by Rose, Karen
He had to smile back at her. Mercy was beautiful, but smiling? Her face simply glowed. And reassured him that she was going to be strong enough to weather this storm.
Rafe turned to his brother, who now waited in the doorway. ‘Damien, you remember Mercy, right?’
Damien, still in uniform, crossed the room to shake her hand. ‘Gideon’s sister, of course. I understand that you’ve had an eventful evening. We’ll get you back to Rafe’s place safely, don’t worry.’
‘Hey, everyone?’ Daisy asked from the speakerphone. ‘Gideon’s here. He has an update.’
‘I just got off the phone with Molina,’ Gideon said. ‘SacPD informed her that they got a call from the spouse of June Lindstrom, who never came home from the airport. She texted her husband that she was on her way home after her flight, right about the same time that Burton attacked Mercy. The airport provided surveillance video from the parking garage and the parking payment lanes. A man fitting Burton’s description was seen forcing Mrs Lindstrom into her minivan. The parking booth camera captured her mouthing Help me. There’s no audio, but there’s little doubt that her vehicle was how Burton escaped the airport.’
‘And Mrs Lindstrom?’ Mercy asked, her chin trembling.
Gideon’s voice gentled. ‘No word on her yet, Mercy. The minivan was found in downtown Santa Rosa, of all places, through its GPS. Surveillance videos near where the van was found show the same man leaving it behind. He disappeared into an alleyway, carrying a small suitcase.’
‘I think Mrs Lindstrom is probably dead,’ Mercy said quietly.
‘I think you’re right,’ Gideon replied. ‘I’m so sorry, Mercy.’
Rafe wasn’t sure what Gideon was apologizing for – that the woman might be dead or for what he had said to his sister before leaving the house.
Mercy swallowed. ‘Thank you. But I still don’t understand how he knew I’d be at the airport?’
Gideon sighed. ‘He was on an earlier flight from New Orleans. Airport video shows him coming into the Sacramento airport this morning. Well, yesterday morning now.’
Mercy had grown even paler, which Rafe hadn’t thought possible. ‘He was in New Orleans? With me?’
Farrah stiffened. ‘Shit.’
‘It appears so,’ Gideon replied with surprising calm. He sounded like the pre-Daisy Gideon, all buttoned up and unnervingly composed. ‘He boarded using the ID of Eustace Carmelo.’
Mercy startled in surprise, then huffed out a bitter chuckle. ‘Of course he did.’
Rafe turned to her, confused. ‘Why “of course”?’
She rubbed her temples wearily. ‘Ephraim Burton isn’t his actual name.’
‘His real name is Harry Franklin,’ Rafe said, wondering where she was going with this. ‘He changed it after going on the run for bank robbery and murder thirty years ago. We knew that.’
‘Yes, but he took the name “Ephraim Burton” when he joined Eden,’ Mercy corrected. ‘I don’t know how much time passed between the robbery and his arrival in Eden, but the name change was because of Eden.’
‘How do you know that, Mercy?’ Gideon asked.
‘I heard him grumbling once, after his son Carmelo was born. I was almost thirteen. He was muttering, “Fucking Ephraim. Fucking fruitful. Fucking Pastor. Fuck him and his names.” At that moment, he was glaring at a card that he was putting in his wallet. Later, when he was asleep, I peeked.’
Almost thirteen, Rafe thought. Which meant she’d been abused by that monster for a whole year by then.
Gideon’s gasp was audible. ‘Mercy. If he’d caught you . . .’
‘I know, I know.’ She waved it off. ‘I was in hell, Gideon. I didn’t think he could do anything worse than he’d already done if he caught me.’ A shudder shook her, but she soldiered on. ‘I hoped it was something I could use against him. Something I could use to get me and Mama free. But all it was was a driver’s license in the name of Eustace Carmelo.’
Rafe wanted to ask her about that shudder, because he had the sinking suspicion that Ephraim had caught her. But he tucked the question away for until the two of them were alone. Mercy had been forced to confront enough shit for one night.
‘So Pastor gave him another alias?’ Daisy asked. ‘After Ephraim’s son, Carmelo?’
Another bitter chuckle from Mercy. ‘Ephraim Burton has several sons. One is Eustace. One is Carmelo. Eustace, Carmelo, and Ephraim all mean “fruitful.” I asked Eustace’s mother why she’d chosen that name and she looked surprised. Told me that Pastor had suggested it and that Ephraim hadn’t wanted it, but Pastor’s word was law. Carmelo’s mother said the same thing.’
‘Several sons?’ Karl asked. ‘By different mothers?’
Mercy shrugged. ‘I was Ephraim’s sixth wife. We all lived together in his house.’
Karl exhaled. ‘He had six wives at the same time?’
‘One big happy family,’ she said bitterly. ‘One of the wives had died before we came to the compound, so I guess I was number seven.’ Her lips twisted. ‘Lucky me. Another wife died a few months after I . . . after our marriage. And then, of course, there was Mama. I don’t know how many he had after I left and she was killed.’
The table fell silent until Irina said through gritted teeth, ‘You were not his wife. You were a child. You know that, yes?’
Mercy smiled at her, a genuine smile that softened her face. ‘Yes, ma’am. I know that.’
‘How many children did he have at that point?’ Gideon asked, troubled.
‘Nine,’ Mercy said flatly. ‘Five sons. He did his part to populate the community.’
Sasha was biting her lip. ‘But not you . . . You never had any . . .’
Mercy shook her head hard. ‘No. Not me.’
Everyone kind of slumped in relief at that. Except for Rafe. He could see that there was far more that Mercy had left unsaid, and none of it was good. ‘Anything else, Gideon?’ he asked. ‘I was going to take Mercy and Farrah back to Daisy’s place.’
‘And I’m here, Gid,’ Damien added. ‘Rafe and I’ll make sure that the bastard doesn’t touch her.’
‘Thank you,’ Gideon said. ‘There is one more thing. Airline records show that Eustace Carmelo took the red-eye from San Francisco into New Orleans on Monday evening.’
Mercy shuddered again. ‘After that damned newscast.’
Farrah looked sick. ‘He was in New Orleans watching her? For almost a week?’
‘I think so,’ Gideon said reluctantly. ‘Molina’s got calls in to the New Orleans field office as well as the police department and sheriff’s office. We’re trying to trace his steps.’
Mercy was frantically trying to do the same, counting on her fingers and mouthing, Work, grocery store, gym . . . Then she went completely still. ‘Gideon, I visited John this week. If Ephraim was watching me all week, he knows where they live. John’s got kids. Three under ten years old. What if Ephraim can’t get to me and goes after them? He does that. He’ll use the people you love to hurt you.’
‘Text me his phone number and address,’ Gideon said. ‘We can warn them to take precautions.’
‘Contact my fiancé, Captain André Holmes,’ Farrah instructed. ‘He knows Mercy, plus he knows all the players in that awful article. He can help. I’ll text you his contact info, and I’ll let him know you’ll be calling.’
‘Thank you,’ Gideon said gratefully. ‘Molina and I appreciate it.’
‘I never heard from Molina after I called her at the airport,’ Rafe said. ‘Does she need my statement?’
‘Officially, yes. She ran with what you told her already, though. She told me to tell you that she can send someone by tomorrow to get a formal statement. So if a Fed-in-Black shows up, let them in,’ he added, trying for a lightness that fell a little flat.
Irina spoke up. ‘If they come by at two, they can have some of my
bird’s milk cake.’
‘If there’s any left,’ Gideon bantered. ‘I might not leave any for anyone else.’
‘Then I make two,’ Irina declared. ‘Now we are finished. Mercy and Farrah are falling asleep in their chairs. They are still on central time, after all.’
And it was after midnight, Pacific time. Rafe was more exhausted than he’d been in a long time.
Rafe used his cane to push himself to his feet and held out a hand to Mercy, his heart thumping harder when she took it, squeezing hard, holding on like he was a lifeline. ‘Come on. Let’s go home.’
Sacramento, California
Sunday, 16 April, 12.50 A.M.
Jeff Bunker groaned, pulling the pillow over his head to block out the incessant pounding on his bedroom door. ‘Go away!’ he shouted.
Or he’d meant to shout. It came out as a whimper instead. He felt too awful to care.
‘Shut up,’ he mumbled, praying this whole thing was simply a nightmare, his penance for drinking way too much scotch.
‘Are you telling me to shut up, Jeffy?’
God, this nightmare was getting worse. It sounded like his mother was standing over him, yelling at him.
‘Yes. Please,’ he moaned.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ A bottle clinked hard, glass hitting his metal trash can. ‘Jeffrey Alan Bunker, are you drunk? Where did you get this alcohol? You’re only sixteen. Dammit. Wait. Was this the scotch I got for Christmas from my boss? You stole from me?’
He peeked out from under the pillow, instantly regretting his life choices. All of them. The light burned his retinas and the yelling kept getting louder. ‘Mom?’
‘So you are alive,’ she mocked. She was standing at the foot of his bed, hands on her hips, arms akimbo. ‘What the actual heck is going on here, Jeffy? I knew I should never have agreed to you graduating high school early. You are not ready for college.’
Jeff wanted to cry. ‘Mom, why are you here?’ he whispered. ‘Can you stop shouting?’
She laughed. ‘If you think this is shouting . . . We haven’t even started, Jeffy. Sit up. Now.’
Shit. Her soldier voice. She’d left the military twenty years ago, but the intensity of her soldier voice hadn’t diminished. His body tried to comply with her order, but his stomach protested. ‘Fucking hell, Mom.’
She gasped. ‘Jeffy! Language.’
‘Mom!’ he gasped back. ‘Trash can. Please.’
With an impatient, angry sigh she dumped the contents of his trash can on his desk, then handed him the empty bin. ‘You deserve to be sick. How could you, Jeff? How could you?’
He blinked, trying to focus through the haze. ‘Huh? How could I what?’
‘Get drunk? Disappear for days without a word?’ She shoved her phone in his face and he recoiled, all the letters out of focus. ‘Write this . . . trash?’
‘What?’ he asked dumbly. ‘What is it? ’Cause I can’t see.’
‘Serves you right. Your poor father’s turning in his grave. I am so ashamed of you, I could cry.’
‘Join the club,’ he muttered, but knew it had to be bad. She never brought up his dead father unless it was. His father had died of cancer when Jeff was eight years old, but his mother maintained what was basically a shrine to him in the spare bedroom. ‘What time is it?’
‘One a.m.’
He stared at her. ‘What? Why are you even awake at one a.m.?’
‘Why am I awake? Why do you smell like a brewery?’
‘Distillery,’ he corrected absently. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘This.’ She jabbed her finger at the phone screen. ‘This piece of trash that is so far beneath you that I . . .’ Her voice broke on a genuine sob. ‘I don’t even know what to say.’
That got his attention. His mom being speechless didn’t happen often. Her crying was even rarer.
He squinted at the phone screen. ‘Let me see it. Can you maybe . . . I don’t know. Make me some coffee?’
She tossed the phone in his lap, making him wince again. ‘Shi— oot, Mom. Be careful.’
‘Be careful, he says. Make me coffee, he says. I should turn you over my knee, is what I should do,’ she grumbled. ‘You want to be so goddamn independent, get your own coffee.’
He blinked a few times, grateful when her phone screen came into focus. It was his story on Mercy Callahan. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ she whispered, tears still tracking down her face. ‘You admit that you wrote that?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ he said, scrolling through the article. ‘It’s not my best work, I admit, but—’ He broke off, staring in horror. There were quotes that he’d deleted and – ‘Oh my God.’ It was the video. The video. The one he’d decided not to send to his editor the night before. ‘Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.’
His mother came back to the bed, lowering herself to perch on the edge. ‘You . . . didn’t write that, then?’ Her relief was evident.
His gaze flew up to hers. ‘I did, but I took a lot of it out before I sent it in. I never sent this video to the Gabber. Never, Mom. I never even uploaded it to the Gabber server. I never copied it to my own laptop. It was on a thumb drive and I viewed the video from that.’
She closed her eyes, exhaling slowly. ‘Thank the good Lord for that, at least.’
He scrolled further, his stomach hurting more with each word he read. ‘I didn’t write this part either, Mom. I swear it. I took out the reference to this Prescott guy because he was a sleazebag.’
Just like my editor.
Oh my God. How had Nolan gotten this? ‘I don’t know how this happened.’
‘Well, you’d better figure it out quickly because it’s had over a million views since it was put up.’
Jeff backed out of the article to see the time stamp. ‘It was posted last night at eight p.m. I sent in my edited version at seven.’
‘Then drank yourself stupid?’
‘Yeah. Because . . .’
‘Because?’ she prompted. At least she was no longer yelling.
‘Because . . . reasons.’
She looked away, her lips still trembling. ‘Grow up, Jeff. You posted a video of a woman being assaulted. And you make it all better by getting drunk.’
‘No, Mom. Yes, I’m drunk. No, I didn’t post that video. I did not.’
‘Then how is it under your name?’
‘I don’t know. Let me think.’
She wiped her face with her fingertips. ‘Where did you get the video?’ she asked, a little more calmly.
‘From this real douchebag in New Orleans named Stan Prescott. He sold me the thumb drive.’
‘Wait,’ she interrupted. ‘You were in New Orleans? Are you serious? How the hell did you get to New Orleans? You are sixteen years old. You don’t even have a car.’
‘I flew.’ He dug his knuckles into his temples. ‘You can yell at me about that later.’
‘Trust me, I will.’ She drew a deep breath and let it out. ‘So, back to the video.’
‘Fine. I was doing an article on one of the women who escaped that serial killer back in February. Mercy Callahan. She lives in New Orleans. One of her college friends there pointed me to this guy. Said he had some information.’
‘This is not “information,” Jeff.’ She crooked her fingers in air quotes. ‘This is evidence of a criminal act.’
‘What? How?’
‘He drugged her, Jeff. He drugged her, then recorded her . . .’ She pinched her lips. ‘He tried to rape her.’
Oh God. ‘I didn’t know that, Mom. I didn’t watch it all. I couldn’t. How . . .’ He shook his head, trying to think, for God’s sake. And then he knew. ‘Oh. The payment.’
‘What payment?’
‘The guy said he had good dirt, but it was going to cost, y
ou know? I told Nolan and he approved the payment.’
‘Nolan is your boss?’
‘My editor, yes.’ Jeff rubbed his aching forehead. ‘When I talked to him last night, I told him that I was deleting something I wasn’t comfortable with and he said to leave it in, that he’d delete it. I knew better than that, but I wasn’t expecting him to contact the guy who gave me the video.’ The guy who’d drugged and sexually assaulted a college girl. ‘He had Prescott’s name for the payment and he must have called him. Oh my God, this is awful.’ He looked up to find his mother still crying. ‘What am I going to do about this, Mom?’
‘You’re going to do the right thing. You’re going to quit that awful job. You’re going to get that video taken down. And then you’re going to contact this woman and make it right, no matter what you have to do.’
‘Okay, Mom. I just don’t know where to start.’
‘Start by getting that video taken down. Now.’
‘But I can’t do that. I don’t have access to the server. Only Nolan does.’
She bit her lower lip. ‘Then call him and tell him that you’ll sue his ass for publishing that video under your name if he doesn’t take it down. I know a judge. I’ll call him for some advice.’
‘You’re going to call a judge at one in the morning?’
She took her phone from her pocket. ‘He’ll still be awake. He’s a night owl.’
Jeff didn’t want to know how his mother knew this. He remembered her dating a judge when he was a senior in high school. She’d met the man when he’d brought his bulldog into the veterinary clinic where she was the receptionist. Dinners with the guy had been awkward as fuck.
‘Okay,’ was all he could think to say. ‘I’ll figure out where she’s staying.’
‘In Granite Bay,’ his mother said as she searched her contact list. ‘Oh, here he is.’
‘How do you know she’s in Granite Bay?’
‘Google her and you’ll see what your article has done to her,’ his mother snapped. ‘The media has surrounded the house where she’s staying.’ Then she turned on the charm. The judge had answered his phone. ‘Bellsie, this is Geri Bunker. I hope I didn’t wake you.’ She tittered. ‘Oh, I remember. Listen, I need some advice. Are you alone?’ Her smile was a little too satisfied for the situation. ‘Oh good. So it’s like this . . .’
