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Mercy

Page 66

by David L Lindsey


  “Look,” Grant said. “You owe it to yourself to explore this. You’ve…got unusual abilities. If…if nothing else, you’ve got to learn how to live with them, to understand them better. They’re not going to go away. I know. If you want to get away from them, you’re going to have to get the hell out of the business. Get completely out of police work, because now that you’ve used them they’re not going to leave you alone. It’s like an artist recognizing that he’s a gifted colorist. He can’t help himself. It’s just going to happen. You might as well learn how to control your gift, discipline it.”

  Palma held the cold drink in her hands and looked at the brilliant orange and yellow blooms of lantana across the path from her. High in the water oaks and catalpas the cicadas rasped against the dead heat of late summer, the throbbing, metronomic rhythm of their droning reminding Palma, as always, of loneliness. She didn’t know what to say or she would have said it. She didn’t even understand what she was feeling.

  “I’d like you to consider it,” he said again. “It’s a year,” he repeated.

  She took her eyes off the lantana and looked at him. “Is this why you’re down here?” she asked. “To tell me this?”

  He gave a short nod. “I came to talk to you,” he said.

  She continued looking at him, and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to say anything else. Then he said, “Look, I just don’t want to seem totally irresponsible, is all. You know what I’ve gone through this past year, and it seems to me I might have come across to you as pretty frivolous…or, maybe, I don’t know. I just don’t want…you…to misunderstand me. We’d have a year. You could get to know me in a year.”

  Palma looked at him. Yes, she thought, she could get to know him in a year, but she didn’t think she could possibly feel any differently about him then than she did at this very moment. With an enormous sense of relief, the first she had felt in over two months, since Grant had returned to Washington, she was thankful that he had been wiser about their silence than she had been. If he hadn’t come back, she wasn’t sure she would ever have understood what had happened between them.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  David L. Lindsey is the author of six novels, including A Cold Mind and In the Lake of the Moon. In 1989, In the Lake of the Moon was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Publisher

  Description

  Review

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  PART ONE

  Prologue

  FIRST DAY

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  SECOND DAY

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  THIRD DAY

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  FOURTH DAY

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  PART TWO

  FIFTH DAY

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  SIXTH DAY

  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

  SEVENTH DAY

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Epilogue

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

 

 


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