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She described seeing the candidate to the door, beginning to say goodbye, feeling fuzzy. She’d mumbled, tried to grab the door handle for stability, and the world had gone dark.
Though her heart ached on hearing these details, the logical part of Gracie could see how this tape could’ve been altered to have the questioner ask different things, making it look like her mother was speaking about a different man. The questions were very leading. The interviewer doing her best to make it easy on her mother.
Thirty years ago, it might’ve been difficult to alter the tape, but nowadays, video was easily manipulated. The interviewer asked questions like a talk show host, leading the narrative, filling in blanks.
But Gracie could see the honesty of it. There wasn’t a question in her mind what her father, Senator Rush, had done.
On screen the corners of Sheila’s eyes tensed as she paused her story, obviously trying to keep control of her emotions. She fiddled with her necklace, whisking the cross back and forth along the chain. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Are you okay?” the questioner asked. Sheila’s hand stopped and her cheeks grew pink. She nodded, swallowed, then shook her head.
The interviewer changed her line of questioning. “Are you okay to go on?”
Sheila’s caramel-brown eyes lifted. She drew up her shoulders. So young. She nodded.
“Can you tell me what happened to you next?”
She dropped the cross as if it burned, balled her hands into fists on her lap as the tears slipped from her eyes.
Gracie could feel Momma and Leland across from her, ready to pounce forward and rescue her from this truth. Dusty put his hand on her knee, squeezed. It steadied her.
Sheila remembered nothing else of the night. She’d woken up the next morning on the couch. Alone. Her body hurt.
Not just her “front part,” she said, wiping the tears, “but the back too.”
Gracie tensed. The interviewer very gently asked, “Were you a virgin?”
Sheila lowered her head, nodded again, and broke into sobs. The tape winked to black. When it started again, Sheila had a tissue balled up in her right hand.
“I didn’t go to the police. It’d be him against me. I didn’t even have citizenship. I wouldn’t matter.”
“You matter,” Dusty told the girl on the screen.
Gracie’s heart opened even more to him. She did matter. All of the women and girls who were discounted and not believed, who were taught playing a role or playing by the rules would keep them safe. And then had those rules, that very role—the one that didn’t let them question a senator or act rudely toward him—be the thing that doomed them. She mattered.
Gracie stopped the playback. The rest Momma had explained to her. Her mother had made friends with one of the Parish girls, a sister Gracie saw more on TV than in real life. She was an international reporter. Back then, she’d just been starting out and had been reporting on the campaign.
Sheila had confided in her. Maybe hoping this reporter would believe her. She had. But she hadn’t taken it to the police. She’d taken it and news of the pregnancy to Momma.
And Momma had done what Momma did. She’d sought justice. Gracie didn’t even hold that blackmail against her.
She delighted in it.
She hoped Rush had squirmed all these years, fearful. She hoped that he’d doubted his safety, doubted his choices, regretted his decisions. She hoped he’d spent years looking over his shoulder, checking the locks on his home, years terrified of what might happen.
Just as her mother had done.
Momma turned from the screen and focused on Gracie. Her dark eyes were wary. Maybe sad. “Do you have any questions, daughter?”
She had a thousand questions. About why she’d never been told. About who else in the family knew. About all the different ways Rush had been blackmailed. About…a thousand useless things. Because right now the important question was…
“How do we take Rush down? Not just stop him or whoever is after me, but stop that creep from becoming president.”
She saw Leland smile a that’s-my-girl smile. Darn tootin’. Questions could come later. When she could go back to fixing her club, making it up to the injured, perfecting her creeper detection software, expanding the underground railroad, protecting any women who might think, like her mother had thought, they didn’t matter.
Then she would ask her questions. And make it up to Momma for sending that email.
Momma looked to Dusty. “And what of you? Are you interested in joining us?”
Her heart in her throat, Gracie swiveled in her seat to look at Dusty. She flinched at the uncertainty on his face. She tried not to feel the sharp ache in her chest. After all, he’d come to take down their vigilante organization, not to join it.
Leland made a disparaging sound. “We can’t trust him.”
Dusty met Leland’s straight stare with one of his own then squared his broad shoulders. Gracie wondered if Dusty knew just how intimidating that looked.
“I appreciate your concern, Leland, I do,” Dusty said, crossing his arms and making himself look even bigger. “But if I wasn’t already all-in, I wouldn’t be here, revealing company secrets, breaking the law. I’m hesitating because I’m not sure you will let me do my job.”
“Your job as an agent investigating my family?” Leland said in a tone that had as much bite as growl.
Dusty’s legs were flung out in front of him and crossed at his ankles. Casual. Except for his crossed arms and the storm in his eyes. “That’s the issue, ain’t it?” He was laying the Southern on thick. “I’m gonna need in on everything you got information-wise on Rush. On the blackmail. Anything that will help me identify the real threat and work with you to figure out how to end it. Something tells me y’all aren’t prepared to give me what I need.”
Gracie fisted her hands, dug her nails into her palms. Dusty had basically asked for proof of the family’s vigilante activities and the blackmail. He’d asked them to trust him, take him not just into this house, but into the inner circle. The exact thing he’d explained to her that he’d wanted when he’d first contacted Tony.
Leland nodded as if this confirmed his suspicions. “We have a whole organization here. Trained people who’ve been on hiatus and are itching for work. We don’t need you.”
Gracie took a deep breath. Let it out. “You’re wrong.”
Momma and Leland gave her their attention. She held her head high and took the leap of faith. “We need him. He has valuable information, and more than that, I trust him.”
A brick of silence crashed into the room. It thudded down, kicked up dust, and sent Momma’s and Leland’s eyes rapidly blinking.
She chanced a peek at Dusty. He smiled at her, smiled like a kid on Christmas morning. His heart, as the saying goes, in his eyes.
“See there,” Dusty said. “Always knew you had good instincts.” He addressed Leland and Momma. “And I think a good family. So if you can’t offer me the same trust, maybe you can trust the facts. Facts are, I got no reason to go against you right now. I’m off the case. Punched out my boss. Sleeping with the enemy.”
He winked at Gracie. She shook her head, bit back her smile.
Leland and Momma exchanged another long look. And though it was subtle, Gracie saw a signal pass between them, a tip of Leland’s chin, an acceptance.
Momma clasped her hands together. All business. Except for the jingle of the bracelets on her arm. “What do we know so far?”
For the next forty minutes the group exchanged information. The flow of ideas and facts set the energy in the room buzzing. It reminded Gracie why she needed a team. Why no one person could do this on their own. And she was genuinely grateful to them, her team. For seeing the things she couldn’t, for using their talents and skills to aid her.
Though, of course, that didn’t
mean they’d always say things she wanted to hear.
“Although I dearly respect Victor,” Momma said, after Gracie told her that he’d been helping her on the case, “how focused could his investigation be when still recovering from severe injuries and simultaneously picking up the slack for his partner—now overseas with Justice.”
The implication was obvious. He isn’t Superman. We need to reevaluate his research on the Rush family.
Leland, as was so often the case, picked up the ball Momma had started rolling and ran with it. “Tell me what you’ve learned about Rush’s family. All of them, including the wife.”
Another long discussion of the facts, in which Dusty added that the odd coincidences around John and El couldn’t be discounted, but his money was on Porter.
Momma nodded. “Porter is a good place to focus our attention.” She fiddled with the series of gold bangles on her wrist. “But not just him.”
She looked at Leland. “I don’t know, but the attempts on Gracie’s life, they feel…personal.”
Leland cocked his head to the side. They stared at each other and simultaneously said, “The sister.”
“Layla?” Gracie said, the shock in her voice obvious. That was not where she’d thought this was headed.
Dusty whistled like he’d had an epiphany. “She has multiple degrees in computer engineering, including as an artificial intelligence programmer,” he said. “Would’ve been able to mess with the security at the club, allowing those guys who broke in access through the tunnel.”
True. But how would she have known about the tunnel?
“She could have altered the video,” Momma added. “Maybe her brother gave her the copied video, the one we sent to Andrew years ago. Maybe they are working together.”
