Give Me Grace(155)

“No one yet.”

“Wait here,” he told me, palming his own gun. “I’ll go around the front, see if Morgan’s car is in the drive.”

I set my jaw stubbornly. “You wait here. I’ll go.”

Travis sighed, exasperated. We did a quick rock-paper-scissors. Knowing Travis always chose rock, I went with paper. When he decided to switch it up and came out with scissors, I hissed quietly. “Sonofabitch.”

With narrow-eyed satisfaction, he threw a quick, “cover me,” my way, and crouched low, running for the back of the house.

He returned five minutes later. “Morgan’s car is in the garage. I saw it through a side window. I did a scope of the entire house from the outside. Didn’t see Grace,” he told me before I could ask.

I huffed with indecision. “What do we do? Storm the place or follow Morgan when she leaves?”

“If we storm the place and Grace isn’t there, then we’ve played our hand. Morgan will know we’re on to her and then following her when she leaves will be a crapshoot.”

“Hell,” I muttered, rubbing a hand over the back of my head.

“My gut’s telling me Grace isn’t here,” he said, shifting his gaze from the house to meet my eyes. “I vote we wait and follow Morgan when she leaves.”

“I can work with that.” I trusted Travis. His gut had never steered us wrong. “But if she leaves and then just returns home? What the fuck then?”

“Then we’re screwed, because the unmarked car the police have out the front of her house will pick her up, beating us to her.”

“Fuck it, Travis. I vote we storm the place.”

We both turned to stare at the house and as if I’d just said abracadabra, the garage door magically began to rise, the loud clunk alerting us to the activity. My pulse rose right along with it and we turned and began running for the Subaru. I beeped the locks from ten yards away and had the engine growling and the wheels spinning before we’d even shut the doors.

We shot out of the side street at the back of the reserve, just in time to catch the tail lights of Morgan’s car turning the corner. I inched off the gas, not wanting to alert her to our presence.

“Speed the fuck up. You’ll lose her.”

“I’m not going to lose her,” I snapped, speeding up a fraction because he was right.

When she hit the intersection up ahead she turned left instead of the right which would’ve taken her home. I followed carefully, keeping behind other cars, and hanging back when traffic around us eased. Travis rang Mitch for the second time since we left, updating him with our progress. In turn, he kept Gabriella in the loop. Travis had the phone on speaker and she was barking at us to stand down.

When she realised she’d have better luck pushing a snowball up a lava-spewing volcano, she told us they were on their way and to wait.

My response was firm and distinct. “No.”

Reaching across Travis, I hit the end button, cutting off her rant.

“Gabriella is a hard-ass,” Travis noted as we drove further towards the mountains.

“No shit,” was my reply as my gut began to churn, engaging its warning system the further out we drove.

“They’ve got a helluva history, those two.”

“Which two?” I glanced at him, confused. “What?”

“Mitch and Gabriella. You don’t remember her? They were tight at uni.”

I thought she looked familiar. Mitch had been two years ahead of us at Charles Sturt. They’d been tight for a long time. She’d changed, gotten taller, or grown her hair long. Or something. Whatever. I shrugged his question off because we just started down a familiar street in Blackheath. And screw my gut’s early warning system, it was full on screaming by the time Morgan pulled up outside the house where Janie Berg had been abducted.

I pulled to the kerb at the end of the street, both of us seeming to hold our breath as Morgan got out of the car.

Moments later, a Harley thundered down the street, driving straight past us. It pulled up next to Morgan’s car and the man swung his leg over and dragged the helmet from his head as he stood, and stood, and fucking stood. He was wearing a Sentinels MC vest and a beard so wild and woolly it was a wonder it didn’t smother him in his sleep.

“That is one big motherfucking bastard,” Travis breathed.

“Ring Mitch,” I ordered, but Travis was already dialling and giving out the address a second later.

“Holy motherfucking shit!” Mitch shouted when it clicked a second later where we were. Gabriella’s wild Spanish was ripping someone a new one in the background so he kept yelling over the top of her into the phone. “Don’t either of you dare touch this one or I swear to God, I’ll—”