Organized Crime: Unorganized

Chapter 36

Grace headed over to her desk, surprising Lilly as she threw her bag onto the desk.
"Sorry" Grace apologized quickly "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. Just one of those days I guess" Lilly shrugged.
"Just one of those days? I've had a lot of them. Do me a favour, talk to someone, trust someone, let them in because you can" Grace encouraged.
"I'm not as brave or as strong as you Grace" Lilly frowned deeply, scrunching up her face.
"That doesn't matter. As long as you believe in yourself, you can do anything you want. Don't let anyone tell you any different" Grace encouraged, smiling at the young woman she saw as her little sister. Lilly smiled back brightly and Grace felt her heart break a bit more. She loved these people more than she did anyone else and she was going to hurt them if she didn't find Cormac soon "Lean on the people around you, they're a pretty great family" Grace smiled as she sat down at her desk. Lilly pushed her chair away from her desk and moved behind Grace, she wrapped her arms tightly around her neck, her head resting on her shoulder.
"Thank you big sister" Lilly whispered.
"Thank you little sister" Grace whispered back.
"For what?"
"For reminding me what you guys mean to me, and that I'm human" Grace told her.
"Your 100% human I can confirm" Lilly joked earning a smile and a light chuckle from Grace "Boss wants us to go home for the day. Do you want to go for a drink?" Lilly suggested still holding her tightly.
"You hate drinking and I've got something to do. But, thank you" Grace smiled as Lilly grabbed her stuff and headed home. Grace wasn't done yet. She had something else that needed taking care of. Something that couldn't wait.

Grace sat on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, a hot coffee cup in her hand as she waited. Three hours had passed, her coffee long since drunk, and the other now stone cold.
"Hello Love" Cormac smiled from the bottom of the steps.
"Hello Cormac" Grace descended the steps towards him, ending up in front of him, a step above him.
"You could've used my nickname or even flashed a smile" he smiled.
"No thanks" he laughed.
"Always so disobedient"
"You know me so well" she muttered just loud enough for him to hear.
"Let's walk" he offered her his arm, which she took somewhat hesitantly.
"Why did you want to talk?"
"Is it so hard to believe that I wanted to see you?"
"Yes" she smiled genuinely.
"At least I got a smile. How have you been?"
"Busy. What do you really want?"
"You. Not today but soon, I'll come for you. Tell me do you like your team?"
"They're good people" Grace admitted.
"Tell me, where do they think you are tonight?" Grace pulled out of his grasp, glaring at him "Aneesa's at home with her children and husband, Lorenzo is on a date with Sadie, Lilly is at home with her parents, Marco's drinking with Diane, and James. James is tucking in his daughter Abigail as we speak. Do they care about you? They don't even know where you are right now do, they?" He smirked.
"If you hurt any of them, I'll kill you. They are good people who deserve happiness-"
"And what about me?"
"You deserve to rot in hell" she bit. Cormac gripped her hips and pulled her to him.
"You'll never escape me. Tell me, where's your ring?" He asked.
"I don't wear it" she bit the memory of when he gave it to her permanently burned into her brain.
"Your mine Caitlin- or should I say Grace? No one else's. When I come for you- and I will come for you, I'll make you mine forever this time" he smirked.
"Over my dead body" she bit.
"That can be arranged my love" He smirked, kissing her deeply, his lips bruising and forceful against her soft and shocked ones. Grace pushed him away quickly, putting space between them "I don't have a problem with them, their innocent, for now at least" he assured her as he gently pushed her hair off her shoulder.
"I was doing my job Cor. Everything that happened was part of my job-"
"Not exactly. You took the only things I cared about in the world-"
"Things?" she scoffed lightly hitting her hands against his chest.
"I didn't just give you the ring for the hell of it. I only cared about you and Liam and Connor, now I don't have any of you, I have nothing to lose and nothing to gain" he said coldly "You took the only things that mattered to me so I'm going to take the only thing that matters to you. Your life" he told her, handing her a matchbook from O'Sullivan's Irish pub "See you soon, my love. Don't go too far" he ordered, winking at her before he squeezed her wrist. Grace looked down at the match book that was between her fingers before she watched him walk away.
"Je ne descendrai pas sans me battre" she warned him.
"Je ne m'attendrais à rien de moins. Mon amour" he smirked as he got into his car and sped away a second later.
He wasn't going down without a fight. But, neither was she.

Grace startled awake as the sound of her ringing phone sent her heart hammering in her chest. She took a moment to catch her breath and calm her racing heart before she tossed her gun on the bedside table and answered the phone.
"Hello?"
"Grace. I need your help"

"What were you thinking shoplifting and skipping school!?" Grace asked angrily as they headed down the street to her car.
"I thought they were my friends" Abigail muttered back, feeling ashamed of herself for believing that those other girls cared about her or that they were her friends.
"Yeah well clearly not, those bitches let you take the fall because they probably have a record already, your lucky I got them to drop the charges" Grace ranted "Your dad's not going to be impressed" Grace sighed.
"No! Please, you cannot tell my dad" Abigail pleaded.
"I have to, Abi. I'm not your parent and James is. You shouldn't keep things like this a secret from your dad no matter how afraid of punishment you are" Grace turned to her, taking her shoulders in her hands "Your dad loves you, and he cares about you and he wants the best for you. So, yeah, he'll be angry but he be more thankful that it wasn't more serious" Grace assured her.
"Will you tell him?" Abi asked in a small voice.
"Yeah, if you want me to" Grace agreed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as they continued up the street "But first, ice cream and then school for you" Grace smiled at her, earning a bright smile back.

The next day the team began working on any and all the evidence they could find or use but, it was proving to be harder than they all thought.
"Both victims frequented the same coffee shop" Sadie announced with a huge sigh of relief at having found something useful finally.
"It seems like they've met before" Lorenzo commented.
"I've found a common phone number between the victims" Lilly announced as she entered the conference room.
"Give it to me my red haired beauty" Sadie smiled.
"703-444-0926" Lilly read out as Sadie typed on her computer.
"Mark Lively. His wife is deceased and all three of his children are grown. He also lived in Russia for a few years" Sadie told them.
"Lorenzo take Grace with you" James ordered earning nods from him and Grace before they left the room.

"What's your take on these guys?" Grace asked as Lorenzo drove them to Mark Lively's home.
"I don't know. They expose bodies just to hide details about the victims. It's just not sitting right with me" Lorenzo sighed as they pulled up outside of the home.
"Doesn't look like anyone's home" Grace commented.
"We won't know until we find out" Lorenzo encouraged climbing out of the car. The front door to the home opened revealing a man in a mask with a semi-automatic "Cameron, get down!" Lorenzo shouted as he and her dived behind the SUV. The masked man continued to shoot at them both and at the SUV as his accomplices moved down the street. Grace and Lorenzo followed after then, using the cars as cover as they returned fire, not being able to land a single shot until one of the men dropped their guard long enough for Grace to shoot him in the leg. Three more shots rang out, and as Grace and Lorenzo rounded the corner the other men had sped away in a blacked out van whilst the man that Grace had shot in the leg was lying dead on the floor with a bullet wound through his head and another through his wrist.

James and Marco looked over the now dead body of Mark Lively.
"He had $20,000 in cash and his passport. He was on the move when he died" James told them as he looked over the briefcase that was on the floor.
"Not likely. He was injected between his toes. It was made to look like a heart attack I'm guessing" Diane told them as she looked over the body.
"His last calls were to Ruth Grant and Arthur Jones in that order, each call only lasted a few seconds" Marco told them.
"Whatever they were apart of must've happened overseas and I'm guessing it happened in Russia" James told him.
"The way they moved, they had to be ex-military" Grace suggested.
"A hit-squad cleaning house?" Lorenzo suggested.
"They could've taken us out easily. Why didn't they?" Grace wondered out loud as James and Marco joined them.
"Two FBI agents gunned down would've brought more attention to them. That's why they dropped the kid" Lorenzo told her as they glanced down at the young boy who Oliver was looking over.
"Someone must have warned Mark Lively to get out and whoever did will be next on the hit list" Marco told them.