by Rose, Karen
‘Now,’ he echoed. And then, watching her every reaction, he slid into her, exhaling on a ragged groan. ‘God. Mercy.’
Her eyes fluttered closed and she hummed. ‘Move. Please.’
So he did, mentally recording every expression on her face, the pleasure he saw there. He noted what made her breath hitch and what made her moan. What made her dig her nails into his skin, what made her claw at his back. What made her wrap her legs around his hips and work herself on him.
He clenched his teeth harder, trying to hold off coming until he couldn’t anymore. Shifting to one arm, he slid his hand between their bodies, finding her clit and fingering her, fast and hard.
‘Now,’ he whispered. ‘Come for me, Mercy. Now.’
He pinched her clit and she cried out, body arching, face so goddamn beautiful that he forgot to breathe. And then he was coming too, pressing his face to her neck as his body convulsed and his vision went white.
His head stopped spinning eventually. She was petting him like he was one of her cats, long strokes up his spine and into his hair. He couldn’t think of a single coherent word to say. But she did.
‘Glorious,’ she whispered.
His lips curved against her skin, damp with perspiration. Pride filled him, but he didn’t think he could preen if his life depended on it. ‘Yes.’
And he’d do even better the next time.
Sacramento, California
Wednesday, 19 April, 3.40 A.M.
‘You didn’t need to see us off,’ Farrah said when Mercy met her and André coming down Rafe’s stairs. But she followed it up with a hug so hard that Mercy’s ribs protested. ‘You need to sleep.’
‘I did. A little.’ And then Rafe had woken her up and they’d made love all over again and it had been more glorious than the first time. When she’d heard footsteps on the landing, she’d left him in bed, him snoring quietly and her feeling ridiculously proud of herself for wearing him out.
Farrah coughed to cover a laugh. ‘Um, right.’ She sniffed delicately at yesterday’s sweater that Mercy had thrown on when she’d heard voices in the hall. ‘I think I know what you were doing when you weren’t sleeping a little.’
Mercy’s cheeks flamed and she took a horrified step back. She hadn’t realized that Farrah could smell what they’d been doing.
‘Leave her alone, Farrah,’ André said. He leaned in to kiss Mercy’s cheek. ‘Go back inside now. We don’t want you anywhere near the door when we go out.’
Mercy frowned. ‘I hate that you’re going to the airport alone.’
‘We’re not,’ André assured her. ‘Rafe’s brother Damien is going to drive us in his car, then he’ll come back later to return the rental.’
‘He was worried that the rental’s been in the driveway all this time,’ Farrah explained. ‘Especially after Burton planted the trackers on Erin’s SUV and Sasha’s Mini.’
‘Has Damien been sitting outside all this time?’ Mercy asked, worried about him now. ‘He can’t have gotten any sleep.’
‘More sleep than you did,’ Damien said, coming down the stairs. ‘The Fed Molina sent watched my car so that I could get some shut-eye. I slept on Sasha’s couch.’ He winced. ‘Tell Rafe that the floors are really thin.’
Mercy covered her face with both hands when his meaning sank in. ‘Oh my God.’
Damien chuckled. ‘I’ll be back later, Mercy. Tell Rafe he can make it up to me with pancakes when he finally wakes his ass up.’
‘I’ll tell him,’ she managed to splutter, then hugged André and Farrah again. ‘Call me when you get home, so I know you’re safe.’
Farrah cupped Mercy’s cheeks, her smile sweet. ‘I will. Please be careful, but more than that, be happy. You’ve earned this, Mercy Callahan. You’ve earned happiness, so grab it with both hands.’
Mercy’s throat grew thick. ‘I was so lucky the day our paths crossed,’ she whispered. ‘Love you, Ro.’
Farrah’s eyes filled. ‘Love you, too.’
André cleared his throat. ‘Ladies, I hate to cut your lovefest short, but we do have a plane to catch. Go inside, Mercy. I’ll make sure Farrah gets home just fine.’
With a teary wave, Mercy obeyed, leaning against Rafe’s door and listening for the front door to close before she headed to bed. But the sight of Rafe’s bulletin board stopped her in her tracks. She stood for a long moment, staring at the photos of Ephraim Burton and Edward McPhearson, aka Harry and Aubrey Franklin. In her mind she added the images of Pastor, who they now knew as Herbert Hampton, plus Waylon and DJ. All of them except for DJ had been there at Eden’s founding.
I was so lucky the day our paths crossed. The words she’d just said to Farrah rolled around in her mind, but now they bothered her. Like a name or a word that hovered on the edge of memory. The day our paths crossed, she thought again. And then it hit her. Her path had crossed Farrah’s at college, that first day. Mercy was there because her half siblings were there, even though she hadn’t met them yet. Farrah was there because everyone in her family had gone to that university.
How had the leaders of Eden ended up there? How had their paths crossed? Ephraim and Edward were brothers, so that answer was clear, but how had their paths crossed with Pastor’s? When Ephraim and Edward were on the run, why did they run to Eden? DJ was Waylon’s son, but exactly how did Waylon fit in?
She sat on the sofa and reached for Rafe’s notebook. At the top of a blank page she wrote, How do they connect? Where did they meet? Below she jotted ideas as they popped into her mind. Random? E & E just stumbled into Eden? Why was Waylon the only one allowed to leave the compound? And then, Edward served time.
Aubrey Franklin’s mug shot was testament to that fact. Rafe had already researched it, tacking to his bulletin board the newspaper articles about the thirty-year-old bank robbery and murder of three people. One article said that Aubrey had served time at Terminal Island, a federal correctional institution in LA, for an even older bank robbery.
Mercy tapped her pen to the paper, then wrote, Amos said that Pastor was accused of embezzling from his former church and falsifying his résumé.
She’d been surprised that Pastor had been an actual pastor. But what if he hadn’t been? What if that had been the résumé falsification? She underlined falsifying his résumé, wrote Why?, and then closed her eyes, picturing Pastor and Waylon.
Pastor had been . . . normal looking. Average height. Brown hair, glasses that made him look smart. His was the kind of face that blended into a crowd.
But Waylon . . . he’d been different. Huge and hulking. ‘Oh,’ she whispered aloud. And covered in tattoos. How had she forgotten about that?
Because you didn’t have much reason to be around Waylon. And she’d been only nine years old when the man had died. Just days after returning with a body he’d claimed was Gideon’s. That she’d blocked it out was understandable, she supposed.
She circled the sentence Why was Waylon the only one allowed to leave the compound? Then around it she jotted Covered in tattoos and Most memorable face of all of them.
She sucked in a startled breath, then exhaled it slowly when Waylon’s face sharpened in her memory. She wrote, Teardrop tat under his eye. Teardrop tats usually meant a person had been to prison. Had killed someone while in prison.
Waylon had been to prison. Just like Edward McPhearson, aka Aubrey Franklin.
Ephraim had also had a record, but he’d only been in juvie. He’d still been a minor when he robbed the bank with his brother, and the two had never been caught.
But both Aubrey Franklin and Waylon had been to prison.
She tore out that sheet and started a new one. PRISON, she wrote in all caps. TERMINAL ISLAND FCI. Was Waylon there, too? Was Pastor?
On her phone she googled the prison, finding the phone number easily. But they weren’t open until eight a.m. On the second sheet of pa
per, she copied the phone number and 8 am. Then tacked both pages on Rafe’s bulletin board. She could sleep a little more, for now.
She set her alarm and climbed back into bed with Rafe, cuddling up against him, sighing when his arms came around her. He held her like he’d never let go. Even sound asleep, he made her feel warm and safe. And happy.
Sacramento, California
Wednesday, 19 April, 10.10 A.M.
‘Yes, thank you. I’ll be expecting her call.’ Rafe ended the call and pocketed his phone, still staring at the new additions to his bulletin board.
Mercy had gotten up sometime during the night and done some amazing detective work. That Aubrey and Waylon had met in prison was breakthrough thinking. That Pastor might have been there, too? That could be the thing that tied it all together.
‘Whose call?’
Rafe looked up with a smile. Mercy was barefoot, her hair mussed, wearing her clothes from the day before, and rubbing her eyes like a sleepy kid on Christmas morning. Thankfully, Mercy Callahan was no kid. She was cute and sexy all at the same time.
And she’s mine. Once again he wanted to ask her to stay. Once again he held back. Still too soon.
‘One of the deputy wardens at Terminal Island. I found your notes.’
Mercy grimaced. ‘What time is it? I meant to wake up and call them already. I set my alarm for eight o’clock and everything.’
‘It’s after ten. Your alarm went off at eight, and I snoozed it. You’d slept through about four snoozes when I finally got up, had some coffee, then found this. Mercy, this is amazing. When did you get up?’
‘It’s after ten already?’ she asked dismayed. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’
‘Why didn’t you wake me up when you were doing this?’
A shy smile curved her lips. ‘You looked so peaceful that I didn’t have the heart.’
‘Same goes. Besides, you were out like a light. I don’t think a bulldozer could have woken you up.’
‘I guess I was tired.’ She got a cup of coffee and curled up in the corner of the sofa. ‘I heard Farrah and André leaving and went out in the foyer to say goodbye.’ She held up her hand, staving off his apparently obvious outrage. ‘Chill, Rafe. I didn’t go outside. I wasn’t even in the foyer when they went out. André made me come in. Damien took them to the airport.’ Her cheeks abruptly flushed. ‘Oh, and he says the floors are really thin.’
Rafe snorted. ‘So noted.’
‘The deputy warden is calling you back? I guess you called the correctional facility this morning?’
Rafe sat beside her, settling when she cuddled close. ‘I did. I already requested whatever they have on Aubrey Franklin a few weeks ago, but never got anything, so I called back this morning under the pretense of following up. The person I talked to in the office said that she’d been working on the request, but that she’d gotten sidetracked, yada yada blah blah.’ He waved his hand in irritation. ‘She seemed really sorry and promised to get me the information, so I asked if she could include anything about Aubrey’s known associates in prison. Just now she called to say that her boss, the deputy warden, would be calling me directly.’
‘You touched a nerve.’
‘Maybe. I hope so.’ He sighed. ‘And I also talked to Erika Mann.’
‘Who is she?’
Rafe opened his email with a shake of his head. ‘The reporter who followed the Herbert Hampton story back in the late eighties.’ He showed her the email from Zoya. ‘Bunker found her.’
‘“I hope this shuts you up”,’ Mercy read. ‘“Jeff was up all night searching online archives from LA newspapers. Erika Mann is the reporter you need to talk to. Here is her current contact information. You’re welcome very much”.’ She looked up with a wince. ‘Ouch. Zoya is pissed with you.’
‘Maybe I deserve it.’ He sighed when Mercy lifted her brows. ‘Fine, I deserve it.’
She patted his thigh. ‘Spoken like a man who’s exhausted all of his plausible defense strategies. What did Ms Mann say?’
‘Mostly what Amos said. She had a few more things to add. Hampton’s résumé falsifications included claims that he’d graduated from Yale’s Divinity School and had a PhD from UC Berkeley. Neither school had heard of him when she investigated.’
‘Who spilled the beans initially?’
‘This is where it gets interesting. One of the members of the church – a college-aged kid – got suspicious because he was studying at UC Berkeley and they didn’t have the program that Hampton claimed had awarded his degree. The kid asked his professor about it and the prof got curious. The professor checked with the registrar and discovered that there was no record of Hampton having ever attended. He then called Yale and found the same thing. He told the kid, who called the church elders. Specifically one Amos Terrill, who she described as an elderly man with an almost fanatical devotion to Pastor Hampton.’
‘Amos’s grandfather.’ Mercy frowned. ‘And then what happened?’
‘Terrill didn’t believe the college kid, according to Ms Mann. Then the church split, just like Amos described. And then the whistle-blower kid was the victim of a “random beating” outside an all-night diner near his parents’ house in LA.’
Mercy gasped. ‘Oh my God. Amos wouldn’t do that.’
At least Rafe could give her comfort on that point. ‘No, the grandfather had died and Amos had disappeared by then. So had Hampton. But even after Hampton left, the members who’d finally successfully ousted him wanted justice. The boy’s family was part of this group and they were actively searching for Hampton and calling him a crook. The kid graduated from Berkeley and became a reporter. Ms Mann said she mentored him and he had a lot of promise. He was determined to see Hampton brought to justice. He’d even started looking for him. But after the beating, he retreated and left town. She doesn’t know where he is, but thinks he changed his name to throw his attackers off the trail, because his parents’ house was torched a few days after the beating.’
‘Wow. Amos said it got vicious, but that’s worse than I expected.’
‘I know. Mann says that he told her he was afraid for his parents, that seeing Hampton in jail wasn’t worth their lives. She got the impression that whoever beat him up had threatened his family too, but he wouldn’t confirm it to her.’
Mercy was quiet for a long moment. ‘I wonder what happened to all that money that members donated to Eden?’
‘That’s a damn good question.’
She looked up at him. ‘You have apologized to Jeff Bunker, haven’t you? And thanked him?’
‘Yes to both.’ He scowled. ‘And it really hurt, too.’
She kissed his cheek. ‘I’m sure it did. So thank you.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, only slightly mollified, because it had hurt. Mostly because he knew he’d been too hard on Bunker and was ashamed of himself. ‘And then I told Mann about him and she said she’d seen his retraction. She said that he could contact her if he’d like a better mentor than that sleaze he used to work for.’
That earned him a sweet smile. ‘You’re a good man, Rafe Sokolov.’
‘How good?’ he asked playfully. ‘Do I get any kind of reward?’
She pecked his lips, then stood up. ‘Later. What time is your phone call with the deputy warden?’
‘Eleven thirty. We’re doing a Skype session. You should sit with me.’
‘I will, but I have to shower first.’ She took a step back, then stopped. ‘I almost forgot. Is it okay if Amos comes over to visit with me today?’
‘Of course. But we could go over to Mom and Dad’s house if you want.’
She hesitated. ‘I really want him to come here. I think he was overwhelmed with all the people in your parents’ house last night. He’d had an eventful day.’
He grasped her hand, holding on tightly. ‘So did you.’
She shrug
ged. ‘I think he wanted to catch up with me where it’s just us. I mean,’ she added quickly, ‘you can stay, of course. It’s your house. But I think he was hoping for a more low-key conversation.’
Rafe kissed her palm. ‘I get it, Mercy. You two can use one of the other apartments if you really want to talk alone. Does he want to see Gideon, too?’
‘Yes. He asked me to ask Gideon and I did.’ Her lips quirked up. ‘Amos was using a loaner phone from Karl. The texting went really slowly. I told him to ask Abigail to help him, that kids always learn this stuff faster.’
‘Is Abigail coming, too?’
‘No. Some of your nieces and nephews are coming over to play with her.’ Her lips curved into a full smile. ‘Your mom is grandmothering Abigail, and Amos says she’s eating up all the attention.’
His heart squeezed with love and pride for his mother. ‘Mom is awesome like that.’
‘She really is. I think Mama Romero and your mother would be the very best of friends.’
The mention of Farrah’s mother reminded him of the family that Mercy had back in New Orleans. Her home. And he had the feeling that seven and a half more weeks with her would never be enough. But she was smiling and he didn’t want to see her unhappy, so he forced himself to smile. ‘The clock’s ticking. You should take your shower if you want to be ready for our call with the warden.’
‘Oh, you’re right.’ She was halfway to the bathroom before she looked over her shoulder. ‘Are you coming?’
He grinned at her, the dread at her eventual departure stepping aside as his cock took notice. ‘Am I?’
‘If you’re very good and very quick because afterward, I want you to make me pancakes.’
He pulled himself to his feet. ‘I can do that.’
‘And then call Damien. He said you owe him pancakes for having to listen to us last night.’
‘I’d say that’s a small price to pay.’
Sacramento, California
Wednesday, 19 April, 11.28 A.M.
‘Mercy!’ Rafe called. ‘It’s time for the call with the deputy warden. Come out already.’