Page 40 of Grayson

“I want to bring her back,” whispered Grayson. His father stared at him. Moose turned, frowning at the young man that was to be his son-in-law.

“What did you say?” he growled.

“She deserves to see his face. She deserves to deliver the final blow and be free of whatever claim he has on her mind, soul, or body. I hate it. I hate that I’m even thinking about it. But how many of us received wounds, were taken prisoner, saw someone’s face that we just wanted gone? And then we made it happen.”

“She deserves to have this,” nodded Gunner. “I normally would say no fucking way but you’re right. She’s been chasing away the demons from this man for years.”

All of the men looked at Moose, then back at Grayson.

“Brother, you know we will protect her. Nothing will happen to her. Nothing,” said Kai. Grayson looked at Moose. He wouldn’t do it if her father refused.

Moose took out his comms satellite phone.

“Dad? Is everything okay?” asked Jennifer.

“Pack a bag honey. You’re coming to finish this.”

Hours and days later…

Kyle Lacroix understood leverage better than he understood mercy. Leverage had kept him alive in alleys, back rooms, and border towns where a man’s promise meant less than the knife under his coat. Now, with every road tightening around him, he needed something powerful enough to draw Jennifer into the open. Without it, she would let the net close, and he would be finished.

He thought first of money, then secrets, then the few people Jennifer might still risk herself to protect. Each idea collapsed beneath the same problem: she had learned him too well. She expected threats against friends, expected forged messages, expected bait. The only vulnerability that remained was the place where she had disappeared to mend herself—the little convent in the south, and the women who had sheltered her there.

The thought carried him backward to the coarse arithmetic of his youth. Find what a person loved. Put a hand around it. Squeeze only hard enough to make them listen.

He had spent years pretending he had outgrown those instincts, dressing them in better clothes and speaking with polished restraint, but desperation stripped him to the bone. By midnight he had a plan, and by dawn he was moving.

He left northern France beneath a sky the color of old pewter, driving a stolen delivery van whose white panels bore the faded outline of a bakery’s name.

The flat country opened around him in long wet fields, their furrows shining after rain. Poplars stood in disciplined rows beside the road, and distant church spires rose from villages huddled low against the wind.

He avoided the broad routes and their toll cameras, choosing departmental roads that narrowed between hedges and farm walls. Tractors forced him onto muddy verges. Milk tankers groaned past at dawn. In hamlets scarcely marked on his map, shutters opened above boulangeries and the smell of warm bread drifted into the cold air, ordinary and almost insulting.

Every face made him brace for recognition. At a fuel pump outside a village square, an elderly man stared long enough to make Kyle’s hand settle near the pistol beneath his jacket. Then the man merely pointed to a loose rear lamp and advised him to fix it before the gendarmes noticed. Kyle thanked him, drove away, and laughed once, sharply, at the windshield.

South of the chalky northern plains, the land began to roll. Fields of wheat gave way to orchards and stands of oak, and the roads threaded through villages built of pale stone.

Moss softened the walls around old cemeteries. Rusted crosses leaned above family plots, and war memorials occupied the center of nearly every square, stern names cut into gray granite.

He slept the first night in the van behind an abandoned mill, where a narrow river moved black beneath bare branches. Rain tapped the roof in patient fingers. He dreamed of doors opening and Jennifer standing behind each one, not frightened, not surprised, simply watching him as if she already knew the ending.

By morning, his cash had dwindled to a handful of notes and coins. Food, fuel, false plates, and the small bribes required to keep moving had consumed more than he had admitted. He needed money quickly, but using old contacts would expose his route.

The answer stood beside the next village square: a narrow bank with lace curtains upstairs and only one clerk visible through the glass.

He watched from a café while church bells marked the hour. Farmers came and went, leaving mud on the tiled floor. A woman deposited the contents of a shop till, and the clerk disappeared briefly into a rear room. Kyle let the scene arrange itself in his mind, not as a set of instructions but as a familiar rhythm: entrances, pauses, fear, escape.

Minutes later he entered with his collar raised and his face obscured. The pistol appeared only long enough to empty the room of argument. His voice remained low, almost courteous, while the clerk loaded cash into a canvas shopping bag. No one resisted. The entire robbery lasted less time than the bells had rung.

He fled along a lane roofed with plane trees, the branches whipping shadows across the windshield. Behind him there were no sirens, only the shrinking steeple and a flock of startled rooks. The money was less than he had hoped, but the ease of taking it warmed him more than the heater. The old skill had not deserted him.

He changed vehicles near a canal, leaving the bakery van beneath dripping willows and taking a compact gray car from an unlocked farm shed.

For two days he moved through the heart of the country, passing green river valleys, crumbling dovecotes, and manor houses half hidden behind cedar trees. He never entered a town large enough to possess a ring road.

Burgundy received him with long slopes stitched in vines and villages clustered around square bell towers. The stone changed color there, warming from northern gray to honey and rust.

Cellar doors opened onto narrow streets, and hand-painted signs promised wine, cheese, and rooms for the night. Kyle bought none of them; comfort felt too much like delay.