Chapter 43

Justice pulled into the parking lot behind Club When? and hit the brakes. Maybe a little too quickly.

In the seat beside her, Sandesh jerked. The coffee in his hand spilled onto his suit pants.

Whoops. “Aw, and I took such care getting you clean during our shower.”

Heat flushed his face as he placed his cup in the cup holder, leaned back, and wiped at his pants. “I’d think you’d worry more about the suit you insisted I wear.”

“Suggested not insisted. And trust me, if you’re coming to the house later for dinner, you’ll be glad to be in a suit. Momma does not mess around with that stuff.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Beyond Sandesh, through the window, sat Gracie’s car. He must’ve caught her looking at the white, hail-damaged Ford Fusion. He hitched a thumb toward it. “Gracie’s?”

“Yeah.” She hated that her voice sounded so hurt. But it did hurt. All of this hurt. “You know, we used to be best friends. We shared a room together, our first drink together, our first sneak out of the house. Not an easy thing when you have armed guards around your home.”

“What happened between you?”

“The Tasmanian Devil, a.k.a. Gracie’s bio-mom, came back into her life and took her here, to the club. They started and ran the club together. After that, Gracie was different. Now, she hates taking money from Momma, even for the work she does. Reason number one to suspect her.”

“Actually, I’d say that falls second to the other thing you told me. About her ex running away after finding out about your family.”

Justice halted with one leg out the open door. “Yeah. Coming from a family of vigilantes limits the dating pool.”

Sandesh snorted. He climbed out of the Jeep and strolled with her across the gravel to the back of the club. She liked the feel of him at her side. It was nice.

Though it was barely eleven, the club was already open for lunch. An eighties Prince song pounded out into the lot.

Sandesh didn’t seem to be a fan. He dug at his ears. “Prince?”

“Club When? changes musical eras every six weeks, so you might not know until you get inside what decade or date or Boston Tea Party you’ll find. It must be the eighties this time.”

He nodded, getting it.

The music, which had sounded loud outside, hit her with a punch once inside the small, crate-stacked back corridor. Her eardrums pulsed with base vibrations. And her stomach rumbled at the smell of fried onion rings and fish.

Justice expertly avoided the food-carrying waitress, and with Sandesh following, rounded the corner toward the upstairs offices.

She bit into a steamy onion ring. Sandesh looked at her. “How did you get…?” He trailed off as she offered him the rest of the onion ring.

With a shrug, he took and ate it. She put her code into the steel number pad by the security door. It beeped. She waved her wrist and her newly implanted chip over the pad. It beeped, and a shrill warning sounded.

She motioned to Sandesh’s wrist. “You have to do the same. It reads the number of people out here and won’t open if everyone doesn’t have clearance.”

Still chewing, a lot less cheerful, he put up his wrist. The pad beeped again and clicked.

She pulled the door open with a heave that brought her onto her heels. The steel-plated, heavy-as-a-tomb door crashed shut behind them.

“Blast proof?”

Dude did not miss a trick.

“Yeah.”

All club sounds went silent. Their footfalls echoed up the stairs.

At the top, they entered a hallway. A series of steel security doors lined with security cameras. Information systems, computers, and servers for the underground railroad and its operations were behind those doors.

Maybe she was being paranoid, but she could feel Sandesh taking note. She shouldn’t have brought him.

She knocked on Gracie’s closed office door. Waited. Sandesh cleared his throat. She really shouldn’t have brought him. She knocked harder. Come on.

“Behind you, dork.”

Ahhh! Justice spun. Gracie stood there. Full lips cocked back in a smile. A smile echoed by Sandesh.

“You’re all kinds of ninja, Gracie.” Justice bent and threw her arms around the petite redhead. She smelled like watermelon Jolly Ranchers. Totally normal for her. She squeezed her sister tight, trying to see if she felt different, like a traitor.

Gracie stiffened. That too was normal. Since losing John and Tyler, girl hated to be touched.

Gracie stepped away. “Why are you here?”

Justice went with the lie she and Sandesh had concocted. Which wasn’t really a lie since she was genuinely interested. “The kid. Cee.”

Frowning, Gracie eyed Sandesh. “And you? Why are you here?”

“I’m a prisoner of love. And your crazy-ass family.”

Gracie raised an eyebrow at the word love. And, truth, it’d made Justice’s heart skip like a kindergartener during recess. She knocked her shoulder into Sandesh. “He’s the Scully to my Mulder.”

“I think you have that backward,” Sandesh said.

Justice shook her head. “I was going by personality.”

He flicked his head to the side in a I’ll-give-you-that-one gesture. Hard to argue with the truth.

Gracie unlocked her door with a wave of her wrist over the small black pad. “Come on in.”

Gracie’s office was as neat as a pin. And modern. White bookcases lined the wall behind a bleached white desk. In the corner stood a white grandfather clock with a round, white face. And in front of the desk, two modern, white Belgian linen chairs.

Type A, party of one.

Gracie’s neatness made Justice nervous. And she wasn’t the only one. Sandesh brushed at the coffee stain on his pants before sitting. Gracie stared at him like he was a walking germ. Girl had mad OCD.

Justice sat, crossed her legs ranch-hand style, right foot on left knee. “What’s the holdup with Cee? You haven’t even given her a psych eval yet.”

Gracie sat in her white leather chair and leveled direct, all-business eyes on her. Sheesh. She wasn’t that much older. Why did she seem so freaking ancient?

Maybe it was the way she pinned her hair back—tight little bun, to go with her tight little body. Or the way she carried her loss, high-shouldered, like her back was pinned to the past. Maybe it was the suit. A charcoal-gray Ann Taylor original with matching silk blouse.

Gracie put her hands on the computer mouse and clicked something open. “Who shot the sex-slaver in the distribution center?”

Whoops. Justice stared down at her flats, watched as her toes curled and uncurled, bowing the cheetah-print fabric. “The kid did.”

Sandesh’s head spun toward her like a rock from a slingshot. Yeah, she’d forgotten to tell a few people that part.

“And you ask me what the holdup is?”

Justice raised her eyebrows. “So she took matters into her own hands. Sounds perfect to me.”

“Sounds scary to me.”

Scary? “Who else could she depend on? How many times have we seen raids go down at these places and the slavers go free and the women end up punished? Besides, even you can’t deny she’s got real potential.”

Gracie’s eyebrows crashed together, like two red lines intersecting to form a stylish V above her nose. “To be adopted as a sister?” Gracie shook her head. “No. She’s rejected. She’s way too old.”

“She’s fifteen.”

“Possibly sixteen. We don’t adopt that late.”

“She saved my life.”

“Yes. And you should be grateful. And more careful. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to go through the trouble of giving her a psych eval, making sure no family is out there, and then washing her to make her look like a legit adoptee. No. She has too much history. Besides, I don’t need a psych eval to tell she’s messed up.”

“Not all of us can be adopted from the cradle, Gracie. Some of us are used, abused, angry, and messed the fuck up.”

Gracie crossed her arms under her chest, exposing cleavage, a brown freckle, and a lacy, black bra totally at odds with her bland suit. “Don’t belittle my life, Justice. You know what I’ve lost because of the League.”

Yeah. Justice knew. And she didn’t want to get into this with her. Not when Sandesh was here, obviously knowing about the family. Not when she was asking her to make room for a kid who was about the same age as the son Gracie had let go.

But Cee deserved better. “She asked, Gracie. You know how rare that is? They never ask. Do you think she’s just going to forget about us?”

“No. I’m going to M-erase her.”

“You bit—”

Gracie slammed her hand on the desk. “Don’t, Justice. I won’t put up with that.”

Sandesh looked over and mouthed, M-erase?

Clenching the seat’s arms, Justice shook her head but did her best to keep him up to speed with her next question. “Tell me why you’re threatening to erase the memory of a fifteen-year-old girl?”

Because you’re a traitor and secretly hate the family and the sister that loves you?

Gracie reached over and took out a watermelon Jolly Rancher from the bowl on her desk. She unwrapped it quietly, expertly. The grandfather clock tick, tick, ticked the seconds away. Gracie put the candy in her mouth. “I’ve never encountered a rage like hers before. Not since…” Her eyes shifted away from Justice. Her face reddened.

“Yeah. I’m angry. I’ve always been. I think I punched you in the face the first time we met.”

Gracie smiled. “Because I called you my sister. You told me your sister was dead and punched me. But that was different.”

“How? How is my childhood anger different from hers?”

Gracie clicked the candy between her teeth, turned it over, sucked it back in. “Don’t you have enough, Justice? Isn’t getting first Tony and now Sandesh into the League enough? Now you want the kid indoctrinated too?”

Indoctrinated? Justice dropped her foot to the floor with a thud. She sat forward, close enough to see how fast Gracie was breathing. “This isn’t about Cee. This is about Momma, our home, the League. You think you know better. You think Cee can do better.”

“Yeah. Fine. It’s about the way we were raised. The way I was raised before my mom came. Being a Parish, having all that money, having your values and knowledge filtered through the school messes you up. It’s different for me. I see things differently.”

Justice bit down on her bottom lip. If she had to hear one more time about Gracie’s miraculous transformation into worldly woman and how the rest of them were sheltered for too long, she’d lose it.

“You can’t use your injury to injure others, Gracie. I’m sorry about John. I’m devastated about Tyler. I wish things had been different. But he left, he chose to get out.”

Gracie worked the candy in her mouth and glared like only a redhead with green eyes can—all spit and fire. “God, Justice, you really are the baby of our unit. Grow up. John would never have done that.”

“What are you saying?”

Gracie rubbed at her eyes. If she had worn a stitch of makeup, that would’ve smeared it. But Gracie had no interest in dressing up. Face or body. Her biggest fashion accessory was her incredible body.

She got that from her devotion to the Cambodian martial art of Muay Thai.

And genetics.

“Leland found out John knew about the League.”

“Yeah. I remember the shouting. And?”

“And when he found out, he told me there were three choices. The first two involved killing or M-erasing John.”

Justice paused for a long beat. “Leland threatened John?”

“The last choice?” Sandesh said.

“I made John go to save him. Told John I chose the League over them.” Gracie’s voice hitched. “Told him I’d fight for full custody if he ever breathed a word. He left. Stayed silent. Stayed alive.”

Gracie stared at Sandesh for a long, complicated moment before licking her lips with a tongue coated unnaturally red. She turned her gaze to Justice. “You asked me how your anger was different from Cee’s. You were six. You wanted love and kindness, even if you couldn’t admit it. Cee just wants to hurt people. The League is bad enough without adding people like that.”

Justice suddenly couldn’t breathe. She hurt for Gracie. She did. She couldn’t imagine the kind of pain her sister had to carry. Or the rage she must have been holding against Momma and Leland.

A sinking feeling pulled at her stomach. A tremor of doubt convulsed in her heart. The traitor could be Gracie. It could.