Last night, I’d arrived home just before midnight to realize Mercy was still gone.
With a half-filled bathtub, no messages on my phone, and an open bottle of wine, I knew something was wrong.
Dialing her, my panic increased when it went straight to voicemail.
Using the landline, I call downstairs asking if anyone saw her leave. Chaz relayed that she ran out of the front door in her pajamas yelling, “Be right back!”
That was six hours ago.
I called Roger wondering if maybe Diane needed her. I called the assisted living center wondering if there had been an emergency. In between those calls, I blew up Pita’s phone, only he wasn’t answering.
Pacing, strung out, worried, and ready to kill someone, Pita blew through my front door yelling her name right as my phone lit up. It’s Mercy, thank-fucking-god.
“Are you okay?”
“You have less than thirty minutes before she detonates, leveling an entire city block.”
“Who the fuck is this?”
“Here’s your nosey bitch.”
Sucking in a breath, I felt Pita behind me but didn’t spare him a look. “Dion?” God, her voice was so small.
“Mercy, where are you?”
“No,” she rushes out. “You can’t come here.”
When Mercy grunts in pain, I nearly come out of my skin. Back on the phone, he rattles of an address then laughs as if he’s already won.
Talking frantically, I realize immediately that Mercy can’t hear me. Because she wasn’t able to hold her phone. Yelling to the kid to find me this fucking address, when he hits me with it, I roar, “That’s twenty minutes away!” Fuck, there was no straight shot to get there either.
Phone in by my ear, we both run to the door when Mercy whimpers, “Dion, if you can hear me—if you love me-you won’t come.”
Gunning it, I was skimming a corner when I whispered, “I don’t love you, Mercy. I adore you. Hang on, beautiful, I’m coming.”
“Dion? I—” the kid says tentatively.
“Not now, Pita,” I warn. “Just tell me where the fuck I’m going.”
With four and a half minutes to spare, I throw my door open threatening him with, “You’re a liability. You stay in this truck and wait while I get her. Do you understand me?”
“Go,” was all he said.
Without any thought to an ambush, traps, or capture, I searched until I found her.
With her phone in her lap, arms and legs tied to the chair, was Mercy wearing a vest of C4 strapped to her chest.
“It keeps ticking,” she says with red eyes. “How much time is left?”
Running forward, I fall to my knees when I see there’s less than two minutes left. At my silence she whispers, “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“I’ll get you out –”
“Dion,” she says so softly. “Run. I need you to run.”
“Stay still,” I beg her while trying to figure out where all these God damn wires go. “Fuck, I don’t know what to do!”
“Dion, please,” she begins to cry. “Go. Leave and promise me you’ll look out for Pita.”
Ignoring her, I take the knife out of my pocket and start cutting the vest from her shoulders. Checking the time, I’ve got one minute and forty-six seconds left. Taking her face in my hands I memorize her features, those eyes and even her tears. “Adoring you has been a privilege, Mercy.”
Before she can say a word, I go back to furiously cutting and when it was free from her body, I did run and I didn’t look back. Clearing the building, I scream warnings at Pita but instead of running away from me, he was running toward me. So, when the ticking stopped I did the only thing I could do. Held the vest to my chest and hit the ground covering it with my body.
I was watching life pass before my closed eyes when I heard, “Dion? Why are you on the ground?”
Looking up at the kid I roar, “Get back!” and watch him fall on his ass in fear instead.
Why didn’t it blow? Was it a dud? Was I dreaming?
Carefully flipping the vest over, I take a closer look and realize the bomb wasn’t a dud. Because the bomb was fake and so was the timer. My fear though, that had been completely real and was still riding me hard.
“Mercy,” I exhale hard and found my bearings to run back inside with the kid right on my heels.
She was soaked in tears, distraught and fighting to get free when I yell to her. Seeing me and the kid whole drained any fight she had left. Every ounce of energy was zapped and had she not been tied up, she’d have hit the floor. “Help me lift her, Pita.”
Taking the opposite side, we lift Mercy, chair and all, carrying her out to the truck.
I just finished cutting the last tie when she cupped my face and whispered, “I couldn’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“Live without you. I couldn’t do it.”
“Baby –”
“Even those few minutes…I couldn’t do it, Dion.”
“It’s the same for me, Mercy.”
“You saved my life,” she whimpers. “You were going to –”
So, she wouldn’t lose it, I call the kid over and when he falls into her arms, I held them both until my own tremors passed. I held them a long fucking time.