by Abbie Roads
Cain hung up.
He shouldn’t. He knew he shouldn’t, yet his finger hit Mac’s number. He braced himself for Mac’s reaction. Mac was smart enough to add. One Mercy missing plus one Cain missing equaled a whole hell of a lot of problems.
Mac picked up on the first ring. “I was just getting ready to call you. We caught a case. A bad one. I need to talk to you about it.”
Cain’s brain had trouble catching up with Mac’s words. He’d expected disappointment. Anger. Something. He hadn’t expected shop talk.
“Cain? You there? You all right?” Mac had the concerned tone again. The one he used far too often around Cain.
“Uh…uh…” Christ, what was he going to say? He should’ve taken two seconds to think about how this conversation was going to play out before he’d called Mac. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.”
“What’s wrong? I can hear it in your voice. Talk to me. Whatever it is, you’ll be fine. We’ll get through it. I’m here for you. Always have been. Always will be.” The words flowed out of Mac’s mouth as if he’d carefully rehearsed them for years.
And didn’t that just about suck. That Mac had suspected Cain would lose his shit at some point and had a pre-rehearsed set of platitudes.
Ignore that. Focus on what’s important. “What have you heard about Mercy?”
Mac breathed one of those dodged-a-bullet sighs. “I talked to Legal at the Bureau, and they say we can’t do anything until her psychiatrist gives us permission. The only option is to file a motion to have her mental state evaluated by another psychiatrist, but that could take months. And if they fight it, years.”
Holy. Fucking. Christ. Mac hadn’t heard that Mercy was missing?
No. Mac would’ve heard. Everyone should’ve heard by now. It should be playing on all the radio and TV stations. Something as big as Mercy Ledger going missing from a psychiatric facility wouldn’t be kept quiet. Hell no. That was the stuff of good ratings.
“I have Mercy.” Cain blurted the words out without even trying to pretty them up.
Silence for a few beats. “Say that again. ’Cause I could’ve sworn you said you had Mercy.”
“I do. She’s with me. I’ve had her for two days now. You’d know if she had been reported missing. So that means she hasn’t been reported missing. And that says there’s something majorly fucked up going on.”
“Wait a minute, I’m still back on you saying you have her. What do you mean you have her?”
“I mean she’s in my bed sleeping off all the meds Dr. Payne had her on. And her short-term memory is shot to shit from the shock treatments.”
“You…you…” Mac stuttered.
“I intended just to meet with Mercy so I could find out about the symbol. That’s all. Liz agreed to make that happen. I never thought Liz would demand I take Mercy. And when she told me what Dr. Payne had been doing to her… Mac, I couldn’t leave Mercy there. That man was going to kill her.”
“Liz? Liz helped you take her? Two days ago? And you haven’t talked to or seen Liz since?” Mac didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Christ. I’m on my way back there right now. Don’t you move. Don’t you do anything. Don’t call anyone or talk to anyone. We’ll figure out how to handle this.”
“I’m not at home.” He gave Mac the directions to the cabin, and they hung up.
In three hours, he was going to pull one of the biggest cowardly moves of his life. He was going to dump Mercy Ledger in Mac’s lap and walk away.
Chapter 5
What does it say about us that our primary sources of entertainment are shows and movies that glamourize violence, rape, and murder?
—Ellis Worth, MD, Journal of Human and Philosophical Studies
The first thing Mercy became aware of was her face throbbing a low-level beat. Her bones ached, and her muscles felt too heavy to move. Her side burned with every inhale and exhale. Her stomach felt oddly distended and empty at the same time.
And she was going to milk it for all it was worth.
She finally had a viable excuse to stay in her room, avoid group, and cancel her session with Dr. Payne. The flu. She’d tell everyone she had the flu. Couldn’t be too far from the truth. It wasn’t like she was faking how bad her body felt. She would spend the entire day lying here, eyes closed pretending to sleep, and luxuriating in the rare bit of isolation.
“Are you awake?” a masculine voice whispered.
Her heart slammed against her spine, and her muscles leaped. She gasped a sound of undiluted shock and wrenched her eyes open.
The world around her had changed. Gone was the sterile room with bars on the windows. Gone was the stench of industrial cleaning products laced with cafeteria food. Gone was the entire Center. In its place was a cozy wood-paneled room with a quaint stone fireplace and a man.
His hair was the color of dark caramel and cut just long enough to be swept messily to the side. His features were angular and hard and so damned masculine it almost hurt to look at him. His eyes were the color of a changing sky—light in the center of the iris like a cloudless summer day and dark like a winter’s night toward the outer edge.
She knew him. Recognition stabbed her in the neck—in the scar she bore across her throat. The echo of that past pain stole her breath. She grabbed her throat, hand pressing over the cold scar. Her heart turned into a battering ram and beat against the bars of her ribs.
She went from lying on the bed to fully upright and ready to run.
“You.” The word was an accusation, a condemnation, a judgment, scraping its way up her throat and out her lips. She wasn’t going to show him an ounce of fear. He’d swallowed her fear twenty years ago and enjoyed the flavor.
He blinked, a long, lazy closing of his eyes, and when he reopened them, the light in his gaze had been swallowed by the dark. “I’m not him.” He spoke with just as much conviction as her allegation had contained.
His words turtle-crawled from her ears to her brain, their meaning finally firing along her synapses, and she understood.
Her body unclenched, and she relaxed against the headboard with an exaggerated sigh. As the initial in-your-face shock wore off, she could actually see him. See the humanity in his features. Something his father would never possess. And if he’d intended her harm, she would have felt the energy of his foul intentions.
“I know you.” Her voice was softer and held a bit of wonder in its palm.
“I’m not him.” He repeated the sentence, nothing in his tone changing, but she saw something in his eyes—through his eyes. Sadness. Resolve. And just a hint of fear. That was her undoing. That he could be scared of her—wow.
“I-I know. You’re Cain.” His name came out in hard vowels and sharp consonants.
He held her gaze for moment, then shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and looked down at the floor.
Silence stretched between them.
For years, she’d imagined what it would be like to have a conversation with him. Even from her first glimpse of him as a child on the TV, she’d recognized something in his eyes. Her eyes had that same scarred look. The look of having experienced something so painful that it marked more than their bodies—it left gaping wounds on their souls. There was an unspoken solidarity in their shared pain.
But in all her fantasies of connecting with the only other person who knew firsthand the evils of Killion, she’d never once thought there’d be this much silence.
Obviously, it was going to be up to her to make the first move.
“You know”—she cleared her throat, trying to go for a friendly tone—“over the years I had thought about finding you. It always seemed like we had a bad bond of sorts. I just never did it because I didn’t know how you’d react.”
That got his attention. He raised his gaze to meet hers, the hard angles of his face easing just a bit.
He looked at the scar on her neck while he spoke. “I’d thought about the same thing.” His words were spoken with a tentative quality, as if he worried about her response. “But I always wondered if I would remind you of…” He didn’t say the name.
“You look similar to him on the surface, but I see beyond the surface to you.” She emphasized the word you. Wanted him to understand she didn’t equate him with his father. “You also look different to me somehow. Maybe it’s your eyes. Maybe it’s how you look at me. So different than he did.” She held her hand out to him. “Nice to meet you, Cain. I’m Mercy.”
One second. Two. Three. Four. Five… Finally he stepped toward her and grasped her hand in his. His grip was firm and dry, his skin rough and wonderful, his touch magnetic and hypnotizing. She got lost in the sensation of total connection. Of there being no boundaries between them, almost as if their skin, muscle, and bones had melded together into one—
He yanked his hand away from her so suddenly that hers was left out there in midair, still holding the shadow of where his had been. Something was wrong. She just didn’t know him well enough to understand.
He aimed his eyes toward the floor again. “You’ve been pretty sick. You went through the vomit stage. The fever stage. The drunk, flirty stage was my personal favorite.” A smile almost grabbed hold of his lips, but missed. “The crying stage.” He sucked in a breath and spoke while he exhaled. “The scared-of-me stage.”
The way he said those last words made him sound more like a little boy trying to be brave than six feet of hard-muscled male—who also happened to resemble a serial killer. His tone made her want to reach out to him and offer comfort, but he was so skittish with her that she didn’t dare.
“This”—he gestured with his head to indicate her and the cabin—“wasn’t my intention. It was all because of Liz. She—”
“Liz?” The nurse had always been the only staff member Mercy trusted. “How do you know Liz?”
“I know her from when I was a child.”
Of course. Killion had been the custodian at the Center, a fact Dr. Payne never allowed her to forget.
“We’ve kept in contact over the years. She’s my…” He stopped like he was searching for the right word. “Friend. Anyway, I’m a consultant for the FBI. Almost a week ago, I found a link between a current case and yours.”
It wasn’t like he’d suddenly started speaking a foreign language, but Mercy couldn’t quite wrap her mind around what he was saying. And he knew it. He’d stopped speaking, his gaze searching her face for…something she couldn’t name, something she didn’t understand.
She fought to find the words she needed to say. “Killion is in prison.” When she said the name, Cain flinched as if she’d slapped him.
“Yes, he is, but we still needed to speak with you.” Still, Cain wouldn’t look at her. Did she look that terrible?
She listened as he explained how MacNeil Anderson—she remembered him from all those years ago—had tried to talk with her, but Dr. Payne had denied him. So Cain had sought Liz’s go-around-the-rules help. “When Liz wheeled you out the door”—he shook his head—“it was pretty plain what Dr. Payne had done to you.”
As he told her all the ways Dr. Payne had hurt her, Mercy’s mind searched for some memory to attach to those events, but it kept coming up with a big, fat nothing. And yet she didn’t doubt Cain for a moment. Dr. Payne had been playing a game with her the entire time she’d been on Ward B. Because of her internal warning system, she’d always managed to stay one move ahead of him. Until he suddenly ended the game and she was the loser.
“So, I feel bad because of the withdrawals, the shock treatments, and Dr. Payne hitting me.” She was glad she couldn’t remember it.
“Yeah.”
Withdrawals. Shock treatments. Dr. Payne. She’d heard her own words, and suddenly they added up to one terrible question. Was Cain acting uneasy because he assumed her gray matter was malfunctioning? She’d spent the last two years of her life locked in a psychiatric facility. That didn’t happen to normal people. Not that she was perfectly normal, but she wasn’t batshit, bananas, or bonkers. But then Dr. Payne always told her that crazy people don’t know they were crazy. What did that asshole know?
“I’m not crazy. I didn’t belong in there.”
His brows dipped low over his beautiful eyes. “Never said you did.”
“Really. I’m not crazy. I don’t know how it happened, but someone did something to get me locked in there. I spent the first six months shouting about how I wasn’t nuts. Finally, I decided to change my strategy. Go along to get along. When in Rome and all that crap. I cooperated. I did every damned thing they asked of me, and still it wasn’t enough to get me out of there.”
“How did you end up in there?”
“No joke, the cops showed up, and right behind them were the men in white coats, and right behind them was Dr. Payne.”
“Why was he there the day they took you? Had you met him before then?”
“I’d never seen him before in my life.”
Cain glanced at her, then looked away again. “Did someone…you know, say you were crazy?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have people in my life. I have no relationships or friendships. You know how it is. Everyone acts like Killion dipped us in gold, and they all want to break off a piece of us for a sick souvenir. I don’t let people in my life. So if you want names, I don’t have any.” No one understood that the sum total of her existence could add up to more than that one terrible day. Everyone acted as if that one day was her entire life.
Except for Cain. He would understand. He was in the same position.
“And I’ve never told anyone about my ability. I could see if I had, they might wonder. It is a little strange, but I’ve never mentioned it to anyone except you. So I have no idea—absolutely none—how I ended up in there.” For just a moment after she finished talking, things were okay. Then the impact of what she’d said hit her. Damn. Probably shouldn’t have mentioned her ability. It didn’t exactly jibe with her I-swear-I’m-sane argument. It was his danged fault she’d said it. He was so quiet she just kept talking and talking, filling the silence with things she shouldn’t be saying.
“Your ability?” His attention locked on her so tight she almost couldn’t move. Great. Now he chose to look at her. Probably assessing her danger level.
That piece of her was out there now. She couldn’t suck it back in and pretend she hadn’t said it. That would only make things worse. “I’m not mental. This is real. After Killion… You know… Well… Um…” She almost couldn’t figure out how to put it into words. “It’s like I have an internal warning system. I’m sensitive to bad energy or bad vibes. I can tell when someone has bad intentions.
“I don’t know why or how it happens, but it’s like memories come into my mind, but they’re not memories. They’re what the person intends to do in the future. It’s not perfect. Especially if a person is behaving spontaneously. So I can’t rely on it.” She’d gone this far, so she might as well finish it off. “It’s a one-way kind of thing—I only see bad. Never the good.”
As she watched, a shield of wariness fell over him, dimming the light in his eyes. A tiny part of her wanted to be angry at him for not believing her, but she didn’t have the strength for anger right now, and logically she couldn’t blame the guy. If she were in his shoes, would she really buy what she was trying to sell? Hell no. She’d go running from the store. “I know it sounds weird. It’s not exactly normal, but it is real.”
He nodded, a curt movement of his head, one that she interpreted to mean that he’d heard her words, understood their meaning, and didn’t want to talk about her craziness any longer. All right; give him what he wanted. “So what’s next for me? You pretty much kidnapped”—he winced slightly at that word—“me, so I’m assuming everyone is searching for me. I’m going to ne
ed a lawyer to keep me out of the Center. You’re going to need one to deal with any charges they file. And I should notify the police that I’m all right. I don’t want them wasting their resources.”
“No one is looking for you.” The sentence came out calm and flat.
“But—”
“I just talked with Mac. He said there’s been no mention of you being missing. My translation of the situation: Dr. Payne doesn’t want anyone to know you’re missing.”
Cain stared at her for a long moment. At least he was looking at her more directly now. Then he turned away and went to work at the small counter across the room.
What did that mean? Understanding? Should she say something else? Figure out how to keep him engaged in conversation to prove she wasn’t Insane Jane? “Um… Thank you for getting me out of there. You probably saved my life.”
He came toward her with a glass of water in one hand and a bowl in the other. “You’ve been drinking pretty regular, but I haven’t been able to get you to eat anything.”
Her stomach gave a growl worthy of a hyena defending its kill. “Yeah, I think I’m starving.”
“The cabin is primitive. No electric. No running water. No refrigeration. So food here isn’t anything fancy.” He handed her a bowl of Spaghetti-Os.
“You gave me Spaghetti-Os. Did you know they used to be my favorite?” Her voice wavered and she stared down at the orange sauce, the round mushy O’s. Tears pricked her eyes. She didn’t normally let herself think about the past—the good or the bad or the mundane. They all hurt for different reasons. “Mom liked to make everything homemade, but sometimes she let me have these as a treat.”
Cain settled his palm on her shoulder. His solid strength soothed her, anchoring her in the present. She closed her eyes, turned her head to his wrist, and rubbed her cheek against the bristly hairs on his arm. He gave her a gentle squeeze but didn’t move his hand. His understanding was unlike anyone else’s. He got it. Really got it in a way that no one else did. He understood how Killion destroyed lives. Because his had been destroyed too. He had been a victim too.