Say You're Sorry

by Karen Rose

  It wasn’t love.

  She swallowed hard, pursing her lips against the need to cry. Later. She’d cry later. For now, she wanted to observe this man who spoke of meditation and therapy and his past to Gideon’s sister—a woman he didn’t really know.

  Maybe because it was easier to disclose those truths to a stranger. But in a way that I can still hear. So that I can understand. And forgive him.

  “I suppose I was,” Mercy was saying. “There was no war in Eden. Not in a traditional sense. But, yes, it was prison. Yes, there was . . . torture. And yes, it changed me.” She dropped her gaze to her shoes. “Hardened me.”

  Frederick sighed. “Yes. Me too.”

  Mercy darted a glance at Daisy, who figured she still looked gobsmacked, because Mercy gave her a sad little smile. “Therapy has helped. Took me a while to seek it. Took me even longer to put it into action.”

  “But you did,” Frederick said. “And now you’re here. Which is pretty brave.”

  Mercy nodded unsteadily. “Maybe. I only knew that I needed to come. I have a friend in New Orleans. We work together. She knows . . . everything. She’s the one who helped me find the therapist. And she’s the one who bought me a plane ticket, reserved me a rental car, hijacked me from work, drove me to the airport, and left me there.”

  “She’s a good friend, then,” Frederick said with a genuine smile. “My girlfriend”—he rolled his eyes—“which feels ridiculous to say at my age. She’s the one who nudged me to go to therapy. She’s a nurse. Pediatric, but she volunteers with veterans. Does equine therapy with them, along with my other daughter. Sally heard one of the vets talking to another about meditation and she did the research for me. It’s helping.”

  He glanced over at Daisy. “Both my daughters give back. Daisy is active in the community here. She gives her time to the community center, LGBTQ youth, animal rescue, and has organized sponsorship of a 5K run for leukemia research. I’m proud of her. Proud of both of them. Not something I can take any credit for, though.”

  Daisy’s heart ached and broke. “I don’t know about that,” she said, her voice on the rusty side of husky. “You were all about civil rights and protecting the defenseless when you practiced law. You took us to volunteer at soup kitchens and we picked up trash in the park and visited nursing homes.” How could she have forgotten those days? She remembered them now. Sitting on her dad’s lap as he read to the elderly at their bedsides, standing on a box to stir a stew at the shelter . . .

  He shook his head. “All that was your mother.”

  “No. It was you, too. I remember.” Now.

  “After she died . . . well, it was hard.”

  “You had three kids, Dad. A baby with a disability. The oldest was wild. And the middle one, while ninety-nine percent awesome, was an occasional handful.”

  His lips twitched. “Occasional,” he agreed, and then his expression darkened. “And then we went to the ranch, where I put you in prison, too.”

  “That was a bit over the top,” Daisy allowed, because it had been a prison. To deny it was to negate this entire conversation that seemed like a giant step forward. “You may have gotten a little obsessed, but . . .” She shrugged. “People say the same about me.” She pointed to the mural wall. “At least I come by it honestly.”

  Frederick blinked at her for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed, a great booming sound that Daisy hadn’t heard in so long. Not since her mother died, she realized. Certainly not after Donna had come into the picture. The woman had been poison—to all of them, including her own daughter. At least Daisy had still had her father. Taylor had been denied hers for her entire life.

  “I guess you do,” he said, wiping his eyes. Daisy wasn’t sure it was all from the laughter, so she moved to the sofa, sitting next to him, and rested her head on his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  He stiffened as if he was surprised, then relaxed, curling his arm around her and hugging her to his side. “For what?”

  “Coming as soon as I said I needed you.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “Always. I will always come when you need me.”

  “Oh!” The sound came from Mercy, who’d discovered the paintings Daisy had left on the easels from Friday night, when she’d given Gideon a paintbrush.

  Mercy lifted the canvas from the easel, her movements slow, her expression stunned. And devastated. “Did Gideon . . . ?”

  “Yes,” Daisy said simply.

  Mercy stood there, staring at the face Gideon had painted from memory. Mercy as a little girl, sitting in a field of happy daisies.

  “I remember this day,” she whispered. “I was nine. He was almost thirteen. We little kids went on a school trip into the forest, and Gideon was one of the helpers. We were supposed to be learning to pick herbs for the healer, but I got sidetracked and found the flowers. They were so pretty.” She looked over at Daisy with a sad lift to her lips. “But the field was of bright red flowers. He made them daisies.”

  Daisy’s heart squeezed. Gideon had included her in his painting, too. “What happened that day?”

  “You sound certain that something did,” Mercy said, tilting her head curiously.

  “Not certain, but Gideon had a look on his face while he was painting. Like it was bittersweet.”

  “It was the last time I saw him before his ascension. His thirteenth birthday,” she clarified. “We’d been told not to go to the flower fields, but I thought they were so pretty and I kind of wandered off. Gideon found me and . . .” She swallowed again and carefully returned the canvas to the easel. “He took my punishment that day.”

  “Which was?” Daisy asked very quietly, because Mercy seemed very fragile.

  “A week in the box.”

  Daisy exhaled, sensing her father going still. “The box?” she asked.

  “It was like a little outhouse. You got water and a little food every day. It would have been a little food for me at nine. Because he took my punishment, he got the same amount.”

  “They starved him,” Daisy whispered.

  “Essentially, yes. It would get hot in there, even in the mountains. It was summer. When they came to get Gideon, he was so thin. He must have sweated off fifteen pounds that week. They took him out on the seventh morning, cleaned him up, and got him dressed for his ascension party later that day.”

  He was fighting for his life by the end of that day, Daisy thought, marveling at Gideon’s strength, even as a boy.

  Mercy sank into the chair Daisy had vacated, her hands clutched tightly in her lap. “It was the last time I saw him. The next morning I found out that he’d killed Edward McPhearson, stabbed Ephraim Burton in the eye, then escaped with my mother’s help.”

  Daisy glanced up at her father. “And then poor Eileen ended up with Ephraim after that. She was ‘given’ to him. That’s the man she ran away from.”

  “What do you know about Eileen?” Mercy asked sharply.

  Daisy hesitated. “I think Gideon wanted to tell you.”

  “He told me that he thinks she’s dead. I wanted to demand to know what he was talking about, but Zandra needed our help. Now I want to know and he’s not here, but you are. Zandra said Eileen’s name, but she called her Eileen Danton. Her last name wasn’t Danton.”

  “Give me a second.” She typed a quick text to Gideon. All ok here. Mercy asking about Eileen. Okay to tell her what I know?

  His reply came quickly. Yes. On way back to you. Will take you to ER.

  Relief flowed over her. He was okay. She wanted to get more information, but she could wait until he arrived. And talking to Mercy would be a decent distraction.

  “All right then.” Daisy resettled herself on the sofa next to her father, Brutus in her lap, and told Mercy about Eileen and the Dantons. “He loaned her the money for a bus ticket. Rafe Sokolov, the
man who owns this house, is a major crimes detective for SacPD. He investigates assault and homicide. He went to Portland today, trying to trace her steps.”

  Mercy’s forehead furrowed for a moment, studying Daisy in a puzzled way until she nodded, understanding dawning in her eyes. “Her locket. That’s how you knew it was her. Gideon called me Thursday and told me that a locket had been found with ‘Miriam’ engraved on the back. He was worried it was mine.”

  “Because your name is also Miriam and he knew you’d escaped,” Daisy said, more for her father’s benefit.

  Mercy’s eyes widened. “Oh. Gideon said a woman was attacked and tore the locket from around her assailant’s throat. That was you? That’s how you met?”

  Daisy nodded. “Rafe’s mother, Irina Sokolov, had been trying to set us up for six months, but we kept evading her. Thursday night changed everything.”

  “Gideon’s mentioned her a few times,” Mercy said. “Irina. He said she mothers him.”

  “She mothers all of us,” Daisy said with an affectionate smile. She almost added that Irina would mother Mercy, too, but she wasn’t sure how long the woman would be here.

  For Gideon’s sake, Daisy hoped she’d stay a good while.

  A knock at the door had her running to check the peephole. Gideon. She opened the door and her heart hurt once again. He looked . . . weary. Beaten.

  Oh, Gideon. What happened? But she didn’t ask. She took a step forward and, being careful of his sling, looped her arms around his neck. He shuddered out a breath, his good arm coming around her as he buried his face against her throat.

  He smelled like smoke. “The fire trucks were going to his house,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  Her heart sank. “Was everything destroyed?”

  “No. Tom and I beat the flames back until the fire department arrived.”

  Okay, she thought, mentally clenching her teeth. “You, um, fought a fire?”

  “Tom did most of it.”

  “Who’s Tom?”

  “Agent Hunter.”

  “Okay. What did you find, Gideon?”

  “I didn’t find anything,” he muttered against her skin. “I’m benched.”

  Oh. “All right. Then what did Hunter find?”

  He just shook his head and clutched her like she was his lifeline. In that moment, maybe she was. And, in that moment, she was grateful to her father for distracting her out of an impending panic attack earlier. She would have been no good to Gideon that way.

  She pulled back enough to see his face. “Are you coming in or are we going out?”

  “Out,” he said. “Tom’s got the SUV in the garage.” He backed up and straightened, his green eyes looking dull and pained.

  “When did you last have one of your pain pills?” Daisy asked.

  Gideon gestured to Frederick and Mercy. “Let’s go. We’ll check on Zandra and then we’ll get you back to the Sokolovs. It’ll be safer there. Especially since he knows where you live, Daisy.”

  “Don’t think I didn’t notice you totally ignored me about the pain pill,” Daisy said tartly. “But we can talk about that later. For now, understand that he has to know where Karl and Irina live, too. He followed you Saturday, Gideon. Remember what the reporter said yesterday? He was at Trish’s apartment building asking where you’d gone. That’s how he knew to follow us to Redding.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “You’re right. I’ll get you a safe house.”

  She put Brutus in her bag and shouldered it. Gideon wasn’t thinking straight, which was why she wasn’t panicking at the thought of a safe house. “Fine. But if I go, you go.”

  He blew out a breath. “We can talk about that later.”

  Behind them, her father coughed, but she was pretty sure he was covering up a laugh. Daisy was okay with that. She’d finally heard him really laugh again, after far too many years. She couldn’t wait to hear it again. “That’s fine. Let’s go.”

  SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1:05 A.M.

  Finally. He’d been sitting in the hospital’s parking lot, waiting for a doctor or a nurse or a PA of the right size to come outside wearing scrubs. And a badge. Especially a badge.

  He tapped his pocket, making sure he still carried the syringe he’d filled with sedative on arrival. It had been in the emergency duffel bag he’d grabbed from the Jeep. He’d last used the bag in Vail, the sedative on Zandra. There was still enough left to take out an average-sized man for at least an hour. He eyed the man and figured the scrubs would be a good fit. Maybe a little loose in the front, but all the better to hide his gun.

  The man was standing alone in the shadows, smoking a cigarette. Even better, he wore earbuds in his ears, leaning with one shoulder against the wall, gently bobbing to whatever music he was listening to.

  He won’t see me coming. And he didn’t.

  He walked up behind the man and brought the grip of his gun down hard on his skull. When the man stumbled, he sprang, using his weight to drag him to the ground and injecting the sedative into his neck. It was clumsy using his right hand, but he didn’t need perfect aim.

  He continued to press the man into the ground, a knee in his back, his good arm across his back, until his struggles slowed and he slumped, down for the count.

  Quickly he undressed the guy, shoved the scrubs in his duffel, took his badge, and dragged him behind some shrubs. Not the best hiding place but the guy was heavy.

  And I’m in a hurry. He took a peek at the badge. For the next little bit he was Nabil Halif, RN. Well, shit. His disguise didn’t exactly go with that name, but he wasn’t planning to stop and talk to anyone, either. Using the badge, he entered through the employee door and calmly found the nearest family restroom. There would be plenty of room there to change his clothes and apply the disguise he had with him. Then he’d find Zandra’s room.

  SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1:30 A.M.

  “What took you so long?” Agent Molina demanded as their party of five exited the elevator on Zandra’s floor. She frowned. “I asked only for Miss Dawson and Agent Hunter.”

  Because Zandra had been calling for Daisy and Daisy only.

  Gideon frowned back. “My sister was at Daisy’s house when we got there. I wasn’t going to leave her there. And Daisy’s father insisted on coming as a condition of her being here at all. I told you this.”

  Molina sighed. “Yes, you did. My apologies. We’re all tired. But only Miss Dawson and Agent Hunter are to approach Miss Jones in her room.”

  Gideon was tired and his head hurt. His arm was throbbing. He should have taken the pain pill Daisy tried to force on him on the way to the hospital, but those pills made him too groggy. He was no good to anyone that way. Especially Daisy.

  “With all due respect, ma’am,” he said, “that’s bullshit.”

  Daisy rolled her eyes at him. “You are super cranky when you’re in pain.” She turned to his boss with a winning smile. “Agent Molina, Gideon is on medical leave, is he not?”

  “Yes. That’s why he’s to stay in the waiting room.”

  “Well, if he’s on leave, he’s here as my companion, is he not?”

  Molina narrowed her eyes. “I suppose so.”

  “Then as my companion, I’d like him to accompany me. I have a service dog in my bag. Gideon is kind of like a service . . . man. My anchor. Without my anchors, I get very bad panic attacks that threaten my sobriety. I’d like to help calm Miss Jones so that you can get her statement, but if I’m not calm, she won’t be, either. So I respectfully ask you to reconsider allowing Gideon to accompany me.”

  Molina’s lips actually twitched. “You’re trouble, Miss Dawson.” Then she was back to business. “All right. I’ve lost enough time waiting for you. Come with me, the three of you. But the father and sister go to the wa
iting room. It’s around the corner. There’s an armed agent at Miss Jones’s door and a uniformed police officer at both of the elevators. If you need help, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Frederick and Mercy headed to the waiting room, Frederick looking like he was biting back a smile.

  Gideon, however, didn’t think he’d smile again anytime soon. Thirty-one victims. They’d only found seven bodies so far, because Eileen hadn’t been found. He thought of the body in the freezer. But Kaley Martell had. So eight bodies so far.

  The earliest of the victims’ driver’s licenses had been issued ten years ago. If that first victim had been taken the year her license was issued, it meant he’d averaged three murders a year. But it was clear that he’d sped up in the last year and especially in the last week. He was escalating and he was fixated on Daisy.

  Which scared Gideon to the depths of his soul.

  “Miss Jones disappeared from an airport in Vail,” Molina told Daisy as they walked.

  “So not a truck driver,” Daisy murmured.

  “No. He’s a pilot. We confirmed that he and another pilot flew a party to Vail on Friday for a ski vacation. They were there for three hours while their aircraft refueled.”

  Daisy gave his boss an incredulous look. “So he abducted Zandra and brought her home with him?”

  “Yes. It appears he abducted her from a bar a few miles from the airport. Let me give you a few details before you start talking to her. She’s a prosecutor in Rhode Island. She was engaged. According to her family, she was in Vail for her wedding, which was supposed to be Saturday. She left early when she found her fiancé and her best friend . . . together.”

  “Poor Zandra,” Daisy murmured. “So she went to a bar?”

  “Apparently so,” Molina said. “The bar had security cameras inside, but the ones outside had been disconnected.”

  “By our suspect?” Tom asked.

  “Not unless he did it on an earlier trip. We have him on an internal camera. He looks nothing like his driver’s license photo or the man captured on the security video in the bar where Miss Hart worked.”

  “I’ve seen him twice,” Daisy said, “once at the pet store and once at the Redding bus station, and he didn’t look the same either time.”