A Merciful Promise (Mercy Kilpatrick #6)(80)

Truman and several agents spent the two days widening the physical search for Mercy and the teenage girl beyond the compound. It was hard, frustrating work. The snow was over a foot deep. Every time Truman’s foot hit something hidden under the thick white blanket, his heart stopped. He pushed himself, rarely taking breaks, eating only when Eddie shoved food in his hand. Needing sleep made him angry at himself for needing time to recharge.

As they searched, the bodies at the gate were removed, and the remaining members taken to the county jail for questioning. Federal crime scene teams covered the compound, bringing in heaters to melt the snow in places to see what was hidden beneath. They collected evidence as SSA Ghattas and Agent Aguirre dealt with angry FBI and ATF upper chains of command. And the media.

Truman ignored the conversations about who was at fault; he didn’t care.

He had one objective. Find Mercy.

The ATF dog finally arrived, and Truman, Agent Gorman, and a few other ATF and FBI agents followed the canine and handler on their search. The snow didn’t slow down the Labrador retriever. Truman had questioned how the dog could smell things below the snow.

“Airborne particles still exist that he can pick up with his nose,” the ATF handler explained. “His primary job is to find explosives, but he does search and rescue and also cadaver work too.”

The dog had led them to several cabins, the mess hall, and the kitchen. When they followed the dog to the command center, the dog had signaled inside Pete’s office, surprising the handler. “That’s his explosives sign.”

The agents ripped the room apart. Under the flooring of the command center, they discovered the stolen guns from the ATF robbery and more blocks of C-4. After inventorying the weapons, they determined that out of more than three hundred stolen weapons, about fifty were missing, possibly sold for the cash.

Selling weapons wasn’t America’s Preserve only source of income. During their interviews, many of the arrested members stated they’d handed over their savings to help fund the compound. A lockbox holding nearly $20,000 was also found with the weapons under the floor.

Yet his people wear rags.

After the command center, the dog led them to the storage unit where Mercy had been held captive.

After finding the unit, Truman watched the agent reward the dog with a rough game of tug-of-war in the big garage. He moved outdoors after a few seconds of the dog’s happy tail and enthusiastic leaps. The cheerful sight was too much. How could the world move forward as normal when his world had been ripped into pieces?

Impatience percolated under his skin. The dog was getting results, but they weren’t the results Truman wanted, and the process was slow. The agent wouldn’t rush the dog, letting him take his time and stopping for frequent breaks and play.

“We’ll find her,” Agent Gorman said to Truman as he joined him outside. The man’s face was long, weighed down with guilt and exhaustion. Truman was still angry with him and Agent Aguirre for leading Mercy into this disaster.

Truman didn’t reply.

When reward time was over, the dog led them across the clearing and then stopped at the trees. The handler led him in a circle, giving him encouragement.

From what Truman had seen, Mercy had walked through every part of the complex.

Catching a scent, the dog shot off, and the men jogged after him, breaking paths in the fresh snow. Truman panted as he moved, suddenly aware he’d forgotten breakfast that morning. His life was completely upside down and backward. He couldn’t think straight.

Is this how Mercy felt when I was stuck in Ollie’s cabin last spring?

Truman had gone missing for nearly two weeks, ill with a fever and nursing a broken arm, unable to communicate that he was alive and safe in the isolated cabin. Back home, Mercy had led an aggressive search, and his town had started to grieve. It’d been worse for her than him. At least he’d known he was okay and would eventually be healthy enough to walk several miles out of the forest.

But Mercy hadn’t known if he was alive.

Just as he knew nothing right now.

Not knowing was hell.

His nerves had grown hypersensitive and his temper short during the three days he’d known she was missing. He felt like water simmering in a pan, hovering just at that moment before it breaks into a boil. It was just a matter of what triggered his boil and when.

The dog started down the ravine that bordered one side of the compound. It was steep, and it was impossible to see if there were footholds under the snow. The men slowed, and the handler called the dog to wait. He stopped, furiously wagging his tail as he looked expectantly at the shuffling men.

They inched their way down the ravine. Truman stumbled twice, tripping over rocks hidden under a foot and a half of snow. It took twenty minutes for the men to get to the bottom. Delighted to resume his work, the dog darted along the bottom of the ravine for a hundred feet and then circled under a tree and sat in the snow, ears forward and eyes eager, looking to his handler.

“Did he lose the scent?” Gorman asked.

Truman’s pulse raced as he watched the immobile dog.

“No,” said the handler. “That’s a hit.” He glanced nervously at Truman. “Something dead is under there.”

Truman and the other agents attacked the snow with their hands only to find bare ground. Men were sent back to the compound for shovels. The long minutes of waiting nearly heated Truman over that boiling point.