Mercy

by Jean Brashear

  WILL THE TRUTH SAVE HER…OR DESTROY HER?

  Days away from release from Attica after serving twenty years to guard a secret, Lucas Walker discovers that he’s news again.

  The story once shocked the world: the son of renowned Shakespearean actor martin Gerard, murdered while defending his twin sister Tansy from rape by Lucas Walker, the juvenile delinquent once taken under the wing of Gerard’s wife Juliette.

  Gerard’s triumphant return to the stage after a ten-year absence brings the old case to light. When Tansy is kidnapped, Lucas can’t leave New York as he’d planned, no matter how badly he wants to—not until he lives up to a promise to her dying mother to protect her. Lucas goes after her, risking imprisonment once more to face the person responsible for the night that forever altered all their lives.

  Mercy

  Jean Brashear

  Copyright © 2017 Jean Brashear

  EPUB Edition

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About Mercy

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Excerpt from The Choice

  About the Author

  Connect With Jean

  The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

  It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

  Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

  It blesseth him that gives and him that takes…

  Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

  And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

  The deeds of mercy.

  William Shakespeare

  The Merchant of Venice

  Prologue

  Attica

  Cold, sterile walls. Harsh lights. Worn furniture and ugly floors. Violence buzzed outside like a cloud of angry wasps. Hopelessness hung thick as a shroud. Decades of misery and bad news, broken hearts and hate lay as coats of yellowing varnish on this room he had never seen before.

  After almost twenty years in prison, this was the first visitor Lucas Michael Walker had ever had.

  Twenty-something, bad goatee, eyes sharp and sly, the visitor picked up the receiver. Pasted on a smile. “Lucas Walker? I’m Brian DeForest from the New York Post.”

  Lucas looked at him but didn’t respond.

  DeForest’s dark eyes twitched to the side, then back. He sucked in a quick breath, wiping one palm on his pants. “Bet you’ll be glad to be out, huh? Not long now.”

  Lucas had been fresh kill for these carnivores twenty years ago. He would walk out on this lowlife right now, except that time dragged on forever the nearer he got to the end.

  And because he wanted to hear why he was news again.

  But he was much less impulsive than he’d been at seventeen. Lucas knew waiting the way he knew his own skin.

  So he watched the kid sweat.

  DeForest’s hand slid into his pocket. A voice recorder emerged in white-knuckled fingers.

  Lucas’s eyes narrowed to slits. He rose, slammed down the receiver, kicked back the chair. Heads swiveled in their direction. The nearest guard lifted his hand toward his belt.

  “Wait—don’t go.” DeForest’s dark eyes shifted toward the recorder. “Is it this thing? Okay—all right. I’ll put it away.”

  Lucas glared until the silence stretched into a twanging, catgut scream. Then slowly he settled back into the chair but didn’t pull it close. Arms crossed over his chest, he stared the man down.

  DeForest gripped his receiver, darting hummingbird-fast glances at the one on the other side of the glass.

  Finally, Lucas picked his up. And still said nothing.

  “You wonder why I’m here?” When he got no answer, DeForest continued. “Martin Gerard’s seventy-fifth birthday is coming up soon. Lots of hype. Kennedy Center award, that sort of thing. He’s going to do his first performance in years, King Lear, two weeks each in New York and Washington. Tickets are being scalped for ungodly prices—the leading Shakespearean actor of our time returns to the stage for one last run.”

  Lucas’s gut clenched. He wanted nothing to do with Martin Gerard. All he wished for was to be left alone.

  “So I’m working on a piece about his life. Checked out your case, wondered if you might have a comment.”

  Goddamn vultures—when would they forget? With effort, Lucas merely shook his head.

  DeForest’s face reddened, but he pressed on. “In talking to the guards, I ran across mention of a letter.” His eyes turned sly once more. Lucas dug his fingers into his thigh.

  “I hear you almost killed a man for stealing it. Word is, Gerard’s late wife wrote it after you murdered their only son. Care to tell me what it says?”

  Lucas lunged for the glass. His chair crashed backward. The phone he’d dropped bounced off the shelf.

  Footsteps pounded behind him.

  Lucas grappled with fury he couldn’t afford. He gripped the desk and shut his eyes. Raised one hand to the guard in reassurance. Shooting one glance at the reporter’s ashen face, Lucas prepared to leave.

  “Walker—” DeForest yelled. “There’s a rumor that the other twin might be marrying a friend of Gerard’s. Look—I’ve got a picture.”

  Lucas’s head whipped around. His gaze settled on the grainy black-and-white photo of three figures. Martin Gerard and his longtime benefactor, Carlton Sanford, flanked a slender blonde Lucas had tried very hard to forget.

  “She’s a recluse. Most people have forgotten she exists. Why does she hide, Walker? What’s wrong with her?”

  Lucas ignored the questions shouted over the partition. He couldn’t take his eyes from the picture. Tansy hardly seemed older than she’d been at age sixteen, when he last saw her. For the first time, Lucas spoke. “Married—” He cleared a suddenly clogged throat. “To Sanford?”

  DeForest nodded.

  Oh, God, Tansy, no. Lucas shot the reporter one murderous scowl. Everything he’d spent twenty years trying to bury had just roared back to life. Slowly, he picked up the receiver again.

  “Tell me where she is.”

  Chapter One

  Manhattan

  Early March

  The last month before spring was the one that came nearest to killing the soul. The weather could slip from cold to warm in the blink of an eye—and back to freezing just as quickly. Today the sun teased, playing peek a boo from behind gray clouds sagging like wet wool. Mona Gerard stared out her midtown office window and silently begged the sun t
o come out and play.

  “Kat, I need your help with Daddy’s party.” Mona rubbed her temple while picturing her younger sister’s features screwed up in a frown.

  Kat swore under her breath. “I told you—”

  Mona sighed. “I know, I know. But what I’m asking is for Tansy, not for Daddy.”

  “Oh.” Immediately, her sister’s rebellion subsided.

  Six years younger than Mona’s thirty-five, Kat was part Annie Lennox—spiky, short copper hair included—and part Madonna, before motherhood reformed her. Owner of her own emerging Chelsea gallery, statuesque Kat was cutting a swath through the New York art world as though it were the AIDS-innocent eighties again. Mona’s lectures on caution fell on deaf ears.

  “What are you asking?”

  “For you to take Tansy shopping for a dress.”

  “Yeah, right,” Kat jeered. “Me and whose army? There aren’t any decent dress shops in the neighborhood, and Tansy won’t venture farther.”

  “Damn it, Kat, would you just help me for once?” Mona hated hearing her voice go shrill. She dropped her forehead to the flat of her palm. The whole party was a nightmare. She didn’t have time for this. She had an issue of her magazine due at the printer’s in a week, and her plate was so full she couldn’t see the table.

  “Hey…what’s wrong?” Kat’s voice was instant softness and sympathy. “I’m sorry. You’re still shaken over what happened to Fitz, aren’t you?”

  Mona wanted to confide in her sister, tell her how strange things had been in the weeks since the terrifying forty-eight hours when her reporter husband had been held hostage by a deranged gunman.

  But Mona had an image to uphold. She was the one who coped, the one who had risen to the challenge after their brother, Paris, was murdered. After Mama died.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she lied through her teeth. Something had changed with Fitz, though he protested otherwise. Something new switching the current rushing over the bedrock that was the only man she’d ever loved. Thank God they were going away this weekend, never mind that she couldn’t afford the break. Things would get back to normal if they could only be alone for a bit.

  Kat snorted. “Well, I was scared to death, and Fitz isn’t even my husband…more’s the pity.”

  Mona’s lips curved at that. Kat had always proclaimed loudly how she coveted her sister’s husband. Fitz and Kat disagreed vociferously and often on almost everything under the sun, but he was just as fond of her. He was the big brother Kat had lost when too young. “Fitz is fine, and so am I. I’m just terribly busy at work, and this party is consuming every spare second.”

  “Carlton’s hosting, God knows the leading prospect for ambassador to Great Britain can afford to hire a party planner. You should be cuddling with your hunk of a husband, not adding this to your load. The old bastard doesn’t deserve it, Mo. Why do you do this to yourself? He’s never going to appreciate what it’s costing you. Don’t you get it? We’re not important to him. We never were.”

  Paris was. Mona was sure her sister would be thinking the same thing. But their elder brother had died at sixteen, his bright golden hope extinguished on one violent night.

  Paris had died a hero, defending his twin from rape by Lucas Walker, may he rot in hell.

  Mona blocked out the chaos outside her office door and concentrated on a to-do list a mile long. “It’s an important night for him, the first performance in almost ten years. His seventy-fifth birthday. He’s our father, Kat.” She sighed, rubbing her temple again. “Maybe he wasn’t the best one, but—”

  “Please,” her sister responded dryly. “Don’t start with the excuses for him. I’m eating breakfast.”

  “It’s one-thirty.” Mona smiled in spite of herself. “Don’t tell me. Reheated pizza.” Her sister’s knockout figure certainly couldn’t be attributed to the quality of her diet.

  “Okay, I won’t. And it was a long night.” Her sister’s voice got that cat-in-cream purr. “Wanna hear about it, old married lady?” Kat teased, good humor restored.

  “No, I do not wish to hear the details of your lurid sex life. Just promise me you’re being careful.”

  Kat laughed. “Careful is no fun. With the big three-o staring me in the face, caution is the last thing on my mind.”

  “Life doesn’t end at thirty, goose.”

  “It’s sure as hell not going to with me. I met this guy last night who is hung like—”

  “I’ll be saying goodbye now, Kat.”

  Her sister’s throaty laugh made Mona chuckle, too.

  “So will you do it? Make sure Tansy has something new to wear?” Mona hastened to add, “Think my taste, not yours.” But she was smiling, though Kat’s penchant was more for leather than lace.

  Kat sniffed. “My gallery caters to all different palates, Mo, not just mine. I can see the appeal of other styles—I just don’t want to wear them.”

  “You have excellent taste,” Mona soothed.

  “Not that Tansy will notice. She’d just as likely wear sackcloth as silk.”

  “But Daddy will—and his friends, too. I don’t want anything to mar his big night.”

  “God forbid that anything should get between Martin the Magnificent and his grand ambitions.”

  “Kat…”

  “All right, all right.” Kat surrendered. “Anything else?”

  “Who are you bringing?” Mona nearly bit her own tongue for asking.

  “Fitz is taken, right?” Her sister giggled. “In that case, I think I’ll torture you awhile longer.”

  “What does the new guy look like? Is he of legal age?” Kat had a thing for young flesh.

  “He’s got an all-over tattoo and he’s not much on wearing clothes. Daddy’s friends will love him.”

  “Kat—” But she didn’t get any further.

  Her sister whooped. “Gotcha.”

  “Bring Armand. Please. I’ll beg if I have to.”

  “Armand? Get real, Mona. We don’t do social.”

  “He’s perfect.”

  “Perfect to keep me in line, you mean. God, Mona, Armand’s too old to be any fun.”

  “He’s barely forty and the most charming man in town.”

  “Forty-four, and I don’t need a chaperone.”

  “Consider it, that’s all. He’d help you get through it. And Tansy loves being with him.”

  Mona could almost hear her sister’s brain whirling. There was nothing either of them wouldn’t do for Tansy. Neither was willing to give up on the fairy princess, lost in her dreamworld for so long. The oldest at thirty-six, Tansy was perfectly preserved in girlhood. She shouldn’t be moldering in that haunted apartment Daddy refused to sell.

  Mona’s assistant appeared in the doorway, using their signal for a special call. “Kat? I have to go. Please—just think about it, all right?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Dramatic sigh.

  “I’ll be dropping by Daddy’s later. Can I tell Tansy to expect you?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Mona ignored her tone. “This week?”

  “Go away, Mo. Love you.” And with that, Kat hung up.

  I love you, too. Kat was flashy and temperamental, Mona’s opposite in almost every sense, but she was the only real family Mona had left. They shared more than their father’s penchant for naming his children after Shakespearean characters. Paris and Titania. Desdemona and Katharina.

  Her bond with Kat was one forged in exile. Once possessed of a rich, full life in New York with a famous if distant father and a gorgeous, adoring mother, all four children had been sent by Martin to Texas to live with his mother-in-law when Juliette fell ill with cancer. He’d been determined to focus on saving his dying wife. They had been thoroughly and completely abandoned in a strange, raw place, banished from his mind until the day he inexplicably sent for Paris and Tansy and left the two younger girls behind with Nana.

  Then the life they’d known in New York shattered forever. Paris died, Tansy retreated into a world where
no one could follow and Mama died a few months later. Mona and Kat were forgotten in the wake of a family’s destruction. Texas became more real than New York. Then one day Nana, too, was gone.

  But Mona understood Daddy’s devotion. Mama had been so beautiful, so magical. She didn’t blame Daddy.

  It was Lucas Walker who was responsible. The friend Paris should never have trusted, the viper Mama should never have welcomed to her breast, to her comfort.

  It was not Daddy but Lucas Walker who had destroyed them.

  Just outside the doorway of her father’s living room, Mona paused to watch Martin Gerard pace slowly, his carriage that of an aging king, over the shabby Persian rug that had once glowed like a ruby in the apartment he’d inhabited for forty-two years. The West Side Highway roared dully through closed windows overlooking the bare trees of Riverside Park.

  “‘Tell me, my daughters—since now we will divest us both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of state,—which of you shall we say doth love us most? That we our largest bounty may extend where nature doth with merit challenge—’”

  He gestured expansively toward the slender blonde across the room. “‘Goneril, our eldest-born, speak first.’”

  Still out of sight, Mona observed her sister, older by one year. Tansy’s long pale hair glowed in the Tiffany lamp. Once honey-blond, her hair had turned almost white after that night when everything changed forever.

  The daughter Martin had named after Titania, the queen of the fairies, was heartbreaking in her beauty, a delicate hothouse orchid trembling at the arching tip of a thread-slender stalk. Curled in the overstuffed once-burgundy sofa almost as old as she herself, Tansy lifted her twinkling blue gaze from the script, her voice melodious with the amusement she tried to stifle. “‘Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter; dearer than eye-sight, space and liberty—’”

  Her smile slipped away, replaced by the gentle, soft-focus glow that was uniquely hers. She spoke the words without glancing at the page, her eyes locked in the distance. “‘Beyond what can be valu’d, rich or rare; no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour; as much as child e’er loved, or father found; a love that makes breath poor and speech unable; beyond all manner of so much I love you.’”