Without Mercy

by Lisa Jackson

  “And he wouldn’t want his private notes about the students’ mental conditions made public.”

  Jules rubbed the back of her neck, trying to work out the knots of tension that had developed as she’d pored over files that had survived the fire. “It makes sense for the parents in a perverse way. Enrolling the problem kids here at Blue Rock into the college programs would be a way to keep them out of trouble and jail.”

  “And their names out of the papers. Less media attention, less scandal,” he said.

  “It’s a win-win situation. The parents believe their twisted little darlings are safe and”—she made air quotes with her fingers—” ‘getting help.’ Their kids can graduate from college and appear ‘normal.’”

  “Sick, that’s what it is.”

  Jules agreed. But there was still a lot to learn. All of the puzzle pieces weren’t dropping neatly into place; there were lots of holes she couldn’t quite fill. “I’m just wondering if these ‘red-taped’ kids are placed in that elite force you told me about, the one run by Bert Flannagan.”

  He considered. “It’s possible, I suppose. Hell, after what you’ve shown me, anything is.”

  She was already thinking hard. “It only gets worse, I think.”

  “How could it possibly get any worse?”

  “I already told you that Shay suspects there’s a secret cult on campus. What if it’s not just TAs? What if members of the staff are involved? Probably Lynch. Maybe others.”

  “Wait a second.” He tossed her a look that accused her of finally going around the bend.

  “Just hear me out. I know it sounds really out there, kinda insane, but think about it. The cult would need a leader.”

  “Come on, Jules. These are qualified educators with degrees and awards and years of experience. Just because you might not like any of them doesn’t mean they’re criminals.”

  She felt as if the weight of the world had settled on her shoulders, but she was certain she was on the right track. “Hey. I’m not making this up. Look for yourself.” She scooted another slim stack of blackened pages his way and pointed to the top file, where the name Flannagan, Bert was visible. Near his name was a piece of singed red tape. “Some of the faculty files are marked, too.”

  “You’re right. It’s worse.” He shoved his chair back and stood. “Lynch sure knows how to pick ‘em.”

  “That he does.” She reached over the table for a stack of files, suddenly conscious of her arm brushing his, the rising heat in the room, the clean smell coming off his skin, a mixture of soap and sweat. “I’d be willing to bet my cat’s nine lives that they were recruited for just that purpose.”

  “Then he’s as sick as the rest of ‘em.”

  “Sicker,” she said, “if that’s possible.”

  “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing …”

  Maeve’s voice was the barest of whispers as she sang a song from her youth group and trod steadily through the snow. It seemed as if she’d been walking for hours, but the truth of the matter was she’d chosen to plod along at a slow pace. She had to be wary. Already she’d dealt with Mr. Taggert, convincing him and Tim Takasumi that she was returning to her room, when, really, once they were out of sight, she’d left the dorm again.

  Did they really think they could stop her? No one could stop love.

  She knew that Ethan would have trouble getting away. He was on security detail, so she’d had to kill time, walking in the snow, thinking about what she’d say to him, how she’d confront him, how she’d make him love her again.

  He does, he does, he does love you. You just have to show him, prove it.

  Now she was at the stable, and she let herself into the building that smelled of horses and hay. This hadn’t been her choice. Why would she want to meet where Nona and Drew had been killed? Or maybe it was fate to be here, where they had made love for the last time.

  There was something romantic about that, right?

  It wasn’t creepy or weird.

  Dimmed security lights gave off an eerie blue glow, illuminating the aisle between the stalls like runway lights. It was warmer inside, but darker without the snow’s white reflection. Rakes, harnesses, brushes, brooms, buckets, and feed bags became dark figures, fuzzy in the umbra of the unlit corners. She saw embodiments of evil in the shadows. The bit of a bridle reflecting the blue light, the tines of a pitchfork glinting evilly as Lucifer’s weapon.

  For a second, she thought she heard the mocking refrain of “A Mighty Fortress” in the creak of the floorboards overhead, from a chorus of lost souls who had died before her.

  “The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him. His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure….”

  She ran the words in her head, driving the evil out, pushing the bad things from her mind. She’d always liked that line about the Prince of Darkness, imagining herself plunging a sword into a black-caped demon. Yeah, that would be tight.

  Then the rafters creaked overhead, and her resolve faded. The music in her head died, and she felt her skin crawl. Maybe this was a bad idea, coming to the place where two people had died.

  She snapped the band on her wrist and moved forward, slowly, half-expecting the snarling ghosts of Nona and Drew to leap out at her. Nona, without clothes, her head perched at an impossible angle upon her long neck, and Drew, naked and wide-eyed, blood dripping from his head wound, could appear at any instant.

  Maeve’s heart grew still.

  Stop freaking yourself out! You’re here to meet Ethan, your Romeo! There are no ghosts. No ghouls. No one here to do you harm. Only Ethan if you’re lucky.

  She kept tugging and releasing the rubber band at her wrist as she forced herself to get a grip, to pull herself together.

  The horses were as restless and edgy as she was, as if they, too, sensed a lurking presence of evil. They shuffled nervously in their stalls, snorting and pawing. Tails switching, hooves clomping, they neighed and refused to quiet.

  Maeve swallowed back her fear and found comfort in the knife hidden within her boot, its razor-sharp blade touching her ankle, teasing the skin beneath her sock. She felt a bit better knowing she could retrieve it in a second.

  Knives.

  Scissors.

  Razors.

  Hated, beloved friends.

  It’s all right. It’s all right. Just be patient. Ethan will come. He has to.

  And yet, the moan of the wind brought goose bumps to the back of her neck, a crinkle to her scalp.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of movement over by Scout’s box.

  She froze.

  Ethan?

  Was he playing games with her?

  Again, a shadow darted near the feed bins.

  Was it Ethan, come to meet her? Or someone else, someone who had stalked her, Nona’s murderer come back to haunt the scene of the crime?

  Dear God.

  Her heart beat as wildly as the wings of a thousand frightened bats.

  Her throat closed, and she slowly bent down, intent on retrieving the hunting knife.

  But now there was no movement at the feed bins. No homicidal maniac.

  And really, maybe one of the freakin’ horses moved.

  Oh, get over it. There’s nothing evil here! No Satan with his pitchfork. No ghosts of schoolmates past.

  Arizona, the gray mare, snorted as Maeve passed. She nickered softly, obviously wanting attention, but Maeve didn’t have time. Now that she was here, she was on a mission, had to keep moving. She ignored Plato, the dun gelding who observed her suspiciously from the back of his stall, and Scout, the paint with the white face and eerie pale eyes. A gust of wind pounded the building, rattling the panes in the windows and howling eerily from the hayloft high above.

  The spot where Nona’s nude body had hung, twisting in the winter wind.

  Again, Maeve swallowed back her fear. She was here to see Ethan. Meet him. Vow her love.

  Finally, she reached Omen’s stall.
The big black horse was inside, standing toward the back, the muscles of his sleek coat seeming to quiver.

  “It’s okay, boy,” she said, but was unable to convince herself as the hymn replayed in her mind. The body they may kill, God’s love abideth still …

  This was the place Ethan meant; she was sure of it.

  The note she’d received, tucked in her math book during the class where Ethan was a TA, had been only one word: OMEN.

  She turned to Omen, who snorted suspiciously. “He’ll be here,” she whispered to the pitch-black gelding. “I know it.”

  In the past, they’d met here when Ethan got off duty, around eleven. This had to be right.

  She reached for the latch of the stall and opened the gate.

  She’d hide inside with the big black horse standing guard.

  Ethan would find her.

  He would.

  CHAPTER 36

  A cult?

  Jules was trying to sell him on some secret society led by one of the teachers or even Reverend Lynch himself, but Trent was still a little skeptical. Her reasoning was sound, to a point. Why, he wondered, would Lynch need a cult when he already ruled this tiny little enclave?

  Trent thought of the grisly scene he’d witnessed in the stable. Could it be part of some kind of initiation? A macabre sacrificial rite?

  If so, the sheriff’s department would be stunned. They were working on the premise of a lone killer, someone psychotic enough within the school to pull off the double homicide, someone with a history of violence. Detectives Baines and Jalinsky were doing background checks on the students and faculty; however, considering the type of student Blue Rock attracted, the investigations had hit on dozens of juvenile arrest records. The suspect list in the sheriff’s investigation was not narrowing yet.

  And he knew that Jules wouldn’t want to hear who was at the top of that list.

  Guilt gnawed at him as he watched her go through the motions of trying to prove her theory—and Shaylee Stillman’s—that the murders of Drew Prescott and Nona Vickers were part of some elaborate plot devised by a fanatical cult. That the murders and the cult were somehow linked to Lauren Conway’s disappearance.

  But Trent listened to Jules’s theory. To her credit, she was putting together a pretty good case as they sat at the old oak table in his quarters. As much as he had doubted her, Trent saw where Jules was going with her theory of what was happening at the academy.

  He’d pushed his chair next to hers to read over her shoulder, glad for an excuse to be close. As the fire burned in the grate, they went over the information together.

  Jules had sorted the faculty records into stacks on the table. Most of the information was standard: résumés and references, awards and degrees. But the handwritten notes in the red-taped files, they were disturbing. As with the student files, it was the personal notes in files marked with red tape that gnawed at him, pricking that instinct that something wasn’t right.

  From a partly singed paper, he learned that Salvatore DeMarco, while an accomplished math teacher, was also an ex-Marine who had been thrown out of the corps for fights that sent him to the brig and his combatants to the hospital with knife wounds. After the Marines, he’d served six months in jail for beating a woman who’d cut him off in traffic.

  “Lynch notes that DeMarco has anger-management issues,” he said. “That’s putting it lightly.”

  “Scary stuff, huh?” Jules said, biting her lower lip in that manner he found so distracting. It made him think of nuzzling her lips with his teeth….

  He placed a hand at the back of her neck and felt her tense until he rubbed the exposed skin gently. “Yeah, it’s real scary.” He turned back to the files, trying to understand where all of this was going. Why would Lynch hire anyone he considered remotely unstable or volatile to deal with at-risk kids? What was his purpose?

  Kirk Spurrier’s folder had been destroyed, except for the bottom notes on a couple of pages. Trent was able to make out part of his résumé, where he’d listed that he’d been a pilot in the Air Force and was adept with weaponry. On the other partially legible page, Lynch had noted that Spurrier was sometimes passive-aggressive.

  “Passive-aggressive. Isn’t that what we do to keep from lashing out at people the way DeMarco does?” he said as Jules pushed her chair back and walked to the kitchen.

  “Sometimes,” she agreed. “But there are extremes.”

  Jordan Ayres’s file was intact, and the only comment by Lynch was that he considered her extremely capable but felt she was someone who had authority issues. Trent read “bossy” between the lines.

  Jules returned with what was left of the coffee. She refilled each of their cups from the glass pot, then carried it back to the kitchen.

  As she did, the lights blinked again. Hell. The last thing they needed was to lose power. He watched the incandescent bulb in the fixture over the table begin to glow again.

  “Looks like we’re on borrowed time with the electricity.”

  “There are backup generators, aren’t there?” she asked, the empty pot still in her hand as she stood at the archway to the kitchen.

  “Yeah, but they won’t help here. The generators have enough juice to power up the dorms, education hall, chapel, rec hall, and some of the outbuildings like the stable, but that’s it. Stanton House will have power; I won’t. None of these cabins will. So we’d better get ready.” He pushed back his chair and set to work stacking wood near the fireplace, enough for the night. He also lit three candles in glass jars to give light where kerosene lanterns might fail. Inside the small closet off the hall, he found a couple of flashlights and flipped them on to make sure the batteries were strong. Both lights fired up with steady beams. “We might freeze,” he said, “but we sure as hell will be able to see.”

  “How comforting.” Jules stretched, placing her hands over her head and arching her back as she moved her head from side to side.

  Her breasts were thrust forward, the hollow of her throat revealed, and he had to drag his eyes away, force his concentration to the remnants of the documents on the table. Did she have any idea how sexy she appeared, her dark hair cascading down her back, her eyes closed as her lean runner’s body stretched?

  The woman had to realize what she was doing.

  With an effort, he tore his eyes from her, turning back to what was left of Rhonda Hammersley’s file. No red tape here. This woman seemed on the level—solid, conscientious, religious. Lynch’s only note was that she internalized too many problems and was an overachiever, which Trent found odd. Wasn’t that what Lynch wanted? Wasn’t it what he preached to the kids?

  So why the notes about the violent tendencies of the other staff members? Why hire these ticking time bombs? True, Lynch needed strong, tough teachers. Leaders, not psychos.

  Bert Flannagan’s dossier noted that he’d been dismissed from several colleges and had an attraction for weaponry. After his stint in the U.S. Army, he’d been denied two jobs in law enforcement. The word mercenary was written with a question mark beside it.

  Wade Taggert’s file was almost completely burned; just one note suggesting he had delusions of grandeur could be deciphered when Trent held a magnifying glass and flashlight close to the browned page.

  “Here’s a really scary one,” Jules said, pushing some nearly illegible pages toward him. Trent read his own file and saw that Lynch had noted that Trent had once been employed by the Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department, was an ace marksman, and was licensed to carry a gun. All true.

  “Funny woman.”

  “Just trying to keep things light.”

  “It’s nice to know that you’re not only an idiot for sneaking around Lynch’s office all by yourself, but also a comedienne.”

  “We got the information, didn’t we?”

  “You should have told me. I would have come with you.”

  “You would have tried to talk me out of it,” she said, her eyebrows rising, daring him to argue.

&n
bsp; “Probably.”

  “So don’t go calling me an idiot.”

  “How about bullheaded?”

  “Maybe.”

  He leveled his gaze at her as she held her coffee cup in two hands and placed her lips over the rim. “From now on, you don’t go anywhere without me.”

  “Don’t go all macho on me, Trent.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know, but think about it. Don’t you have security duty? I do. With Hammersley and DeMarco.”

  “I don’t trust him. DeMarco.”

  She let out a nervous laugh and shook her head. “Me neither, Cowboy. But for the record,” she said, pointing to the burned pages, “I don’t trust anyone.”

  “Except for me.”

  “You?” she said in mock horror, glints of light in her gray eyes. “No way. The not-trusting thing, it goes double for you!”

  Maeve was tired of waiting.

  She was freezing in the stall, and Omen, the big black gelding, wasn’t happy that she was there. He’d even pissed near her, the smell so acrid and disgusting she was about to retch.

  She tried to hang on to her sense of hope. Ethan would be here any minute, as soon as he was off patrol. Then the wait would be worth it.

  But right now, hugging the manger in a huge animal’s smelly stall, freezing her butt off, didn’t seem like such a great idea.

  She checked her watch, the illuminated dial showing that she’d been waiting only twenty minutes.

  Give him time. He’ll be here!

  Still she was jumpy, her nerves on edge and that stupid hymn running in circles through her mind. She tried thinking of something newer, a song by Fergie coming to mind, but always, no matter what, the refrain of “A Mighty Fortress” came back to haunt her.

  She wiggled her toes in her boots, hoping to get the blood flowing, as her toes were beginning to turn to ice. Maybe she should get up and walk around. She’d been afraid to move, because she’d thought she’d seen the bogeyman in the shadows, Nona and Drew’s killer hiding between the bags of oats and bales of hay.

  Which was ridiculous.

  No bloodthirsty maniac had jumped out at her.