SIXTY-ONE
The darkness slowly edged away.
Terra’s head pounded. She couldn’t remember a thing beyond...
Oh no.
A familiar laugh sent dread through her. Nausea roiled in her stomach. Terra opened her eyes. Gramps sat across from her on the other side of his desk. His desk. In his office.
She’d been transported from her apartment to the ranch.
Gramps tried to appear calm, collected, and in control. He was failing miserably.
“She’s awake now. I didn’t need her awake for this, but the more the merrier.” His back against the wall, Marcus Briggs held a gun and pointed it at her grandfather.
“What’s ... what’s going on?” Terra asked.
“Bringing her here, using her against me like this doesn’t change anything,” Gramps said. “I don’t know where it is.”
“Where what is?” Her words, the rising emotions, were too much, too loud against the constant throbbing in her head. Even as she asked the question, she suspected she knew exactly what Marcus wanted.
“The artifact. I have a buyer, and he’s growing impatient.”
“Why does he think you know where it is?” Terra stared at her grandfather through blurred vision.
The fear in Gramps’s eyes rocked through her.
“He’s a desperate man.” Gramps ground out the words. “I don’t have anything to do with this business.”
If this man was behind the murders, then he would have no problem killing her and her grandfather. But where was Owen? Her heart pounded as fear for her brother, for Gramps, mounted.
Terra found the strength to push from the chair and stand, only to realize her wrists were bound. “You killed Jim and Neva? Or did you make Leif do it? He must have worked for you.”
Marcus pointed his gun at her. “Sit if you want to live. Morrisey didn’t work for me.”
“I don’t understand.” Terra needed to buy time. Get him talking so she could figure a way out of this.
“He was trying to find me so he could kill me, but I found him first.” Marcus aimed the gun at her head. He still stood too far for her to take the gun from him, if she even could with bound wrists. “Now, I need my property.”
“The Janus has many connections, political and social, and probably travels a lot.” Jeremy’s words came back to her.
“You’re ... you’re the ... the Janus.”
He laughed. “If that’s what you want to call me. I’ve developed the connections and the reputation. And that reputation is going to receive a big blow if you don’t tell me what you did with it. This is the deal of my life. I’ve waited a long time to get my hands on it.”
“Gramps, please, if you have it, just give it to him.”
“But I don’t have it,” Gramps said. “That’s what was stolen from my safe.”
She gasped. What?
Frown lines grew deeper in his forehead. “Jim came to me. He brought me the package. He was to get the package at the airstrip, but the plane crashed. He retrieved it when he saved the pilot but realized he couldn’t store it at his cabin. He needed to put it somewhere for safekeeping until his meeting to hand it off. But he was scared after he realized what the object was. He’d gotten in too deep and wanted out. He needed time to think about what to do with it.”
“Why did you agree to keep it? You were going to be running for office. Something like this could ruin it all.” And would destroy his chances of election.
“I wanted to give him a chance to do the right thing. I owed him for getting me out of a financially sticky situation. Besides, I could claim that I didn’t realize the item’s provenance. And honestly, I still don’t.”
“I agree. I’d like to know what all the fuss is about.” Keep this guy talking. Find a way out.