Mercy (Atlee Pine #4)(94)

I give money to people I don’t know. I help them because I know what it’s like not to have anything. But that’s easy. I slip them a few bucks and walk away. There’s no other obligation, no lasting responsibility. I don’t have to do anything hard. If they live or die, get hurt or sick, it doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t touch me, because I have no real link to any of them.

But with people who cared about you, who loved you, it was different. That road ran both ways and so did the responsibility. And that suddenly scared her more than anything she’d ever fought in her life.

A direct connection to someone else who really matters, who really counts, so that if I lost it, I would feel the pain. And it would hurt far more than even what Desiree had done to me.

Yes, so much easier, and also painless, to walk away.

Instead, she trudged back into the hotel and took the stairs up. She walked down the hall and rapped on the door.

Pine answered, the fresh tears still sticking to her face like hot wax on a death mask.

She seemed far more surprised to see Mercy standing there than Mercy felt standing there.

Did I always know I was coming back? Probably.

Pine closed the door behind her sister and she sat on the bed while Mercy stood.

“How do we find Carol?” Mercy asked simply.

Pine wiped at her face, cleared her throat, and went into FBI mode. “We have APBs out on her and the car. The Porsche will have been abandoned. She may already be out of the state by now. And as time goes by, maybe out of the country.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What?”

“The dude wants me, like you said. Him just having Carol ain’t gonna cut it. She’s a means to an end.”

Pine pushed her hair out of her face “You’re right. She is.”

“So he’s gonna use Carol to get me.”

“At least he’s going to try.”

Mercy nodded, chewing on this line for a bit. “Since he’s using her as leverage, we can use me as bait. That’s how we get to Carol.”

“No, that’s how you get dead, Mercy.”

“Well, Carol can end up dead, too.”

“I know that. Which is why we have to handle this really carefully.”

“They’re gonna contact you somehow. They’re gonna want you to give me over for Carol.”

“Which I can’t and won’t do.”

“But if I’m cool with it, you don’t have a choice.”

“That is not how this works,” said Pine firmly.

“Why not? It’s a free country.”

“I can’t let you just give yourself up to be killed.”

“So you’d sacrifice your friend for me?” asked Mercy.

This blunt statement hit Pine like the punch delivered by Spector had her gut. Her face flamed, her lips set in a straight, unflinching line, and her hands curled to fists.

She looked to Mercy like the little dungaree-clad girl about to assault another tree. And win.

Pine said, “I’m not sacrificing anybody. My goal is to get Carol back safe and sound, without losing you in the process.”

Mercy sat down in the chair. “And how will you do that?”

“I’m working on it.”

“No, you’re still recovering from the mental avalanche I dropped on your head just now.”

A few moments of profound silence passed between the women.

In a cracking voice Pine said, “You obviously felt the need to say it all. And you also came back. Why?”

The fists had now uncurled to shaky fingers, Mercy noted. The little girl was solidly on earth, but perhaps more afraid than if she’d been up an eighty-foot poplar with no way down and a lightning storm coming.

Mercy shrugged in the face of this question, partly because it was complex and partly because she didn’t really have an answer that she believed would satisfy her twin.

“You worked hard to try to find me. Seems shitty to walk out on you when you need some help. And Carol doesn’t deserve to get killed over this. It’s not her problem. It’s mine.”

This blunt and honest assessment seemed to wick the tension from Pine’s body. She relaxed and looked down. “Carol is really the only good friend I have. I depend on her for everything. She’s . . . taught me a lot.”

“This dude who took her. Anything else you can remember about what he said?”

“Why?”

“He said I killed his brother. Something you remember him saying might give me a clue as to what the hell he’s talking about and who the hell his brother was.”

“But you said you didn’t kill anybody.”

“I haven’t. But he sure seems to think I have.”

Pine said, “I can’t think of anything. And I never saw his face. I got hit twice. But I don’t think by him. Whoever did it knew what they were doing.”

Mercy said, “Only your face? You look tight in the torso, too.”

Pine lifted up her shirt to reveal a mass of yellow and black bruising on the left side of her abdominal wall, bleeding over to her oblique like a stain.

“Fist or some kind of weapon?” asked Mercy, clinically observing the marks.

“Fist. I felt the knuckles.” She dropped her shirt.