Mercy (Atlee Pine #4)(29)

“Go get your things,” said Cain.

“Que?”

“You got any kids? Any . . . ni?os?”

Rosa shook her head. “We’re not . . . married.”

“Okay, go get your things. I’ll take you to a place where you’ll be safe.”

Rosa ran back into her room and they could hear her banging and slamming things.

“Hey!”

Cain turned to see the office woman striding toward her.

“Hey what?”

“You assaulted Ken.”

“I was defending myself.”

“I don’t think so. I’m going to have to call the police,” she said.

“I thought you might do that when he was beating the shit out of Rosa.”

“He was just disciplining her. You shouldn’t have butted in.”

“Well, the fact is, we’re leaving,” said Cain.

“Who’s leaving?”

“Me and Rosa.”

The woman said stubbornly, “You’re not getting your money back. No refunds.”

“Yeah, I can see how you might think that.”

“’Cause it’s true.”

“How long has Ken been here?” asked Cain.

“A month.”

Cain pulled out her phone. “Then I’ll make the call to the cops.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” the woman exclaimed, utterly thrown by this abrupt change in the discussion.

“Ken broke his parole. So I’m notifying the cops that he’s here and that you’ve been harboring him for a month.”

“Shit, are you drunk or what? How do you know he’s on parole?”

In answer Cain pointed to a tat on Ken’s arm. “That’s the membership symbol for the Aryan Brotherhood. They’re a prison hate group. You get that tat when you go inside. I can tell it’s a prison tat because it’s a shitty job; they use melted-down junk for ink and crappy, homemade shivs to do it. Now Ken’s on the outside. He’s a young guy. Parole is usually for quite a few years. That tat looks almost brand-new. But he’s got a knife and a gun. And he just assaulted a woman. Triple-strike parole violations. And you just admitted that you know he does this regularly. So that makes you an accessory. That’ll get you at least a year in jail, too.”

The woman took a step back, her confidence draining away along with all the color in her face. “How do you know so much about all that?”

Cain knew all about that because she had been picked up hitchhiking and then assaulted by one of these “Brothers.” She’d briefly been held against her will before escaping, and had left the dude looking a lot like Ken did right now.

But she said with authority, “I’m a cop.”

“Bullshit! Show me your badge. And what would you be doing here?”

“I’m undercover investigating some of the lowlifes in the area, so I’m not carrying a badge. Besides, you think every gal could take out somebody like Ken without special training?”

It was sometimes stunning to Cain how easily she could produce lies that sounded authentic, like she had with the security guard that morning. But for most of her life Cain had been in situations where coming up with an alternate reality on the fly and under stressful situations—and making it sound so real that sometimes she believed it herself—was the only thing that allowed her to keep breathing.

Practice makes perfect. And practice under penalty of death makes better than perfect.

Painter’s Pants said, “She’s talking truth to you, Beth. I mean, you can see that with your own damn eyes, gal. Hell, I bet she’s like ex-military or something with all that damn ninja training.”

Cain said, “So, Beth, go get my money, all of it, and bring it here to me. And I won’t call the cops. Not because I don’t want to see you and Ken go to jail, but because I don’t want to waste time filling out the paperwork. I have better things to do.”

Beth stood there for a moment, wavering. Then she ran back to the office and came back with the money. She handed it over to Cain, who counted and then pocketed it.

Cain went to her room, grabbed her things, and met Rosa outside. She had put on jeans and a white long-sleeved shirt and carried a small duffel.

They drove off while everyone else stared at the unmoving pile of Ken.





CHAPTER





20


CAIN GOT ROSA INTO A WOMEN’S shelter that Cain had used when she had first come to town. She pressed a hundred dollars into Rosa’s hands and said, “Don’t ever go back to that guy. He will kill you, okay? The dude’s just bad.”

“I swear I won’t. And . . . thank you.”

Cain said nothing in reply because she wanted no thanks, from Rosa or anyone else. She just wanted to be left alone and wondered why she kept inserting herself into other people’s troubles. Maybe because no one had done that for her, and she understood quite clearly the catastrophic results of looking the other way.

She decided to splurge a bit and checked in at a local Marriott using her credit card. Cain took her things up to her room on the fourth floor and closed the door behind her. She took a long shower with actual hot water, letting it soak into her and using all of the complimentary toiletries the bathroom had to offer. It took her only a few seconds to dry her hair. She put on a clean pair of jeans, to replace the pair dirtied from the fight, with a white T-shirt and a loose-fitting straw-colored sweater over that.