Black Dog Security- Complete 5-Part Series

by Camilla Blake

  Dream Mercer had gotten too far away and my brain had kicked in. Throwing off the scratchy sheet of the cheap motel I was in, I sat up and rubbed at my face. The large, black clock on the rickety side table read 03:49 in the morning. Too early to get up. Too late to toss and turn and pray for another few hours of sleep.

  I sighed and stood up. The motel room was tiny so I didn’t have much room to pace. I had to work off the tense energy the dream had left me with, though. For a split second, I thought about getting back in bed and using the dream to get myself off, but it never felt right. Touching myself to the thought of Mercer when he wanted nothing to do with me felt wrong, like some kind of violation of him.

  Changing into a pair of jogging pants and a sweatshirt, I laced up my shoes and tucked the room key into my pocket before slamming the door on my way out. I had to run off some of the energy burning through me. One thing I’d learned along my life was that all that balled-up energy only led one way when I didn’t have a healthy outlet for it. I banished even the thought of that part of my life and ran harder. I didn’t know the area I was in, some hole-in-the-wall town in Texas, but it was the size of a postage stamp and I was willing to bet I couldn’t get lost if I tried.

  I didn’t stretch or warm up to a run. I just outright ran. It was the same way I did everything in life. No easing into it—just do it. I ran as hard and fast as I could. I ran like my life was on the line. Maybe it was. Maybe everything was on the line.

  That heavy thought hung over my head, despite the run. Everything was on the line. Black Dog Security. Mercer. Me. Everything. I wasn’t sure how we’d gotten into the mess we were in. I’d gotten my life together. I didn’t get in situations anymore where everything rode on a few decisions. Things were organized and made sense. At least in most of my life. Nothing ever made sense with Mercer.

  It felt like just a few days earlier that I’d been in my office at Black Dog, scheduling meetings for Mercer and the rest of the guys. The firm had just been starting up, so things were slower. Mercer was never happy, per se, but he’d seemed calmer. Before all the mess started, he’d seemed almost normal.

  I stopped to catch my breath and tilted my head up to the night sky. Over the tops of the trees that surrounded the small town, black tinged to blue as the sun made its way closer to me. I knew that wherever Mercer was, he was already up, probably staring at the same night sky that I was. Maybe that knowledge would’ve soothed a better woman. Maybe a better woman would accept when a man left. I wasn’t a better woman. I was stubborn, determined, and going to find Mercer. There was no other option.

  By the time I got back to the motel room, the sun was peeking over those trees and the little town was starting to wake up. The sound of a truck door slamming in the distance was followed by the low groan of an engine turning over. An older woman stood at the edge of her porch and stared at me as I moved past her. The owner of the motel was holding a watering can over a dead flower bed, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her crinkled mouth.

  My motel room felt cold and lonely. I was tempted to go back out and talk to the owner, but I had things to do. Mercer wouldn’t give in to the simple desires of his human nature that way.

  Like a shock of electricity, I thought of the woman from The View. A strip club, a stripper, a back-room blow job. She’d looked like me. Mercer gave into some of his human nature.

  I jerked the shower curtain open a little too hard and ripped a few of the plastic rings off the tension rod. When I reached up to reattach them, my fingers came into contact with something thick and wet that made me jerk away, cringing. I stuck my hand under the sink faucet and scrubbed it with the little bar of soap they’d provided me. I felt like crying.

  I’d only been on the road for a week. I was only in my second motel. It wasn’t even all that bad. The goo on the shower rod was messed up, but I’d seen worse motels along the way. It wasn’t the motel that was really bothering me. It was that I couldn’t find Mercer.

  It’d only been a week since I started looking, but I’d been sure that I knew him so well I’d find him right away. I’d been sure that he would be in Luke’s old hunting cabin. It was a place that Luke loved and he’d taken all of the guys to it once upon a time. Maybe it was being there that had helped drag me down, too. All those old memories, waiting to taunt me into submission.

  I didn’t think about Luke very often. It hurt too much. Being back in the cabin had been overwhelming and heartbreaking. My big brother had been a force. No matter where he was, he left an impression. It turned out that even in death, that impression never faded.

  Mercer hadn’t been there, though. My next guess had been a place in Texas, not too far from where I was that morning. It came up empty too. I still had a few guesses, but I’d been so sure that he was going to be at the cabin that I hadn’t bothered to really think of anywhere else. The slithering doubt that maybe I didn’t know Mercer as well as I thought I did had tried to creep in, but I did know him. I’d spent so much time with the man that I had to know him. He couldn’t have hidden himself from me in the weeks and months that I’d nursed him back to health after the explosion that killed Luke and almost killed Mercer.

  Leaving the shower curtain hanging halfway off, I took a fast shower and dried off with a surprisingly clean towel. Dressing in jeans and a sweater, I pulled my hair up into a hat and shoved dark sunglasses onto my face. They covered most of my features and I felt safer in them. Boots on and laced, I grabbed my packed bags and headed out.

  I’d parked on the other side of the motel. Years in Vegas, doing things I had no business doing, had left me with some questionable habits that never seemed to leave. They came in handy while I was trying to stay hidden, though. Not that I thought the police of Ambrose, or the deputies of Aim County were chasing me all over the country. They wanted Mercer, but I was pretty sure I’d lost them the first day of my search for him. I’d never lead them to him, if I could help it.

  And I could. Help it, I meant. I wanted his name cleared, but that wasn’t going to happen by me just leading the police to him. They didn’t want a different answer. In their minds, Mercer was a cold-blooded killer, of multiple women.

  I tossed my bag in the trunk and leaned against the cold metal of the car. Blowing out a harsh breath, I watched as it fogged into the early-morning air and vanished. It was cold out, the middle of the fall conceding to the winter. The cracked concrete lot was littered with leaves long fallen. It was time to say goodbye to another miss at finding Mercer.

  “Leaving early?”

  I glanced over at the motel owner, still standing above the dead flower bed with that watering can, which I could see was definitely frozen over, or empty. “Yep.”

  She slowly snagged her cigarette from her mouth and tapped the long ash off. “Cold one today.”

  I pulled open the car door and nodded. “I’m sure there are people up north laughing at that.”

  She took another long drag of her cigarette, killing the rest of it, and then let it fall into the soil at her feet. “You be careful out there. Dangerous world for a woman traveling alone.”

  A chill went down my back, but I shook it off. Forcing a weak smile, I put one foot in the car. “Dangerous world, no matter how you look at it, I figure.”

  She barked out a rough cough and dropped the watering can. She raised her hand to me in a wave as she turned and shuffled back into the office. The door slammed behind her and a few seconds later, the booming sound of some morning news broadcast flooded the parking lot. Rise and shine, it seemed.

  I settled the rest of the way into the car and drove to a fast-food place a few miles away. Then, while eating a breakfast of a biscuit and coffee, I stared down at the map in my lap. The GPS on my phone was more accurate, but I had a thing about being able to touch the places that I was heading for.

  I knew that Mercer had spent time all over the world, few spots for more than a couple of months. Those few spots were spread out over the south, a southern boy
through and through. Texas was marked off. Arkansas was marked off. The next guess I had was a small reserve in Florida. He’d spent the longest time there, with Luke, while doing some type of training. I trailed my finger along I-40, down through 55 in Mississippi. I could cut across Mobile, Alabama and then end up in the Florida Panhandle.

  I tapped the small town just past the panhandle, inside the large mass of land that was just… normal. What was the point of living in Florida if you didn’t live on the beach? I snapped the map closed and shoved it back in the console. Pulling the visor down, I adjusted it so the morning sun wasn’t beaming straight into my eyes.

  I turned on the radio and listened as a slow country song poured into the car. Some sad sap had lost his wife to another man. At least he’d had her once.

  The highway was an hour away and once I was on it, it was a straight shot for several long hours. I crossed my fingers and hoped that I’d find Mercer on the next stop. I couldn’t keep driving around the country, looking for him. I’d gotten enough cash out of my account to live for a while, but eventually I’d run out of money. I’d run out of energy. I’d run out of time.

  My hands tightened on the steering wheel. He had to be there. I had to find him.

  Chapter 2

  Mercer

  I tracked through the backs of fields and farmland to get back to the cabin. The cabin was nestled in the middle of an overgrown section of farmland, in the middle of a couple of family-owned farms. Luke had purchased the land, thinking he’d settle down on it someday and raise a family the way he’d wanted to be raised when he was a kid. Some wholesome shit with two parents, a few kids, a family dog.

  He’d used it as a hunting cabin while he was still alive, taking care of the overpopulation of deer and rabbit, in season. We’d spent weeks holed up in the piece-of-shit shack, him dreaming and me wondering what I wanted for the future. A life like Luke wanted? I didn’t think so. I couldn’t see myself settling down with anyone and trying to raise kids like I wasn’t fucked up.

  At one point, maybe I could’ve seen part of it. With Jessica. Those days had ended long before I ever knew she was dead, though.

  The once grated gravel road down to the shack had been long forgotten. Luke had been dead for a while. The land was legally his little sister’s, but she didn’t want it. It’d just sat there, abandoned. No one asked the county to come grate the road; no one mowed the grass along it. It was left untouched. There were still empty beer cans in the old metal trash can from the last time Luke had been there.

  Nature had taken over. It hit something soft in my chest that Luke’s prized land wasn’t being taken care of, but I was lucky. If everything was maintained, I wouldn’t be able to use the land as a hiding space. As it was, I could slip with ease past neighbors and anyone else happening by. I’d easily hid from Lauren when she’d stopped by.

  I stopped moving to listen to the sounds of everything around me. The wind rustled through the dying grass; an owl called out somewhere in the distance and was answered by the lone cry of a coyote. Nothing manmade. Nothing close by. I finished the trek into the cabin and made quick work of setting up my camp for the night.

  I packed up everything every morning and hid it under the loose boards in the corner. That little paranoid precaution had saved me when Lauren had come marching up to the cabin like a bull through a china shop. A four-year-old boy scout could’ve tracked her. There were still broken limbs and plants from where she’d stomped over them on her way in. She left a mark—that much was for sure.

  The floor of the cabin was a far cry from the bed I’d gotten used to being in at night. I’d gotten spoiled. Back in my SEALs days, I could’ve slept on a bed of sticks and rocks and would’ve been fine. In my older age, with my beat-up body, I didn’t do all that well with a hard floor. I woke up in the mornings stiff and in pain. I went to bed in the evenings stiff and in pain.

  I’d get used to it again. It hadn’t been long enough.

  I cringed. It felt like long enough. My mind must’ve gotten weaker, too. The idea of spending the rest of my days hiding out, being stiff, not seeing any of the people that I cared about… it wasn’t as easy as it would’ve been back in the day.

  I settled in for the night, on my sleeping bag next to the window so I could watch the night sky as it passed by overhead. With my knife and gun at my side, I tried to clear my mind so I could fade into the blackness of sleep. Like every night, though, my mind just raced.

  I knew the diagnoses, the labels for why I couldn’t sleep. They were the reasons I woke up screaming every night, supposedly. How I’d managed to stay hidden while screaming my head off every night was unknown to me, too. Knowing what was wrong with my brain didn’t make it easier to handle. I was a SEAL. I was the strongest of the strongest. Had been, anyway.

  Just like each night, my thoughts drifted to Lauren. Luke’s baby sister. The woman who’d kept me from dying and then had kept me from killing myself. It wasn’t an easy job. She’d been fighting her own battles at the time, but she’d never hesitated. She took care of me through her own detox. I could still feel her shaking hands caressing my face when I woke up screaming in pain from losing my leg.

  She’d been in pain again when she was searching for me at the cabin. I could read it on her face. She’d come for me, but I saw the memories of Luke filling her eyes. She’d lost her big brother, the only family she had left. She’d been crazy about him. As she looked around the cabin, I’d seen the tears in her eyes. She never cried in front of me. She’d thought she was alone, though, and she’d cried.

  It was one more ghost that haunted me as I tried to fall asleep. It’d been almost two weeks since she’d been inside the cabin, but I could still imagine her scent lingering in the air. Fresh apples in a wide-open orchard. She always smelled like that. I didn’t know if it was something she used or if she just smelled like that naturally, but it was a scent that I’d never forget. It reminded my twisted brain of freedom.

  Lauren wasn’t freedom, though. Lauren was responsibilities and the chains of having to be good enough that everything I did wouldn’t be a disappointment. She was wide eyes and a slow smile. She looked at me like I meant something—and I couldn’t mean anything to her. There were complications, but there was also just the fact that I wasn’t sticking around.

  There I was, hiding out in an abandoned cabin. I was wanted for two separate murders and for assaulting several cops during my escape. I didn’t have a future. Yet she looked at me like she expected one with me.

  The same blooming anger settled in my gut as it always did when I thought of Lauren looking at me like that. She was too young, too inexperienced to think that I was anything but her big brother’s fucked-up friend. I wanted to shake her and demand that she didn’t look at me, at all. Which was doable at that time. I didn’t even know why I was thinking about it. She was gone. She’d look for me for a while, but she’d give up. She probably already had given up. For all I knew, she was back in Ambrose, working with the guys to hold down the fort with Black Dog.

  She’d move on. They’d all move on. The guys knew what was up. I couldn’t go back to jail. They’d be fine. Lauren would be fine. She’d keep running the office like a most fine-oiled machine. She’d let me go. She’d find someone who wasn’t fucked up.

  I blew out a deep breath and cracked my knuckles. I was fine with that. It was for the best. She needed to move on with someone else. Someone closer to her age. Someone easy to deal with. Someone who she didn’t get in screaming matches with all of the time.

  I used to never lie to myself. Before the explosion. Before Luke. I didn’t have to. It seemed all I was doing these days was lying to myself.

  After a fitful night’s sleep, I woke up hours before the sun came up and quickly put my stuff away. Heading through the thick brush, I peed and made my way behind the farms to get to the little town down the way. There was a tiny general store and the owner had known Luke well. He was an ex-navy man himself, and he kept e
verything quiet. We’d struck up a deal. I did anything he needed done around his house and he fed me and kept his mouth zipped about the extra presence around town, if anyone ever asked.

  That morning, I ended up cleaning his horse stalls while he cooked us bacon and eggs. The sun rose with me and I was sweating and stripping my shirt off, despite the cool, morning air.

  “You know, I used to look like that.” Henry shook his head as he walked up to the fence around the barn and leaned against it. “You want to keep that body, don’t ever get married. I got married to Susie and she started cooking to keep me home. That’s how I ended up with this gut.”

  I leaned against the pitchfork I’d been using. “I don’t think I have to worry about that happening.”

  “Getting fat or getting married?”

  “Either.”

  Henry laughed and pushed off of the fence. “Come on in. Breakfast is ready. My eggs aren’t the best. Susie always made the eggs.”

  I grabbed my T-shirt and used it to wipe my face. “Eggs are eggs—right?”

  “Not even a little bit. Susie made them taste like the best thing you’d ever eaten, somehow. She’d never tell me how she made them. Said that if I knew how to feed myself, I wouldn’t need her around.”

  I winced away from the sadness in the man’s face. I didn’t do great with emotions. Luckily, he didn’t seem intent to delve into it. He marched towards the house and didn’t look back to make sure I was following him. He knew I was, though, because when we got to the back porch, he opened the door and went through, holding it open for me.

  “How much longer are you thinking you’ll be around?”

  I went to the sink to wash up. “I don’t know. A while, probably.”