Grace Anne - By Kathi S. Barton Page 0,67

Gracie is moaning. I won’t let anything happen to her, Michael. None of us will.”

“We aren’t stopping it just yet because we need her dead to rights.” Payton flushed. “I could have said that better. So far, all we have her on is kidnapping and maybe the death of the driver, but nothing else. I don’t want her to get off that easily. If she takes Grace somewhere and is prepared, this is all premeditated.”

“So you’re using my future wife as bait.” Michael took a deep breath and tried to reign in his temper. They were playing with his future, his and Grace’s.

“No, we’re using my sister as the way to end all of this,” Sin said softly. “And just so you know, Grace agreed to this.”

Chapter 20

Grace hurt. She’d been shot twice now. Verrie had shot her the first time in the arm and Thomas had shot her the next time. She glanced down at her thigh and was glad to see that it had stopped bleeding again. She wasn’t sure how much blood a body had in it, but she was reasonably sure her dipstick was nearing the end. A manic giggle escaped her mouth.

The car was still moving. She’d been moving in and out of consciousness since she’d been tossed inside. She’d hit her head on something and wasn’t sure what it was until she’d seen the cell phone shattered on the seat next to her. She had cried then, knowing that Michael would be worried if he couldn’t get to her.

“Yes. I had to. There was no other way to get them to back off,” Verrie said from the front. The next voice, though the same, was slightly different, just enough so that Grace knew that one of the others was speaking to Verrie.

“You had to throw him out of a moving vehicle going eighty miles an hour? Yeah, that didn’t draw attention to us.”

Grace might have laughed if she wasn’t afraid that Verrie or one of the others might hurt her again.

“He shot her again without my permission. What the fuck did you expect me to do? Let him just pop her full of holes before I could get things set up at the house? We have to be as far away as we can before they figure out where she is,” Verrie’s voice said.

“Yeah. I guess we’re not going to get to live in the big house.” Grace knew instantly that was her mother. She’d recognize that whiny tone anywhere. “And all that money. Even after we blow them all up at the funeral we can’t come back and get it.”

Grace tensed. She knew that Thomas was dead. He’d been killed right after he’d shot her. She shuddered when she thought about what he’d been doing to her when she’d awakened. She didn’t want to think about what he would have done if she hadn’t stopped him before he’d raped her. And what he’d said…he was as insane as her mother.

“You have to let me take you, Grace, before she kills you. It’s only fair. You put out for Michael and he’s nothing but a bastard. Just let me fuck you this once and then she can kill you and I can tell Michael that I had a piece of you before you died.”

She could only stare at him for several seconds. It wasn’t until he tried to take her panties off again that she started fighting him. She managed to knee him in the nuts before he hit her with his fist. Then she’d hit him with the heel of her hand in his nose and he’d bled on her. Before she could scramble away from him he’d pulled the gun from the floor and shot her in the leg.

“Now,” he’d said. “Lay still until I get you naked. Then you can—”

The car swerved and she fell to the floor. Verrie was screaming at them. Then the loud pop of another gun and Thomas fell atop her, blood everywhere. When Verrie had grabbed him by the hair and ordered her to help her put him in the front seat, she’d done so even when the pain was nearly too much. What Verrie had done with his body made Grace throw up on the floor and the back of the seat.

She’d reached over and opened the passenger door and kicked him out into the street. Grace looked behind them when she heard the squeal of tires and horns blaring just in time to see