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Grace looked around the room. Her mom kept a lot of her things and she made a scrapbook of all the pictures Grace sent her from overseas.
Why would someone want to kill me?
And Cheryl was such a nice girl. Who would kill her and leave my picture by her body?
The agents said another woman was murdered. She was the wife of some hotshot attorney in New York. The agents had little to go by but felt that Grace’s safety may be in jeopardy. No shit. That was obvious to her considering only minutes ago her head was nearly shot off her shoulders.
The agents and other detectives, including her brothers, were bombarding her with questions. She couldn’t think straight and her head was spinning.
She didn’t have any answers for them.
Grace heard a horn honk and a car pull quickly up the dirt driveway. She peeked out the window and saw Eric emerge. Instantly Peter and Frank were at the driver’s side door.
To the right of the driveway she saw Investigator Sandstone and he saw her.
The stern look told her to get away from the window and she did.
Grace recalled her mother saying that Eric was on his way home from the store. He had waited for his main worker Richie to get back from some delivery before heading home. Sarah said Eric was so upset that this was happening. He felt that Grace coming back home was such a blessing and was definitely what his wife Sarah needed and was missing in her life. He looked scared and frantic in the driveway but maybe Eric would be able to calm Sarah down.
Grace was trying to figure out how Clara’s murder could be connected to the others.
How could the investigators have put away the wrong guy? Could Clara’s killer still be out there? Could he have been the one who just tried to kill me? She asked herself a thousand questions.
She looked at her elbow, which was now covered with a bandage. She couldn’t help but think how close she came to dying. Investigator Sandstone, Sandman, had saved her life and the thought of his body against hers sent a tingling feeling through her. He was so sexy and rugged. Talk about bad timing and bad circumstances. She never had much luck with relationships. Not that she really had any at all. Her inexperience and inability to commit always got in the way.
Deep down Grace felt that her fear of losing someone so close to her again kept
her from falling in love and taking chances. She wanted little to do with dating and feared commitment. She had survived living away from home, away from her family, but she was lonely, frequently experiencing nightmares, flashbacks and fainting episodes. She knew they stemmed from her sister’s death, from leaving home, moving on alone. That was when she met Pierre Joudeou and her life had begun. He was exactly what she needed and he was her cure.
She had met him at one of the after-parties the magazine editors and producers would throw at the completion of a photo shoot. Everyone would dress up in his or her most expensive designer evening wear and party until the following day. Grace and Pierre hit it off immediately, getting caught up in the music, the atmosphere, and the celebrities around them. He was handsome, wealthy, and charming. When he spoke to her in French, she felt weak, hypnotized, drunk.
Grace was a virgin. She was inexperienced and he knew it. She was nervous about doing it but she knew the time was right, she was ready and when he kissed her, touched her, she didn’t want to stop, she wanted more. Did she regret it? Absolutely not.
Now here she was in the middle of a huge mess. She would have been safer in Europe. Paris was enchanting and so romantic. Her troubled past and the traumatic memories were just that, memories. But here, in this current situation, she was facing the pain and the past head-on.
She was lucky she didn’t get shot downstairs. She might just have to fly back to Paris and hunt down that hunk of a French man and become very experienced. Grace laughed at the thought. A fear of death made her suddenly wish she had taken more chances in life. But the truth was, she feared a lot of things. She feared the pounding in her chest as the reality that a bullet nearly grazed her skull as she stood on her front porch. She also feared the pounding in her chest as Sandman tackled her to the ground and covered her with his exceptionally fit body.
People were dying, emotions she had buried were resurfacing and this entire situation had the ingredients for disaster.
It was just like her to take an incredibly dangerous, depressing, and life-threatening situation and make light of it. That was how she dealt with leaving home and her sister’s murder behind her.
Grace looked around the bedroom and began thinking about Clara and even Cheryl. She didn’t want to allow herself to cry or give in to the fear. That would be a sign of weakness, a characteristic of the old Grace she had left behind years ago.
She had done so much crying in the past. There was just too much sadness in her life, in her soul, but now layers of professional success and the fact that she constantly kept busy either working or exercising had covered all that sadness.
She didn’t want it all to resurface, emerge again, and destroy everything she had worked so hard for the past two and a half years. She wouldn’t allow it. No way.
Just then there was a knock at the door. Her brothers John and Frank entered.
“How are you doing, hun?” Frank asked then sat down on the bed next to her.
John joined them as well.
She turned her head sideways, not knowing quite what to say. Her brothers were worried and Grace knew her mom must still be hysterical downstairs.
Peter called the doctor, and he was sending over something to help her to relax. Grace couldn’t even imagine what all this was doing to her mother. She was sure her mom was thinking about Clara.
“This doesn’t make sense, guys. I was fine in Europe and then I come home and all this stuff happens in less than twenty-four hours.”
