A Merciful Promise

by Elliot, Kendra

  It went on and on as they paced exactly southeast.

  Their breaks grew more frequent, and Mercy glanced at the position of the pale circle behind the low, gray clouds in the sky.

  Has it been two hours? Maybe more?

  A mild panic set in. She breathed heavily, and Eden passed her the bottle of melted snow. The water was lukewarm and felt like heaven sliding down her throat. The teen was a good partner. She hadn’t complained, and Mercy had noticed Eden would spend extra effort to break up the snow in her trail. An attempt to make Mercy’s hike as easy as possible when she followed.

  Eden was a good kid and deserved to be with her family. Her mother had to be searching for the children. Mercy couldn’t imagine a mother who would abandon kids like Noah and Eden.

  Mercy leaned against a skinny fir tree for a break. Tears welled as she wondered if she’d ruined Eden’s chance to be reunited with her family. Horrible scenarios of dying in the wilderness spun in her brain, dragging her toward a deep pit of despair. She’d fucked up. They’d missed the cabin. Everything was her fault. If she hadn’t accepted the ATF assignment, Eden would be just fine.

  But Noah would be dead.

  Breath rushed out of her lungs. She’d saved one sibling only to lead the other to a possible death.

  “Do you smell that?” Eden asked, spinning in a circle, her nose in the air.

  “I can’t smell a thing.” Her nose didn’t work. She’d breathed through her mouth the entire hike.

  “It’s woodsmoke. Quite strong.” Eden’s blue eyes lit up.

  Relief weakened Mercy’s knees, and she sat hard in the snow, her gloved hands pressed to her face.

  We’ll be okay.

  THIRTY

  Pristine snowdrifts surrounded the squat cabin, and smoke curled from the chimney.

  It was the most beautiful sight Mercy had ever seen. And as if the weather had decided to celebrate with her, the fog lifted, and they could see clearly in every direction. Eden had tracked the odor of smoke. Mercy had been no help, but after a few minutes of walking in circles, they’d spotted the cabin.

  Thank you, Beckett.

  Eden started to rush toward the house, and Mercy grabbed her arm. “Wait. We need to announce ourselves.” The resident of an isolated cabin wouldn’t expect company. Especially in a snowstorm.

  They stopped about fifty feet from the cabin. Mercy cupped her hands around her mouth. “Mr. Dean?” she hoarsely yelled. “Nelson Dean?”

  Eden took up the call. “Nelson Dean?” she shouted with the strong lungs of youth.

  A figure moved at the window. Mercy waved her arms, hoping she appeared nonthreatening. The door opened, and a tall, gaunt, graying man aimed a rifle at them.

  “Who’s there?”

  Eden stepped in front of Mercy, surprising her. “I’m Eden Trotter. Beckett sent us. Can we warm up?”

  The rifle dipped a few degrees. “You both women?” Surprise filled his tone.

  Mercy moved from behind Eden. “Yes,” she croaked, pushing back her hood.

  “You walked from the compound in this shitstorm?”

  “We did,” answered Eden.

  The rifle now pointed at the ground. “You said Beckett, eh? You in trouble?”

  “Definitely,” Eden told him.

  “Come on in then.” He stepped farther out from under the eaves of the cabin, his boots sinking into the snow. “You must be freezing.”

  Mercy couldn’t move. Her energy was depleted. Eden wrapped Mercy’s arm around her neck and shoulder, hauling her forward. Every last ounce of Mercy’s strength was used to raise her feet and step. Nelson Dean leaned the rifle against the house and came out to help. He was close to seven feet tall, his face long and lean with a long, thick beard. Bushy gray eyebrows nearly covered his brown eyes. From what she could see, his eyes were kind.

  “Thank you,” she breathed.

  “What kind of fool travels in this?” he asked as he copied Eden’s position by putting Mercy’s other arm over his shoulder. He straightened and nearly lifted her off her feet. “You must be on Pete’s shit list. What’d you do?”

  Speaking was too hard for Mercy. Nelson’s open front door beckoned, promising heat and food and rest, and she couldn’t look away.

  Nelson tripped, his chest jerking forward as a warm spray covered Mercy’s face and the crack of a rifle filled the air.

  He’s been shot.

  Mercy fell, Nelson’s body weight yanking her down. Unable to catch herself, she landed face-first in the snow with Eden beside her.

  I can’t breathe.

  Floundering, she got her arms under herself and pushed up.

  Eden started to shriek, and Mercy stared at Nelson, her heart hammering in her chest.

  The snow was pink with spray, and a large chunk of Nelson’s skull was gone.

  Mercy fought to make her lungs work.

  Still on her hands and knees, she had her eyes locked on the sight of Nelson’s shattered skull a few feet away. She tasted his blood in her mouth and spit, spraying more color on the white snow.

  From Mercy’s other side, Eden continued to wail, her high-pitched words unintelligible. She flailed in the snow, crawling away from the dead man and Mercy.

  Who shot him?

  “Eden, stay down!” Mercy shouted as her brain came back online. Adrenaline pumping her muscles, she lunged after the teenager and protectively threw herself onto Eden’s back, pressing her into the snow.

  Eden fought to fling her off, and Mercy leaned close to her ear. “Stop it! We need to get inside and take cover.” The girl stilled. “Stay low and run.” She rolled off the girl and struggled to get to her feet, her knee trembling with pain.

  I can’t do this.

  “Don’t move.”

  She knew the male voice.

  Sean.

  Mercy froze. And then slowly looked over her shoulder.

  Ten feet away, the tall man pointed a rifle at her back.

  “Sean!” Eden exclaimed in relief at the familiar face. “I’m so glad—” Eden cut off her words with a gasp. Mercy swore she heard cogs grind in Eden’s brain as she processed that a man she knew had shot another in the head.

  “Hello, Eden,” he said with a laugh, pointing the rifle at her.

  The teenager’s mouth hung open.

  Fighting an instinct to flee, Mercy said nothing, desperately searching for options.

  There were none.

  Although the temperature was freezing, sweat gathered on her upper lip.

  The rifle swung back to Mercy. “Did you know you’re hanging out with an FBI agent, Eden?” he asked.

  Pete told him.

  “Yes.” Eden’s voice shook, but Mercy was proud of her for staying calm.

  “Let’s go inside,” Sean said, indicating with the gun for them to rise. “And do everything I say. No fucking around. You run, you die. Either from my bullet in your back or from the cold.”

  Eden pushed slowly to her feet, but Mercy couldn’t stand. Her adrenaline had vanished, leaving her weaker than before.

  “Get up,” he snapped.

  “She’s hurt,” Eden shot back as she bent to help.

  “Yeah, I know. I heard about Pete’s punishment, and it’s been obvious over the last several hours.”

  He followed us?

  Mercy managed to get to her feet, facing Sean and leaning heavily on Eden, trying not to gasp for air as pain raced up her leg. Surprise lit his eyes as he studied her face.

  “Wow. Pete was more pissed off than I realized. You look like hell.”

  Self-conscious, Mercy looked away at his intense stare, and her gaze fell on the body in the snow. Her stomach curdled at the spray pattern of blood and brains. “Why him?”

  “Nelson? Pete will appreciate that I got rid of the asshole. Now, inside!”

  With Eden’s help, Mercy walked toward the door. A minute ago the open door had been a beacon promising warmth. Now it was a door to a prison.

  What wi
ll he do with us?

  She shuddered, and her hands clenched at the thought of returning to Pete. He’d kill her this time. I can’t let that happen.

  The air inside the small cabin was heavenly on her icy cheeks. A woodstove in the corner churned out ample heat. The main room contained a small table, a chair, a bed, a rough sink with a single dripping faucet, and many shelves of canned and packaged food. A glimpse into a second tiny room revealed bins and food-grade buckets stacked to the ceiling.

  Nelson was prepared for the winter.

  He was Mercy’s kind of person.

  He had been her kind of person.

  She thrust the image of his shattered head out of her mind.

  Sean gave Eden cuffs to lock Mercy to the bed frame. Her face pale, Eden secured Mercy’s wrists as Sean closely watched, snapping at her when she fumbled with the awkward cuffs. He held a pistol at her head, his rifle swapped for the gun.

  Mercy shot a glance at the rifle leaning against the wall.

  He saw her look and smirked. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  Mercy sat on the floor and leaned against the mattress, assessing the bed. The frame was made of rough wood and bolted to the wall. She tugged at it and determined it wouldn’t budge.

  Sean checked Eden’s work and then rapidly tied the teen to the other end of the bed with rope.

  Once he was satisfied with the knots, he sat heavily in the chair and rubbed his face, exhaustion showing in the droop of his shoulders.

  “What are you—” Eden began.

  “Shut up,” he said coldly. “I don’t want to hear a word from either one of you.” He rose out of his chair and paced the length of the room several times, deep in thought, an intent look on his face as he mumbled under his breath. Mercy watched, wondering if he hadn’t thought ahead before shooting Nelson and taking the women hostage. Again his movements reminded her of a law enforcement officer’s. Or a soldier’s.

  Eden leaned her head against the bed and silently mouthed to Mercy, “Now what?”

  Mercy raised one shoulder and gave a slight shake of her head, feeling her brain and thoughts slow down. Her own exhaustion swelled and spread, taking over every limb. Now that she’d sat down, her body insisted on rest. She twisted to lie on the floor, her hands elevated by the cuffs, and closed her eyes, no longer caring what went on around her. She was warm, and both of them were alive.

  For now.

  She slept.

  THIRTY-ONE

  It took two more days to get a search canine on the scene.

  The delay had worn Truman’s patience down to nothing. A car accident just outside Ukiah had halted the first dog who had been called out—the dog was fine, but his handler had a broken leg. After that, locating an available federal K9 team had been more difficult than expected. An ATF dog and handler were finally flown in from Seattle.

  Two days lost.

  Two days with Mercy somewhere.

  Every agent and Truman were livid at the delay.

  Another mystery had been raised by Noah Trotter’s mother. Her sixteen-year-old daughter had not been with the women who’d left the compound or found inside with the members who’d remained.

  In the interviews, everyone stated Eden Trotter was part of their group and seemed confused as to why she was missing, although no one could specifically remember seeing her the day of the raid. The teenager was added to the search.

  Truman and several agents spent the two days widening the physical search for Mercy and the teenage girl beyond the compound. It was hard, frustrating work. The snow was over a foot deep. Every time Truman’s foot hit something hidden under the thick white blanket, his heart stopped. He pushed himself, rarely taking breaks, eating only when Eddie shoved food in his hand. Needing sleep made him angry at himself for needing time to recharge.

  As they searched, the bodies at the gate were removed, and the remaining members taken to the county jail for questioning. Federal crime scene teams covered the compound, bringing in heaters to melt the snow in places to see what was hidden beneath. They collected evidence as SSA Ghattas and Agent Aguirre dealt with angry FBI and ATF upper chains of command. And the media.

  Truman ignored the conversations about who was at fault; he didn’t care.

  He had one objective. Find Mercy.

  The ATF dog finally arrived, and Truman, Agent Gorman, and a few other ATF and FBI agents followed the canine and handler on their search. The snow didn’t slow down the Labrador retriever. Truman had questioned how the dog could smell things below the snow.

  “Airborne particles still exist that he can pick up with his nose,” the ATF handler explained. “His primary job is to find explosives, but he does search and rescue and also cadaver work too.”

  The dog had led them to several cabins, the mess hall, and the kitchen. When they followed the dog to the command center, the dog had signaled inside Pete’s office, surprising the handler. “That’s his explosives sign.”

  The agents ripped the room apart. Under the flooring of the command center, they discovered the stolen guns from the ATF robbery and more blocks of C-4. After inventorying the weapons, they determined that out of more than three hundred stolen weapons, about fifty were missing, possibly sold for the cash.

  Selling weapons wasn’t America’s Preserve only source of income. During their interviews, many of the arrested members stated they’d handed over their savings to help fund the compound. A lockbox holding nearly $20,000 was also found with the weapons under the floor.

  Yet his people wear rags.

  After the command center, the dog led them to the storage unit where Mercy had been held captive.

  After finding the unit, Truman watched the agent reward the dog with a rough game of tug-of-war in the big garage. He moved outdoors after a few seconds of the dog’s happy tail and enthusiastic leaps. The cheerful sight was too much. How could the world move forward as normal when his world had been ripped into pieces?

  Impatience percolated under his skin. The dog was getting results, but they weren’t the results Truman wanted, and the process was slow. The agent wouldn’t rush the dog, letting him take his time and stopping for frequent breaks and play.

  “We’ll find her,” Agent Gorman said to Truman as he joined him outside. The man’s face was long, weighed down with guilt and exhaustion. Truman was still angry with him and Agent Aguirre for leading Mercy into this disaster.

  Truman didn’t reply.

  When reward time was over, the dog led them across the clearing and then stopped at the trees. The handler led him in a circle, giving him encouragement.

  From what Truman had seen, Mercy had walked through every part of the complex.

  Catching a scent, the dog shot off, and the men jogged after him, breaking paths in the fresh snow. Truman panted as he moved, suddenly aware he’d forgotten breakfast that morning. His life was completely upside down and backward. He couldn’t think straight.

  Is this how Mercy felt when I was stuck in Ollie’s cabin last spring?

  Truman had gone missing for nearly two weeks, ill with a fever and nursing a broken arm, unable to communicate that he was alive and safe in the isolated cabin. Back home, Mercy had led an aggressive search, and his town had started to grieve. It’d been worse for her than him. At least he’d known he was okay and would eventually be healthy enough to walk several miles out of the forest.

  But Mercy hadn’t known if he was alive.

  Just as he knew nothing right now.

  Not knowing was hell.

  His nerves had grown hypersensitive and his temper short during the three days he’d known she was missing. He felt like water simmering in a pan, hovering just at that moment before it breaks into a boil. It was just a matter of what triggered his boil and when.

  The dog started down the ravine that bordered one side of the compound. It was steep, and it was impossible to see if there were footholds under the snow. The men slowed, and the handler called the dog to wait. He stopped, fu
riously wagging his tail as he looked expectantly at the shuffling men.

  They inched their way down the ravine. Truman stumbled twice, tripping over rocks hidden under a foot and a half of snow. It took twenty minutes for the men to get to the bottom. Delighted to resume his work, the dog darted along the bottom of the ravine for a hundred feet and then circled under a tree and sat in the snow, ears forward and eyes eager, looking to his handler.

  “Did he lose the scent?” Gorman asked.

  Truman’s pulse raced as he watched the immobile dog.

  “No,” said the handler. “That’s a hit.” He glanced nervously at Truman. “Something dead is under there.”

  Truman and the other agents attacked the snow with their hands only to find bare ground. Men were sent back to the compound for shovels. The long minutes of waiting nearly heated Truman over that boiling point.

  The men returned and started to dig, immediately finding results. Parts of severely decomposed bodies began to appear. Twice Truman had to stop digging to lunge away and vomit. Gorman tried to make him return to the compound. He wouldn’t.

  “The decomposition is far too advanced,” one agent stated, holding his collar over his nose. A half hour of digging had determined the dog had hit on a shallow grave containing three bodies. “These have been buried for months if not longer.”

  Relief sent Truman to his knees, and he was not ashamed that he cried.

  The canine’s handler made increasingly wide circles around the grave, trying to find another trail. The dog didn’t catch Mercy’s scent, and the search was temporarily halted to recover the dead.

  The next morning Truman and Agent Gorman followed the K9 team again. The other agents who’d searched with them yesterday had been pulled to help the investigation inside the compound. Truman felt slightly abandoned, but he knew the dog was what was important. A dozen men could follow the dog, and it wouldn’t speed up the search.

  The Labrador started where they’d left off yesterday and spent two hours in the ravine without results. The handler took the dog on a slow, thorough search around the perimeter of the camp, hoping to pick up another trail. The dog’s tail didn’t wag as it had the day before, and the handler took more breaks and played more games, trying to keep the Lab’s spirits up. The dog seemed nearly as down as Truman felt.