Saving Mercy

by Abbie Roads

“Goddamn it! Wake up!” But he knew this guy wasn’t going to wake up.

  He shoved the body away and rested his back against the bench. Daught was populating the earth. What in the holy hell did that mean? It meant Daught was well and truly lost.

  Telling Dolan was going to be a slow walk through hell. Partly because Cain understood exactly what it would feel like to lose the person he loved. It would be harder to survive that than any mortal injury.

  Epilogue

  There is no problem so great—wars, hunger, poverty, bigotry, religious persecution—that it cannot be defeated by love. Love yourself. Love everyone. Love life in all its forms.

  —Guru Abro

  Mercy awoke to the sound of Cain’s cell phone buzzing on the nightstand and birds singing outside. Cheerful morning light beamed through the window, and for just a moment, she languished in a half-asleep, half-awake space until she reached out for Cain and realized she was alone.

  She rolled over and nabbed the phone.

  Mac calling lit the display.

  She tapped the screen and held the phone to her ear at the same time she flopped back on the bed. “Morning, Mac.”

  “I hope I didn’t wake you.” Mac’s tone reminded her of a concerned parent. “Do you and Cain have plans today?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “I’ve got a case for Cain. He said he was ready to get back to it, but I’m honestly glad I got you on the line instead of him. You think he’s ready?”

  A month ago, she never would’ve thought he’d work again. Today, she knew he was chomping at the bit to get to it. It was Cain’s way of helping right the wrongs. She wouldn’t take that from him. Even if it was going to be hell to watch him suffer from the headache afterward. But she had some ideas of things to ease him—medication, massage, and meditation were the first things she’d try.

  “He’s ready.”

  Mac heaved a sad sigh. He didn’t want to see Cain suffering any more than she did. A few seconds of silence came across the line. “Have you given any thought to my proposal?”

  His proposal had been for them to experiment with her ability. He thought—and she agreed—that she might be useful in cases where they were dealing with someone suspected of planning terrorist activities. “I’m in.” It wasn’t until she’d spoken the words out loud that she realized how excited she was to give it try. It would be her own way of giving back. Cain had his way, and she could have hers.

  “I’ll drive back and pick you both up in an hour.”

  “See you then.” She ended the call and then set Cain’s phone back on the nightstand. It was odd that she had awakened alone. Cain normally didn’t leave the room without telling her where he was going. To other couples, that probably sounded codependent, but for them, it worked. They were each other’s safety blanket. Time would heal them both, but right now, when everything was still fresh, when they still had to battle back the nightmares of the past, being together was the best medicine.

  She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her body was deliciously sore from being loved long and hard by a good man. Damn, she loved the feeling. Loved how he was the only one who’d ever made her feel that way.

  She stood and stretched before heading to the closet. She bypassed her clothes and nabbed one of his shirts. It hung nearly down to her knees, but wearing his clothes had become something she adored. In a weird way, it was like a bit of him touching her at all times.

  “Cain?” she called as she walked downstairs.

  At the bottom of the steps, she headed around to the back of the staircase into the kitchen area, but he wasn’t there, and the bathroom door underneath the steps was wide open. Hmm… Where was he? She moved through the house looking out all the windows until she spotted him on the path that ran behind the house, alongside the field toward the creek.

  His back was to her. His knees were on the ground. His arms were moving almost like he was…weeding. Weeding?

  Curious, she slipped on a pair of shoes by the back door and walked outside. Red-winged blackbirds trilled, mourning doves cooed, and other birds she didn’t recognize sang soft songs. Late-spring sunshine warmed her skin and promised a pleasant day. All around his house—their house—were fields of vibrant green. Cain said it was winter wheat.

  She loved living here with him. It was the first time since her family had been murdered that she felt as though she had some true privacy. Heck, she was out here wearing nothing but a shirt of Cain’s and wasn’t worried one bit about anyone seeing her. Now that was privacy.

  “Whatcha doing?” she asked as she got closer to him.

  His head came up, but he didn’t face her. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.” There was a lightness in his tone. A lightness that hadn’t existed in the days when she’d first met him. A lightness she knew that she’d played a part in putting there.

  “I got lonely.” Her tone was full of sexy innuendo.

  “Woman, I thought I took care of you last night.”

  “You did, but now it’s morning.”

  He chuckled and looked down at what he was doing. She couldn’t see around him, but it really did look like he was weeding.

  “Mac called. You have a case. He’ll be here in an hour.”

  Cain turned on his knees to face her.

  She saw what he’d been doing.

  He held a bouquet of dandelions he’d picked from along the field’s edge. Their bright heads looked like he’d wrestled a piece of the sun out of the sky and was now offering it to her. Something about the sweetness of him picking her those flowers brought happy tears to her eyes.

  “I wanted to surprise you in bed.” He held the flowers out to her.

  She took them from him, her fingers lingering over his, and then brought them to her nose. They smelled like happiness and the best parts of her childhood. She could remember playing out in the yard, picking bouquets of them for her mom, while her father complained about the weeds in the yard.

  “Oh, Cain. They’re lovely.” No store-bought bouquet could ever rival this one.

  His gaze roamed over her, taking in his shirt on her body, her bare legs, then traveled up to her face. “Are you happy here? Happy with me?” He looked so earnest, so serious, like this was life’s most important question.

  She moved closer to him, stared down at him still on his knees, and put her free hand on his cheek. “Happier than I’ve ever been.”

  He covered her hand with his own, then moved it off his face and held it in front of both of them. “Me too. I want us always to be together. I want to wake up with you in the morning. I want to go to bed with you at night. I want to spend lazy days on the couch with you. I want to spend sunny days outside with you. I want to spend busy days and slow days and every day in between with you.” He reached into his pocket. “Mercy Ledger, will you promise me all your days?”

  She started to say yes, then saw the ring he held between his fingers. Surrounded by a thick edging of art deco silver, a bloodred garnet winked in the morning sun. It was the most unique and beautiful ring she’d ever seen. And he’d gotten it for her.

  “Will you marry me?” His words were strong and sure, his face expectant and hopeful.

  In this moment, she could see beyond the strong man in front of her to the little boy inside him. The boy who’d been so beaten and abused by his father, but who still dared to hope for happiness. And by some miracle he’d chosen her to share his life with.

  “Yes isn’t a strong enough word. But yes. Yes. Yes.” She flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, hugging him, but that wasn’t enough so she went down on her knees with him.

  His hand shook just a bit as he slid the ring on her finger. She couldn’t look away until it was seated. She wiggled her finger in the sunlight, the garnet glowing a deep cherished red, and she knew she’d never take this
ring off. Never. “It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

  She pulled his head down to her, kissing him with all the love she possessed.

  The birds sang all around them, the winter wheat rustled lightly, and pure cleansing sunshine lit their world with cheerfulness.

  This was their happily ever after.

  For more Abbie Roads

  check out the Fatal Dreams series

  Race the Darkness

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  Keep reading for an excerpt from the first book in Abbie Roads’s Fatal Dreams series

  Xander Stone stopped outside Interrogation Room B, shoved his ear up to the seam of the closed soundproof door, and listened. Supercharged hearing had only one benefit, and this was it. From inside the other room, he heard the slow, easy breathing of someone who thought he’d never be caught or prosecuted or imprisoned. Xander’s favorite kind of criminal.

  He pushed open the door and made sure to display his scars to the suspect. The disfigurement was a neon sign on a starless and moonless night, pointing and flashing freak, freak, freak. A caution to all who dared speak to him. Wasn’t his fault if no one listened to the warning.

  Yeah, life was a saggy-assed, fun bag of laughs since he’d been zapped with more than 50,000 volts of lightning. But the forehead-to-calf scarring didn’t even rank on the Richter scale of shit when compared to the bizarre sensation of no longer being alone inside his head. And then there was the issue of his amplified hearing. He couldn’t ignore the way his brain now tuned in to the frequency of thoughts.

  The familiar pounding—like a basketball upside the head—slammed into Xander’s right temple. He winced. Always did with the first thump, no matter how hard he tried not to react. Tuning in to the frequency of people’s thoughts fucking hurt. He washed his features of expression.

  Holy shit. What happened to the dude’s face? Xander heard the words even though they hadn’t been spoken aloud. The suspect—a kid, really—snickered, his gaze riveted to the puckered striation and the network of branch-like scars that stretched up Xander’s neck, spread over his cheek, and finally ceased on his forehead.

  “Good Cop–Bad Cop didn’t work, so now they’re sending in Ugly Cop?” The kid slouched back in his chair as if he were in his dorm watching the latest episode of some show glamorizing stupid people, instead of in an interrogation room at a Bureau of Criminal Investigation field office. He looked like every other cocky college kid—hair too long, clothes too preppy, ego too large. He didn’t look like the leader of a sex gang.

  “Ugly Cop? The last guy said the same thing. The asshole before him too, and the one before him. See how boring that gets? If you really want to insult someone, you’ve got to get creative. Try again. Lay a real good one on me. One I’ve never heard before.” Xander couldn’t remember the kid’s name—wasn’t important anyway. He took a seat at the table and settled his notepad squarely in front of him with his pen diagonal across the clean sheets of paper.

  Scar face. Fugly motherfucker.

  The kid opened his mouth, but Xander cut him off. “‘Scar face’ and ‘fugly motherfucker.’ Seriously? That’s the best you got?” Most suspects expected him to be offended or outraged. They didn’t expect his total acceptance.

  The kid tilted his head like a dog trying to understand a new command. That’s weird.

  Yeah, it was weird. “My name is Xander Stone, and just so you know for your insult planning, I’m not a cop. Never been a cop. Never wanted to be a cop. Don’t even like cops. They’re all pricks. And these guys”—Xander jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at the mirrored glass of the interrogation room—“are some of the biggest pricks of all.”

  No one could accuse him of lying. It was no secret he didn’t do well with authority. The only reason the BCI put up with him was because they needed him and his unique style of interrogation.

  A smile padded with self-satisfied smugness hitched up the kid’s mouth. We’re back to Good Cop.

  “What is he doing in there?” The superintendent’s words came to Xander from beyond the mirrored glass. With his supercharged hearing, the soundproofing separating the rooms was little more than a cotton swab on a spurting artery.

  He turned in his seat to face the mirror. Everyone knew about his rule of absolute quiet if they were going to observe. “Silence. I need complete silence. Or I’m out of here and you can let the kid walk.” He glared at the mirror, daring someone to speak.

  This dude is certifiable cray-cray.

  Xander faced the kid. “I think you might be on to something with that cray-cray bit.”

  The kid jerked upright like someone had goosed his gonads. How’d he know what I was thinking? His attention bull’s-eyed on Xander. The kid was just starting to realize Xander had changed the game from checkers to chess.

  “I know what you’re thinking because I’m the guy the BCI calls in when they’ve got a difficult case.” Referring to gang rape as merely a difficult case was like painting a pile of shit just to make it look better. It was still shit. It still stank.

  The kid laughed a blatantly fake laugh, the kind that was code for “fuck you.” He’s trying to mess with me. Ain’t gonna work.

  “I’m not trying to mess with you.” Well, maybe just a little. Disbelief in his ability was a universal rule. Hell, he barely believed in it himself. “I just want to get this done so I can get out of here. Like I said, I hate cops. And I’ve got a headache.” The vision in his right eye pulsed with each thump inside his brain. He wanted to press his palm against the pounding, but didn’t. Show no pain. Show no weakness. Show no emotion.

  No more dicking around with the kid. Xander needed to get answers to the questions he’d been sent to ask and then get the fuck out of here. Funny how he could remember the questions, but not the kid’s name. “How many guys are in the Bangers Club?”

  Six plus nine. Sixty-nine. Six plus nine. Sixty-nine. The kid’s thoughts were a perverted chant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Xander picked up his notepad, tilted it so the kid couldn’t see, and scribbled 6 + 9 = 15 onto the paper. “I need the names of all fifteen members.”

  Fifteen? How’d he come up with that number? He’s guessing. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Good Cop and Bad Cop. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The names of all fifteen members.”

  Michael Blevins. Blake Johnson…

  Xander listed the names until he lost the frequency. Five to ten seconds of silence in the conversation, and the connection severed. He stared down at the paper and cherished the absence of pain, then sucked in a few deep breaths, pumping himself up to reestablish the connection and restore the basketball thumping inside his head. “I need the rest of the names.”

  Bang! He jerked from the force of the blow inside his brain. God, that first hit—

  Aiden Stacey. Trey Mitchell…

  Xander listed all the names.

  “What are you writing?” The kid half stood, trying to see across the table to Xander’s notes.

  “Names.” Xander angled the notepad so the kid couldn’t see his writing.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Yeah, you did. Just not out loud.”

  What is he talking about? They sent in some mind-game expert? This shit isn’t going to work on me. Just keep quiet and don’t react.

  “You’re already reacting. I can hear it. You’re breathing faster, shallower. Your pulse has picked up. You’re not quite panicking yet, but eventually you’re going to.”

  What the hell? What the hell? What. The. Hell. The kid did a stellar job of retaining his outward expression of entitlement. No one would ever guess he was on the cusp of an implosion.

  “Between the fifteen of you, how many girls have you banged?” The word—the Bangers Club’s word—tasted insectile on Xander’s tongue, like
if he didn’t spit it out, it would burrow a hole through the roof of his mouth and have babies in his brain.

  Fifty-seven. Twelve away from our goal—sixty-nine.

  Jesus. The kid needed to be neutered.

  There was no reason to ask for the girls’ names. From what he’d been told, the Bangers Club didn’t bother learning the names of their victims. “You ever been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder?”

  No. The kid’s brows rose and his head swiveled on his neck in a good imitation of a white-trash ho about to show her sass.

  “Just asking because you seem awfully obsessed with the number sixty-nine.”

  The kid’s jaw unhinged and nearly clattered onto the table. Not possible. He can’t really read my mind. He’s guessing somehow. Or…did someone talk? No one would dare—

  “You’re right. I’m not reading your mind. I’m listening to the things you aren’t saying.” As if the kid would believe that. Only one more question and Xander could walk out of the room, out the building, and be alone.

  The last question was the most critical. From the dumbed-down version Xander understood, the kid had created a nearly impenetrable computer system that streamed all the Bangers Club bangs—for a monthly fee. The only way to shut it down was to access the original computer and enter the password—no mistakes, no guessing—or the entire system would go viral and start broadcasting live on all the local channels, even the small-town church TV station. Kids today were dangerously clever. “What’s the password?”

  6*2H95—London Bridge is falling down…

  Xander wrote the numbers and letters on his paper. The kid was starting to catch on. Not that it would matter.

  “Stop writing shit down. You’re making things up.” The kid’s voice rode the ridge of hysteria.

  “6*2H95. I need the rest of the password.” Xander loved the way other people’s brains just couldn’t resist thinking.

  O#ZR591H. No. No. No. London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down—

  “6*2H95O#ZR591H. Keep going.”