SIXTEEN
Later that night Mercy couldn’t sleep, but it wasn’t because she had energy to burn and a list of tasks to tackle. Tonight she was drained, so drained she was unable to relax into sleep. The roller coaster of emotions with Rose had burned her out.
It’d been worth it to talk with her sister again.
But now, as she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, violence haunted the dim corners of her hotel room. She heard every sound in the old building. A flushed toilet. Footsteps walking past her room. The slam of a car door. She tried to tune them out.
Instead a fifteen-year-old flashback erupted to the surface. Bloodshed and fear and guilt.
Mercy yanked the gate closed and double-checked the latch.
In the dark she followed the path to the house, thankful she’d finished her homework at school. Spring was crazy busy on their farm and it would be nearly eleven by the time she got to bed. Jealousy flashed as she thought of the girls at school who lived in town. No animals to tend, no gardens to weed. Plenty of time to watch TV.
A different life. Mercy and her family lived differently for a reason. One she was proud of, but that didn’t mean she always liked it.
Those girls would be very sorry when they found themselves without gas for their cars and food for their meals one day.
Life would give them a crash course in gardening.
Her parents were gone for the night. They’d traveled to Portland for their semiannual shopping trip even though her mother had worried about leaving the three siblings alone after Pearl’s friend was murdered. Mercy’s father had waved off her concern. “No one can take care of themselves better than our kids.”
Her mother had reluctantly agreed. Throughout the year her parents would make a list of items they couldn’t get on this side of the Cascades. Last night they’d analyzed their list for hours, debating cost versus necessity of an ultracold medical freezer, a microhydro generator, and a half-dozen other items. Mercy had finally tuned them out. She didn’t care what they did. She loved her parents, but sometimes they took their TEOTWAWKI preparations a little too seriously. Other families took vacations; hers tucked away every extra penny.
At least Owen and Pearl could do as they pleased. They’d both married and now lived in their own homes in Eagle’s Nest, but Owen still spent a lot of time with her father, asking advice on prepping and then recruiting him and Levi to help him install solar panels. Owen was becoming more like her father every day—so serious about life. What happened to her older brother who would drag race and drink beer behind the Wilsons’ barn?
She stepped through the back door of her house. “Rose? Is there any pie left?” she yelled. Her stomach growled at the thought of her sister’s apple pie. Rose made an incredible pie. Her sense of smell alerted her when a piecrust was perfect; she didn’t need to see the color.
Silence greeted her. Mercy kicked off her wet boots in the mudroom and hung up her jacket. In stocking feet, she checked the cupboards for the remains of the pie. Rose had learned to hide baked goods or else Levi would eat everything. Mercy had eaten one small slice when the pie had come out of the oven, and she steeled herself for the discovery that Levi had finished the rest.
She wished he’d get married and move out. He’d already fathered a baby girl; he just needed to get things straight with Kaylie’s mother.
Thumping and a small crash sounded from her father’s den on the other side of the house.
“Rose? You okay?” Mercy kept snooping through the cupboards, wishing she had Rose’s sense of smell to find the pie.
“Darn it! Levi!” Opening the dishwasher, she’d discovered the empty glass pie pan.
More thumping sounded. Mercy slammed the dishwasher and went to see what her sister had knocked over. The front door was wide open, and she pushed it closed as she passed by, following the sounds to the den.
She rounded a hall corner and spotted her sister on the den floor. A man straddled her bleeding body. He looked up as Mercy froze and he lunged for her, knocking her to her knees as she spun around to run.
In the hallway his weight landed on her back, crushing the breath out of her lungs. She fought, swinging her arms and kicking her legs with every fiber of her muscles. She flung her head upward and was rewarded with a satisfying chunk as she connected with his nose.
“Fucking bitch!”
He grabbed her hair, yanking her head back, and punched the side of her face with his other hand. A section of hair ripped out of her scalp. Mercy’s eyes watered and her neck throbbed where it overextended. She stopped fighting.
He’s going to kill me.
Is Rose already dead?
Is this what happened to those other girls?
Is he the killer?
He released her hair and leaned harder on her back, speaking in her ear, his breath hot on her skin. An odor of fear and excitement reached her nose, rancid and oily. Her brain refused to compute his words of terror.
He yanked on the back of her jeans waistband.
Something erupted deep inside her and she arched back, leading with her elbow, determined to find his face. Her elbow connected with his eye socket and he screamed, slapping his hands over his eye. Mercy scrambled out from under him, kicking frantically, wishing she still wore her boots. She tripped and lunged, barely keeping her balance, to get back to the den to Rose.
Her sister was on her hands and knees; blood trickled from her nose and mouth, and her dress was torn down the front. Her bra and stomach were visible. Mercy stopped in shock and then rushed to help her sister. Rose cowered back and rose to her knees, one of their father’s handguns in her shaking hand, pointing at Mercy.
“Rose! It’s Mercy.”
The gun immediately lowered. “Mercy?” Rose’s voice wavered.
“Give me that.” Mercy snatched the gun from her hand and whirled around to glimpse the back of their attacker as he vanished around a hall corner. “Don’t move!” she ordered Rose, and ran after the man, adrenaline pumping through her limbs.
Shoot him, shoot him, shoot him.
The gun settled comfortably in her grip. She’d fired her father’s guns hundreds of times.
This is why he made us drill.
She turned a corner in time to see the man abruptly reverse direction. He’d started to run through the kitchen, but nearly fell over as he changed his mind and lurched in the direction of the front of the house. Mercy planted her feet, aimed, and fired once. Two shots sounded.
He collapsed on the floor of their family room.
She held her position, her heart threatening to beat out of her chest and her panting filling her ears.
He didn’t move.
“Mercy? Rose?” Levi shouted from the kitchen.
“We’re okay!” she answered.
Her brother peeked around the corner from the kitchen and his eyes widened as he saw her gun aimed at the man on the floor. Blood rapidly pooled around the body.
I’ll have to scrub that floor.
“God’s eyes, Mercy! Did you shoot him too?”
She spotted the raised gun in her brother’s hand. No wonder the thug had reversed direction.
“He attacked Rose, he attacked me. Oh my God.” She turned her head in the direction of her sister. “Rose? Are you okay?” Mercy couldn’t pull her weapon away from its position, trained on the body.
“I’m okay.” Rose’s voice shook but sounded strong behind Mercy. “Is he dead?”
“I think so.” Mercy looked at her brother. “Check him.” Her feet were glued to the floor.
“I shot him too,” said Levi. “I could hear you screaming from outside.”
Mercy didn’t realize she’d screamed. “Check him,” she repeated in a whisper.
Levi slowly approached the body, his weapon trained on the figure. She wanted to holler at him to hurry up, he moved so slowly. He finally knelt next to the man and placed his fingertips on his neck.
He waited forever.
“He’s dead.” Levi moved the head to look at the face. He glanced over his shoulder at Mercy. “Do you know him?”
She found the strength to move her feet and crept forward, the gun lowered at her side. She wasn’t ready to set it down, but the compulsion to point it at the body was gone; he was no longer a threat. She looked over Levi’s shoulder and couldn’t put a name to the face. He was young. In his twenties. He wore the dusty jeans and boots of every other man in town and hadn’t shaved in several days. The back of his plaid shirt was soaked with blood.
We shot him in the back.
He’s unarmed.
Warmth touched her toes and Mercy jumped back. Her sock was red with his blood. She made a strangled sound and bent over to rip off the sock, wiping at her toes. OhmyGodOhmyGod. She rubbed until every speck was gone.
It just appears to be gone. Tests could still find his blood on my skin.
She met Levi’s gaze. “What did we do?” she whispered. “Oh my God, Levi. We’ll go to prison for this.”
“No, you won’t,” came Rose’s voice. “He was going to kill me. He said over and over that he was going to fuck me and then kill me.”
Rose’s language made her wince, but Mercy was more alarmed by Rose’s white face. Shock. Blood still ran from her sister’s nose, and it was smeared across her cheek and down her dress.
“He had my dress up around my waist,” Rose said matter-of-factly. “He was moments away from raping me.” She shuddered and pulled her cardigan tighter over her dress. “Who is it?”
“We don’t know,” said Mercy.
“Where’s the other guy?”
“What?” Mercy and Levi gasped.
“There were two of them,” Rose’s knuckles whitened on her sweater. “Two of them grabbed me. One let go when he heard Mercy’s voice.”
An engine and spinning tires sounded in the distance. Levi ran for the window and pushed back the curtain. He watched for a few seconds and then turned back. “All I could see was a dust cloud.”
“They’re going to get the police.” Mercy’s teeth clattered together. “He’ll tell them we killed someone.”
Levi took three large steps and grabbed her by the shoulders, looking her in the eye. “No, he won’t. How will he explain that they were both attacking Rose and you? He won’t do that. He’s a coward. He’s running away. I bet these are the guys who killed Jennifer and Gwen.”
Mercy stared at him, desperately wanting to believe. “We killed someone. They’ll lock us up.”
Levi turned his head to study the man on the floor. “No, they won’t. No one will know.”
“What?” said Rose. “Levi, are you crazy? We killed someone!”
He gripped Mercy’s shoulders tighter, his gaze boring into hers. “Can you clean this up? If I take care of the body, can you and Rose get rid of the blood?”
She blinked. “Yes. Where—”
“Don’t ask.”
She nodded, not wanting to know.
“Levi, you can’t do this,” argued Rose. “We need to call the police.”
“Why? So they can arrest Mercy and me? Do you want to testify in court about what you just went through?”
“But they need to stop the other guy before he hurts another woman.”
Levi’s laugh was empty. “He’s long gone. They’ll never find him. We shook him up. I bet he doesn’t try it again.”
“But I’ve heard the other guy’s voice before,” Rose insisted.
Mercy spun around. “Where?”
Rose’s pale face went a shade paler. “At the Bevinses’ ranch.”
Mercy couldn’t breathe. “Rose, are you sure? How do you know?”
“I just know,” she said, but her face was uncertain.
“Who is it?” Levi asked. “One of the family? One of the hands?”
“I don’t know,” Rose cried. “I just know I heard it when we were there for the Saint Patrick’s Day barbecue two weeks ago.”
“So it could have been anyone,” Mercy said. “Nearly the entire town was there for that party.”
Rose’s face crumpled. “I’m no help.”
Mercy pulled off her plaid overshirt as she moved to her sister, and used it to wipe the blood and tears off her sister’s face. “You’re shook up. That would rattle anyone.”
“But I know what I heard,” Rose insisted. Mercy exchanged a look with Levi.
“We can’t tell Mom and Dad,” said Levi slowly. “We especially can’t tell them that you heard the voice at the Bevinses’ ranch. Dad will declare war.”
Mercy stared at him as Rose sucked in a breath. “We have to tell them.”
“No. No, we don’t,” said Levi.
Mercy’s mind raced through the possibilities. Dad would stop at nothing until he found who’d attacked his girls. If he thought that person was from the Bevinses’ ranch, the town would be more divided than it already was. The police would know she and Levi had shot an unarmed man in the back.
The bare walls of a prison cell flashed in her head. “Levi’s right. We clean it up and don’t tell anyone.”
“I’m getting a tarp.” Levi dashed out the back door.
“We can’t let him hide that we killed someone, Mercy.” Rose’s fingers went to Mercy’s shoulders and then gently touched her sister’s jawline and cheeks. A gesture that meant she needed comfort. Mercy put her hands over Rose’s, pressing them into her face, also needing to feel her touch.
“I think it’s for the best,” Mercy whispered. “I can clean this up. Levi’s right. Who’s going to come back and accuse us of murder while they were trying to kill us first? He doesn’t know this guy is dead. He’d already left.”
“But I’m sure he heard the shots.”
“Probably, but he can’t assume his friend is dead. Most likely he’ll think he got away. What exactly happened?”
Rose took a deep breath. “I was cleaning in the den when someone came in through the front door, and I assumed it was Levi because of the heavy boot tread, but I realized there were two sets of boots. Then I heard the mirror in the powder room shatter.”
“What?” Mercy dashed to the half bath near the front door. Rose was right. Someone had pulled the small mirror off the wall and thrown it to the floor. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Rose answered from right behind her. “One of them laughed as it happened. That’s when I got scared. I tried to shut the door to the den, but they beat me to it.”
Rose started to shake, and Mercy guided her back to the living room and into a chair. She wrapped her big overshirt over Rose’s cardigan. “I’ll get you something hot to drink. And then I’ll tackle this mess.” A small dark circle caught her eye. “Crap. There’s a bullet hole in the wall.”
“We can patch it,” Rose said firmly.
Determination washed over Mercy. “Yes, we can.”
In her bed in the dark motel room, tears washed over her cheeks. Is he back? Did we let a killer go free back then and now he’s killing again?
How could she tell Truman her suspicions without implicating herself?
I could lose my job.
She shuddered. Her job was her life, her pride, her proof that she’d been born for more than living on a ranch and waiting for the world to go to hell.
Did we screw up?