Men of Mercy: The Complete Story

by Cross, Lindsay

  He leaned in close to her ear. Her sweet and spicy scent filled his senses. "Listen, I need you to hide. I don’t think we have much of a chance at getting away on foot now. The only option is for me to get them before they can get us.”

  Evie shook her head immediately, bumping the underside of his chin in the process. "Shh. It’ll be okay. I know what I'm doing." Hunter rolled and studied their surroundings. Other than the clump of trees, an empty space extended behind them for at least ten feet. Then more trees. No bushes. They had inadvertently landed in the best spot to hide.

  Hunter rose, keeping his body in line with the middle tree. Careful not to make a sound, he shrugged off the backpack and passed it down to Evie. Using hand gestures, he indicated for her to follow his lead and began scooping up dirt and mud and rubbing it on the backpack. The bright yellow pack might as well have been a beacon. Once they were done camouflaging the pack, his gaze drew to her white tank top. If the backpack had been a beacon, then her shirt might as well have been a flashing neon sign.

  He scooped up more dirt and scrubbed it on her shirt, stopping to savor the weight of her breasts in his palms. Evie scowled. He shrugged and offered no excuse.

  When he was satisfied she had sufficient camouflage, he pushed her back into the cover of the trees. Her vulnerable, scared gaze tugged at him, but he knew the best way of protecting her was to go on the offense.

  Staying in a crouch, Hunter crept forward through the woods. His gun was tucked safely in his jeans; his hands were free and at the ready.

  Once he'd gotten far enough, he stopped and listened. The absence of sound in front of him was as telling as if his prey had started dancing a jig. Hunter closed his eyes and listened. The wind shuffled through the trees, rattling leaves softly in the night. Bullfrogs croaked and cicadas chirped.

  Then he heard it. The unmistakable sound of a watch alarm, followed by a barely discernible curse. Forest survival lesson number one: turn off all watch and cell phone alarms. Hunter smiled in the darkness. He set free the beast that had been pacing within him since Brown’s visit last night, the one that was frothing at the mouth after seeing the brand on Evie’s hip.

  It was time for one of the government's top assassins to get to work.

  Chapter 26

  Hunter had left her alone. In the dark. With a mad man bent on his very own killing spree.

  Evie squatted in the darkness and clutched the backpack to her chest. Her legs were like spaghetti noodles. They wouldn't support her if she tried to stand, but the rest of her body was tense to the point of shattering.

  Her palms started to sweat. She gripped the backpack tighter.

  The silence and darkness were weighing on her.

  She tried to tune her ear in to every minute sound within range, straining so hard she nearly jumped out of her skin when Brown shouted again.

  "Evie, remember that old family video we watched together last night? The one with your dad? If you don't get your ass out here right now, we're going to do the same thing to your mother."

  Fear jackhammered her heart. She squeezed her eyes shut, slammed her teeth together, and fought back a sob. A low groan fought its way up her throat, but she clamped her lips together.

  Not her mother. Maxine might have gone behind her back to try and wrest control of the MRG, but she and C.W. were all the family Evie had left.

  "Come on, girl. I ain't got all night. You got about ten seconds to show yourself or I'm leaving." Brown's voice bounced off the trees around her, making it sound creepier and deadlier than usual.

  She wanted so desperately to defend herself against this maniac, but she didn’t have a weapon. Hunter. She needed to trust Hunter to take care of this.

  "Tell you what, you give up now, and I won't even kill your new boy toy."

  Did they have Hunter? Fear threatened to engulf her. If they had captured him, there was no hope left. They would kill him and Maxine and everyone who was important to her.

  Her heart pumped furiously and her palms turned cold despite the thousand-degree heat. Maybe it was time to turn herself in. Marcus wanted her alive.

  Evie's muscles bunched as she eased a trembling hand to the ground to push herself up. Her fingers squished in mud. She commanded her body to move, to rise. But she might as well have sprouted roots from the soles of her boots and taken anchor in the ground. Her body was paralyzed with fear.

  Her senses went into overdrive, as if to compensate for her body’s failure to move, and her hearing suddenly turned sharp and acute. But the main thing she picked up on was silence. No one spoke. No whippoorwills sang. No bullfrogs croaked. Nothing.

  A breeze ruffled the leaves around her, but to her sensitive ears, it sounded more like glass shattering than a gentle rustle.

  She looked left and right, too scared to break cover to look behind her. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness and she could make out certain shapes. Distinguish the difference between trees and leaves.

  Something tall and skinny directly to her right shifted sideways. Her heart jumped and she jerked back, slamming her head into the tree. The wind died down.

  The logical part of her brain made a timid step forward and informed her the moving object was a sapling bending in the wind. But her heart continued its marathon race anyway.

  Her mouth went as dry as the desert sand. And despite the fact she'd prayed for weeks for the rain to stop, she fervently wished for water.

  A limb snapped near her and her entire body went cold. Her heart skidded to a stop so fast pain slammed into her ribcage and she clutched desperately at the backpack.

  Another limb snapped and her heart jumpstarted. Blood flooded to her neck and face, taking any remaining heat from her hands and feet with it. Evie scrunched smaller. Too bad she didn’t have a shrinking potion like Alice in Wonderland.

  She heard a strange swoosh followed by a gurgling sound. Then the once silent night filled with violence. More leaves crackled, followed by what sounded like a whole herd of deer galloping through the forest. A man screamed. There was a grunt. A crash. Cursing.

  Evie shuddered, fighting the urge to scream. Was Hunter dead? Was she alone, unarmed, in the woods with Brown?

  Evie swallowed and cringed. She knew she should find somewhere better to hide, something to defend herself with, but she couldn't move.

  Everything around her seemed to grow too big. The trees towered above her, their shadows reaching out with sinister claws. The wind picked up, masking all other sounds.

  The backpack. Her chest expanded. What if Hunter had tucked a knife or something in there? Evie yanked the zipper and immediately cringed from the noise it made. But then she dove in and began a frantic search.

  A man crouched next to her.

  Her brain kicked on. The muscles in her throat constricted and released and she finally let out the scream that had been building inside her.

  "Evie. It’s me, Hunter. It’s okay."

  Evie blinked fast, tried to reconcile the fact that this man of shadows was on her side. "Hunter?" He nodded. She threw down the bag and grabbed his arms, reassured by the feel of his rock-hard biceps beneath her fingers. "Are you okay? Who screamed? Where is Brown?"

  A door slammed and tires spun out in the distance. She held Hunter's gaze, needing an answer. Needing to know if her cowardice had signed her mother’s death sentence.

  "I got the deputy. Brown saw me and ran. I tried to get him, but he was already halfway up the levee." Had she thought the night was dark? Hunter's gaze was darker. And his expression was so cold she almost got chills.

  She suddenly noticed the blood-soaked knife clutched in his right hand. There was a dead look in his eyes that terrified her. It was as if the Hunter she knew—the one who had saved her, held her, loved her—was gone and a ruthless mercenary was in his place.

  Was this the Hunter the rest of the world saw? Concern for him overwhelmed her fright. She cupped his cheek, but he didn't move, didn't blink. He looked like the god of death froz
en in stone.

  "Are you okay?" Evie tried to draw him back to her.

  "Yes." His curt one-word answer didn't reassure her.

  Evie slid a hand down to his and slipped her fingers around the knife handle. He let it fall into her grasp. She carefully placed the killing object on the ground, making sure to keep her distance from the blood.

  Then she caressed his jaw. Held his gaze.

  "I failed."

  "What?" Evie asked.

  "I let Brown get away."

  "I don't think you let him get away. He used his own man to distract you."

  The only sign of anger he allowed himself was to clench his jaw. Evie eased closer, almost afraid to startle him, and put one knee into the wet mud. She trembled, but not from fear.

  His dark gaze did something to her. Drove her past logic. Past desperation. She burned. She craved. Yearned for his kiss. His touch. The heat of his flesh against hers.

  She needed to connect with him. Evie kept her eyes wide open and kissed him. She didn't let go, didn't relax until he closed his eyes. She forged forward, sought his tongue, and explored the moist depths of his mouth.

  Hunter groaned and went to his knees, wrapping his arms around her. Evie held on to his face, needing an anchor.

  Fire licked her limbs.

  Fire and something else. Something deeper. Something that went beyond lust and desire and approached tenderness. Passion. Love.

  When they broke apart, she didn't pay attention to her soaked jeans or to the spray of blood on his handsome face. All Evie saw were his soulful eyes and how much she loved him.

  She sucked in a shaky breath. "Are you okay?"

  Hunter smiled, the expression small and barely there, but his eyes weren't the embodiment of the Grim Reaper anymore. "I'm supposed to ask you that. Not the other way around."

  "True, you did leave me alone in a dark forest with a mad man." Evie tapped her chin, pretending to ponder whether she would forgive him.

  "How did I know you would look at it that way?" Hunter said, his smile growing right along with the warmth in her heart.

  "I thought that was the girlfriend's job. You know, to nag and point out all the bad stuff."

  "Girlfriend?" Hunter said.

  "Too much?"

  "Not enough,” he growled, yanking her forward and taking a kiss from her all-too-eager lips.

  She had finally accepted the truth: she had never really stopped loving him and the only way to fill her empty shell of a soul was through Hunter James.

  "Are you really okay?" Hunter asked.

  Evie thought for a minute. The past few days had surpassed the ninth gate of Hell, all but inventing a whole new tenth gate just to torture her. But she hadn't had to trudge through the horror alone.

  Hunter would help her save her mother. And after they secured Maxine, she had every intention of asking for his help with Marcus and his weapons.

  The Evie that had practically pissed in her pants at the first sign of trouble had ceased to exist. Now she was just pissed.

  And she had a warrior by her side.

  "Let’s go." Evie retrieved his knife, wiped it clean on her jeans, and offered it to him.

  He tucked it in his boot, checked his gun, and yanked a flashlight from the backpack. "I think Silo Farm is about a half-mile east of here. Can you run?"

  "I can run circles around you."

  Hunter lifted her chin with a crooked finger. "I don't know where all this spunk is coming from, but I like it. Let’s see if you can back up that challenge.” Hunter turned and took off, the flashlight bouncing off trees and brush in a smooth straight pattern. Evie sucked in a breath and followed, already knowing she didn’t have a shot at keeping up with him. Even while running, he moved so silently she could barely hear him.

  Tree limbs rushed by in a dark haze. Sharp thorns snagged her skin and hair, but she kept moving. She had a goal. A purpose. And Hunter.

  Evie kept as close to him as she could, his flashlight the only illumination in the pitch-black night. They ran at the pace of a brisk jog and it wasn't long before Evie was out of breath.

  Then the ground seemed to dip into a deep ravine. She tripped forward and grabbed Hunter’s shoulder for support.

  “You doing okay?" he asked, pausing at the bottom.

  Evie had managed to remain upright, barely, so she nodded, too out of breath to answer.

  "The incline is steep. I want you to hold on to my jeans until we reach the top."

  She nodded again. When Hunter turned she hooked two fingers into his center belt loop. Then he started up. Slow. He grabbed small trees as they climbed and Evie stayed latched onto him the whole while. Her very own mercenary.

  Razor vines cut burning paths across her arms. Her feet slipped on the wet leaves and muddy ground and her lungs burned from the effort, but she kept going.

  They reached the top, what seemed like forever later, and she couldn't stand up straight anymore. Her hands hit her knees and she sucked in big gulps of air.

  "What happened to running circles?" Hunter said.

  There still wasn’t enough air in her lungs to fuel words, so Evie held up a finger.

  "I see a field. We're at the edge of the woods."

  "Okay." Another gasp. "Let’s go." She stood and started past him, but he caught up with her in two strides.

  They walked out of the woods. A dirt road cut perpendicular in front of them. A huge cotton field lay past that.

  The bushy green plants grew so thick she couldn't discern one row from another, and they were at least a few inches taller than her own five-foot-two frame.

  "Just stay close and watch out for snakes."

  Great. Snakes. "I've had enough of those to last me two lifetimes," Evie said.

  "Yeah, me too." Hunter started into the field and Evie tucked up close behind him. After they pushed past the first few plants, she couldn’t see anything but leaves.

  "This is worse than the woods." Leaves slapped her face, the plants at the perfect height.

  "Just stay close, I can see over the top." Hunter kept going.

  Their boots slushed and mucked through the mud underfoot, and Evie found herself cursing the rain again. Damn deluge had turned everything to mud.

  Something stung her neck and she slapped hard. She came up with a small splatter of blood on her palm. Mosquito. All the water attracted the blood-sucking insects like flies to rotting food.

  Hunter increased their pace and they finally emerged from the cotton. Of course, her sense of relief was short lived—as soon as they crossed another dirt road, they went into a cornfield. The damn corn stalks were twice as tall as the cotton and, without any moon, scary as hell. Fear tried to slip a toehold into her conscious, but she slapped it back. She wasn't going to let that scared little bitch take over. Not again.

  By the time they emerged from the last field, Evie had been bitten more times than she could count and she’d acquired at least another five pounds of mud on her boots. But she didn't pay attention to that.

  All she saw was Silo Farm.

  Chapter 27

  Cal Silo's old white farmhouse sat off to the left, tucked against the levee, away from the main workshops. It looked so much like the house Evie rented, except hers was underwater. On the other side of the levee.

  Dingy yellow light from atop an electric pole cast a glow on a driveway that spread wide and connected the house to the main workshop to their right. Behind that was another open shop with trailers and combines. Behind that, the grain bins.

  "Come on, I'll start checking the shop for a truck. You check behind the house." Hunter prayed the old man had left something they could use for transportation. Anything. Shit. Evie was pale and out of breath, but he could tell she was terrified for her mom. All because he hadn’t managed to keep his goddamn cool out in the field. He'd seen the deputy, and instead of checking his surroundings, he'd moved in for the kill.

  Brown could have attacked him, but instead the bastard had run. Wh
ich was worse. Hunter could have easily overtaken the guy in hand-to-hand combat.

  Now he had no one to fight but distance.

  Evie nodded and took off toward the farmhouse. Hunter jogged around the first shop. It was a huge metal building with an opening down the right side that was used to shelter farm equipment. Silo Farm was the oldest in the area. And though Silo had moved most of his farming operations closer to town, he still used the old farm. Or he had. Before Hunter left.

  Shit.

  He passed a combine. Old. Flat tire.

  A tractor. 1980's model at best and rusted across the whole engine. Shit.

  Another combine. Fuck. Might as well be put in a museum. Apparently Silo kept everything, antiques included.

  Hunter rounded the back. Three grain bins stood sentry, clumped together, with weeds growing waist high. It didn’t look like it’d been mowed in a year.

  Silo must have shut the whole farm down in Hunter's absence. Which meant anything of any value, anything that worked, would be at the new headquarters.

  He stopped at the back corner of the shop and hung his head. A pile of trash rotted about a foot away. He'd never failed at a task in his entire career. Not one. But he’d failed twice tonight.

  Worse: he’d failed Evie.

  He punched the wall and metal rattled like wild thunder across the yard. Dammit. Then he punched it again. And again.

  "Hunter." Her scream hit his ears. Could Brown have figured out where they were headed and circled back?

  His heart stopped. He turned and ran, destroying the distance between them, fear for Evie eating up his defeat and spitting it out. He didn't stop until he spotted her. Bent over. Hands on knees. Gulping in air. His pistol was in his hands in a second, but there was no sign of the sheriff—or anyone—around them. "Evie? What's wrong? Are you okay?"

  She walked her hands up her legs, panting and pale. "Yeah. I heard a bang and it scared me. I thought maybe..."

  Damn. His own anger and loss of control had made her think Brown was back. "I'm sorry. I accidentally hit something."