Without Mercy

by Lisa Jackson

  “We’ll see,” Father Jake said.

  “Without a judge’s release, or your parents’ say so?” Jules asked. “The school will let you out of here?” Boy, Shay was pushing it!

  “Of course not, but we’ll get that, right? Since the phones are working, we can call Edie and Max and the attorney can find the judge and convince him. Right? I asked Detective Baines during my interview.”

  Jules glanced at Father Jake.

  He nodded, though he didn’t crack a smile. “That’s basically how it works and everything’s amped up because families are clamoring to get their kids out of Blue Rock.”

  Jules wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know, Shay, you’ve been through a lot and—”

  “And I’m fine!” Shay rolled her eyes as if Jules were thick-headed and couldn’t see the obvious. “Really. Everything’s okay!”

  Jules still had trouble with the concept that everything could easily be forgotten and swept under the rug, but maybe this was Shay’s way of dealing with trauma. She was also dead tired and didn’t want to argue. “All right. But whatever Dr. Hammersley advises and whatever the judge orders, you’ll do, right? Promise.”

  “Scout’s honor!” Shay said, “Yeah, okay, ‘I promise.’”

  “I’ll hold you to it.” Jules wasn’t going to be buffaloed.

  Shay was smiling. “I know, I know. Okay?”

  Jules gave in. “Then I’ll meet you in your room in a little bit and we’ll wade through the paperwork together,” she said.

  “Just hurry. I am soooo outta here,” Shay said, then was off to snag a can of Coke from the cooler before heading outside.

  As if nothing had happened.

  Weird.

  But that was Shay. Unpredictable.

  Jules turned to Father Jake. “Does this really sound legit to you? It seems all too easy somehow.” She glanced at Trent whose gaze was fastened to Shaylee as the doors shut behind her.

  Father Jake said, “It’s a little fast but we’re not exactly on real time, not after everything that’s happened. Everyone on staff knows that a lot of kids will be leaving as soon as the Sheriff’s Department gives its okay. There’ll be a mass exodus, I assume, because of the murders.” His eyes clouded a bit. “Parents and judges alike won’t make the kids stay here. It’s too traumatic, would do more harm than good. Lawyers are probably already making noise to get the students released to other, safer institutions and I can’t say as I blame them.” He looked at the group of students gathered at tables, some somber, a few others talking and joking loudly, as if nothing had happened.

  They, like Shay, seemed to have developed a thick shell, a guard against letting any of the horror of the last few days touch them.

  Trent asked, “What’s the update on Spurrier?”

  “In a coma.” Father Jake rolled his lips in on themselves. “Life flight’s on its way, but no one thinks he’ll pull through.”

  “Hell is too good for him,” Trent said.

  “Agreed.” Father Jake nodded.

  “What about Roberto Ortega?” Trent was still looking at the door, then turned his attention to the preacher.

  “He has a chance, but it’s slim. A pity about the kids.” Father Jake looked at his watch, sighed, then rapped on the table with his knuckles. “Thanks for everything. Without the two of you, I’m not sure Spurrier would have been flushed out. Duty calls. I’d better attend to it.” He stood abruptly, kicking his chair back, then moving swiftly through the surrounding tables, his footsteps taking him out the very door through which Shay had exited only minutes before.

  A few kids watched him leave.

  The rest didn’t appear to notice.

  But Trent had. His eyebrows slammed together thoughtfully, he stared at the preacher. “What do you think of Father Jake?”

  Jules glanced over her shoulder. “That he’s too good looking to be a minister.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am.” She reached across the table and took his hand. “But maybe not quite as handsome as a certain bull rider I know.”

  “Has-been bull rider. Remember?”

  “That’s what I meant.” She grinned and he squeezed her hand, but his eyes remained on the door as it slammed behind the preacher.

  Things were changing, and fast, Jules thought. Her unexpected relationship with Trent was one thing; a positive force, and now her mission, to rescue her sister, to spirit Shaylee away from whatever dark presence was lurking here, was about to be fulfilled.

  As for the school, now that Spurrier and his twisted followers had been ferreted out, Blue Rock Academy would likely fail. Another example of the unexpected outcome of the best laid plans gone so far awry.

  “Okay, I guess I’d better pack my things, too, and resign,” she said, pulling her fingers from his as she scooted back her chair. “You know, this might be the shortest tenure of a teacher at the school.”

  Trent laughed. “I’ll be right on your heels. I’m resigning as soon as I get through to Lauren Conway’s parents. You heard that Meeker found a flash drive in Spurrier’s pocket, right?”

  “I didn’t know what it meant.”

  “We’re not sure yet, but we think the drive might hold information Lauren gathered—Rhonda Hammersley put it into one of the computers in the clinic—and though it was partially burned, some of the info seemed intact; the Sheriff’s Department will get their lab to try and retrieve it.”

  “In lieu of Lynch’s files.”

  “In addition to whatever wasn’t destroyed in the fire. Deputies are already searching through the rubble of my house.”

  “What about Lauren’s body?”

  “Bernsen thinks he knows, but he’s holding out. Wants immunity.”

  “Great. Just what we need, Zach Bernsen, a free man.” She rotated her half-drunk cup on the table, then realized she was fiddling and let it be. “So what about you, Cowboy?” she asked. “Once you’re out of here, what then?” she asked.

  “You have to ask?”

  She arched a brow. “With you? I think so.”

  “I thought I explained all this right after we were nearly killed in the snow. Remember? If not, I’ll fill you in: What I intend to do as soon as I get out of here is chase you down. So don’t think you’ll be getting away.”

  She winked. “Catch me if you can.”

  “I can,” he said confidently. “And trust me, I will.”

  So her life was going to make a major left turn, she thought, imagining a future with Cooper Trent. Who would have thought?

  Buoyed that at least this nightmare was about to be behind her, Jules left the cafeteria and walked across the campus for one of the last times. Now, the campus seemed serene, even peaceful. The sun was shining brightly, rays glinting off the ice collecting around the edges of Lake Superstition. The campus once again had that idyllic appearance captured in so many of the photographs on the Web site, an Eden-like setting filled with promise for teens with problems.

  The mountains spired into the blue, blue sky and she heard the whomp, whomp, whomp of the medivac helicopter before she saw it slowly descending onto the snowy campus.

  The seaplane bearing the academy’s logo was still locked in ice and was a sober reminder of Spurrier and all of his diabolical plans. How could one man affect so many? Shuddering, she headed toward Stanton House.

  Life here at Blue Rock Academy would never be the same.

  Would Spurrier survive?

  Ever admit to the murders?

  She doubted it. Even Zach and Missy were screaming that their leader had no intention of killing anyone. But then they were blind and trusting, almost as if Spurrier were part of their family, like children who refuse to see the evil side of their parents.

  Family loyalty was usually deep; sometimes to the point of the ridiculous. Just look how much she, herself, had gone through, the lies and deception, all for her sister.

  She glanced at the area in front of the clinic, the trampled snow, the blood that sti
ll remained. The horses had been rounded up and were back in their stalls, once again safe under Bert Flannagan’s care. But the students involved in the attack would never forget, be changed forever.

  As would she.

  And Shay.

  She changed her mind about returning to her suite and decided to check on her sister instead. There was something false about Shay’s reactions to the ordeal, and Jules wanted to be certain her sister was okay, that she would be able to put all this horror to rest and live a normal life.

  Well, as normal a life as Shay could sustain.

  Truth to tell, Jules was bothered by something else. Shay’s being able to leave today, within the hour, just didn’t ring true, despite Father Jake’s rationale.

  Shaylee was known to lie, to bend the truth to her own way of thinking, to work Jules into doing what she wanted and damn the consequences. Her track record spoke for itself.

  Shay might believe she was miraculously “cured” of the horror of being confined and kept hostage by Eric Rolfe, but Jules knew it would take years of therapy, if that, before her sister stopped playing the people around her, pretending that she was “just fine.” Deep in her heart, Jules wondered if Shay ever would be normal, whatever that was. Ever since Edie had remarried Rip Delaney, Jules’s father, Shay had been acting out, adolescence stealing the sweet child within. As Father Jake had said, “A pity.”

  Jules hurried up the stairs of the empty dorm. It was still, other-worldly quiet with most of the students either being questioned in the admin building, or gathering in the cafeteria. Jules knocked on Shay’s door. “Hey, are you about ready?” Unlatched, the door opened of its own accord, swinging into the hallway.

  Shay, alone, a cell phone jammed against her ear, jumped. Startled, she turned around to face the open door. “What the hell?” she demanded, angry, one hand knocking over her half-drunk can of soda. “Shit, Jules, you scared me!”

  “Sorry,” Jules said, realizing her sister wasn’t as calm as she’d pretended. Jules pulled the door shut behind her as the Coke continued to gurgle from the can. “I thought—”

  “I’ll call ya back, Dawg,” Shay said into Nona’s cell phone, the one she’d never returned, as she clicked off and turned to face Jules. “He’s out, you know. On bail,” she said with a grin.

  “Maybe you should avoid him.” Jules walked to the desk, searching for something to clean up the mess.

  “Right.” Without thinking, Shaylee grabbed a towel from her desk, dropped it over the spreading stain of dark soda, then placed her foot atop the towel and smoothed it over the floor.

  Nudging the towel with her toe.

  Sopping up the liquid. Slowly.

  In an S formation.

  As natural as if she did it all the time.

  Jules, standing near the window, stared at Shay’s foot. The circular motion. Familiar. Dark.

  Her heart nearly stopped beating.

  In a flickering memory, one that she’d repressed for years, she saw her sister’s small boot-clad foot on another towel, dropped onto the floor near Rip Delaney’s body, covering a small stain of blood. Not blood that Jules had spilled from pulling the knife from her father’s body, but from the wound already there.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. In her mind’s eye, in jagged pieces she caught a glimpse of her father, lying dead, the knife in his leg, bleeding out from his femoral artery. She was already too late as she’d walked into the room with the flickering television screen and found Shay mopping up the blood with her foot. Jules had screamed and yanked out the butcher knife, but it had been too late.

  What had been Shay’s excuse? She was trying to help?

  The memory, so long a blur, was clear as glass.

  Jules’s insides turned to ice.

  It couldn’t be!

  And yet the motion that Shay did so naturally was identical to the one in her mind’s eye.

  No way! She had to be imagining things! Her head began to pound painfully as she remembered the bloodstain near Andrew Prescott’s body in the stable. Swiped over, as if someone had spilled his blood and tried to wipe it away in a smooth, swirling motion, the darker “S” shape visible.

  Another flash of memory: the small smeared pool by Maeve Mancuso’s corpse. Again, smooth, sure strokes. A snake-like shape darker in the wiped stain.

  And, no doubt, on the sleeping bag where Nona Vickers had lost her life there was the same bloody signature: Shay’s signature. The snakey, blurred S.

  Jules swallowed hard, her head screaming denials.

  She focused again, back in the moment, her gaze fixed on Shay’s foot. God help us. Glancing up, Jules saw her sister staring at her, a knowing smile playing upon Shay’s full lips. “For the love of God, Shay,” Jules whispered, her voice trembling. “What did you do?”

  This couldn’t be happening! Couldn’t! Shay wasn’t a killer! There had to be something else, someone else … But the light in her sister’s gaze in that moment burned bright with triumph and something else, something far more sinister and evil-bred.

  In that instant of recognition, Jules knew. But she had to hear it from her sister’s lips. “You killed them?”

  No, not Shay. NOT SHAY!

  “Nona? Drew? Maeve? You murdered them?” she asked again, hoping beyond hope that she was wrong. Please deny it. Please. I’ll believe you!

  “How else was I going to get you to believe me?” Shay asked innocently, an undercurrent of satisfaction in her voice, not a trace of denial. “How else would you have gotten me out of here?”

  “No, you couldn’t have,” Jules whispered, shaking her head, refusing to think her sister was a monster, horrified to believe Shay capable of cold-blooded, premeditated murder.

  “Are you too stupid to see that you would never have gotten me out of here unless you thought there was danger to me and my life?” Shay asked, anger sparking. “You thought I should be locked up; you just came down here to make yourself feel better about it.”

  “I don’t … no …” But that much was true. They both knew it.

  “Right, and it wasn’t bad enough! That was the problem. So someone had to die. I figured it should be someone who thought they were smarter than I was, someone who got off on being mean to me. Nona and Maeve, they were a good start. Andrew; he just got in the way. You know, that same old problem: Wrong place, fucking the wrong girl.”

  “What! Wait a minute. Don’t lie, Shay,” Jules said, clinging desperately to the belief that Shay’s talk was just bravado; that she’d snapped when Eric Rolfe and Missy Albright had trained rifles at her back. “You didn’t kill them! You couldn’t!” Jules argued, trying to get through to her. “Lauren Conway disappeared a long time before you even got here.” That was it; proof that her sister was confused.

  But Shay didn’t bat an eye and Jules’s blood was pulsing through her body with the knowledge that there was an explanation. “You really are naive, aren’t you? God, Jules, I would hate to be you. Of course I didn’t kill Lauren! I think Spurrier or his band did. Maybe it was even an accident, but I knew it could work to my advantage and it did, didn’t it?”

  Jules saw the hatred in her sister’s expression. “And Dad?”

  “Rip? That perv? Are you kidding? Of course I killed him, because you couldn’t! You were so blind when it came to him! Do you know how he looked at me? At you?” she demanded, her lips curling in disgust. “I did us both a favor!”

  “What? No—”

  “So he didn’t touch me, big deal! It was only a matter of time. And he was half in love with you.”

  “What?” Jules couldn’t believe her ears.

  “Always hugging you, hanging on your every word, acting like you were so damned special.”

  “He was my father.”

  “Well, he wanted something more.” Shay’s face contorted in disdain, her psychosis visible in her features.

  “You’re nuts,” Jules whispered. This was unbelievable! Yes, Shay and Rip hadn’t gotten along, yes, Sh
ay had never understood a father’s devotion, but this sick delirium was so far gone … “So you killed him?” Jules whispered, horrified to the marrow of her bones. She couldn’t believe what was happening here.

  “Oh, what did you think? That somebody broke in and stabbed him in the leg for what? His Visa card?” She rolled her eyes.

  “But why?”

  “I told you, he freaked me out!”

  What kind of monster was she?

  “He was so shocked … and I guess I was, too. But I watched him bleed out and I felt this … this rush of power. It was funny really—” Shay said, her voice trailing off, as if she were lost in the memory.

  “Funny? My father’s murder was ‘funny’?” Jules couldn’t believe she’d been duped for so many years, that the chameleon who was her sister had fooled her so completely.

  “You know what I mean, I was kinda transfixed,” Shay said, “just watching the blood flow out of his body. There was so damned much of it. Everywhere … and I had to keep away from it, of course, so I did. I even pretended to dial nine-one-one as he lay there, trying to reach for the phone.”

  “But there was an intruder …”

  “Sure there was!” Shay was nearly laughing, enjoying the look of horror on Jules’s features. “He’d left his wallet on the table, so that part was easy. I just hid it from Edie and ditched it with a homeless guy on the street on my way to school the next day.”

  “But there were footprints,” Jules argued, realizing the depths of her sister’s depravity, that she was enjoying the fact that she’d gotten one over on Jules, on Edie, on Rip, on the police.

  “The same size as his own. Did the police even notice? Odd thing about that. Remember the good shoes that Edie had tucked away into some sacks for Goodwill?” She lifted her shoulders as if to say, “Easy.”

  Jules felt sick inside, starting to believe the mind-numbing truth.

  “And then you came in and I had to wipe up … with the towel, to make it look like I’d just found him, too. I had to start crying and screaming, but you didn’t even notice. One glance at him and you really freaked out, lost your damned mind.” Shay grinned. She was almost giddy! “Man, did I luck out!”