Rebecca York - Guarding Grace

Grace had seen the woman—a blonde much younger than her lover. Young enough to flatter his ego.

Her low, throaty voice drifted through the closed door. “I have an idea you’ll want to try.”

Grace’s insides clenched. Her mother hadn’t raised her to listen in on a scene like this.

She turned off the copy machine and then the light as a man wearing a business suit stopped in the corridor outside the next-door office and gave the closed door a smirking look. Obviously he knew what was going on in there, too. Feeling her face redden, she took a step back into the shadows, hoping he hadn’t seen her and wouldn’t think she was eavesdropping. Every muscle in her body tensed as she listened to the sound of rustling clothing and panting breath through the connecting door.

Each minute that ticked by felt like a century. Finally she heard the moans of a man reaching orgasm.

Thankful that her unwanted stint as a voyeur was over—she went still when the cry of satisfaction changed to a loud gasping sound of pain.

The man she’d seen in the hall ran through the office where Grace was standing and charged through the connecting door into the room where the lovers were closeted. He was shouting something that sounded like, “Ridgeway is down! Repeat. Ridgeway is down!”

Obviously the guards had gone into panic mode. Seconds later, more footsteps came pounding down the hallway.

The door between the two offices was open, giving Grace an excellent view of what was going on inside. She pressed her fist against her mouth. A few moments ago she’d been embarrassed by the sounds of lovemaking. Now she was grappling with something far worse.

Armed bodyguards kicked open the hall door and shoved their way into the office where the man lay unmoving on the beige carpet.

“Get a doctor,” one of them shouted into the microphone at his collar. “He’s unconscious. Get the defibrillator.”

A man holstered his weapon and sprinted into the hall, reappearing moments later with a plastic case. Someone else started CPR.

Grace shrank into the shadows, her heart pounding as she stared at John Ridgeway, head of the Ridgeway Consortium, one of the most prestigious think tanks in DC. This morning he’d been advising the president. Now he was lying gray and unconscious in a back office of the consortium’s downtown headquarters.

Oh God.

Her gaze bounced around the room, and she saw Ridgeway’s sex partner crouched in the corner, pulling up the bodice of her black dress to cover her small breasts.

The woman’s gaze met Grace’s for a couple of frantic heartbeats, then flicked to the right before settling on the bodyguard bearing down on her. Grace knew her name. It was Karen Hilliard.

The man grabbed Karen by the elbow and pulled her roughly to her feet.

“What the hell did you do?” he demanded, thrusting his face into hers.

She raised her chin. “Nothing. I haven’t done anything. Let me go.”

The man’s hold on her arm tightened. “You’re kidding, right?”

More footsteps came rapidly down the hall, and an older man with thinning dark hair and unstylish horn-rimmed glasses entered the scene of chaos. Grace recognized him at once. Ian Wickers, Ridgeway’s chief of staff.

“What’s happened?”

“Looks like a heart attack.”

“Will he pull through?”

“Don’t know. The doc’s on his way.”

Wickers turned to the guard who held the woman in place. “Take her to the secure room in the basement.”

“Yes, sir.”

The man hustled Karen out. After they were gone, Wickers addressed the room at large, his voice clipped and commanding. “Archer, zip up his fly.”

One of the bodyguards kneeling over the unconscious man unceremoniously maneuvered his limp penis back inside his underwear and zipped up his pants.

Wickers kept talking. “Mr. Ridgeway was alone when he had a heart attack. I’m not going to have a scandal cloud the reputation of the consortium.”

“Yes, sir,” came a chorus of agreement.

From her hiding place in the next room, Grace watched the unfolding drama, her heart thumping. When her knees threatened to give way, she leaned back against the wall, grappling with her own disbelief.

It had all happened so fast. Too fast. She should have done something. But what?

Her brain threatened to shut down. But she forced herself to take deep breaths and stay cool.

One salient fact leaped out at her, grabbed her by the throat and wouldn’t let go.

A cover-up.

She was a witness to a cover-up of major proportions. They’d hauled Karen Hilliard off to the basement and made it look as if John Ridgeway was alone and working late. What was going to happen to Karen Hilliard now? And what would these ruthless men do if they discovered another woman had seen everything? Heard everything. Would they let her live to tell about it?

Feeling as if she was standing on quicksand, she pressed her hand against the hard surface of the copy machine. If only she’d left the building when her research job was over, she’d be home by now.

The medics brought a stretcher and loaded the unconscious man onto it.

“Will he make it?” Wickers asked.

“He’s already dead. Like Michael Jackson,” the doctor answered.

After all the frantic activity, the room and the hallway were finally empty. This might be her only chance to get away.

The security man who had seen her earlier had forgotten about her in the confusion. But when he started thinking clearly, he would remember there’d been a witness.

She wanted to run. But she forced herself not to panic. Two years ago she’d turned her life upside down and come to Washington on her own. If she could do that, she could get through this.

At least she’d caught one lucky break. She’d gone shopping with a coworker on her lunch hour at a couple of the boutiques on Seventh Street. Fumbling in her briefcase, she pulled out a black jockey’s cap and jammed it onto her head, pushing her sable-colored locks out of sight.

She thought about hiding her blue eyes with sunglasses. But that would look strange at night.

Keeping her head down so the security cameras wouldn’t pick up her face, she stepped out of the copy-machine room.

But she couldn’t stop the death scene from playing out in her mind. She’d known Ridgeway had heart problems. And hidden them from the public. He was arrogant. And secretive. And he’d thought he could operate outside the laws of God and man.

She started to turn away. Then from under the sofa, she caught the glint of something that sparkled. As she stared at it, she remembered the split second when Karen had looked at her—then to her right. Toward the couch.

Every self-protective instinct screamed at Grace to get out of the building before it was too late. But instead of running in the other direction, she took a quick step toward the couch, then another. Reaching underneath, she felt something that wasn’t part of the office equipment. It was Karen’s beaded evening bag.

Had it gotten kicked there during the emergency? Or had Karen deliberately hidden it?

Why? As proof of what had happened?

Or maybe she’d understood Grace’s dilemma—and handed her a kind of insurance policy.

With shaking fingers, she shoved the evening bag into her briefcase. Conscious that she had to get out before they locked down the consortium complex, she stood and walked into the hall, striding to the exit as if she’d only been working late.

“See you next week?” the security guard asked, and she knew he wasn’t in the loop.

“Yes,” she managed to say in a cheerful voice as she turned in her badge, signed out and walked toward the gate that opened onto Pennsylvania Avenue, praying it was still open.