Grace Anne - By Kathi S. Barton Page 0,40
fallen rail cars as they come up on shore. He nearly had that in the bag, last I heard.” Alyssa sat at her desk and began clicking on the computer. “Here, look Cain. He’s the real deal and almost as rich as we are.”
Cain walked around the desk, but still wasn’t convinced that Payton hadn’t set this up. He liked the guy and he was really good to his sister, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill him if he got Grace hurt. Cain sat in the chair that his wife got up from and started skimming the articles about the man who his sister was seeing.
“It says here he has a son. What happened to his wife?” Cain looked up when no one answered. “Drew? I asked you a question.”
“He never married. Terrance Michael Cunningham is the result of a long affair Michael had with a woman he never really liked.” Payton sat down, took the file, and slid a picture across to them. “She was killed about a year and a half after the kid was born. So far as we can tell, she never had a thing to do with either of them after he was born.”
Cain read over the file again. There was something he was missing, he knew it, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He looked up when Payton cleared his throat. From the look on his face, he knew that whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it.
“Your sister is in deep shit. Grace has been harassed for several months, it seems. Michael said that the calls and the threats have become quite violent. He said that whoever is threatening her has also targeted him and his son.” Payton shifted in his seat. “Has she ever said anything to you about it? Not even a slip of the tongue?”
“No,” Cain said sadly. “She talks with Jazzie the most, but I’m sure she would have told me if she’d said anything. Gracie moved to New York and, as you know, doesn’t come home all that much. She left, literally, in the middle of the night while I was away at school.” He pulled Alyssa into his lap when she came to him. “How bad is it, Payton? Is it as bad as the rest?”
Payton pulled out another bunch of papers. “Michael took the tape from her machine, had a copy made, and sent it to me. She doesn’t know and will probably be pissed at him when she finds out, so let’s keep this between us. He claims she’s not heard the messages. She told him that she doesn’t listen to them, simply erases them as soon as she thinks about it.”
“But you don’t believe her, do you?”
Payton shook his head.
“What does this Cunningham person know? Has she shared anything with him?”
“He told me yesterday that he was taking her to his house and sitting her down and talking to her. Whether or not that happened, I don’t know. Michael said that he would come with her this weekend even if she didn’t invite him. He…he’s in love with her.”
Cain hugged Alyssa tighter. He had to ask, but he wasn’t sure he could without breaking down. He looked at Drew then at Payton. He took a deep breath. “My mother, she’s been trying to kill us all since the beginning, right?”
Payton nodded.
“Why, do we know?”
He shook his head this time.
“Then how do you know it’s her? I mean, maybe she’s taking the money because, hell, I don’t know, maybe she thinks she’s owed it…Holy Christ, my father. She’s taking this because of my father. And we’re all…”
“We’re all paying because she feels we are the cause of his death,” Alyssa finished for him. “What are we going to do to finish this? Because I, for one, want this over with.”
~~~
Guinevere watched the house. Well, she watched the gate. She had been told by Ginny that if anyone got by her without her warning someone, she’d be hurting. Guinevere huffed. Ginny was becoming entirely too full of herself. Closing her eyes against the small pain that was just behind her ears, Guinevere thought about the past few weeks.
Ginny was the least of their problems. Verrie was becoming impossible to control. Her violent outrages were getting to be messy. Just last night it had taken her over three hours to clean up the blood and gore after one of her episodes. And the man…Guinevere felt her stomach lurch at what she’d done