Mercy (Beartooth, Montana)

by B. J Daniels

She’d read somewhere that a vampire couldn’t come into your house unless they asked. Once you said “yes”... Where had that crazy thought come from?

  She answered with a soft, seductive chuckle, and he did what she knew he would, what she’d prayed he would. He opened the shower door. As she moved to one side, turning her back to him, he stepped in.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  AS ROURKE STEPPED into the shower, all he saw through the steam was bare, wet soapy skin—and long dark hair. He’d been so happy to find her here, waiting for him. He knew he’d disappointed her. He’d lied to her. He’d even thought she was a killer at those moments when he’d had his doubts.

  Callie didn’t think that they knew each other, let alone could love each other after such a short time. Especially after the lies.

  He just wanted the opportunity to get to know her. All his feelings for her came in such a rush that if she hadn’t turned around, he would have told her that he loved her.

  His eyes widened in alarm. He tried to step back, but she had already grabbed his arm, had already jabbed the syringe into him.

  * * *

  CALLIE OPENED HER EYES. Blood ran down into her right eye. She blinked and tried to sit up. The room spun wildly, forcing her back down. She closed her eyes and lay on the worn wooden floor of the room she and her mother had shared as she tried to sort out what had happened.

  She remembered the voices—two of them standing over her, arguing—didn’t she?

  “Catherine, oh, my God, what have you done now?” Laura’s voice, sounding close to tears. “Look what you’ve done now.”

  “Stop crying like a baby,” her sister snapped. “You knew this had to end. Isn’t that why you got me here? You needed someone to do your dirty work. Help me lift her. We’ll throw her out the window.”

  “No! I can’t do this anymore. I want you out of my life.”

  Callie had felt someone touch her temple, but when she opened her eyes all she saw was darkness for a moment.

  “She’s not dead. I just grazed her,” Catherine said with a curse. “We have to finish her.”

  “Oh, no, look, there is a puddle of blood in the dark shape of a halo around her head.” Laura cried harder.

  Callie heard the sound of a hard slap and Laura’s cry of pain.

  “Laura, are you serious?” Catherine demanded. “Callie is no angel. Remember, she tried to take Rourke away from you.”

  “She was such a sweet little girl. Is that why you hated her so much, Catherine? Did you know I used to pretend she was my little sister? My only sister.”

  “Snap out of it, Laura. You have to finish her off. Now. We don’t have much time. Either shoot her or help me throw her out the window. I have to do everything for you, don’t I?” Catherine yelled at her, their voices echoing through the old building.

  Callie blinked up at the dark image standing over her.

  That was where the memory blurred and dissolved. Callie opened her eyes again. The smell of the blood filled her nostrils. She forced herself to sit up. Her hand slipped in the blood on the floor. Her blood.

  She picked up her cloth shoulder bag, feeling by the weight of it that the gun was gone. So was her cell phone. She pressed the cloth to the wound on her head to stanch the bleeding as dark spots tried to blot out her vision. Closing her eyes again, she fought to stay conscious.

  Over the pounding in her head, another memory of the two arguing surfaced, this one old and yet as familiar. She saw Laura and Catherine standing at the top of the third-floor stairwell.

  “I have to do everything for you, don’t I?” Catherine yelled at her twin, their voices echoing through the old building.

  “No, I never asked you to hurt anyone.”

  Catherine’s laugh. “Hurt? That little brat saw you kill that man, Laura. She has to be dealt with. She’ll tell if I don’t shut her up.”

  “She won’t. I’ll talk to her—”

  “You’re so weak. You make me sick.” Catherine’s slap and Laura’s sudden cry echoed through the back stairwell as Callie watched from her hiding place. “Either you take care of her or I will. Only I will make the little brat pay for spying on us.”

  Catherine started to turn away, to go back through the door to the third floor. She was looking for Callie. That was why Callie was hiding in the stairwell. Now Catherine would go to her room, where her mother was too sick to protect her.

  Laura reached for her twin. She didn’t mean to push her. She meant to grab her arm, to try to reason with her. Callie knew this, but she didn’t know how.

  Catherine lost her footing. Her arms flailed, her eyes widening. “Help me!”

  Laura lunged for her sister, but at the last minute, she pulled her hand back. Catherine fell, tumbling down to finally come to a stop in the space at the base of the stairwell.

  Callie had run, terrified of what she’d seen. Terrified even more because she’d known the truth. She’d run back to the room and tried to tell her mother what had happened. But she hadn’t been able to speak.

  Now, opening her eyes, she pushed herself to her feet and looked around the room, remembering all of it, including the horrible secret that had been locked away all these years.

  Why wasn’t she dead? Why had she been spared? As she staggered toward the door, head banging like a war drum, she knew who the real killer was. She had to get to Rourke.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ROURKE KINCAID WOKE tied to the motel bed. His wrists and ankles were bound, his mouth gagged, and a blindfold had been tied over his eyes. Something had been thrown over him, but he could feel that he was naked beneath it.

  He’d seen enough of the crime-scene photos to know what happened next. He could hear someone in the room with him, but for a moment, he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there. It came back slowly. He saw himself entering the motel room after getting what he thought was Callie’s text, hearing the shower, stripping down and stepping in, only to find—

  “Laura.” He tried to say it around the gag in his mouth, suddenly acutely aware of how her victims had felt. They’d been panicked at finding themselves helpless. But they hadn’t known until it was too late that they were at the mercy of a woman who enjoyed torturing and killing men.

  Rourke knew.

  Sweat beaded his forehead and upper lip in the darkness of the blindfold. He tried to simply breathe, but as the drug wore off, he could feel places on his body where he hurt.

  Vaguely he remembered fighting her in the shower before the drug knocked him out. That thought made him feel a little better. He was glad he hadn’t gone down without a fight. Had Edwin fought, as well?

  “Laura?” The word came out unintelligibly again. “Laura.”

  He heard her move to the side of his bed. As she stepped closer, he caught a scent of perfume that he would never have associated with Laura Fuller. But then again, he’d never known the woman, had he?

  She removed the blindfold first.

  He blinked up at her, surprised again by her dark hair. Even her blond hair had been a lie, he realized. No wonder he’d mentally questioned her being a blonde that day at the restaurant in Seattle. Her coloring was that of a brunette. He suspected this was her natural color, dark brown. Had she changed it back to its natural color in the past few days or was this a wig?

  She stared at him for a moment before she reached to remove the gag, but stopped. “I’m going to take your gag out. I’d prefer you didn’t make a lot of noise, not that it will do you any good because there is no one around to hear.”

  The motel clerk had given him the two rooms at the end away from the office. Hadn’t he said business was slow? Rourke had laughed at that since the entire town was dead as a graveyard.

  “Promise to be quiet?” she asked.

  Rourke nodded and flinched when
she touched his cheek as she removed the gag. Her blue-eyed gaze met his again. A chill ran the length of him at what he saw in her eyes.

  “Laura—”

  “I’m not Laura. I’m her sister, Catherine.”

  “Where is she?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “Is she with Callie?”

  “Don’t worry, Rourke. Callie isn’t going to be a problem anymore.”

  His heart sank. He was the one who’d brought Callie here at Laura’s suggestion. He’d played right into her and her sister’s hands.

  “Everything is going to be all right now. Laura’s going to take care of you.” Catherine turned then toward the open doorway between the adjoining rooms. He could hear water running next door. “Laura,” she called. “He’s awake and all yours.”

  Catherine patted his cheek. “You’re lucky it will be Laura and not me.” She left then, disappearing into the other room.

  He heard the water shut off in the adjacent room and the sisters talking in low voices. They sounded as if they were arguing. Callie. What had they done to her? Was she tied up in the next room?

  Rourke fought to free himself from the duct tape on his wrists and ankles, thinking again of the other men who had tried to escape and failed. He knew how this ended, and yet if there was even a slim chance of saving Callie...

  He heard the shower come on in the next room and looked up to find a blonde Laura standing over him. “Hi, Rourke.”

  “Laura.” It came out a plea. He told himself that his only chance was to convince her not to do this. They’d once been best friends. But even as he thought it, he was reminded of her confession of love for him. He’d hurt her. Now she was a woman scorned.

  It was an unforgiving woman who stepped to the side of the bed—not the homicide detective who’d been his partner.

  He desperately wanted to ask where Callie was and what they’d done with her, but he held his tongue. Just the mention of Callie again would make things worse, he thought. If he had any hope of reaching the old Laura...

  “What’s going on, Laura?”

  She gave him a rueful smile. “I didn’t want it to end like this, Rourke. I did everything I could to keep this from happening, but if you’re anything, you’re relentless when you get on a case.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Westfield, about your mother, about...Catherine?” he asked, dropping his voice as he glanced at the open doorway to the adjoining room.

  * * *

  “HOW COULD I tell you about my family, my past?” Laura moved around the room. She could feel Rourke’s eyes on her. She had his undivided attention now, she thought ruefully. “The first time I saw her photograph, I thought I’d seen her before. Even her name sounded...familiar. I didn’t remember Westfield at first, at least not by name. My mother moved us around every few years. We lived in all kinds of weird, awful places. I was just a kid. I’m not sure I ever knew the names of the places where we lived, or cared.”

  He watched her pace up and down at the end of the bed and wondered if he could trust anything she said.

  “When you told me about the connection to Westfield Manor...I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. I never thought I would have to tell you about my past. Never thought I’d ever have to tell anyone. I thought I’d buried it.”

  She stopped moving to look at him. Catherine had only given him enough of the drug to get him into the bed without him fighting her. She’d underestimated him. He’d fought her until the drug had taken effect.

  Normally, Catherine preferred doing this somewhere more private than a motel room. But in a town like Flat Rock, the motel was empty except for the rooms Rourke had rented, and fortunately, they were at the end of the row. They had lots of privacy and no one to interrupt them.

  “Laura, you don’t want to do this.”

  “Shh,” she quieted him as she pulled up a chair next to his bed. “You want to know the real me, Rourke? I’m the daughter of Gladys McCormick, the identical twin daughter, the one my mother never liked.” She laughed. “Identical but so different. Catherine is...” She glanced toward the open doorway. “She was the special one. As far back as I can remember, she flirted with any male, no matter how old he was.”

  “Laura—”

  “Let me finish my story, Rourke. Catherine and I were twelve that year when things got really bad. Twelve, but Catherine acted like she was sixteen. I saw her flirting with that awful young man who worked for our mother. Some might say she was asking for it.”

  His eyes widened. “No one asks to be raped. Edwin said it was one of you.”

  “Your P.I. got that right. One of the twins was raped. But it wasn’t Catherine. I...” She hated that, even after all these years, saying it made her voice break. “I was the one that horrible man raped. He thought I was Catherine. I kept telling him...” She swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat. “He...hurt me.”

  “Laura, I’m so sorry.”

  She brushed at her tears. “I’m not telling you for your pity—”

  “It’s not pity.”

  Laura couldn’t bear to look at him for a moment. She cleared her throat and continued. “The rape was bad enough, but my mother and my sister...” She shook her head. “They acted like I was to blame for what happened. But it wasn’t me. Don’t you see? It was Catherine.”

  “Callie saw you.”

  “Yes. I loved Callie. I used to pretend she was my sister and not Catherine. I kept Catherine from hurting her.”

  “That’s why she couldn’t remember. She was protecting you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  PRESSING THE CLOTH of her shoulder bag to her head, Callie worked her way down the stairs. At the bottom she had to stop for a moment to grip the rail, too dizzy almost to stand.

  She could see the motel sign across the field. As she started through the tall dried weeds, she spotted a piece of metal pipe. Picking it up, she used it like a crutch. All she could think about was getting to Rourke. She prayed that it wouldn’t be too late.

  Her head ached. There was a dullness that she’d never felt before. Her only worry was making it to the motel. She tried not to think about what Catherine had said. Rourke in alliance with Laura, his former partner at the Seattle P.D.? That couldn’t be true.

  As she neared the motel, she saw Rourke’s SUV parked in front of the last room in the row. She wanted to run down there and make sure he was safe, but in her heart, she knew he wasn’t. She had to get help. She didn’t know how much longer she could stay on her feet. Weak from loss of blood and her pounding head, she headed for the motel office.

  When she reached it, she caught her reflection in the glass. Her face and clothes were covered in blood. She would scare the motel manager to death. But once he saw her he would call for help.

  As she started to reach for the knob of the door that led into the office, she saw the crude note taped to the small window. Be back in fifteen.

  She had no idea how long the manager had been gone, but she didn’t see a vehicle anywhere around—except for Rourke’s SUV. She tried the bell next to the door. It rang inside, but no one came.

  For a moment, she hesitated. Then she lifted the pipe still in her hand and put the end of it through the window in the door. The glass shattered, sounding like a gun had gone off. Callie looked down the row of motel rooms toward the one with Rourke’s SUV parked in front.

  She had to lean against the door for a moment to keep from passing out. Then she broke out the rest of the glass, reached inside and opened the door. She went straight to the phone and dialed 911.

  “What’s your emergency?” an operator asked after the first ring.

  “I need an ambulance and the police.” She read the name of the motel off the sign.

  “You’re in Flat Rock?”

  “Yes. Hurry.”
>
  “Can you tell me the nature of your emergency?”

  “I’ve been shot and there is a killer—” She couldn’t talk any longer and dropped the phone. Behind her, on the board where the room keys were hung, she saw that two were missing, one from each of the adjoining rooms. She snatched one of the extra keys from the board and headed for the door.

  * * *

  ROURKE FLINCHED AT the cold hatred in her eyes as Laura talked about her sister, Catherine.

  “I killed him, but Catherine... She found me in the man’s room. She saw Callie and knew that she’d witnessed all of it. Callie seemed to be in shock. Catherine told me to get out of there....”

  He could see that something had happened after that between her and her sister. “She covered for you?” There was more; he could sense it. “And your mother covered for you?”

  “Yes, we were told never to say anything. The deputy couldn’t prove anything.... Catherine said I owed her.” Laura’s chuckle held no humor. “She turned everything around. She told Mother that she’d killed him.”

  Rourke saw that she looked confused for a moment.

  “Catherine was afraid Callie would tell someone,” she said in a small, quiet voice. “I loved Callie so much. We would sing this song her mother taught her.”

  “Laura, why in God’s name didn’t you tell me this?” But he knew the reason. He thought of the photographs from the crime scene. The photos that Laura hadn’t put in the homicide file. She’d hidden the photos because she’d been covering for her sister. The other two murders in Seattle. Had she tampered with evidence on those cases, as well?

  He could see that she was afraid of her sister. But to cover for her, knowing what her sister had been doing for years? Laura was a cop!

  “How can you let her go on killing, Laura?”

  “I...I didn’t know at first. We lived in so many places. I never knew the names. I was just a kid, shuttled around, from one horrible girls’ home to the next. You have no idea what it was like. The girls were all mean to us, and the men...”