She didn’t try to untangle her hair, so I decided to leave it, not knowing if that was going to set her off if I tried to touch her face.
“We need to get you looked at,” I finally settled for.
She shook her head again. “I know every single man with the fire department. I don’t want them to see me like this.”
A chill went down my spine, and the names started adding up.
Two and two became twelve.
Mother fucker.
“Mercy Shepherd. Any relation to Fire Chief Shepherd?” I asked softly.
She shuddered in my arms before taking a deep breath and saying, “Yes.”
That’s about when I realized that I knew her.
She was a good friend of Downy’s woman.
Downy was another member of the SWAT team and the man who allowed me to have his apartment when my brother, Foster, and I came to town.
His woman, Memphis, was the neighbor who used to live next door.
Memphis had met Mercy nearly a year ago and had been volunteering at Mercy’s place, Second Chance, ever since.
I’d taken notice because of the things she started to do for the community; mainly, the members of the armed forces who came back from overseas and weren’t quite polite enough for a real job.
They used Second Chance as a plank where they’d transition back into society without actually having to be in society.
Not if they didn’t want to, anyway.
Second Chance was quickly becoming one of the most sought after businesses for construction and odd jobs in the community. Not only because they did good work, but because the community loved their heroes and would do anything to help support them for what they sacrificed.
And their leader… their tiny little boss… was just raped.
“Second Chance,” I said quietly.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“What you do for those men… that’s a good thing. That’s a really good thing,” I said quietly.
She shrugged. “They’re going to fucking flip.”
Yes. Yes they were.
Every man in that place looked up to Mercy. They appreciated her kindness. Were happy that she gave them a chance, and they loved her. They were protective of her.
Hell, every man in the fucking county knew how they doted on her. Even the most scarred of men looked out for her.
And to know that what they saw as their reason for moving forward and moving on with life, had been raped, was going to set up a clusterfuck of mass proportions.
Good thing the fucker was dead.
‘Cause he would’ve been drawn and quartered if he weren’t.
“How about if I take you to the hospital?” I asked softly. “In my cruiser.”
I didn’t actually have ‘my cruiser’ with me, but I was fairly positive I could get one.
She shuddered again. “Can you take me to a hospital that’s not in town?”
I immediately thought of Benton, Louisiana. The town where my brother and his wife lived.
He was part of a motorcycle club there, and a woman who belonged to another one of the members was a SANE nurse: A sexual assault nurse examiner. She’d be able to do everything that they would here. And she wouldn’t be known to the entire city.
“I can do it. I just have to clear it with Chief Rhodes first,” I said quietly.
She nodded but made no attempt to move away from me, so I worked my hand into my pocket and withdrew my phone.
The Chief answered immediately. “She needs to be seen by an ambulance.”
“She wants to go out of town. Somewhere where she doesn’t know every nurse and paramedic in the county,” I answered back.
Silence.
“Her father’s not going to like that. In fact, he’s raising up a big stink right now because I won’t let him through the police line,” Chief Rhodes explained quietly.
I felt a tiny hand sneak up and pull the phone away from my hands, and Mercy’s soft, melodic voice said, “Tell him I need a timeout. He’ll understand.”
I guessed the information was relayed over the line because she visibly wilted in my hands, causing me to fall forward when her weight collapsed entirely.
I lowered her to the ground, going down on my knees beside her.
The phone was in her hand, still up to her head, as she listened to what was being said on the other end of the line.
“No.”
The denial was torn from her. It sounded like it’d come from the very bottom of her soul and was wrenched out of her with such force that it took her breath right along with it.
“No,” she said more firmly. “There’s a back entrance. Mr. Spurlock will take me.”
The Chief must’ve given her my name, because I hadn’t given it to her yet.
The woman had a backbone of steel to stand up to the Chief like that. He was even more intimidating than my CO when I was in the Navy.
For her to stand up to him was a minor miracle in and of itself. Although, she did have to deal with men like that on a daily basis.
She may just know what she needed to say to get her way.
Women were adaptive like that.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Just don’t expect to ride in the same car.”
With that, she hung up and exploded out of my arms.
No more sad Mercy. In her place was pissed Mercy.
One who was ready to blow if she didn’t get her way.
Something that I’d definitely give her. All she had to do was ask, and I’d bend over backward to get it for her.
Because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the last hour to stop playing on repeat in my brain.
Chapter 2
Here’s to you, fuckhead. I hope you step on a Lego and break your face.
-Miller’s secret thoughts
Miller
“How’s the girl doing?” Trance, my brother, asked.
Oh, his name wasn’t really Trance. His real name was Killian. It wouldn’t do to have a Spurlock brother not being named after a beer.
My parents were the shit like that.
I, of course, got the coolest name.
I looked over at him to see him leaning against the wall, much like I was doing.
“I’ve been standing here for nearly five hours. I don’t have a fuckin’ clue. Does it normally take this long?” I asked worriedly.
Trance shrugged and placed his foot against the wall, causing the dog at his feet, Kosher, to grumble at being moved.
Kosher was Trance’s K-9 partner.
I never saw Trance without Kosher.
A pang of sadness hit me as I remembered a time when it used to be another dog.
Trance’s retired K-9 partner, Radar, had died in a training exercise when Trance was attempting to teach the Kilgore SWAT team how to handle their own K-9. One that Trance had supplied them with.
Since Trance lived nearly an hour and a half away, he’d thought it’d be good to bring Radar with him to give him a chance to show off his skills. It was never meant to be anything more than a show and tell, but it’d turned into a violent bloodbath, leaving an officer shot and Radar killed.
Since then, Trance had acted differently. He was a little moodier and justifiably angry.
His wife, Viddy, had been distraught, as she should be.
Hell, I was distraught. The entire police force, in both cities, as well as all the citizens of both towns, were distraught.
Radar was a hero, and he didn’t deserve to die like that.
But he had, and now we had to live with it.
“Hours,” a rumbled voice from my side said.
I turned to find Cleo, the SANE nurse’s husband, walking down the hall.
He was carrying a bag of clothes, new ones, if the tags hanging out of the shopping bag were anything to go by.
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Really?”
He nodded. “The lon
gest one I’ve heard about was twelve hours.”
I just shook my head.
I’d wait here however long it took.
She’d asked me to, and for some reason, I didn’t want to leave.
Especially not after the pleading I’d seen in her eyes as the doors closed behind her.
I was stuck where I was, literally, until she came out.
My feet hadn’t let me move in five hours and, I looked at my watch, six minutes.
My bladder was screaming, yet here I stood.
And when the door opened, emitting a very exhausted looking Rue, Cleo’s wife, I finally breathed deeply for the first time in hours.
I really didn’t know why I was affected in this way, but I was, and I couldn’t help it. Something inside of me was ravaged at having witnessed that act of violence.
And I didn’t feel so much responsible for her, as just plain caring how she was doing.
“You got the clothes?”
Rue’s question was geared toward Cleo rather than anyone else in the hallway.
Her brown eyes lit briefly on me before she nodded her head and said, “You can come in.”
I blinked in surprise, but nonetheless went in and closed the door as Rue walked across the room.
She knocked softly on the door that I assumed was the bathroom and said, “I’m hanging the clothes on the doorknob just inside the door.”
With no answer, Rue knocked again, and a quiet, “Thank you,” followed the knock.
Rue sighed and turned around, gathering up papers as she spoke. “She wants you to take her back home. But I was hoping to talk to you before she got out.”
I blinked. “She doesn’t want me in here?”
I started backing toward the door before she even got the quick, “Yes,” out of her mouth.
I stopped with my back against the door and waited for her to proceed.
She didn’t disappoint.
“She’s acting like everything’s fine, but I think once she gets home and is alone, she’s going to break. I want you to be aware, and possibly go check on her,” she said softly.
I nodded. “Okay.”
I would, too.
“I have some pamphlets for her to take home, and I think it would be beneficial for her to go speak with someone,” Rue continued.
I nodded again and took the pamphlets she held out. “Okay.”
As she kept talking, I just kept wondering why.
Why did she want me?
I wasn’t a very nice guy.
I didn’t treat women right.
I loved ‘em and left ‘em.
She’d probably hate me in real life if I hadn’t saved her.
“The last thing I need to show you is this. I need you to convince her to take it,” she said softly.
The shower turned off, and I could hear Mercy moving around, tags being ripped from the clothes, and the distinct sound of cotton against skin.
“What is it?” I rumbled quietly, looking down at her hand and a pill wrapped in a plastic package.
“It’s Plan B,” Rue said softly. “The man didn’t use protection. It’s possible that she could be pregnant. This is to counteract that and must be taken within the first forty-eight hours after unprotected sex.”
I blinked. “Why are you telling me this?”
I didn’t want that responsibility.
I wasn’t responsible!
“Because I asked her to,” Mercy said softly. “I know that you don’t know me, but you’re all I have right now. You’re the only one who has a sound mind. Mine is in turmoil and my family’s probably is, too. I need someone who has a rational brain in their skull to try to convince me, because right now I don’t think I can take that.”
She indicated the pill with a nod, and I shook my head. “I’m really not understanding what you think I can do.”
She came fully out of the bathroom in a pair of black yoga pants and a Mickey Mouse shirt. A pair of pink house slippers donned her feet, and her long brown hair was up in a messy bun on the top of her head.
“Please,” she said softly.
I sighed and took the pill that Rue was still offering me.
“Okay,” I said finally. “Are you ready to go?”
She nodded in confirmation and turned to stare at the door in trepidation.
Not knowing if my touch would be helpful or not, I walked toward her, offering her my arm for support.
***
The ride home was awkward, and what I pulled into when I arrived at her street was anything but normal.
There were police cars, fire trucks, and news crews everywhere.
“Oh, no,” Mercy moaned.
“What the fuck?” I asked as we passed car after car.
There were literally people everywhere.
Didn’t these assholes know that this was the last thing she needed right now?
Then I saw the huge crowd, and was thankful we were in an unmarked car, because I pulled through a loop around the driveway and started driving in the opposite direction.
“What’s your second choice?” I asked.
She shrugged. “My parents, I guess.”
She said it with the utmost reluctance that I was fairly positive that that was the last place on earth that she wanted to be.
“You’re going to have to talk to them eventually,” I said as I started to drive.
Not toward her parents, but to my place.
Why, I couldn’t tell you, but I did.
It was monumentally stupid, but she needed it.
“I know,” she whispered brokenly. “Just… not yet. They’re just going to tell me I told you so, and I’m not ready to hear that quite yet.”
I refrained from asking the question that was on the tip of my tongue, but only just barely.
“How about my place… or a hotel?” I offered.
She looked at me with her heart in her eyes. “Your place.”
And that was the beginning of how I became well and truly fucked.
And not in a bad way.
Chapter 3
Back in the day, I used to call them names when someone pissed me off. Now, I just unfollow them on twitter. That’ll show those motherfuckers!
-Mercy to Miller
Miller
When I got home the next day after dropping Mercy off at her house, I threw up for an hour.
Once I got all the food and water up, I started on the bile. Then the dry heaves finished up the entire lovely round.
I couldn’t breathe, and all I could do was replay the previous day’s events in my mind, wondering how the hell a woman would be able to get over what had happened to her that day.
“You okay?” Foster asked a while later.
I held up my thumb. “Fucking peachy.”
I wasn’t okay.
I was far from okay.
I’d done nothing but hold a woman who could do nothing but cry for the last day.
I was literally exhausted, and I felt like a fucking dick for just dropping her off at her house. However, that’d been what she wanted, so I’d done it.
Even though I’d been extremely reluctant to do so.
“She take it?” Foster asked softly.
I shook my head. “No.”
Foster was speaking of the morning-after pill.
After hours of trying to convince her to do it, she’d finally flushed it down the sink while tears had coursed down her face at an alarming rate.
Foster had entered our apartment somewhere in the middle of me trying to convince her, and Mercy telling me of her ‘values’ of not killing a child, no matter how that child was conceived.
She’d said, over and over, that if ‘God wanted her to have a child with that… man, then she’d have one. And she’d love it.’
I’d refrained from disagreeing or agreeing.
Personally, I had a feeling that she wouldn’t take it when I’d
received it from Cleo’s woman. Me, playing devil’s advocate to a poor woman who’d just been raped, was mainly for Mercy’s benefit. She needed to know the consequences of keeping a child who’d been conceived like that… if she was even pregnant.
Only time would tell, though. And I wasn’t one to preach to her about right or wrong.
I didn’t know the bible like I probably should. I was a Christian, and I spoke to God, but I wasn’t an avid churchgoer.
I was a man who believed in God and country. Country more so than God, but that was neither here nor there.
“It was her decision not to, I just hope she realizes what’s going to happen to that kid if she stays in Kilgore. Everyone will know that, that baby was conceived by rape, and the child will never live it down,” Foster said softly, leaning his bulk against the doorframe.
I turned on Foster with a snarl turning up the tip of my lip. “That child will not be bullied. If he or she is, they’ll have to answer to me.”
I’d practically spat that, hurtling the words at my brother as if he’d been the one teasing the defenseless child.
Foster held his hands up in surprise. “I wasn’t saying I was going to do it! I was saying that it was going to be what happens. People are dickheads. Especially those old busybodies who have nothing else to do but talk their head off about everyone’s problems but their own.”
I just shook my head. “Well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen, because I’ll fuck them up.”
He snorted. “The autopsy was done last night on the attacker. He had nothing in his system except a minute amount of alcohol.”
I looked at the toilet bowl, thankful that the cleaner had come only two days ago to clean the apartment. I wasn’t a big fan of puking and puking in a toilet that stank of piss and shit wasn’t my favorite thing to do.
“Well, that explains a lot,” I said sarcastically before pushing myself to my feet.
He eyed me warily wondering if I’d finished or not. He probably stood there and took pictures of me the entire time.
He was a nice brother like that.
“How was her place?” Foster asked, following me into the kitchen where I promptly chugged a full can of beer.
He watched me in silence, waiting for me to finish before I answered.
“Ghost town. After she went to bed last night, I called her pop and then Chief Rhodes, who took it upon themselves to clear that mess up. They let every single radio station, news station, and newspaper in the Ark-La-Tex that was there, know that if one video showed up of Mercy, that they’d personally sue them,” I said, just before I belched.
Code 11- KPD SWAT Box Set Page 62
