Guarding Grace

Lydia looked down at her evening gown as if realizing that she was dressed for a formal reception.

Standing quickly, she took a moment to compose herself. When she spoke, her voice was well modulated. “Yes. I’ll be right with you.”

The door closed again, and she raised her eyes to Brady. “I want to know if one of his enemies killed him. I mean—did somebody send in a woman to cut off the blood flow to his carotid artery or something? You have to find out what happened.”

“If I can, I will,” he promised. He was really speaking to himself, not Lydia. He’d gotten used to cleaning up John Ridgeway’s messes. Maybe he was too comfortable with that role.

What he did now depended on what he discovered—starting with Grace Cunningham.

GRACE WANTED to scream at Karen Hilliard. Instead she pulled off her business suit and pulled on jeans, running shoes and a dark T-shirt. Leaving her good clothes in a pile on the bedroom floor, she made for the kitchen. Because she didn’t want to announce that she was home, she worked with only the illumination from a streetlight outside the window as she pulled the sugar canister out of the cabinet, then started digging in the white grains like a dog looking for a buried bone.

As her fingers closed around the legal-size envelope, she breathed out a small sigh. She was going to need the cash. No credit cards. Not in the name of Grace Cunningham.

Or Ginnie Cutler.

She’d buried Ginnie two years ago. Everybody she’d known from before she’d made her big decision thought she had died in a boating accident. Even her parents, and it still made her heart squeeze when she thought about how her death must have devastated them.

They didn’t even have the solace of a grave site—after all the years of raising their daughter, of loving their daughter.

Scenes from her life flashed through her mind as she dashed down the hall to the bedroom.

She remembered the pink-and-white little girl’s bedroom that had made her happy. Her eighth birthday party when she’d proudly taken eight friends out to lunch. The smile on Mom’s face when her daughter had graduated from high school.

Her parents hadn’t had a lot of money, but they’d showered their daughter with love and given her the confidence to take the road she traveled now.

She’d come to Washington with a carefully constructed new identity and a lot of optimism. Like those first-term congressmen who thought they were going to make a difference. You could check her driver’s license, her Social Security number and her college transcript—from Barnard instead of Brown, where she’d really gotten her history degree. All the documents would testify to whom she was supposed to be. The background had stood up to even Ridgeway Consortium scrutiny. Not anymore. They’d go digging and find out that Grace Cunningham had never really existed.

But before that—they’d check the visitors’ book and see when she’d left this evening.

When she’d escaped through the Pennsylvania Avenue exit, she’d barely been thinking about her next move. Now she knew she was going to have to disappear—again. And come back as someone else. If she had the cash to do it again.

Not that she’d committed a crime. She’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the bedroom she switched on the television, turning the volume low, and caught the news on CNN.

They were reporting John Ridgeway’s death. But nothing had changed about the story.

So much for honesty in the halls of power.

As she stared at the television set, she wanted to curl up in a ball on the bed and close her eyes. She wanted to wake up and find out the past hour was all a horrible dream. But it was real. Just like the nightmare of two years ago.

Only now a powerful man was dead, and she was a witness. And if she didn’t want to end up like Karen, a secret detainee, she’d better get the hell out of here.

She was throwing clothing into a duffel bag when she heard the wooden stairs creak. Her hand on a pair of jeans, she went rigid, listening intently.

It could be one of the neighbors. Maybe nosy Mrs. Sullivan who was always peeking out her front door to see if Grace was bringing anybody home.

The next sound she heard was something metal sliding into the lock of her apartment door.

No knock. Nobody calling out, “Police. Open up.”

For a second, she was too stunned to move. Then she shoved the money into her purse, along with Karen Hilliard’s evening bag.

Without a second thought, she abandoned the duffel bag in the middle of the bed, thrust open the window and climbed out onto the ledge.

She hated to take extra time. But an open window was a dead giveaway, so she turned to ease down the sash behind her.

Thank God she was in good shape from all those laps at the pool—and the fencing lessons she’d been taking.

After slinging her purse strap over her shoulder, she lowered herself by her hands and let go, landing with a thunk on the roof of the next building. As soon as she hit the flat surface, she sprinted toward the edge, skirting puddles of standing water.

Behind her, through the old glass, she heard footsteps running through her apartment—then men’s voices.

“Where the hell is she?”

“Maybe she didn’t go home.”

“Where else would she go?”

Without looking over her shoulder, she kept moving across the gravel, then over the side of the building. “She’s on the roof.” “Don’t let her get away.”

Lord, who were these men? The DC cops? Or more likely John Ridgeway’s private security force.

Either way, she was pretty sure that getting caught could be a fatal error.

Fear swelled inside her chest, making it hard to breathe. But she didn’t break her stride until she came to the edge of the building. As she lowered herself over the side, she saw a man coming out the window.

Two of them had barged through the front door without announcing their presence. Was the other one going around back to cut her off at the pass.

She dropped to the roof of a garage, then to the alley.

“Stop her!”

Praying she could make it, she hurtled down the alley, her running shoes splashing through puddles of dirty water. Before she reached the car, a hand whipped out from the shadows and grabbed her shoulder.

Grace screamed, the sound coming to her above the roaring in her ears.

She’d almost made it—and now …

A man barked out a gruff order. “Hold it right there, sweetheart.”

It wasn’t necessary to fake terror. She was literally shaking in her shoes. “Please don’t hurt me,” she whimpered. “I won’t. If you come quietly.” Oh sure.

When he turned her toward him, she went still, pretending to comply, letting him think he had control of a woman too terrified to resist. But as she came around, she lashed out, whacking her elbow into his armpit the way they’d told her to do in self-defense class.

He was totally unprepared for the attack. Grunting, he dropped his hold on her shoulder.

Free of his control, she struck out with her foot, catching him in the balls. He screamed as he doubled over.

But he wasn’t the only one she had to worry about. Another man dropped over the side of the roof, charging toward her.

If she ran, she had no chance. So she played deer in the headlights, standing still and breathing hard, forcing herself to wait until he was almost on her. Then she moved, using her body weight to shove the first guy into the second.

They both went down.

A curse rang out behind her as she turned and sprinted away, knowing this was her last chance.

Her lower lip wedged between her teeth, she kept moving, braced for the pain of a bullet slamming into her back.

Instead, just as she turned the corner, another man stepped into her path, trapping her.

“Come on,” he said.

As he took in her wide-eyed look, he snapped, “I’m not one of them.” “Then who?” “The cavalry. Come on.” “Where?”

“Away. Let me help you, before they catch up with you.” With a gun in his hand, he gestured toward a car pulled up at the curb. The guy looked tough and capable but subtly different from the men who’d broken into her apartment. Making a split-second decision, she climbed into the car.

Her heart was pounding so hard that she thought it might break through the wall of her chest.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“It looks like I’m your bodyguard.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“You put up a good fight, but they would have gotten you in the end.”

She sighed, eyeing him. “What’s your name?” “Brady Lockwood.”

Oh Lord. She should have recognized him! But the photos she’d seen of him had been old. He hardly looked like the same guy.

“You’re John Ridgeway’s brother.”

Chapter Three

Brady drove toward Georgetown with no particular destination in mind. The one thing he knew was that going home wasn’t an option at the moment. Despite claiming to be her bodyguard, he still didn’t know if he was going to end up taking Grace Cunningham to the cops. And he sure as hell didn’t trust her enough to let her into his apartment.

As she sat next to him, she radiated tension. Yeah, well, she should. She’d been involved in something pretty nasty this evening.

He saw her hands trembling. She was on the edge, and maybe he could use that to his advantage.

Turning off Wisconsin Avenue, he pulled onto a side street and under a streetlight that gave him enough illumination to see her.

When the car came to a stop, she glanced around in alarm. “Where are we?”

“On the run. But you look like you could use a friend.” “I’m fine,” she protested.

“Of course not. You’ve been through a rough couple of hours.”

He cut the engine, then reached across the console and gathered her close, stroking his hands over her back and shoulders, then into her hair, feeling her tremble.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he whispered.

She stayed rigid for a moment, then relaxed against him. As he kept stroking her, murmuring low, reassuring words, he was having trouble fitting her into the murder scenario he’d constructed on the way to her apartment. The picture he’d seen made her look like the soul of innocence. The woman clinging to him gave the same impression. Yet he’d also seen her dispatch a couple of tough guys in the alley. Let’s not forget about that.

“I’m scared.”

“Yeah. I understand.”

He’d taken her in his arms for purely mercenary reasons, yet he couldn’t keep himself from reacting to the softness of her skin, her light flower scent, the clean feel of her hair.

Careful, Brady, he warned himself. This is no time to be taken in by a woman who could work her way into a weekly liaison with the head of the Ridgeway Consortium.

Yet she didn’t seem like one of John’s honeys. He went for women who were flashier, blonder. Women who knew that John Ridgeway might be able to help them along in the world.

She was more like Brady’s own type. A lot more. Or was it that he had stayed away from any romantic relationships for too long? And the first young, pretty woman who came along was tugging at his emotions in unexpected ways.

He should distance himself from her, but he stayed where he was, captured not only by the physical attributes of the woman but also by a sense of connection.

Her voice woke him up to reality.

“It wasn’t a coincidence that you showed up in the alley in back of my apartment.”

“Yeah.”

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“I stopped by my brother’s house. He had your address and your photo in a personnel file.”

“Okay.”

He reminded himself that he should be the one getting information, and he didn’t want to be staring over Grace Cunningham’s shoulder when he questioned her. He wanted to be looking into her eyes. Would they shift to the side or stay steady?

Easing away, he asked, “Are you feeling better?” “Some.”

“Who was after you?”

Her gaze turned inward as she considered the question. “I’m not sure. Could be security guards from the Ridgeway Consortium,” she said in a flat voice.

“The news said my brother was alone when he died.”

She moistened her lips. “That’s a lie.”

“Oh yeah? How do you know? Were you with him?”

“No.”

“But you were having an affair with him,” Brady said because he wasn’t going to get sucked into feeling sorry for this woman. Or feeling anything. He’d said he was her bodyguard. But that was for his convenience, not hers.

Her eyes shot up to him and her voice turned hard as she said, “I was not having an affair with him. He didn’t appeal to me that way.”

“You just said you were with him when he died.”

She gave him a glacial look. “That’s not what I said at all. I said he wasn’t alone. I wasn’t with him. There’s a difference.”

He kept the questions coming. “You were supposed to be working on a research project with him, but you were really having a liaison.”

“No,” she said again. “He was using me for something else.”

CHARLES HANCOCK WAS a man used to making life and death decisions—and collecting the huge fees his clients were willing to pay.

Tonight he sat on the leather sofa in the den of his McLean mansion. The floor-to-ceiling drapes were open, and he could look out over his property.

The television played softly across the room. One of those programs he liked on Animal Planet where a macho guy ran around jumping into alligator pools or sticking his hand into scorpion holes. Charles was always hoping one of the fools would get chomped to death. Or stung by a stingray, like that Australian guy.

The show was good background for cleaning his Glock model 17L, a sweet little handgun if he’d ever seen one.

He glanced at the clock. It was ten and time for Anderson Cooper. The boy came across as steady and reliable. Charles had made that a rule of his own life.

He had no illusions of his own power. Or his own tragedies. After his wife and son had died in a terrorist attack in Egypt, he’d vowed to devote himself to the greater good of humanity. As he saw it. His goal was a stable society—with power in the hands of the people who knew how to wield it.

He stayed in the background, quietly giving substantial amounts of money to causes he thought would make a difference. Like his college scholarship fund for disadvantaged kids. A lot of people had written them off, but he understood that the better chances those kids had in life, the more likely they were to stay out of trouble.

Charles switched channels then sat up straighter when he saw the concerned expression on Cooper’s lean face.

“White House advisor John Ridgeway suffered a fatal heart attack this evening while catching up on some work in his office.” The anchor’s words hit him like rocks slamming against a cement wall.

Carefully Charles set the handgun on the table in front of him.

Ridgeway was dead. Supposedly he’d died alone in his office.

Charles’s mind flashed back to November six months ago, when an intruder had blown himself up—along with Dr. Richard Cortez—at the Bio Gens Laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland.

Cortez had been a close friend and colleague. When he’d heard the news, Charles went back and looked at the deaths of some of his clients. Pat Richmond in Massachusetts. Joe Barlow in California. Ted Pierson in New Jersey.

Richmond had died in a hit-and-run accident. Barlow had been at home when a burglar broke into his Beverly Hills mansion. Pierson had drowned in a boating accident.

He’d wanted to dismiss those deaths—and half a dozen others—as unrelated. That was before the pipe bomb at Bio Gens Labs. Two people had died. Cortez and someone else—presumably the bomber.

Charles had obtained a sample of the DNA from what was left of the bodies. And what he discovered had brought cold sweat to his skin.

The police had never solved that mystery. Now what about Ridgeway? Were the authorities going to get a crack at the case—or was a grand cover-up in motion?

“MAYBE YOU’D BETTER explain what you mean about his using you for something else,” Brady said.

He watched Grace drag in a breath and let it out.

“I was in the office complex, but your brother was with another woman when he died. They went into another office together. They made love. Then he gasped, and I assume he had a heart attack. There must have been security guards right around the corner. As soon as it happened, a couple of them rushed in—followed by Ian Wickers who runs security at the Ridgeway Consortium.”

“I know who Wickers is!” He glared at her. “You expect me to believe someone else was with my brother?”

“Earlier, I was working with him on notes for his autobiography. We had a standing appointment every Tuesday night.”

Just what Lydia had told him.

“Did you know he was working on an autobiography?” Grace Cunningham asked.

“He hadn’t shared that with me.”

“Probably he didn’t want to tell you anything until he had a publisher lined up.”

That sounded pretty cynical. Yet the observation fit. John wouldn’t want to make a big announcement until he’d signed a multi-million-dollar book contract.

She continued with her version of the evening’s events. “After our sessions together, he always left me and went to meet someone else.”

He kept his gaze fixed on her. “That’s an interesting story. Why should I believe it?”

CHARLES HANCOCK TYPED in his password—Paladin. It was from an old TV show, where a guy in a black hat rode around the old west righting wrongs.

He’d loved the show when he was a kid. So he’d appropriated the title. Paladin wasn’t the Lone Ranger. He didn’t always play by the rules. But he got things done.

The way Cortez had.

The doctor’s death had been a personal tragedy. But Charles would find the right man to take over the research. Someone with vision. Someone who understood the importance of maintaining stability in the government of the United States—and ultimately the world.

All the Bio Gens protocols were in the computer. Waiting for the right moment to start the project up again.

But right now he was into damage control.

His source at the consortium had confirmed his suspicion that Ridgeway hadn’t been alone when he’d suffered his fatal heart attack. It seemed that he’d been playing Russian roulette with his health. He’d been with a woman, but Ian Wickers was keeping that information inside the building.

Good. That suited Charles’s purposes perfectly. The fewer people who knew what had really happened, the better.

He had the woman’s name. Karen Hilliard. He drummed his fingers lightly on the computer keyboard. He hated giving in to conspiracy theory. However, in this case he knew it was justified. When you put Ridgeway’s death together with the murders across the country and then the explosion at Dr. Cortez’s lab you came up with an unfortunate pattern.

The man who had blown himself up—along with Cortez—had been a rare bird. He’d called himself Billy Carmichael. But that was the name he’d taken after he’d disappeared into thin air.

Charles knew his real identity from the DNA sample he’d obtained. Billy Carmichael was one of the babies who had been conceived in a petri dish at Bio Gens Labs—then sold to childless couples desperate for children. Couples who bore all the expenses of raising one of Cortez’s little darlings yet didn’t know what a remarkable youngster they sheltered.

He switched to another database—the children. He didn’t usually go into it unless he had a request from one of his clients.

Now he plugged in Karen Hilliard’s name. He didn’t find her, but he had a pretty good idea who she was. Three years ago, one of the children—now grown—had gone missing. A young woman named Kate Winthrop.

Charles’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the computer screen. He had no conclusive proof, but he’d be willing to bet that Kate Winthrop and Karen Hilliard were one and the same.

She’d been one of Cortez’s more bizarre experiments. He’d brought her into the world just to prove he could do it. Really, she’d been of no real use to anyone.

And now Charles cursed himself for not getting rid of her when he’d had the chance.

Switching to e-mail, he sent a message to his Ridgeway Consortium contact. First he wanted a physical description of Karen Hilliard. And her DNA—if he could get it.

Had she been working with the man who had blown himself up—along with Dr. Cortez? Or was she on a private mission?

Either way, he needed answers. And if he got the wrong one, he would have to take drastic action.

BRADY WATCHED GRACE Cunningham glare at him.

“I’m not telling you a ‘story,'” she said, punching out the words. “And you should believe me because I haven’t jumped out of the car and started running.”

“How about, you know, I’d catch you and bring you back.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” She kept her gaze steady. “Tonight, your brother was in the office next door when he had a heart attack. After he died, Wickers told one of the agents to take the woman to the basement. While they were busy with her and with your brother, I managed to get out of the building.”

“You’ll pardon me if I’m having a little trouble connecting with this fantasy.”

She shifted in her seat. She might be spinning him a story, but she was scared of something—and not necessarily of him.

Then there was the logic of the situation. If she’d really been in the same room with John when he’d died, could she have gotten away?

He studied her face. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. Had he seen her at one of the parties that John insisted on dragging him to? The parties where he watched people drinking cocktails and highballs.

She surprised him by saying, “Your brother spoke very highly of you.”

He snorted. “My job was taking care of business he didn’t want made public.”

“Then maybe you can do one last thing for him.”

“Which is?”

“Find out what really happened and expose the cover-up.”

He kept his gaze on her, hoping his posture gave nothing away. On the way to Grace’s apartment, he’d called Wickers, and the guy had blown him off. Maybe Grace Cunningham really was what he’d been praying for—to use a conventional phrase because he hadn’t prayed in years. If she was willing to tell the truth. But he wasn’t going to act too eager.

He lifted one shoulder. “Maybe it’s better to leave it the way it is.”

“You want Wickers and his pals to control the situation? When I got home—armed men were only a few minutes behind me. Then you came and rescued me.” She sighed. “Or maybe I’m kidding myself. Maybe you’ve already pushed a secret buzzer on your cell phone, and they’re coming for me now.”

“Maybe,” he answered and watched her shoulders tighten.

“One woman’s already disappeared. The woman who was with your brother. Either she’s still in the basement of the Ridgeway Consortium, or they’ve taken her somewhere else. Or she’s already dead.”

“Dead! I’ve only got your word that she exists.”

She reached into the large purse that sat on her lap and pulled out an evening bag. “While the guards were busy, I took a big chance and grabbed this.”

When she laid it on the console next to him, he turned on the overhead light, then opened the bag. Inside was a wallet with a driver’s license belonging to someone named Karen Hilliard. There were also a couple of credit cards, a library card and an auto-club card. He held up the driver’s license. She was an attractive woman with large dark eyes, short cropped blond hair and a challenging look on her face. More John’s type. Just as with Grace Cunningham, he felt as if he knew her—only in this case, the conviction was even stronger.

“Who is she?”