by Abbie Roads
“You need to know some things. I did pull the trigger. I did shoot Cain. And I do regret it. But I want you to understand why I did it. And to understand that, you need to understand who Dr. Payne is.” She played the highlights reel from her time in the Center. “When Dr. Payne showed up at the cabin, Mac tried to protect me, but Dr. Payne doesn’t like anyone or anything getting between us so he shot Mac.”
This next part was going to be the part she really needed Dolan to understand. Cain settled his hand over hers as if offering his support for what she was about to say. “Then he messed with my mind. Forced me back to that day twenty years ago. He knew things. Things no one else knows. Things I’ve never told anyone. And I got lost in the past. For a moment I thought Cain was Killion, but only because Dr. Payne primed me to see Killion.”
“Jesus.” Dolan let out a low whistle. “This guy really is obsessed with you.”
“Welcome to the past two years of my life. You don’t have to worry about me hurting Cain. I’d never willingly harm him. Never. He saved me from Dr. Payne. He and Liz. I owe both of them my life.”
“Damn. There’s a whole tangled mess of connections here. You and Liz. Liz and Cain. You and Cain. You and the symbol. Cain and the symbol.”
Dolan’s words were such an unexpected combination that it took Mercy’s mind a bit longer to process them.
“I haven’t had a chance to ask her about the symbol yet.” Cain squeezed her hand. “She was sick. Then everything with Mac happened. There just hasn’t been any time.”
“What symbol?” Her mind raced back to Cain telling her that he and Mac wanted to talk to her about what happened to her family. She flipped through memories—but not the worst ones—searching for something that might be a symbol. Nothing. “I don’t know anything about a symbol.”
Dolan’s voice came over the phone speakers. “While Cain is doing his work at Liz’s, we’ll discuss the image. I’ve got a picture of the one you drew from twenty years ago. You might remember it if you see it again.”
“I don’t remember drawing anything.”
“Back then, we confirmed that your fingerprints were on the wall. We didn’t realize it was a symbol until the same design showed up at a recent crime scene.”
She stared out the back window at Dolan. “I want to be very clear when I say this. I won’t help you if you’re one of those people seeking to exonerate Killion. Too many times, I’ve been approached and asked to recant my testimony.”
Dolan’s sunglasses aimed right at her. He held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Killion’s a bastard who deserves worse than he got.”
Cain nodded his head but didn’t say anything. He handed the phone to her, then faced forward in his seat, shifted the car into gear, and pulled out onto the road. Dolan followed.
“I’m just trying to find out who’s copying this element of his crimes. And I need to find Dr. Payne. Bastard shot a federal agent. That doesn’t go unpunished,” Dolan said. “When we get to Liz Sands’s, I’ll need to take a formal statement from you. What you remember about the symbol and what happened at the cabin. Then we’re going to need to contact the local authorities. They’re the ones who will investigate and file charges against Edward Payne for what’s been done to you. By the time the FBI is done with him and you’re done with him, he’s going to be fighting at least a dozen serious charges and life in prison.”
Mercy couldn’t help it. A vindictive smile stretched across her lips. “Liz will corroborate a lot of my story so it won’t just be my word against his.”
“Liz is dead.”
Her face stung with cold, as if the temperature had just dropped to arctic levels. The sensation traveled down her neck, her torso.
Dead. Dead. Dead. Her mind locked on that word and refused to let go. Liz was dead.
“Jesus, Dolan. She didn’t know.” Cain snatched the phone away from her, tapped the screen, and tossed the phone onto the dash.
She stared straight ahead. At the rain hitting the windshield, at the wipers scraping it away, at the cars passing by them. They were on a highway. When did they get on a highway? Just a moment ago they’d been on the road Cain had found her on.
“Mercy?” She felt Cain’s gaze on her, heard the concern in his tone, and felt his hand covering hers. His skin was so warm. She just wanted to cuddle up next to him and take a nap. Maybe when she woke, she’d discover the past two years had been a nightmare. No, maybe she’d discover the past twenty had been the nightmare, and she was a ten-year-old girl again whose only worry was making sure the ribbon she wore in her hair perfectly matched her outfit.
But wishing for a thing never made it real.
“What happened to Liz?” She didn’t want to know. She needed to know.
“We don’t need to talk about this right now. Why don’t you—”
“Tell me what happened.” Mercy tried to make her tone forceful, but it came out as a whisper.
He squeezed her hand but didn’t say anything.
“Tell me, damn it.” But in her gut, she already knew. “It was Dr. Payne. Right? He did it to find me.”
Cain remained silent—all the confirmation she needed.
“It’s my fault.”
“No, it’s Assface’s fault. Not yours.”
She shook her head, denying his words with her body, because her mouth couldn’t speak. He gripped her hand tighter, telling her with his touch that she would be all right. It took willpower and fortitude and a bit of masochism, but she yanked her hand away from him. Coldness leaked into her, seeping deep into her bones.
Liz was dead because of her.
Mercy shifted to stare out the window at the same time tears pooled in her eyes, reached the tipping point, and skimmed down her cheeks. If Cain saw her tears, he’d offer her comfort. She didn’t deserve comfort. She deserved to be punished. She might not have delivered the fatal blow to Liz, but by caring for her, by liking her, by accepting her kindnesses, she’d sealed Liz’s fate.
Cain had been worried that she’d be frightened of him? He had it all wrong. He should be afraid of her. If she didn’t keep a tight rein on herself, if she didn’t get away from him as soon as possible, he would end up dead.
Chapter 10
The true opposite of good isn’t evil. It’s indifference. Lack of emotional connection. Lack of conscience.
—Lucille Bert, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation
Somber, swollen clouds hung low in the sky, skimming the rooftops as Cain navigated the car through Liz’s neighborhood. If clouds could look depressed, these fit the diagnosis. And Cain’s mood.
How had everything gone from the paradise of the kiss to the misery of Mercy yanking her hand away from him and refusing to look at him? Heap on top of that the growing dread gnawing at his gut, and the drive had been his own personal perdition.
Mercy slept, curled against the passenger-side door. She had blamed herself for Liz’s death—he could see that in her reaction. It wasn’t her fault, but he understood how survivor guilt worked. Knew the illogical nature of it and yet how the mind warped it into believability and truth.
He turned onto Liz’s tree-lined street in middle America. It might as well have been hell’s main boulevard, with the way sweat suddenly moistened his skin. His underarms turned into swampland. The oxygen in the car went stale, and the smell of blood he’d been able to ignore roared into his nostrils, demanding his attention.
He cranked down the window and leaned his head toward the opening to gulp the chilly, damp air. There was no relief. No solace. Things were only going to get worse—so much worse.
He eased the car to the curb in front of Liz’s house. Dolan’s black sedan slid in behind him.
So many times over the years, he’d parked right here. And every one of those times he’d wanted to be here. Except this time. This time Liz wouldn’t be openin
g the front door and rushing down the sidewalk to greet him. She wouldn’t be offering him her special homemade lemonade laced with vodka. She wouldn’t be stuffing him so full of home cooking he could barely walk. She wouldn’t be treating him like the son she’d never had.
No, all that was over and gone as if it had never existed.
He shifted into Park and shut off the engine. It normally pinged a few times as it cooled down. Not today. The abject silence around them was the slow inhalation before the scream. Now he had to go in there and allow the blood to transform him into the monster who killed the closest thing he’d ever had to a mother.
“Cain?” Mercy’s voice knocked him out of his thoughts. “Are you all right?” Her hand landed on his arm, and he realized he was gripping the steering wheel so tight his muscles shook. In the rearview mirror, he watched Dolan get out of his car.
“No, and I’m not going to be. I don’t know what your plans are after you speak with Dolan, but I’m going to be sick. I’ll have a migraine and be nonfunctional for eight hours.” It was pathetic that the headache was going to be the best part of this experience. He reached into his pants pocket and withdrew his money clip. He peeled off a twenty for gas and handed the rest to her—had to be few hundred there. “You make sure you take care of yourself.”
She didn’t reach for the cash. “Why are you giving me this? How do you know you’re going to be sick?”
He didn’t have the energy to answer. He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath, smelling Mac’s blood on the seat. Blood. Everywhere. He couldn’t escape it. And the one undeniable truth: his father’s blood would always run through his veins.
He supposed he could shift the car into Drive and take off. But he wouldn’t—couldn’t—do that. Dolan wanted him here, but he wasn’t here for Dolan. He was here for Mac and Liz. Mac wanted him here. He wouldn’t let Mac down. Mac kept calling him out for these cases because there was no better way to know the enemy than being inside his mind. And Cain wanted to find something—some tidbit of information—that would confirm for Dolan that Payne had been the one to kill Liz.
A hell more horrible than any of his other blood work awaited him inside Liz’s house. He glanced skyward, the closest he would ever get to prayer.
Dolan knocked on the car’s trunk—a get-your-ass-moving gesture—and headed up the sidewalk to the front door. Cain wasn’t ready. Would never be ready.
Mercy finally took the money clip he still held out to her.
His body felt weak and shaky, but he dragged himself out of the car.
“I don’t understand what’s going on.” Mercy’s voice held a pinch of panic. She met him as he rounded the hood, her face full of confusion and questions.
Maybe he was an ass for not explaining, but he didn’t know what to say. He grabbed her hand. Her cold fingers instantly soothed the inferno blazing inside him. She was his safety blanket. Touching her didn’t change the situation, but it gave him a fragile courage.
She squeezed his hand and didn’t speak. Maybe she understood. Maybe he just desperately wanted her to understand the horror that awaited him.
He’d seen gruesome things, but the worst were always the ones that had personal meaning. His father killing Boo Boo—his childhood cat—had been vicious, but this was going to surpass that by a few thousand miles.
The air seemed thick and hard to walk through as they followed Dolan. Just like every spring, carefree rows of blooming daffodils framed the sidewalk. The house itself had been painted the softest buttercream yellow trimmed in white with a robin’s-egg blue door. So cheerful. So happy. So Liz.
“This looks just like the kind of place Liz would live.” Mercy whispered the words, quiet reverence dominating her tone.
“She grew up here. Said she never wanted to leave.”
“You were really close with her, weren’t you?”
A boulder of regret lodged in his throat. Mercy thought Liz’s death was her fault? Nope. It was his for involving Liz in the first place. If he’d never mentioned wanting to talk to Mercy, if he’d never asked Liz to make it happen, she’d be in there right now baking cookies, or out working in her garden, or doing any of the hundreds of wonderful things that made up her life.
Dolan stopped at the front door framed in crime-scene tape. “Shit. Where’s the damned key.” He rummaged in his pants pockets, then his coat pocket.
Cain dropped Mercy’s hand—missing her touch almost as much as he would miss oxygen—and reached up over the porch light to feel for the key Liz kept stashed there. Many years ago, she had shown him where she hid the spare key. Just in case, she’d said. Just in case. How could she have ever known this was going to be the just in case?
His hand shook as he unlocked the door and pulled the crime tape away and then walked across the threshold.
The house was small by today’s standards, but it was the coziest, homiest place Cain had ever been. To the left was supposed to be a formal dining room, but Liz didn’t do formal anything so she’d turned it into a library. Shelves full of books lined the walls, and comfy chairs and reading lamps were scattered around the room. To the right was the living room. The place they’d watch the Ohio State football games in the fall and eat nachos and dip until they were ready to burst.
Everything looked exactly as it had the last time he’d been here. But the atmosphere was different. Almost like the terrible things that had happened had imprinted themselves on the air. He could almost feel the echoes of pain whispering over his skin.
The habitual part of his brain expected Liz’s home to smell of flowers, floor polish, and something good baking in the oven. But that’s not what hit him. The air didn’t exactly stink; it just lacked all the homey scents and contained a faint, almost imperceptible undertone of rot. He recognized the scent. Decomposing blood.
His stomach flipped on end. He wanted to run, but there was no turning back. The only way out was to go forward.
For Mac, for Liz, he reminded himself.
Dolan squeezed past where Cain had rooted to the floor and pointed at the kitchen door. “Your work is in the back. I’ll keep Mercy in the front rooms.”
Cain’s vision narrowed to the swinging door to the kitchen. Liz had always loved that swinging door. Said it made her feel fancy.
He pushed one foot in front of the other toward that door.
“Cain?” Mercy moved around in front of him, but his gaze was locked on the kitchen door and he couldn’t tear it away. “Are you all right?”
He tried to open his mouth, tried to form some words, but couldn’t. She touched his face, and his gaze snapped to her.
Her eyes were bloodshot, but that only made their color more entrancing. They reminded him of tropical waters, not quite blue, not quite green, but some beautiful, elusive color in between. If he could dive into those depths, submerge himself, then float on those waters for days upon days, maybe, just maybe he’d come out on the other side of this in one piece.
“You look like you need to sit down.”
Cain worked to find some words that would reassure her, but those words didn’t exist. There was no assurance that his soul would survive.
Mercy latched on to his arm and tried to lead him to the living room sofa. The same sofa he and Liz always sat on… No, he couldn’t sit there among all those memories.
Speech still eluded him, so he motioned toward Dolan and then pointed to Mercy. His message: Handle this. I can’t.
Dolan’s brows above his sunglasses burrowed together. His forehead wrinkled. The guy looked downright worried. Yeah, he should be. He had no fucking idea what Cain was about to do with the blood or what would happen to him afterward.
“Mercy, this is Cain’s job. It’s what he does. He’s all right.” Dolan stepped forward and motioned toward the living room.
Carefully, Cain disengaged his arm from her hand, hating the way
he felt so alone and small without her soothing touch.
“He’s not all right. Just look at him.” Mercy snapped the words at Dolan.
Cain walked toward the kitchen on numb legs. Behind him, he heard Mercy trying to talk Dolan into stopping him, but Dolan wouldn’t comply. He wanted the information too bad and was willing to sacrifice Cain to get it. But then Mac had been willing to do the same thing, a voice in Cain’s head stated.
Liz’s place wasn’t huge, but each footstep closer to the kitchen added up to miles of exertion. At the swinging door, Cain’s momentum faltered for only a moment before he pushed through it, bracing for a nightmare.
Nothing.
Everything looked exactly the same. And then, as if drawn by a magnet, he saw the red drops on the back window. He didn’t remember walking across the space, opening the door, and going out on the porch. He was just suddenly there, surrounded by death’s favorite color.
Blood.
Everywhere.
Smears on the siding. Streaks on the ceiling. Splashes and partially dried puddles on the floor. The smell of decomposition entered him, nestled inside him, and sent out its evil feelers.
Oh. God. Liz.
Superimposed over reality were memories of them sitting on this porch on a hot summer night, drinking her vodka lemonade, and staring out over her enchanted garden full of bushes and blooms and birdbaths. Her garden, walled off from the world, had been her oasis and his version of paradise, a magical place crafted by one woman’s hands.
His legs buckled, and his knees crashed into the floor so hard his teeth clacked together. A whine of pain or maybe pleasure slipped from his lips. No. He didn’t want to find any pleasure in this blood.
As if they had a life of their own, his hands smacked down into a pool of Liz’s blood. The congealed mass was oddly soothing against his heated skin. He raised his fingers to his face and spread the slickness over his forehead and cheeks, down his neck.
His mind slid sideways, and that part of him that enjoyed this took over completely. He coated his chest and arms, loving the way blood felt so right against his flesh. Like silk and satin and sin.