Acts of Mercy: A Mercy Street Novel

by Mariah Stewart

  “I’m just saying, maybe we should consider—”

  “No. It isn’t possible.” Sam waited in line for his chance to pull out of the parking lot, his jaw set, his eyes avoiding hers. “Christ, you sound like Mancini.”

  “Sam, like it or not, we’ve already agreed that someone from your past—my guess is someone you considered a good friend—has set this all up to bring you back here. You even agreed that it was someone—”

  “That was before I came back and saw people again. You just met a couple of my best friends from growing up. Seeing them … I can’t believe that any of them could have killed anyone. I can’t think of one reason why any one of them would have cause to hate me so much.”

  “Sam the legend. Sam the great football player. Sam the college star. Sam who got out of town and made it big as an FBI profiler.” She leaned back in the seat, her arms crossed over her chest. “Should I go on?”

  “No. You’re wrong. It isn’t one of my friends.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that,” she said quietly. “You of all people know better.”

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  EIGHTEEN

  He sat on the hard metal seat, his feet on the row in front of him, his arms resting on his knees, a smile on his face.

  He was so damned smart. He couldn’t get over just how smart he was. All those years, everyone thought DelVecchio was the smart one. Man, if they only knew how he’d been outsmarted—his mind had been played with all these years.

  If they could only know how much he’d taken from Sam … how many sleepless nights he’d caused him … how much pain.

  Plenty more where that came from.

  It had all been so very simple, so easy. Even now, he marveled at how easy it had all been, how clever he’d been, right from the start.

  Of course, his very cleverness was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because no one—no one—could ever guess the lengths he’d gone to over the years to break Sam DelVecchio. A curse, because, well, because the very nature of the game ensured that no one could ever know, would ever know, how he’d bested the best over and over. But it was okay, he assured himself, because in the end, in the very end, Sam would know all, and he’d understand that the price that was exacted was merely what was due.

  Sam had ruined his life. It was only fair.

  He watched Sam move through the crowd, his arm around the pretty woman with the long black hair. She might do, but he really didn’t like dealing with women. It just didn’t seem quite right. But then, there was the boy. Sam was obviously very fond of him. Of course, there’s the brother …

  So many targets to chose from, only one act left. Well, two, actually, but the last was going to be very special, and that was reserved for Sam.

  Oh, yes. Payback was a bitch.

  NINETEEN

  What do you mean, Tom left?” Sam frowned at his sister after she’d given him the news. “When did he leave?”

  “Around three. He said he was going to watch Tommy’s football practice and would try to meet up with you there. From there, he said he was going home.” Andrea was tall and slender and in midpregnancy with her third child. “And before you start yelling, keep in mind that Tom is older than you and he’s very stubborn, and he’s going to do what he wants.” She held a hand up in protest when Sam started to speak. “What he wanted to do was watch his son on the football field, then go back to the farm to see how his hired guys were getting along. He was bored out of his mind here today. And yes, I tried to explain to him that you were going to be annoyed but as usual, that really wasn’t much of a deterrent.”

  “Is Kitty still here?”

  “No. She went with Tom to the field. They were going to pick up Gil from school on their way back to town.” She glanced at Fiona and said, “This is a sorry introduction to Sam’s family. This is merely the usual DelVecchio drama.”

  It was apparent to Sam that Andrea was reading more into Fiona’s presence than there was, but he did nothing to correct her. Instead, he kissed his sister on the cheek, patted her growing tummy, and said, “It’s not your fault. Tom is who he is: one stubborn cuss. I should have known he wouldn’t be able to hang around for a whole day doing nothing. It isn’t in his nature.”

  He assured Andrea that the police car would remain on the scene for as long as they needed it, but didn’t really think she’d be in any danger.

  “This guy has never gone after a woman,” he told her. “I think there will be two more targets, the last one probably being me. The next one … I’m not sure who that’s going to be.”

  “You think it could be Tom,” Andrea stated.

  “I think there’s a chance it could be him,” Sam replied slowly. “I’m thinking the killer’s going to go after someone close to me. Why else draw me back here unless to heighten the threat? I could be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am. My instincts are telling me he wants to close this out soon.”

  His sister’s face had gone completely white, and he realized how insensitive he’d been in speaking so candidly.

  “On the other hand, Sam could be completely off base about all of this. And as much as I hate to be the one to break this bit of news, he really isn’t infallible. His read on this could be all wrong,” Fiona hastened to tell her. “Let us worry about it, okay? You have enough to deal with here. But be assured that your home and your family will be protected.”

  “I’m not worried about me,” Andrea told her. “I’m worried about Tom. If you think the killer is going to go after someone close to you—most likely a man, you said—then who is going to be protecting Tom?”

  “I will be,” Sam said.

  “That’s great, Sam.” Andrea stood with her hands on her hips, clearly not impressed. “But who’s got your back?”

  “I do,” Fiona told her. “I’ve got Sam’s back.”

  “Well,” Andrea said, “let’s hope that’s enough.”

  “It will be,” Sam assured her. “Fiona’s got a reputation as a real marksman.”

  Fiona drew back one side of the big shirt she wore partially buttoned over her tank top.

  “I don’t leave home without it.” She tapped on the small handgun in the black holster that rode her waist on the right.

  “I was raised around guns. I have a lot of respect for them,” Andrea told Fiona before kissing her brother good-bye. “Be careful.”

  He hugged her again and promised, “I will be.”

  Once they were back in the car, Sam’s temper—stifled for the sake of his pregnant sister—erupted. “I’m going to rip him a new one.”

  “Let it go, Sam. From what you and Andrea both said, Tom isn’t likely to change. You said it yourself: he’s going to do what he wants.”

  “Kitty’s too young to be a widow. His kids need him.” His eyes shielded by his sunglasses, he pulled away from the curb with enough speed to catch the attention of the police officer who sat in a car across the street. Sam waved as he passed by.

  “You need to get a grip,” she told him. “Scaring the crap out of your entire family is not going to help the situation.”

  “My family doesn’t react to anything unless they’re scared shitless. They all think they’re immortal.”

  “Like you do?”

  “I’ve seen too much. I know I’m—”

  “Oh, can it. You’re running around as if you don’t have a target on your back.”

  “He’s saving me for last, Fiona. He’s not going to come after me until he’s finished with the sixth act.”

  “That may be the most likely scenario, but you don’t know that for certain. And you don’t know that he hasn’t killed that last victim already. Maybe there was one—one other one—that we didn’t find, Sam. Someone we hadn’t heard about. Maybe he’s on his last one already and we just don’t know it.”

  When he didn’t reply, she continued.

  “I’m calling John, and I’m going to ask him to send out some backup. The f
arm is too big and fronts onto several different roads. Two people cannot possibly ensure that no one gets close to the house. If you want to ensure that Tom and Kitty and the kids are safe, we need more people.”

  “All right.” He dragged a hand through his hair with impatience. Giving in had never been easy for him. “But I’m not letting Tom off the hook.”

  And he did not.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? I told you to stay at Andrea’s and you just take off without even telling me?” He started yelling the minute he walked into Tom’s house.

  “Since when do I take orders from you? I had things to do,” Tom replied calmly. “I wanted to see my boy. I figured I’d see you at the field. I ran into Blake Carter and he told me he’d seen you in the parking lot but that you’d already left.”

  “Did you think to call my cell phone?” an exasperated Sam asked.

  “No. I left mine at home. It never works around here half the time anyway. And I figured you’d be stopping at Andie’s on your way back, so you’d know where I was.”

  “And if I’d gotten back to the farm and you weren’t here?”

  “Sam, give it a rest. I’m not hiding in my house, all right? I talked it over with Kitty, so don’t think you’re going to turn my wife to your side. I have a bunch of guys working with me out there in the fields, and I have my rifle and I have a handgun. I’ll take them both out with me if it makes you happy. Can’t say I’ve ever ridden a tractor with a twenty-two caliber Winchester Wildcat lying across my lap, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything.”

  “You’ll be lucky if you don’t shoot your knees off.”

  Tom hesitated. “You think maybe the handgun’s enough then?”

  Fiona was still awake in her room in the back wing of the old farmhouse at almost 1:30 AM. The house had been still and silent for the past several hours, since everyone—Fiona included—had turned in for the night. There’d been bickering most of the evening—between Tom and Sam, Tom and Tommy, Tommy and Jody, Jody and Gil—to the point where her head was spinning.

  If anyone in her family had disagreed with another, they kept it to themselves. Disapproval always meant the cold shoulder, the withdrawal of whatever small amount of affection there might have been before the offending opinion had been spoken. She’d never witnessed the collision of tempers and opposing viewpoints, followed by a round of good-natured ribbing and good-night hugs as if nothing had happened.

  The DelVecchios, on the other hand, seemed to all hold different opinions to one extent or another on just about every topic. At the end of the evening, Fiona couldn’t recall hearing any one of them say, Yes, you’re right, the entire night. To be sure, they had been good-natured about their bickering, and had even seemed to be enjoying it, as if arguing amongst themselves was a form of sport. She hadn’t taken part, of course, in any of the discourses, being an outsider on the one hand and a person who, in her personal life, always sought the avenue of least resistance. But it had been fascinating, she had to admit, to see how the personalities played off each other, how the different relationships wove into one another. She wondered how it might have felt as a child, to have been encouraged to express herself as openly as Tommy, Jody, and Gil had been earlier. Would her life’s choices have been very different if she’d been allowed to voice her thoughts? She hadn’t done that until she turned eighteen, and then the results had been somewhat disastrous.

  She heard a door down the hall open and close quietly, heard careful footsteps move toward the steps and fade down the back stairwell. Moments later, she heard the porch door squeak as it opened and squeal as it was closed. She got out of bed and tiptoed to the window and looked out on a star-filled night sky. She could make out a form headed toward the lounge on the back porch, and she knew it was Sam. Fiona sat on the edge of the bed and tried to talk herself out of joining him. She could think of several reasons why she shouldn’t and only one why she should: she wanted to. She wanted to sit with him in the moonlight and she wanted to kiss him and see if he tasted as sweet as she thought he might.

  She got up and pulled a T-shirt over the tank and sleep shorts she’d worn to bed, and crept from her room to the first floor before she could talk herself out of a trip down the steps.

  The inside door of the kitchen stood open. Fiona turned the handle of the outer screen door and stepped out onto the porch.

  “I thought I heard you,” she said as she walked toward him. “Having trouble sleeping?”

  Sam nodded and held out a hand to her. She took it and let him tug her down onto the chaise next to him. The evening air had gone cool, but his arms and body were warm and welcoming. “You too?”

  “I usually have one or two sleepless nights each week,” she told him. “I guess this is one of them.”

  “I usually don’t have a problem sleeping,” he said, “but tonight, I guess there’s too much on my mind.”

  “You’re worried about Tom.”

  “Sure. Wouldn’t you be if he were your brother?”

  She nodded, prompting Sam to ask, “Do you have a brother? You never talk about your family.”

  “I have a brother. He’s a few years younger than I am. Also one sister, also younger. They both live on the Coast. I don’t see them very often.”

  “Are they in law enforcement too?”

  Fiona laughed softly. “Hardly.”

  “What do they do?”

  “I’m not really sure. As little as possible, probably. Last I heard, my sister was trying her hand at some little theater, and my brother was trying to get a contract with a recording label in L.A.”

  “Sounds like a theatrical family.”

  She smiled wryly. Her family had thrived on theatrics.

  “You really enjoyed seeing all your old friends today, didn’t you?” She thought now would be a good time to change the subject.

  “Oh, man, did I ever.” He smiled broadly, his fingers playing with hers. “They were such great guys, every one of them. Seeing everyone again just made me realize that I need to keep in closer touch with them, need to get back here more often. It’s good to keep those ties alive.”

  “Why haven’t you?” She inched closer to him and settled in the crook of his arm. He played with her hair, lifting the long strands, then letting them fall.

  “I don’t know. I guess because for a long time, I was busy with work and busy with Carly when I wasn’t working. Then, after she died, most of my energy went into making sure that Don Holland accepted responsibility for what he’d done to her. Of course, he never did …”

  “Well, you can’t change the past, but you can make it a point to stay in touch now that you’ve reconnected with your old friends.”

  “Yeah, I’m definitely going to do that. We had some real good times back in the day. We were really close back then, went all through school together.”

  “That’s what you said. I find that amazing, that you’d all gone from kindergarten all the way through twelfth grade together.”

  “Well, all of us except Steve. His parents divorced when we were juniors in high school and he left to go live with his mother when she moved to Sioux City. He moved back after college. But it’s not so amazing when you consider how small our elementary school was. If you grew up in a really small town, there might have only been two classes per grade. Some schools might only have one class. You California kids probably had bigger classes.” He glanced down at her. “How many kids were in your grade-school class?”

  “Well, actually, there was only me. I was mostly homeschooled.” She shifted uncomfortably.

  “For high school, too?”

  She nodded.

  “No prom? No football games? No team sports?”

  “No.” Talking about it made her feel bad about it all over again.

  “You must have had friends from … I don’t know, Sunday school? Summer camp? Girl Scouts?”

  “I never did any of those things,” she admitted. “So I’ve never had those lon
g-term connections. I guess that’s why it all seems so strange to me.”

  She took a deep breath, then said, “Something smells so wonderful. What do you suppose that is?”

  “Probably the garden. My mom started it when she first moved out here, tended it all those years. Now Kitty’s keeping it up.”

  “I’ll have to check it out tomorrow, see what all she has growing down there.” She pointed up at the sky. “Look, there’s a shooting star. Quick! Make a wish.”

  She closed her eyes and wished for what she wanted. When she opened them, she saw Sam was staring at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Was that uberagent Fiona Summers, superior marksman and investigator extraordinaire, wishing on a falling star like a six-year-old on her first camping trip?” He poked her in the ribs.

  “What’s your point?” She sniffed with feigned indignation.

  “Madam, you have a reputation to protect.” He grinned at her. “Hard-assed agents do not wish on stars—shooting or otherwise.”

  “I guess I didn’t get that memo.”

  “We’ll let it go this time.” He gazed down at her and asked, “So are you going to tell me what you wished for?”

  She smiled.

  Reaching up, she drew his face down to hers and kissed him full on the mouth. If Sam was surprised, he recovered quickly.

  It had never been Fiona’s habit to make the first move, but there was something about this man and this place that she needed to hold on to. Sam DelVecchio was the most decent man she’d ever met, and if she was ever going to let him know how she felt, it was going to have to be now. Tomorrow, things could change, she knew that all too well. Maybe there would only be tonight. If so, she needed to take advantage of that. If other days, other nights, were in the cards, she was fine with that, too. She’d welcome them. Right now, she was trying to ignore the voices in her head that were telling her that she should have waited for him to make the first move.