Run to Ground(134)

Kaylee squeezed her eyes closed and then opened them again, but the scene in front of her didn’t change. Jules and the cop were still making googly eyes at each other. Kaylee could almost see the cartoon hearts circling the pair. He didn’t look like a cop on a mission to hunt down Martin Jovanovic’s enemy. He looked like a guy in love.

Martin hadn’t sent him here. She wouldn’t be hauled away in handcuffs…not now, at least. As the realization sunk in, her panic retreated enough for her to pull in a shaky breath. Blinking several times, she managed to clear her vision, and her grip on the banister eased.

The officer looked at Kaylee, and his expression hardened. The muscles that had just relaxed ever so slightly stiffened again.

“Who are you?” he barked.

Her heart thundered in her chest, and she swallowed. You’re ready for this, she reminded herself firmly. She’d repeated the name and backstory over and over to herself for hours as she drove across deserts and mountains. “Grace Robinson.”

“Where are you from?”

“Most recently? Bangor, Maine.”

“Why are you here?” The kids’ heads turned with each question and answer, following the exchange like they were watching a tennis match.

“Theo,” Jules broke in firmly. “Stop interrogating her. She’s not one of your suspects. Grace was my friend in high school. She’s going to stay here for a while.”

For a brief moment, his too-intense gaze left Kaylee—not Kaylee, she thought for the umpteenth time, Grace—and landed on Jules. Grace took the opportunity to suck in a few long breaths and try to quiet her shaking hands. Too soon, that laser focus was locked on her again.

“Why don’t you have an accent?”

“What?” Accent? Did people from Maine have an accent? Mr. Espina had let her choose her pretend city of origin, and Kaylee had chosen Bangor because it seemed like a nice place, a peaceful place. She hadn’t realized there was an accent.

“You went to high school with Jules.”

“Yes.” The word came out slowly. Kaylee felt like she was stepping into a trap.

“In Arkansas.”

Oh! That accent! “Just for a few years. My parents moved around a lot.”

“Military?”

“No.” Kaylee didn’t have enough knowledge about the different military branches and rankings and everything else she’d be expected to know to pull off that lie. “They were just restless.”

“Restless? Is that another term for avoiding arrest?”

“What? No!” She couldn’t believe she was offended for her imaginary parents. Her real mom had lived in the same horrible basement apartment for twenty-four years until she died of liver failure five years ago. Grace hadn’t known her real dad. “They didn’t do anything wrong.” Neither had she, but she was paying for Martin Jovanovic’s sins. A new surge of rage filled her, and she shoved it back. She could have her pillow-thumping tantrum later. Right now, she needed to focus on not making the cop suspicious…well, more suspicious than he already was.

“Why are you here?”

The jump back to his original question threw her off-balance, and her answer came out sounding hesitant. “Just visiting Jules.”

He waited, watching her steadily.

Racking her brain for a reason he would believe, all she could think about was that room in Martin’s house. Grace decided to go with the truth—in a somewhat altered form. “And I needed to get away from my ex-boyfriend.”

By the way his face hardened even more, she knew right away that it had been the wrong thing to say. “He’s dangerous?” he barked.

“No. Just a jerk.” Noah wasn’t a jerk, though. His uncle was—well, jerk was a very mild word for what Martin was—but Noah had been nothing but sweet to her. Although her common sense told her that he had to have known his uncle did very bad things, another part of her felt guilty for convicting him without even talking to him about it. Maybe he was ignorant of his uncle’s true nature, or maybe Noah didn’t know exactly how deadly Martin really was. Grace just couldn’t believe that Noah—kind, considerate Noah—would be okay with having her killed. There was no way he could have hidden a monster of that magnitude under his perfect-boyfriend exterior.

“Will he follow you?”

Grace yanked her mind away from her real ex-boyfriend and refocused on her fake one. “No. He’s lazy, as well as a jerk. He’s a lazy jerk.”

Jules ducked her head in a way that made Grace think she was hiding a smile. For some reason, that, plus the affectionate hold Jules still had on the cop’s hand, eased a few of Grace’s fears. Jules wasn’t scared of him, and she wasn’t acting as if he was one wrong answer from hauling Grace away to her death, so Grace allowed herself to believe that this conversation would end well.