A Merciful Secret (Mercy Kilpatrick #3)(92)

“Yes, my mother started the collection, but I’ve increased it over the years.” Bitter but hopeful eyes turned toward Mercy. “Can you get my daughter?”

Their gazes held.

“Absolutely. My daughter is out there too.” Uncertainty and fear wove through Mercy.

But the confidence in Salome’s eyes sent a calming energy up her spine, obliterating the fear.

Nothing will happen to them. Not while I’m still breathing.

“Aunt Mercy?”

She nearly missed Kaylie’s soft voice through the radio. Mercy lifted it close to her mouth. “Yes?” she whispered.

“There’s a man. I think he took the fuel cans out of the barn.”

Mercy whirled back to the laptop again, searching the screen. “I can’t see him.” She pointed at Christian and Salome and gestured upstairs to her small loft. “Try to see him from the windows.”

“What is he doing with them?” Kaylie asked softly. “Morrigan and I are in the cabinet.”

Kaylie wouldn’t ask Mercy while Morrigan was listening if the barn was being set on fire.

“I can’t see him right now. I’ll figure it out.” She paused. “Be ready, Kaylie.”

Be ready to get out if the barn burns.

“Always,” came the teen’s reply.

Tears smarted at her niece’s answer. I couldn’t love her any more if she were mine.

“Don’t come out unless I say so or you need to.”

“Understood.”

Mercy shoved the radio back in a pocket and studied her camera views.

Where is the bastard?





THIRTY-SEVEN

I have a brother.

It’s as if someone attempted to erase only child across my heart, but the words still show through the smears. They added sibling in tentative script; the word is awkward and harsh. It doesn’t fit. Yet.

My best friend is my brother.

I’ve always known our affection went deeper than friendship. I look at him now and my heart is happy; it knows the truth. Perhaps if I had listened closer to my heart, I would have realized it for myself.

But the man outside is also my brother. My brain refuses to accept this fact.

“Will Gabriel set the barn on fire?” I ask Christian as I peer out of a loft window, my stomach in my throat, worried sick over my daughter.

Morrigan.

Burning.

Living deep in the woods, my mother had a great fear of fire. One that she passed on to me. Not just a fear of forest fires but also a personal fear. “They burn witches,” she often told me.

“We aren’t witches,” I’d reply.

“It doesn’t matter. They believe we are, and that is all it takes.”

“This isn’t the seventeenth century.”

“Hmph. Don’t sass.”

My mother’s words echo in my brain as I search the grounds for Christian’s brother.

“It’s too wet,” answers Christian. He stands with his body to the side of a window as he scans outside. “Everything is covered with snow. It’d be nearly impossible to get a fire going.”

I look at the smoking Hummer without comment.

“When we were kids, he got in trouble twice for fooling around with flammables.” Disgust fills his voice. “Makes me wonder how many times he didn’t get caught.”

“We can’t see him,” I report down to Mercy on the lower floor.

“Keep watching. He’s somewhere,” she answers back. “Can you see his vehicle?”

“Barely. Not much past the headlights,” I tell her. Out the opposite window I can see the barn. No smoke. A small reassurance that Morrigan is still safe.

“Gabriel is no longer a child,” I tell Christian. “What he’s done is unforgivable.” Tears burn in my eyes and my throat grows tight. “My mother . . .” I can’t speak.

Christian looks ready to cry. “I’m so sorry, Salome. I know how special she was.”

“I liked your father. I’d always hoped the two of you would repair your relationship. I tried to reason with him.”

“He’s stubborn.”

Like his son.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was my father?” I whisper. “You’ve known for years.”

He won’t turn from the window to look at me, and I see his father’s stubbornness in his spine.

“You didn’t tell me you were friends with my father. The man who practically disowned me,” he lashes back.

“That’s not the same and you know it.”

He has the grace to nod, and I can tell he is struggling to tell me the truth.

“I don’t know. A lot of reasons.”

I wait.

“I wasn’t positive it was true. I didn’t want to spread a rumor.”

“But now you believe it is true?”

“I did some snooping around after you begged for a place to hide. I found out there was no way your father could have been your birth father . . . he was in jail at the time.” He finally meets my eyes. “I found your baptism record. Your birthday isn’t what you think it is.”

“When is it?” I whisper, my knees weak.

“Sometime in September, I think. Not March. You’re about six months younger than you believe.”