Saving grace, p.1
Saving Grace, page 1
It’s just one itty-bitty undercover gig, in an itty-bitty outfit and some mamajama heels. Or is it?
Grace just wants a little recognition on the force to prove she’s a worthy comrade. Plus, she wants to convince her parents a bunny shifter can do something other than teach. She never thought about the consequences if the operation didn’t go as planned. When fate lands her in a cell with a hungry wolf shifter, can she escape with her heart and her body still intact?
Cameron can’t believe he’s made a rookie mistake and gotten himself captured by the very people he’s been hunting. Now, he’s locked in a glass cage with a hottie in a leather bustier and four-inch heels for reasons he can only imagine. Can the retired Army Ranger resist the intense desire swirling inside him, or will he become the one thing he hates the most?
Contents
Saving Grace
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dear Reader
About the Author
Tianna’s books and series:
Saving Grace
By
Tianna Xander
Chapter One
“OKAY, EVERYONE. LISTEN up. This is how I want this operation to go down.”
Grace tried not to appear nervous as her sergeant briefed her and the rest of the team on the sting operation.
Wasn’t it just her luck that they’d choose her for this a month out from her leaving the department to finish her master’s in criminology? Her classes started in six weeks.
Though this was her dream assignment, and a chance to prove herself to her peers, she’d hoped for a few simple assignments until her last day. Easy assignments would have given her some time to pack her things so she could relax for a few days of her two-week vacation before her classes started.
But luckily for her, she had been the only woman in the force who even remotely had anything in common with the women in seven different counties who had gone missing over the last few months.
The captain thought the profiler had worked out a pattern, and they expected whoever it was snatching the women to strike again in their county next.
Yippee...
She rubbed her arms, chilled almost to the bone in the cool night air. It would have been nice if they would have rolled up the van’s windows a bit.
The skimpy outfit the department provided barely covered her torso, much less anything else. Apparently, it had been too much to ask that it would also cover her arms and legs.
Grace tugged on the too-short leather skirt, wishing she’d gotten a choice on what she would wear. She was too big and too old for the scanty top and miniskirt. She’d blushed to her roots when she had first seen herself in it. There was no missing the way tops of her boobs practically overflowed out of the tight bustier.
That’s what she got for accepting all those assignments for stakeouts and guard duty, she supposed. Sitting in cars for hours, day in and day out, eating greasy takeout had done little for her figure.
That’s okay. You’ll have free time between your chemistry and English classes to swim or work out this semester. Only one more month of this tedium, and you’re on vacation until classes start.
Then, if she worked hard, two more years after that, she was home free with her master’s and with any luck at all, she’d qualify for something better than traffic, beat cop or a detective’s gopher on a stakeout.
Anything was better than being the bait in a sting or a gopher.
“Try not to worry, Corporal. We’ll be right around the corner. Just keep pacing back and forth the way you’ve seen the others do.”
In other words, don’t forget to swing her ass around, supposedly advertising her wares.
“I still don’t understand why I can’t have a wire.” She’d have felt much safer with one.
“Because, that skimpy outfit won’t hide a wire.” Sergeant Holcomb glared at her as though saying, We’ve already covered this. “Plus, that leather is so tight on you it would muffle the mic.”
Did that jerk just insinuate that I’m fat? She’d gained a few pounds working stakeouts sure, but she’d just gotten a little curvier, hadn’t she?
Grace supposed his reasoning was sound, but it didn’t mean she had to like it. It also didn’t explain why they couldn’t have given her one of the fancy wireless bugs that vice used occasionally. She could have put it in her hair.
“Oh.” She glanced down at her exposed cleavage and tight leather bustier with a frown.
“Yeah, oh.” The sergeant glared at her as though she’d just called him out for snagging her collar again.
“This outfit is small on me.” She tugged at her top, trying to get it to ride a little higher on her chest than barely above her areolas.
“It’s bad enough we had to use you, to begin with. The chief wasn’t happy about it and I’m not happy about it.” The sergeant scowled. “You’re leaving soon. If this takes a while, it’ll set back the investigation. We’ll have to start all over again with a new officer when you leave.”
The sergeant didn’t mention there wasn’t anyone to take her place. He didn’t have to. She was the only officer in the county who could pull off looking even remotely like a hooker.
The rest were too old or much heavier than she was. Grace clenched her teeth when she really wanted to be insubordinate. Maybe she should have eaten more hot dogs while on stakeout. If she had, maybe they would have borrowed another officer from a different county.
“Gee, thanks for slamming me back to Earth, Sarge.” She curled her lip. “I almost thought you cared for a minute,” she said sarcastically. Let him write her up. Maybe that was the push she needed to apply for a position in another state after she graduated.
“I can’t afford to care.” He scowled at her, his big hairy brows wriggling over his dark eyes like two fuzzy black caterpillars crawling across his forehead. “Losing a colleague is bad enough. Seeing someone you care about getting wasted is devastating.” He pinned her with a glare. “If you don’t know that by now, I’d suggest a career change while you’re back in school. If you can’t separate your emotions from the job, you weren’t cut out to be in law enforcement.”
Grace pressed her lips together and looked the other way. She didn’t give a damn what he thought, or any of the others like him.
She was meant to be a police officer. Grace knew it. Everything in her had told her it was her job to protect people ever since she had been a little girl. And she’d worked damned hard overcoming her own community and her family’s preconceptions on what someone like her should do for a living.
So what if she didn’t want to be a teacher like her brothers or a dance instructor like her older sister?
The other officers in the back of the big delivery van stared at the floor, not looking their way as Sergeant Holcomb chastised her.
It was obvious they thought the man was right. Maybe he was. Perhaps she should have joined the Army or some other military branch and threw in her hat to be one of the rare females in Special Forces instead.
Grace shook her head with a sigh. Wouldn’t that have gone over well with her parents?
Maybe she would change careers after college. Nothing said she had to return to police work. Hell, maybe she could specialize in profiling and try to get herself recruited into the CIA or FBI or one of the other lettered law enforcement agencies.
If she did that, maybe she’d get some damned respect for a change, instead of getting herself crammed into a too-small leather outfit and looking like an overstuffed sausage wearing a thick layer of makeup.
Just as they had arranged, a large city bus filled with officers they’d borrowed from several neighboring counties pulled up and half of them filed off the bus, crowding the corner.
“Time to go.” Holcomb slid open the side door and pushed her out into the crowd of officers milling about as though trying to figure out where they were.
“Great.” Grace grumbled as she yanked down on the hem of the skirt that had ridden up far enough to show nearly half of her butt cheek and glared at one officer when he whistled. “Just what I need.”
Grace gave the whistler as haughty a look as she could muster while wearing the leather hooker outfit, and then headed toward the corner where her boss expected her to pass herself off as a prostitute.
She walked to the corner in four-inch stilettos, glad that at least she could walk whil e wearing the darned things. She hoped no one had guessed she had a slight fetish for sexy shoes, but since she was working with a bunch of detectives, she figured the proverbial cat was most likely out of the bag, anyway.
Ignoring the large group of officers who slowly dispersed into a nearby department store and other businesses, Grace took a deep breath and blinked her eyes, hoping her extra-long false eyelashes wouldn’t fall off, and shifted into character.
After about four hours, she stepped inside one of the local businesses to use the bathroom.
No one had told her which store they’d arranged for her to use for that purpose, and she couldn’t afford to contact anyone now. She’d had to guess.
Her feet ached from standing four long hours in the gorgeous but uncomfortable shoes, and she had to pee. Something had told her not to have that third cup of coffee earlier, but the dark liquid nectar of the gods was her one and only vice. Well, not counting her shoes.
“Can I use your bathroom?”
“It’s in the back. The older woman looked up from her magazine and smoothed her gray hair back, eyeing her skimpy attire with a sneer. “Just so long as you’re using it for its intended purpose and aren’t meeting a John in there.”
Grace’s face burned at the implication. After giving the woman behind the counter a tight smile, she made her way back to the tiny bathroom near the back entrance.
“Just so long as you’re not meeting a John in there,” she repeated in a high-pitched voice. “Bitch.”
After using the facilities, she washed her hands, then checked her over-the-top makeup and her cleavage, making sure she hadn’t popped out of her top and was flashing a nipple before opening the door.
“Oh, excuse me,” she said to the tall man who stood just outside the little room. “I didn’t realize anyone was waiting.”
Tall and muscular, he was probably devastatingly handsome beneath the dark sunglasses he wore, even with the long scar that ran from under the shades and down over his cheek to his ear.
“Not a problem.” He stepped aside to let her pass.
Grace turned sideways and sidled by, facing him. She’d never been one to turn her back on a stranger. Not since the academy, anyway.
Still, her habits had been about as useful as water in a vodka bottle.
“I’m sorry to have to do this, miss, but I have orders.”
“Excuse me?”
Grace’s eyes widened when he moved so quickly, he seemed to blur as he raised his hand and covered her mouth and nose with a stinking rag.
Is that chloroform? She fought as she held her breath. After several moments, she gave in to the urge to inhale and the chloroform took effect. When her legs gave out, brawny arms easily lifted her off her feet and Grace knew no more.
Chapter Two
THE ROOM SPUN AS CAMERON woke face down on a hard single mattress with his head pounding. He grimaced as he ran his tongue around the inside of his parched mouth. It tasted like shit and probably smelled worse.
Pushing himself to a sitting position, he glared through the glass wall at anyone who looked his way.
The people who roamed freely on the other side of the glass scurried about, looking behind them occasionally as though they feared they, too, would end up in a cage.
After he’d seen what happened to some of Dr. Thornton’s research assistants, he didn’t blame them. A few of them had ended up as the crazy asshole’s unwilling test subjects.
From what Cam understood, most of the people who worked in Thornton’s labs did so under some type of coercion. Apparently, the doctor threatened the wellbeing of their families. Even their children—the sick bastard.
“Good morning.” The voice was female and held the sound of false cheer.
Did the sick son-of-a-bitch force his people to act happy to be here, too? He wouldn’t put it past him.
“How are you doing today?” There was a long pause before a disappointed sigh. “You can refuse to answer, but there are ways to get you to cooperate.”
Sycophants always said that. Cameron snorted and turned his back to the glass. He’d been up against many terrorists and dictators of vile government regimes and he’d yet to bow to the pressure of a tyrant or their minions.
Drugs? His enemies had used them all without success, thanks to his advanced training. Torture? That, too. But never had he given in and spilled his guts to anyone. He wasn’t about to start now.
The lackey on the other side of the glass just sighed. Her saccharine cheerfulness had disappeared, replaced by a brooding expression. He studied her when she didn’t realize he was looking. She didn’t appear as though she wanted to be here anymore than he did.
“Do what you will, but we have things at our disposal that will make what you suffered at the hands of your enemies look like a village fete. And I won’t hesitate to use them.”
The last comment had come from someone else. It was a cultured male voice he recognized from the videos he’d seen that they’d confiscated from the several labs they’d raided.
“Doctor Richard Thornton.” He said the man’s name like a curse. Turning his head, Cameron looked the other man over with a sneer. “What rock did you just crawl out from under?”
“Bravo, bravo,” Thornton said as he tucked his tablet under his arm and clapped his hands slowly. “Such fearlessness in the face of unknown peril. You’re a brave man, Mr. MacDonald. And strong. Definitely a credit to your past units.” He leaned forward, his nose nearly touching the thick glass, and narrowed his eyes. “You are very much like your brother. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“I don’t believe you have my brother, and you can’t convince me otherwise. But nice try, you sick fucker.” Cam glared at the other man. There was no way this psycho had anyone he cared about. His family was under protection and his twin was too damned sharp to fall into their trap.
The only other thing in the world he cared about was Sterling, his African Grey parrot. Luckily, the parrot was still at Randy’s because Cam had just moved into the new house the alpha had given to him. Otherwise, the poor bird would have most likely starved to death by now. Hell, it still might. His brother hated the rude bird he’d purchased from a retired Nevada Madame.
Cam studied the doctor for a moment. The older man didn’t have much of a poker face. They hadn’t captured his brother. Not only would the doctor be gloating about it, Cam’s brother would have tried to reach out to him through their mental link by now.
Not if they’re holding him in another facility. He shook his head at the unbidden thought.
They couldn’t have Randy, too. If they did, any hope of rescue was futile. Only his twin had known he’d been stupid enough to get himself captured. He hadn’t had time to notify anyone else.
He’d fallen for the oldest trick in the fucking book. He should have known better than to follow Thornton’s right-hand man out of the back door of that convenience store. It had been a trap, and he’d tumbled right into it like a green recruit.
“Oh, I’m certain we have him by now.” Thornton grinned.
“I doubt it.” Cam sneered.
“Either that, or he’s dead.” He shrugged, as though it didn’t matter either way. “I’d rather have you two in here together. I’d love to see the results of my newest variant of my experiments on twins. Would your reactions be the same? Would your DNA change after multiple injections. Would you both have the same mutations? Would you still be identical?” He rubbed his hands together almost gleefully.
“Wouldn’t you like to fucking know?” Cameron barked as he turned and lunged at the thick glass, stopping just before he made contact.
“There are so many unanswered questions. Questions that having both you and your brother here could bring to light.”
“But you’ll never get those answers because, unlike me, my brother won’t let you take him alive. He’d rather die than end up here in your lab being a part of your perverted tests.”
God only knew Cam would rather have died, too. But no one had given him a choice in the matter. Now that he was awake, he needed to think and do his best to escape this hellhole.
“Perhaps.” Thornton said with a smile. “However, since it’s obvious that you won’t cooperate any other way, we’ll have to coerce you.”
