He had the news clipping she’d cut from the paper at the age of fifteen about her father’s conviction and had kept folded small in her wallet ever since as a reminder to never stop working harder, aiming higher and pushing herself to be the best possible person she could be.
“...along with two counts of first-degree murder, drug trafficking, bribery, corruption, breach of public trust...”
Grace tuned Cutter out. She’d obsessively read every article about Turner when he’d first been arrested, hoping with all her heart that no one would ever uncover that the dirty cop had secretly fathered a daughter he barely saw and hardly knew with a twenty-two-year-old emergency room nurse he’d met at a crime scene and never deigned to give either his heart or home to. Turner had bailed long before Grace was born. She’d always had her mother’s last name, not his, and while he’d sporadically wanted to see her growing up, had insisted his name not be listed on her birth certificate. She’d never looked like him, not in ways that anybody had noticed, with the slender build and long black hair of her beautiful Afro-Caribbean Canadian mother instead of looking anything like her overweight German Canadian father, whose pale skin was frequently flushed red with anger. No one had ever seemed to suspect she was mixed race, especially after her mom and Frank, a fellow nurse and widower, had drawn close during the pregnancy and married when Grace was two. Gossipmongers speculated that Grace must have always been Frank’s, but her mom had consistently risen above others’ idle gossip.
But Grace had obsessively followed every moment of the trial. She watched television for hours, flipping through news channels to find his face and then hid in the computer lab when she got into journalism school, scanning the wires for his name. What had she even been looking for? Clues to what would lead a man who’d sworn an oath to protect his community to instead cut deals with drug dealers? Whether there was any credence to the story his lawyer had spun—that his partner had been the real criminal, the deaths had really been a murder suicide and that her father had set the fire in a noble attempt to protect his former partner’s name?
She’d been fourteen when he was arrested. She’d been there, in a restaurant-chain coffee shop, wondering why the father she’d barely seen had wanted to see her. His face had been white with fear and his hands had shaken so hard he could barely pick up his coffee cup. Then suddenly six police cars had pulled up outside. He’d leaped to his feet, told her to point the cops in the wrong direction, make up some story about where he’d gone and then quickly get to his apartment, destroy his computer and burn his files. Then he ran, leaving her to watch through the window with a gawking crowd of spectators and journalists as people in uniform chased him down the block. She hadn’t talked to the cops or gone to his apartment. Instead, she’d slipped out the back and gone home, the hair prickling at the back of her neck with every step, half expecting a journalist to stop her and ask her what she had been doing with him and who she was. But no one ever had. Seemed that for whatever reason, Turner had actually kept her existence a secret. The next time she saw her father’s face was his mug shot on the news.
She hadn’t heard from Turner again until she was twenty-eight, when her name was syndicated in newspapers across the country and he needed money.
“Listen to me, Grace Finch, wherever you’re hiding!” Cutter shouted, “You looking for Hal Turner? ’Cause I know him. He and I broke out together, and he’s real close by. He told me that he was coming here, looking for someone. I can take you right to him. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”
Her heart stopped. Her father had broken out of prison? Her father was here?
The noise above her was so faint she hadn’t even realized someone else was there until the uniformed police officer dropped down into the crevice beside her. Her breath caught in her throat. Her lips parted. But before she could let out a sound, one strong hand clamped over her lips while the other grabbed her hand, closing over the gun and peeling her fingers away from the trigger. The officer pulled her to him so that her back was against his chest.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you.” The voice in her ear was strong, warm and compelling, with just a hint of danger, filling her with a sense of reassurance that was as unexpected as it was unfamiliar. “I’m Detective Jacob Henry of the RCMP. I’m here to rescue you, and I’ll keep you safe. Do exactly what I say, and I’ll get you out of here alive.”
He would, would he? Her relief at knowing she wasn’t alone and her irritation at having a man—any man—suddenly announce that he was in charge and all would be well if she just did what he said battled somewhere deep inside her core. Yes, he was a cop. Yes, there was something undeniably and extremely reassuring about the feel of him there. But she’d survived her whole entire life on her own, without ever being rescued by anyone and wasn’t about to just fall into anyone’s arms now.
Especially not if that someone was Detective Jacob Henry.
Her eyes closed for a moment as the background file she kept on Jacob filled her mind. He’d done more to save lives, rescue others and stop killers than anyone she’d ever known. Not that they’d ever actually met. She’d heard his voice before, usually saying no comment and telling her to get off his crime scene before he had her arrested. As for his face, she knew it had a handsome and rugged quality that was a bit rough around the edges, like a former movie star that had retired to build custom motorcycles. But right now, he was holding her too close for her to turn around and see it. She definitely had never let herself imagine what it would be like to be held like this in his arms. Well, at least not in a situation like this.
Jacob Henry had a knack for being the primary detective on practically every major crime scene she’d raced to, especially the worst and more grisly ones. Some veteran detectives—like the immensely charming Warren Scott who’d been supremely friendly since transferring to the Toronto division a few months back—were known to toss reporters like her at least a few scraps of information before politely sending them on their way. But Jacob never had. If anything, he’d avoided even looking at her, let alone making direct eye contact, as if something about her mere existence made him uncomfortable. And maybe it did. Reporters and cops did tend to eye each other warily despite the fact that, as she saw it, they were all on the same team, wanting to see truth win out and bad guys get locked away. She didn’t want to know how much worse it would be if he knew she was the daughter of a dirty cop who’d killed a fellow officer.
Of all the cops who could’ve dropped out of nowhere to rescue her, why oh, why did it have to be him?
In fact, just last week, when she’d heard that her boss’s sister, Detective Chloe Brant, was getting married this weekend to Jacob’s fellow detective, and brother, Trent, she’d sent Jacob an email, hoping that one point of connection would be enough to thaw the ice between them, enough to grab a friendly and professional off-the-record coffee. Not a date. She definitely hadn’t asked him out on a date. Just to grab coffee sometime to see if they could set up a better, less adversarial mode of communication. Instead, he’d ignored her.
Well, he could hardly ignore her now.
And if he didn’t get his hand off her mouth pronto, she just might bite him.
He leaned so close she could feel his breath on her face. He smelled like coffee and wood smoke. It was a scent that somehow seemed to match both the toughness and warmth of his voice.
“Hand me the gun,” he whispered.
She shook her head. He sighed and twisted it from her grasp so deftly that she had no choice but to let go. He slid it into his ankle holster with one hand and pulled his pant leg down over it. Then his hand was back on her wrist so quickly it almost impressed her.
“Now I’m going to peel my hand away from your mouth,” he said. “But I need you to promise not to scream.”
Who did this man think she was?