Glamorous Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Copyright Page

  Subscribe to the Grace Bishop Newsletter

  Get More Grace Bishop Stories!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  GLAMOROUS

  A Grace Bishop Novel

  by Denise Bossarte

  Chapter 1

  DL grabbed the cell phone off the bedside table on the second vibration, dashing into the attached bathroom to avoid waking Jennifer. It was too late at night for his eyes to take the vanity lights. Instead he relied on the light from the phone. The glow caught the multiple colors of the tattoos on his arms as he held the phone up to his face and waited for his eyes to focus on the number.

  Only one of his kids would call at this time of night. But when he recognized Chris’s number, he almost didn’t answer. It was rarely ever good when it came to Chris. Sighing, DL answered the phone. He ran his hand through his dark, shoulder-length hair and roughly scrubbed at his face, trying to get his brain functioning.

  “Hey, Chris…”

  Before DL finished his sentence, Chris’s desperate voice interrupted him.

  “DL! Shit, oh, shit!”

  “Chris, slow down a minute. What’s going on?”

  “She’s cut up—her face, her arms. Oh God, there’s so much blood… What-do-I-do? What-do-I-do!”

  “Who’s hurt, Chris? Is it Beth? Did something happen to Beth?” What if something awful had happened to Beth?

  “Wha…? Yeah, it’s Beth. She’s hurt bad—she’s bleeding real bad. I don’t know what to do!”

  “Where are you? Are you at the apartment? Is she somewhere safe?”

  “Yeah, yeah, my place… We’re at my place. But what do I do? I can’t get the bleeding to stop!”

  Knowing Chris, he wouldn’t call an ambulance. DL needed to go over there himself to try to help Beth. And get Chris calmed down enough to let emergency response professionals come and do their jobs.

  “Chris, listen to me. You need to get some towels—bath towels, kitchen towels, it doesn’t matter. Get all you have, and use them to put pressure on Beth’s wounds. The pressure will help to stop the bleeding.”

  DL suspected Chris had dealt with injuries before. He should know how to take care of Beth on his own. Something had spooked him enough that he was freaking out and not thinking straight. Whatever had happened, there was a strong chance Chris was also high, which would explain the way he was acting.

  “Towels? Yeah, yeah. We got some in the bathroom.”

  “Then go do what I said. Put them on the wounds and apply pressure. I’m coming right now to help. I’m going to hang up. You go take care of Beth, and I’ll be right there.”

  “Yeah, yeah… sure…” The line went dead.

  “Who was on the phone?” Jennifer asked in a sleepy voice from the bed as DL slipped back into the room. Her bright auburn hair tumbled across her freckled face as she shifted toward him. “One of the center kids?”

  “Yes.” DL kept his voice soft while working to pull on his jeans and socks before sitting on the bed next to Jennifer.

  “Chris and Beth ran into some trouble, and I’m going over to see what I can do to help. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  DL hated to minimize the situation, but he wanted to avoid waking Jennifer fully, or she would insist on coming with him. But better to have her safe in bed than rushing into God-knew-what at Chris’s.

  He leaned in and moved the downy wisps of her hair to expose a soft cheek and gently kissed her goodbye. Then he jumped up to snatch a shirt from the hamper, satisfied to hear her rolling over and settling back to sleep. A quick trip through the kitchen to grab his keys, and he was out the door.

  He ran to his truck. “Please start. Please start…” He sighed with relief when it growled to life. It looked like a piece of crap, and only ran half the time, but at least there was less of a chance it would be stolen when he got to Chris’s place.

  He called 911 when he was half-way to the apartment. It was a risk to wait that long, but he was afraid if the ambulance got there too soon, Chris might do something irrational. This way, he’d have time to deal with Chris and help Beth before they arrived. It would increase the chance of Beth getting to the hospital with no one else getting hurt tonight, especially the paramedics coming to help.

  After racing to the address, he took the stairs two at a time to the third floor. He was forced to hurdle the garbage littering the steps and climb over a few people passed out in the hallway to get to Chris’s apartment. He tried opening the door, but it was locked. He pounded on it instead.

  “Chris,” he yelled. “It’s me, DL. Open the door!”

  There was no answer. He pounded harder and longer. Turning his frustration and anger on the door, he bounced his fist off the thin imitation wood that was ready to dent under his assault.

  “Chris,” he shouted again. “Come here and open the damn door!”

  DL paused to listen and was relieved to hear footsteps moving toward him from deeper inside the apartment.

  “Who’s there?” Chris asked through the closed door.

  “It’s me, DL. You called me, remember?”

  “DL? Shit, oh, shit!” Chris fumbled with the dead bolt and opened the door as wide as the security chain would allow.

  DL was about to push through the door—screw the chain—when he saw a flash of light. Chris was holding a gun beside his right leg, and the gun was shaking. But right now, it was pointed down at the ground and not at DL.

  “Who else is there?” Chris asked, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his pupils large.

  DL slowly raised his hands and motioned for Chris to stay calm.

  “It’s only me, Chris. Nobody else,” DL said.

  His guess had been right. Chris was high. DL had to make sure not to do anything to give Chris an excuse to act stupid.

  Chris looked back and forth through the crack in the doorway. Then, he clumsily undid the chain. He opened the door enough to let DL in, closing it so fast that he almost caught him with the edge.

  “Where’s Beth?” DL looked around the disheveled apartment, taking in the piles of fast food containers and drug paraphernalia littering the room. The place smelled liked a combination of moldy carpet and sour g
arbage.

  “In the bathroom.” Chris headed that way after re-bolting the door. The entire front of his shirt and the thighs of his jeans were slick with blood, and it covered the length of his arms.

  Dammit! DL clenched his hands into fists as he followed Chris to the bathroom. He had convinced himself on the drive over that Chris had exaggerated about all the blood. But it was obvious something had gone wrong tonight.

  DL steeled himself as he came to the doorway of the bathroom. Chris hovered at the edge of the door, and DL had to push past him to get inside the cramped and dirty room.

  DL’s stomach clenched at the sight of Beth’s tiny limp form splayed out on the cracked linoleum. Mismatched towels of various sizes and colors layered her face and arms. Blood was spreading out into a large pool by her head, tinting her pale blond hair red. Her legs appeared untouched and un-bloodied, but so many towels covered the rest of her, DL couldn’t tell how badly she was hurt.

  “Is she dead?” Chris ran a hand through his hair, creating bloody spikes in it.

  DL looked at him before turning back to Beth. “Haven’t you been applying pressure to her wounds to stop the bleeding?”

  He knelt beside Beth’s body and reached for her neck to feel for a pulse.

  “I got the towels, just like you said.” Chris jerked the gun toward Beth. “But the bleeding didn’t stop.”

  DL shook his head at Chris’s half-assed attempts at following his instructions and focused his attention on Beth. At his touch, Beth moaned, and a rush of relief filled his body.

  “It’s okay, Beth. It’s DL, kiddo. I’m here to help.”

  He breathed through his mouth, trying to keep his breath steady even as the metallic smell of blood rose to meet him. He could almost taste the blood, it was so thick in the room. But breathing through his mouth lessened the threat of nausea. To his disgust, his knee slipped a bit in the blood near her head, and his pants immediately became soaked in red.

  DL checked the towels Chris had placed on Beth’s cuts. The ones on her arms were already starting to stick to the drying blood, and she whimpered when he tried to lift the towels there. He left them alone and moved on to check her face and shoulders. She might have wounds anywhere on her arms and back, and he didn’t want to miss major injuries. He worked to be as gentle as possible with her, but she continued to whimper at his touch.

  Luckily, there were no cuts on her shoulders, but the gashes on her face were deep and bleeding heavily. He made sure there was enough space for her to breathe, then he applied firm but steady pressure to the towels covering her head. They were soaked with her blood immediately, becoming saturated until the redness formed a thin glove over his hands as the blood penetrated the material. He fought a wave of nausea at the thought of the damage to her small, delicate face.

  “What are you doing?” Chris stepped through the door-frame and loomed over DL’s shoulder.

  “I’m trying to keep her from bleeding to death.” DL attempted to keep the frustration out of his voice, aware of the gun in Chris’s hand hovering near the back of his head.

  “Man, this is so fucked up! So fucked up!” Chris left the cramped room and started pacing outside the door.

  “Chris,” DL said as calmly as he could while compressing the towels. “I need you to focus, here. Tell me what happened to Beth. Who did this to her?”

  “It was some dude, some whacked out dude! Beth was out trickin’. I needed her help making a few deliveries, so I went to pick her up.” Chris looked pointedly at him when he said “deliveries,” daring DL to call him on it.

  “She ignored me when I yelled at her to get her ass in the car, and I went to get her. I was right next to her, and she kept ignoring me, the dumb bitch. I grabbed her arm and was about to smack some sense into her stupid head. Then this guy came out of nowhere and just attacked her with a knife.

  “I pulled my gun on him and tried shooting him, but it wouldn’t fire. That’s never happened before. I was right next to the guy but couldn’t nail the mother fucker.

  “And the whole time Beth is screaming, and he keeps cutting her. Finally, I went to club him with the gun, and he jumped into a car and took off.

  “Beth was a mess, so I got her to my car and drove back here as fast as I could. I didn’t know what to do, so I called you.”

  The sound of approaching sirens grew louder as Chris finished his story. Slow realization dawned on his face, and his head whipped back and forth between the source of the sound and DL, crouched over Beth.

  “You called the cops?” Chris yelled, turning to aim the gun at DL’s face. “Shit, I said no cops!”

  DL looked at Chris over his shoulder and stared at the shaky end of the gun barrel. His heart raced as he met Chris’s angry eyes. DL allowed himself a second to gain his composure before speaking in a neutral but unsteady voice.

  “An ambulance, Chris. An ambulance for Beth.” He nodded to the prone figure on the floor to make his point—this was for the injured girl.

  DL watched the battle warring in Chris’s eyes as they flicked between DL and Beth, anger then fear flashing over his face. DL steeled himself as Chris’s face settled into anger. He forced himself to keep his gaze steady on Chris, even as he prepared for him to pull the trigger. He was aware his death was coming eventually, but he hadn’t envisioned it happening in a dirty bathroom, blood-soaked, while trying to save a girl from dying.

  Chris took one more look at Beth, sprawled under DL’s blood coated hands, and took off into the other room.

  DL released the breath he was holding shakily but maintaining enough presence of mind to continue applying pressure to the towels on Beth’s face. He could make out Chris ransacking the apartment, rushing from room to room, presumably gathering up his stash. Then the front door slammed against the wall as Chris bolted through it and stumbled down the steps.

  Not long after Chris made his escape, DL heard the ambulance pull up outside the apartment building. Right afterward, a voice was calling out from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Who called the ambulance? Who needs help?”

  “Up here on the third floor. The door’s open!” DL shouted. He continued to call out until the paramedics made it to the apartment and found him in the bathroom where he huddled over Beth.

  They quickly took over, shifting DL away and assessing Beth’s condition. He answered their questions about what he knew of her situation, working to match their calm and professional manner. After a brief interchange with DL, they focused on bandaging Beth’s wounds and starting an IV.

  It seemed to take forever for them to finish up what they needed to do to get Beth stable, while DL watched helplessly from the side lines. Finally, they lifted her to the gurney and maneuvered it out of the apartment and down the stairs to the waiting ambulance.

  DL ran to his own truck, heedless of the blood on his clothes and hands and how it might look to anyone who saw him. He jumped in and started the truck as fast as he could to follow the ambulance to the hospital. He took a moment to wipe one hand on a dry place on his shirt, then pulled out his cell phone to dial Grace’s number.

  Chapter 2

  Robyn sat in his darkened apartment. He tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible while Gustav paced the room. The single light from the adjacent kitchen threw Gustav’s movement onto the wall as large dancing shadows.

  “What happened tonight?” Gustav demanded. “What went wrong?”

  Robyn shrunk further down into the chair, but there wasn’t any way he was going to escape Gustav’s anger.

  “I don’t know.” Robyn’s voice trembled. “I did everything I normally do. I drove to one of the places you recommended. And it started just like all the other times. I got a great spot to watch the girls, and I found one just like you hoped—one with emerald green eyes. I even had her right up to the car. It was so easy.”

  “So easy?” Gustav moved to tower over Robyn, his nostrils flaring. “Then why didn’t you bring the girl to me? That
is our bargain, little Robyn.”

  Robyn squirmed under Gustav’s livid stare. “There was a boy,” he said, his voice barely audible.

  “A boy,” Gustav snarled as he placed his hands on the arms of the chair and leaned in to hover inches from Robyn’s face.

  “Y-y-y-es.” Robyn’s whole body trembled as the closeness revealed Gustav’s protruding eyes and mottled skin.

  “So you panicked,” Gustav said, his voice a deep growl.

  Robyn nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  “And then you ran.” Gustav’s hands tightened on the chair’s arms, causing the wood to creak under the pressure.

  Robyn willed himself to be still, blinking rapidly as sweat ran into his eyes. Gustav needed him, needed him to find and bring him the girls. He just needed to offer Gustav something that would calm him down.

  “I can go out again tomorrow. Try to find another girl.”

  “Imbecile!” Gustav threw his hands up and turned to pace the room. “This was the last night of the cycle. We won’t be able to look for another girl until the next cycle begins.”

  “I’ll do it next time, I promise,” Robyn said, his words rushing out. “I won’t let anyone get in the way.”

  Gustav stopped his pacing so that his back was to the light of the kitchen. His shadow fell across Robyn, his body motionless except for his fists, which clenched and unclenched as his ragged breath slowly calmed.

  Robyn sensed he was out of danger for tonight. But just in case, he repeated himself. “I promise. Next time I’ll get the girl.”

  Chapter 3

  Together, Grace and Danny entered Sally’s Home-style Diner, but they split apart once inside the door. She moved to the counter while Danny headed to their usual booth at the back of the restaurant. Grace stood at the counter until she caught Sally’s eye as she finished up taking an order from another regular. The diner was one of the most popular places in Dayan Springs, for both tourist and locals, and Sally always worked the counters on Saturdays.

  While she was waiting on Sally, Grace removed the scrunchy holding her dark hair in a ponytail. The thick hair settled across her shoulders, and she ran her fingers through it to dry out the remaining dampness. She had pulled it up on the way out the door, expecting the hot morning air to dry it most of the way as they walked to the diner.