Without Mercy

by Lisa Jackson

  Eric growled, incensed. “You sick twat.” His nostrils flared, his lips curling. “You’re going to regret that.”

  “I doubt it.” Shay kept him in her sights, measuring, calculating. Electricity crackled in the air as everyone turned to the center of the action. Kids cheered and jeered.

  From the corner of her eye, Shay saw two people hurrying across the room. “Hey!” one of them, a woman, shouted, but Shay couldn’t turn away from Eric; she couldn’t break her concentration.

  “Eric!” a male voice boomed.

  As if on cue, Eric lunged, his right fist coiled, ready to lay Shay flat. At the last possible second, she sidestepped the attack, grabbing his arm and catching him in midair.

  “Wha—?” He gaped as she flipped him onto his back in one quick motion.

  Thud! The building shook as his back smacked into the hardwood floor.

  The initial impact was followed by a smaller jolt as Eric’s head smashed against the floor. He let out a yowl of sheer agony.

  Maeve screamed.

  “You twisted bastard!” Lucy cried as Eric tried to climb to his feet.

  “Fight!” One of the boys, probably that pansy-ass Ollie Gage, yelled in excitement.

  The circle of students widened as Eric staggered to his feet, crouching like a boxer, his fists clenched.

  Shaylee remained alert, ready for him to come back at her. Just try it, prick, she thought.

  “Stop!” Dean Hammersley yelled while that stupid Maeve screamed and screamed.

  Eric’s face turned nearly beet red. “Jesus Christ!” he hissed, springing to his feet with surprising agility. “You little bitch! You can’t get away with this!” Again he ran at her, swinging wildly.

  Shay feinted.

  His fist glanced off her upper arm.

  Pain shot through her.

  He spun and pulled back, both fists curled, his bared teeth glistening. She noticed spittle had collected in the corners of his mouth. Bastard!

  “I said stop this, now!”

  The pounding of running footsteps almost caused Shay to take her eyes away from Rolfe. Almost.

  “Did you hear me? Stop!” a woman yelled.

  On the balls of her feet, circling, Shaylee focused on Eric. “Try it,” she goaded, ready for another round. He kept his face toward her, his disgusting snarl in place, his eyes as dark and hard as onyx. Good. If he thought he could take her, he had another thing coming.

  “I said, stop, this instant!” The woman again.

  Suddenly Dr. Hammersley and Mr. Taggert cut between Shay and Eric, barricading them from hitting each other. Some of the other kids receded, only to linger a little farther away but close enough to watch the action.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Dean Hammersley demanded in a harsh whisper, her gaze riveted on Shaylee. Her bird face was flushed, anger radiating from her slim body.

  “Dealing with a loser.” Shay wasn’t backing down.

  “Fighting isn’t the answer, Shaylee, and you know it. Nor is name-calling.”

  Shaylee rolled her eyes at that.

  “Hey!” Father Jake was running across the room, and Shay saw that his face, usually charming and friendly, had turned deathly serious. “What’s happening here?” He glanced at Taggert and Hammersley. “Let them go.” He turned his gaze to the group that had gathered. “Anyone want to explain?” he asked calmly.

  “It wasn’t Shaylee’s fault!” Lucy Yang stepped forward from her group of friends, leaving Nell and Maeve to gape at her. In an act of honesty Shaylee couldn’t believe, Lucy added, “Shaylee’s right. Eric was being a real jerk about Nona. He wouldn’t shut up about it, wouldn’t quit making sick jokes, and I snapped. I slugged him in the gut.”

  Way to have my back, Lucy, Shay thought.

  “Is that so?” Father Jake said, folding his arms over his chest, his gaze on Eric.

  “See. It wasn’t my fault,” Eric said with a sneer as he swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yang started it.”

  Lucy sent him a withering glare, then turned to Hammersley. “Before he had a chance to hit me back, Shay stepped in and stood up for Nona.”

  “You were gonna coldcock me!” Eric accused, pointing at Lucy, his face twisted in hatred.

  Father Jake held up a patient hand. “Slow down.”

  “You deserved it!” Lucy wasn’t backing down an inch.

  “We aren’t here to judge.” Wade’s goateed jaw was rock solid as he glared at Eric Rolfe.

  “That bitch slugged me!” Eric said, motioning toward Lucy.

  “So she admitted,” Wade agreed.

  “I was just defending myself when she”—he hooked a thumb at Shaylee—“butted in and came at me!”

  Hammersley studied Lucy Yang. “You put your hands on him first. Is that what you said?”

  “That’s right!” Still enraged and trying to hold on to some of his bravado, Eric sniffed and touched the corner of his mouth again. “Stupid, fuckin’ cunt!”

  “Hey!” Father Jake was having none of the swearing.

  “That’s it!” Wade grabbed the TA by one arm and escorted him out of the building.

  Hammersley’s eyes narrowed. “Anyone else witness what happened?”

  Of course all the students turned away, afraid to be drawn into the fray. Shay didn’t really blame them; it wasn’t their fight.

  “Lucy’s right,” Ethan finally said. “Eric was mocking the details of Nona’s death. Lucy told him to knock it off, and when he didn’t, it went down just as she said. She, uh, Shaylee”—he pointed at her—“was just helping Lucy out.”

  “Doesn’t seem like she needed any help,” Hammersley observed as an exit door opened and one of the deputies in full uniform, holster unbuckled, sidearm within his grasp, hurried inside the building.

  “Is there a problem here?” he demanded.

  “I think we’re cool,” Father Jake said, and then to Hammersley, “We can handle it.”

  Nodding, she said to the deputy, “Everything’s under control. Right?” she asked Shay.

  “Right,” Shay said quickly, eager to be out of trouble, but that, of course, was impossible. She felt Father Jake’s gaze following after her as she left the room, but she wasn’t kidding herself that things were okay here.

  She knew in her heart that she’d just made an enemy for life out of Eric Rolfe.

  “I need a favor,” Trent said, praying that his cell phone connection wouldn’t fail as he drove on the winding road to the gatehouse.

  “What’s that?” Larry Sparks’s voice was interspersed with static but was still audible. Sparks was an old friend and a detective for the Oregon State Police. When the OSP had needed assistance locating an escaped prisoner who’d crossed both the Oregon and Idaho state lines, ending up in Montana, Trent had helped track down the suspect and send him back in cuffs to Oregon. Sparks owed him at least one, maybe more.

  “I’m down at Blue Rock Academy; there’s been trouble,” Trent explained, downshifting again for a sharp curve.

  “I heard. Bad news. One dead, the other critical.”

  “That’s right. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m hoping you can help me out. Get official info for me if I need it, ‘cause down here all I’m getting is double-talk. It would be legit. I’m going to try and get myself deputized by the local sheriff, a yahoo named O’Donnell. I’ll give him your name as a reference.”

  “Got it,” Sparks agreed, one step ahead of him. “Once you’re officially on the force, we’ll talk.”

  Where the hell was the damned school? It had been over thirty minutes since she’d turned off the main road, five since her connection to Shaylee had been severed.

  Her muscles were beginning to ache, her eyes straining from following the narrow tunnel of her headlights in the snowy darkness.

  All her worries converged on her as night closed in.

  Jules passed another sign, and finally the open space of a lit parking lot loomed ahead. She steer
ed the Volvo around a corner of the parking lot toward the guardhouse. She drove slowly, awed by the sight.

  Security lights blazed, illuminating a massive stone wall and guardhouse built at the narrowest point of the gulch. There were two wide steel gates that swung open on either side of the gatehouse, the entrance to what appeared to be a fortress.

  A few vehicles, covered with four inches of snow, were scattered near the edges of the parking area while a dirty news van with the logo and call sign for a television station from Medford was parked near the gate. Inside the idling van, visible through the windows, two people sipped from thermoses. The last vehicle parked near the guardhouse was a cruiser from the Rogue County Sheriff’s Department.

  Stomach in knots, Jules nosed her car into a spot in the area marked STAFF and told herself everything was going to be all right.

  A door of the sheriff’s vehicle opened. A deputy climbed out and headed her way.

  Here we go, Jules thought, hoping she didn’t have to stretch the truth with the police. She cut the engine and rolled down the window, the warmth of the interior immediately chilled.

  The deputy was short and stocky, his thick jacket adding extra weight, a broad-brimmed hat covered in plastic protecting his head. His name tag identified him as Frank Meeker.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said through her open window. “The school is closed tonight.”

  “I understand.” She flashed him her most sincere smile. “I’m a member of the faculty.” God, it was cold. The wind cut through her sweater, and she clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.

  Meeker frowned. “Then you’ll be on the list.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I assume so, yes. Julia Farentino. I was hired only this week. Dean Hammersley called and said someone would meet me here.”

  “Did she mention the school is part of a crime scene?”

  “She said there was an accident.”

  His eyebrows rose over the tops of his glasses as he leaned closer to the open window, his gaze sweeping the dark interior of her car. “I’d like to see your ID.”

  “Sure.” She dug through her purse, found her wallet, and managed to wiggle her Oregon driver’s license from behind its plastic window.

  “Just a minute.” Meeker turned back to his cruiser. Shivering, Jules grabbed her jacket from the passenger seat, slipped her arms through the sleeves, and hastily zipped it. Too late. Her insides felt like ice, and she turned her car on again, cranking up the heater as she found an old pair of knit gloves in her pockets and pulled them on just as she heard the rumbling sound of an engine in the distance. She looked toward the sound and spied headlights cutting through the darkness on the far side of the gate.

  Her ride.

  A Jeep appeared through the curtain of snow, slowing at the window of the gatehouse. Rolling down his window, the Jeep’s driver slowed to talk to the officer in the gatehouse. A moment later, the gate swung open and the Jeep rolled through, headlights heading straight for her. The Jeep wheeled to a sliding stop next to her car, and the door popped open. Jules turned casually to look at the driver, and her heart sank. Something about his profile seemed familiar.

  Jules’s heart clutched as she squinted against the swirling snow.

  She told herself she was imagining things. She had to be.

  Cooper Trent was not crossing the parking lot!

  Not in a million years.

  Her tired, distraught mind was just playing tricks on her.

  Nonetheless, her heart was trip-hammering, her pulse jumping, her nerves strung to the breaking point.

  It was just her subconscious dragging him up again as it did in her nightmares, or her headache giving her eyestrain.

  He was out of her life.

  As in forever.

  Right?

  It couldn’t be.

  No way, no how.

  But no amount of denial could erase the fact that Cooper Trent now stood outside her car, looking better than any man had a right to look and acting as if the past five years were just a heartbeat.

  Gone were the dusty chaps, ratty old Stetson, and cocky cowboy grin. Instead he wore faded Levi’s, a pair of worn boots, and a sheepskin jacket. Bareheaded, snow collecting in his hair, he stared downward.

  Her foolish heart knocked.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded through the open window.

  He hesitated a second, glanced over his shoulder to make sure the deputy couldn’t hear him, then met her gaze again. “You know, Jules,” he drawled in a low voice she’d once found so sexy it had turned her inside out, “that’s just what I was gonna ask you.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Jules decided that the nightmare had just taken a turn for the worse. What were the odds? Out of the billions of people in the world, how did she end up face-to-face with the one man she’d never wanted to see again?

  So God did have a sense of humor after all.

  And a wicked one at that.

  “You know why I’m here,” Jules said. “Someone—probably Dean Hammersley—sent you to get me.”

  “That she did. And that’s when she dropped the bomb that you were the new history teacher.”

  “Perfect,” she said with sarcasm as bitter as the wind chasing down the mountainside.

  “And the funny thing about that,” Trent observed, “is, I’ve already got a job here.”

  “Yeah, real funny,” she said. “You’re not listed on the Web site.”

  “They’re updating. I’m the newest person on staff. Well, I was until you showed up.”

  Great, just damned great! All her scheming and plotting and lying were for nothing. She’d been afraid that Shaylee might blow her cover or that Lynch’s wife might figure out that she was related to Shaylee, but she hadn’t thought—couldn’t imagine—that Cooper Trent would be here. She rolled up the window, opened the door, and stepped onto the icy parking lot where the wind, like a frigid knife, cut through her jacket. “I didn’t see that they were teaching bronc busting or bull riding down here, so what’s your job?”

  “I’m the phys ed teacher.”

  “Why?” she demanded, wondering why her pulse still pounded at the sight of him. “The rodeo circuit run out of bulls?”

  “Change of profession.”

  “Oh, right. You traded in your spurs for Nikes. Don’t think so.”

  Deputy Meeker glanced over at them. Frowning, he started heading across the lot again.

  “Don’t ruin this for me,” she whispered. “I need this job.”

  “Deal. You do the same.” He was waiting. When she didn’t respond, he added, “Does Lynch know your sister is one of the students? I think there’s some rule against family members—”

  “Shh!” she warned, feeling heat in her cheeks. She had to stay cool, to calm down. She couldn’t blow it with the deputy.

  “Is there a problem, Officer?” Trent asked, and it was all Jules could do not to kick him in the shins. Instead, she pasted on a smile that she didn’t feel.

  “Just checkin’,” the deputy said, and handed Jules back her ID. “Your license expired two days ago.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve been busy. I thought once I moved down here and took the job and had a permanent address I’d renew it.” Oh, God, she hoped the deputy was buying her lie.

  He studied her with eyes used to sorting fact from fiction, but finally he nodded. “All right, then. You take care of it. There’s a DMV in Cave Junction. It’s quite a bit closer than Medford.” The deputy’s cell rang, and he answered, turning his back to them.

  “Thanks,” she said, relieved.

  “Great. So we’re good to go?” Trent asked, but Meeker was deep in conversation.

  “Sounds like a go to me,” Jules said.

  “Let’s get your things out of your car and into the Jeep.”

  She popped the trunk and pulled out the smaller of two bags, her pillow, and a laptop computer case. He-Man could get the larger roller bag.

/>   They loaded up the Jeep quickly and stopped at the gate, where Trent waved to the guard. All this was done in relative silence, questions pounding through her head.

  Stupidly, her mind flashed to another time and place, when she was not quite twenty, still a virgin, and Erin’s brother had introduced her to him. She’d expected he’d be brash, loud, and all macho; she’d discovered he was quiet, thoughtful, but with a sharp sense of humor that matched her own.

  Now, five years of pent-up fury and bitter disappointment gnawed a hole in her gut. She’d thought she would never see him again, much less end up in a vehicle with him as he drove her to a school where, if Shay could be believed, a murder had recently been committed.

  What kind of cruel twist of fate was at play here?

  “Okay,” she said, once they were completely alone on the precipitous road leading deeper in the mountains. “Why don’t you tell me how you went from bull rider to teacher in one fell swoop?” She still couldn’t believe it.

  “Better yet, let’s start with you,” he countered. His cocky smile slid from his face, and his gloved fingers clenched the steering wheel. The temperature in the Jeep seemed to drop ten degrees. “Your sister’s already here and up to her eyeballs in trouble,” he admitted, his face grim. “Her roommate was murdered, or possibly killed herself—that hasn’t been determined yet—and another boy is probably going to die from his injuries.” He let his breath whistle through his teeth. “The sheriff’s department is still trying to sort it all out, but whatever happened, it was brutal.”

  “Shaylee called. She warned me.”

  “Called? How? I thought—”

  “Don’t ask.” She held up a hand. “But she’s freaked.”

  “We all are.”

  “But you said that she was in trouble.”

  He nodded, glancing down at the gauges for a second. “Shaylee claims she knows nothing about what happened, but her baseball cap was found at the scene.”

  “Her cap?” Jules repeated, stunned. “Wait … let’s just start from the beginning. Shaylee’s a suspect?”