right?” she called.
“I found her!”
Jillian held on to the storm door while she waited for him to bring her mother out, ducking her head briefly once or twice for a gulp of fresh air. The sirens were unmistakable now, a panicky caterwaul that pierced the cold winter night. She glanced over her shoulder. Through the spruce trees at the bottom of the drive she spotted red lights winking as the trucks rounded the corner at the end of Lakeshore Road and turned up the street toward her mother’s drive. Feeling was coming back into her legs, and the wooden planks were icy under her bare feet. She shivered, her jeans and black turtleneck sweater scant protection against the wicked night air.
Shifting her weight from one freezing foot to the other, she stuck her head around the door frame again. “Come on, Nils! Get out! The trucks are here!”
Silence.
“Nils?”
The smoke swirling under the ceiling was thick as soup now and dropping fast. Jillian hesitated for a moment, then drew a deep breath and ducked low, trying to stay under the worst of it as she headed into the kitchen, across to where she’d last seen him. Rounding the oval oak table, she saw his back, POLICE stenciled on his jacket in large, reflective yellow letters. He was crouched on the floor, and to one side of him a pair of stockinged legs lay akimbo, splayed feet shod in familiar, tiny black pumps. The pose was uncharacteristically awkward, but Jillian would have recognized those legs anywhere—veinless, smooth and remarkably girlish for a woman of sixty. A source of great pride to her mother.
“Oh, God, Nils! Is she—”
His head snapped up at the sound of her voice. “Jill, no!” His arm shot out to hold her back.
Too late.
Jillian froze as his body shifted and she saw what it had been hiding. She dropped to the floor. “Oh, my God! No! Mother!”
Her mother lay on the tile floor, head tilted strangely to one side, intense blue eyes staring dully into space, half-hidden under heavy lids. Her silver-blond hair was tucked up as always into a chignon at the nape of her neck, virtually unruffled except for a single strand that had come loose and lay across her slack jaw. Her mouth was open, as if she’d been struck dumb in midprotest. Jillian’s gaze dropped to the dark stain that had seeped across the front of her mother’s pale cashmere sweater. All color was obscured by the strange tinge to the light flickering from the hall, but she knew the sweater set was robin’s-egg blue, just like her mother’s eyes. Grace had been wearing this sweater as she sat in her favorite wing chair in the front room…. When? Only moments ago, it seemed, sitting there, large as life, her spine ramrod straight, held away from the chair back, her hands clasped delicately in her lap, knees together, legs crossed demurely at the ankles. Always the picture of a lady. Now, the sweater was ruined. Her mother was lying sprawled on the floor, and the irrational thought crossed Jillian’s mind that Grace Meade would be appalled to know she’d been found in such an ungraceful state.
“Let’s get out of here!” Nils yelled over the roar of the fire and the wail of sirens that were right outside now. He coughed, drawing in air that was rapidly becoming completely un-breathable as he gathered the small, limp body into his arms.
Jillian stood and pressed herself against the wall, repelled by the burden in his arms, yet unable to look away. Her gaze rose with him as he struggled to his feet. He was huge, her mother’s tiny form almost lost in the bulk of him.
He cocked his head toward the back door. “Get going! I’ll follow you!”
He shifted the weight in his arms for a better grip, and as he did, her mother’s head turned, those pale, dead eyes fixing Jillian with an accusatory glare. She recoiled, and as her knees buckled, she slid down the wall, landing with a thud on her backside.
“For Christ sake, get up!” Nils bellowed. “The fire’s spreading! The whole place is going to go!”
She wanted to run but she was nailed in place by the judgment she saw in her mother’s eyes. Nils hefted the body over one shoulder, freeing up a hand, and he used it to grip Jillian’s upper arm. She shook him off and turned away, squeezing her eyes shut. Anything but to look at the stare of that monstrous thing that was—but couldn’t be—her mother.
Mummy, no, please!
He grabbed her again, but she fought him off and scuttled down the hall, deeper into the house, moving toward the dull roar and the flickering light of flames that had now fully engulfed the living room.
“Jill! Get back here, dammit!”
Instead, she lay down on the threshold of the dining room, opposite the fire, pressing her cheek into its waxed and buffed cherry planks. The fire crackled in her ears, but beyond that sensation, which was more pressure than sound, she was aware of nothing. Her eyelids closed, and she gave herself over gratefully to whatever void she could find.
It wasn’t to be. Something clamped on to her arms, and she was lifted in two sharp yanks, first to a sitting position, then to her feet. She opened her eyes. Nils held her by the elbows, both of his hands free now of that other load. He shook her once, then again, all will had drained out of her. Her head flopped, her body limp, joints unstrung.
“Dammit, Jill, come on! Do you want to die in here?”
A sweet lassitude overtook her. Yes. Leave me alone.
He caught her face and cupped it in his hands, his wide, worried face filling her field of vision.
“Jill, please!”
He leaned toward her until their foreheads were touching, and he held her close, thumbs stroking her face. Then his head tilted and he kissed her, hard. She felt his lips on hers, and for a moment, she was seventeen all over again. The intervening years faded away, and they were Nils and Jill, inseparable, deeply, obsessively in love, the way it only happens the first time, when every experience is new, every touch a revelation. It all came back to her—the smell of him, the taste of him, the safe refuge of him.
When he pulled back and looked at her again, his expression tortured, she nodded. He got to his feet and extended a hand, and she reached out, ready to take it, until she spotted the dark stain on the left shoulder of his jacket. Blood, she realized, soaked deep into the padding. Her mother’s blood. She tried to push him away—push the blood away—only to realize that her own hands, too, were sticky and wet with it. She stared at them, horrified, and she screamed.
He grabbed her roughly. She fought him, scratching and kicking, but it was a hopeless mismatch. He was huge, well over six feet and even heavier now than he’d been in his high school linebacker days. He lifted her easily and was about to sling her over that same bloody shoulder when a lucky kick from her right foot connected with his groin. His grip weakened momentarily, and as he crumpled, Jillian pushed herself off his brawny frame and started to run. But before she’d gone more than a couple of steps, her bare heel hit a wet patch and skidded out from under her. She landed flat on her back on the hardwood floor, the wind knocked out of her.
She lay there for a moment, then rolled over—only to find herself right where Nils had laid down his bloody burden, face-to-face with her mother’s dull, half-lidded stare. Unblinking, it cut through her like a judgment.
She was, indeed, in hell, Jillian thought. Exactly where she belonged.
CHAPTER 2
Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, January 10, 1979
Much later, when it was all over—and yet not really over because, as Alex Cruz knew, there were some events you never truly got over but only locked away in that dark recess of the mind where nightmares live—afterward, he did the calculations, backtracking, trying to figure out the exact sequence of events. Where he’d been the first time he’d heard the names Jillian and Grace Meade. Whether he’d had any premonition he was about to encounter a face of evil unlike anything he’d seen before in either his professional or personal life. Whether there’d been any warning sign that this would be the case to finally push him over the razor-thin line between the letter of the law he’d sworn to uphold and the rough justice of the vigilante; the line between his troubled past and the uncertain fate that lay ahead of him.
Even before he’d heard of these two women, Cruz had already witnessed more than his share of the horrors that human beings could unleash upon one another. He’d been a grunt in the jungles of Vietnam, then spent more than a decade as a U.S. Army criminal investigator, specializing in homicide, rape and other crimes of violence. Now, as a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he spent his days tracking the worst of the worst—terrorists, kidnappers and serial killers who claimed the entire planet as their personal hunting ground.
At this point, there wasn’t much he hadn’t come across in the way of human depravity, but the events at the root of Grace Meade’s murder and the others connected to it would forever stand alone in his mind, unequaled in terms of sheer cruelty. Did he have the slightest inkling of that the day the case first landed on his desk? One thing was reasonably certain: On the night Jillian Meade was trying to die in Minnesota, Cruz would have been eighteen hundred miles away and, taking into account time zone differences, already in bed. While the fire in Minnesota blazed, trapping mother and daughter, Cruz was struggling with the restless insomnia that had plagued him for almost as long as he could remember, part of the price he paid for past mistakes. If Jillian Meade was trying to die that night, Alex Cruz had long since resigned himself to the knowledge that he was condemned for his own sins to live.
The day after the fire, Cruz arrived at the office early. If he hadn’t been trying to dodge Sean Finney, who worked in the next cubicle, he might have overlooked the notice regarding Jillian Meade, only one of at least a half-dozen pending cases sitting in his “In” basket. Given his already heavy caseload, he might have passed this one on to someone else, or at least delayed following up on it for a few days. But that morning, Cruz was determined to find a reason to get out of the office and avoid the loaded questions and broad hints Finney had been lobbing his way with increasing frequency of late. He needed a case that would take him on the road where he could slip back into comfortable anonymity.
Eleven months into a new job with the FBI, he was close to violating one of his cardinal rules: never blur the boundaries between the job and his private life. Maryanne Finney was Sean’s cousin, and Cruz had met her at a New Year’s Eve party hosted by his co-worker. An attractive redhead with hair that corkscrewed halfway down her back, Maryanne had an infectious smile that didn’t take no for an answer, even from a taciturn newcomer who tried to telegraph he wasn’t looking for romantic entanglements. Within hours of meeting her, Cruz had found himself accepting an invitation to a Sunday dinner at her parents’ home in Bethesda, seduced by Maryanne’s sweet Irish blarney when she’d assured him that it wouldn’t be a formal date but that he’d be doing her a favor by going.
