Hunt the Dawn

by Abbie Roads

  “Why the fuck is she even here if she’s not…?” He’d assumed her past—what his father had done to her and her family—had finally caught up with her. He knelt in front of her wheelchair.

  “Don’t you curse at me, boy.” Liz’s tone was all angry mom, making him feel like a bad kid. “Her official record says undifferentiated schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder. But I’ve seen psychotic. She’s not psychotic and never has been.”

  He’d never spoken to Mercy before, never been this close to her, never dared to. He’d been a wuss—too damned scared of her reaction to approach her. She had every right to hate him. It was his father who had killed her entire family, his father who had slit her throat, and his father’s blood ran in Cain’s veins.

  He touched Mercy’s hair, feeling the damp stickiness of it on his fingers, and smoothed it back over her shoulder. Moonlight gave him more than enough illumination to see. Mercy’s eyes were half open and half rolled up in her head. A dark shadow marred the side of her face, spreading up and around her eye. His insides went arctic. “Who hit her?” The words exploded, loud and angry and conspicuous into the night. All the rage he’d suppressed came surging back into his body, tensing his muscles and nestling in his bones.

  “Dr. Payne claims she was hallucinating and thought he was Killion.”

  Cain flinched as violently as if Liz had struck him. It was a reflex he couldn’t subdue, even after all these years. Hearing his father’s name still had that effect on him.

  “I don’t buy it. The good doctor claims he was in the process of subduing her when she fell and hit her face. And her ribs. Seems a bit odd that the bruise where he injected her with the sedative is the exact size of a man’s fist around the needle mark.”

  Cain sucked in a slow breath to calm the anger revving through his muscles. He felt like yelling at Liz for everything that had been done to Mercy, but the rational part of him knew it wasn’t her fault. He metered and measured his voice to force it to sound calm. “You reported him, right?”

  “There’s no point. It’s his word against whose? Mercy’s? My speculation?” Liz’s tone contained the anger that Cain had been trying to control. She was as pissed off about this as he was.

  “Dr. Payne claims she’s been unresponsive to meds, so now he’s shocked her twice in two days and still has her on enough meds to sedate an angry bull elephant. But you won’t find any of that on her official record. If it ain’t recorded, it didn’t happen.” Liz’s lips pinched so tight the tiny wrinkles around them turned into chasms. “At this stage, the damage isn’t permanent. Only short-term memory loss. But the longer she’s with him… I’m not risking my job so you can talk to her. She’s unable to talk. I’m risking it so you can save her life. You have to take her away from here before he destroys her.”

  Liz’s words fell into his brain one by one, each lining up until the meaning finally hit him. He jerked back from Mercy and stood. “No way. You know I can’t.”

  “You will.”

  “I just wanted to ask her a question. Maybe two. That’s all. I can’t take her. Be responsible for her.” He was going to hit Liz with his best shot. “She wouldn’t want me to take her. I look too much like him.” Cain backed a few steps away from Liz and Mercy.

  “Cain”—Liz had that take-no-attitude tone—“if you don’t take her, Dr. Payne is either going to turn her into a vegetable or kill her. Do you want her emotional or physical death on your hands? Because it will be if you walk away.”

  His heart jerked. Liz’s words were a bull’s-eye straight through everything he feared most—being responsible for someone’s death. And Liz fucking knew it. In that moment, for the first time in his life, he hated her a little for using his fear against him. “I never thought you would stoop so damned low.”

  She gave the wheelchair a shove toward him. “I can tolerate your anger, even your hatred, but I can’t endure sitting back and watching Dr. Payne kill her a little more each day. If I take her, they’ll just find her and put her back in here. Her best chance is with you. No one would ever think to look for her with you.”

  Cain opened his mouth to say something, to argue the point, but his brain went devoid of thought. Liz slowly turned and walked back into the Center. She shut and locked the door behind her. Only when she was gone did Cain find the words.

  “Holy fucking Christ!”

  He was going to kidnap Mercy Ledger.

  * * *

  Cain had spent three hours, a third of a tank of gas, and a metric ton of worry driving across Ohio. The windshield wipers thwacked a steady rhythm—not from rain, but from a fog so thick it was like driving through cotton candy. Outside his Mustang, the world had completely vanished. Gone was the thin strip of curving blacktop, gone were the forests and low hills, gone was his ability to see more than three feet in front of the car’s headlights. The effect was eerie and alien and oddly serene. Almost the same way snow makes everything feel peaceful and quiet and transforms the landscape into something completely different.

  He slowed to a pace just above turtle speed and searched the vapor for any indication of the turnoff leading to the cabin. Even on a bright, sunshiny day, it was hard to see the lane hidden in the woods.

  Hours ago, he’d shifted his rearview mirror to aim at her, not out the window. She lay across the backseat, the same way she’d been the entire time, yet something inside him still couldn’t believe Mercy Ledger was in his car, and he was going to keep her hidden until…until when? He couldn’t hide her forever. Someone was going to notice she was missing. Someone was going to start searching for her. And that someone might even try to get her put back in the nut ward.

  Just let them try. He gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles burned.

  In her sleep, Mercy shuddered as if the temperature hovered in the frozen zone, yet her face was slicked with sweat and her pallor hung somewhere between gray and ghastly.

  Withdrawals. From all the meds. Just how bad were her withdrawals going to get? He hadn’t thought to ask Liz, and she hadn’t bothered to tell him. Worst-case scenario was what? Seizures? Death? Could someone die from suddenly going off psych meds? No. He was not going to have Mercy’s death on his conscience. That was why he’d taken her in the first place. To save her.

  “We’re almost there, Mercy.” Once again, saying her name calmed his mind. Her name seemed to contain magical properties.

  He yanked his gaze away from her and back to the fog along the passenger side of the car. A break in the solid white line. A gap in the trees. Found it.

  He pulled onto the rutted, gravel road squeezed in among the greenery. The car rocked from side to side, shifting and moving Mercy’s body along with it. She moaned, a long, low sound of primal pain that punctured his heart and popped the air in his lungs. He eased his foot down on the brake and slowed to lessen the jostling. And yet she still didn’t awaken.

  How much pain must she be in for her to moan while unconscious?

  A shadow formed in the gloom in front of the vehicle, then solidified into the shape of the cabin. The place looked quaint with its large windows and welcoming front porch. But to him, it wasn’t charming. It was a jail, a prison of sorts, a place where he locked away the nightmares. The one place where he didn’t have to hide the ugliness inside him—where he could purge himself and lance the festering thoughts in his head.

  He parked alongside the structure and turned off the car. The sudden silence screamed in his ears as it always did after the constant roar of the Mustang’s engine.

  “We’re here.” He had to speak. Couldn’t let the silence reign. Needed sound. Needed noise. Needed a distraction. “I, uh, have to go unlock the door.” Part truth. Part lie. He had to unlock the door, then he needed to hide his sketchbooks. He couldn’t allow her to find the evidence of the evil inside him. “I’ll be right back.”

  He got out of the
car and shut the door softly, but the white mist distorted the sound and bounced it around the small clearing like a drum solo. The air smelled of pine and tasted of remembered pain.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have brought her here. He’d known not to take her back to his place. There was no evidence of him being at the Center and no chance that Liz—if grilled, if pressured, if threatened—would ever rat on him. But if anyone looked close enough at her, they’d find him.

  This was the only completely safe place he knew of. It was off grid—no electric, no gas, no running water. Not even Mac knew Cain came here. No one would be able to find him. He rented the place by the year. The old lady who owned it was mostly blind, happy to take cash, and didn’t ask questions for an extra five hundred dollars.

  Anywhere else, Cain risked being seen. Even though it had been twenty years ago, too many people still recognized him as Killion’s kid—either that or thought he was his father for a split second until their minds had enough time to catalog the differences.

  He walked up on the porch, the boards creaking a muted tone from the damp. The wooden rocker he had sat on for years looked down over the lane as if a ghost sat sentry. Cain unlocked the door and stepped inside the one-room cabin.

  His eyes immediately locked on the sketchbooks. On the mantel above the stone fireplace were his personal portraits of blood and murder and death. Heaviness settled across his shoulders, then sank into his guts. Oh, he recognized that feeling. Knew it intimately.

  Shame.

  He’d been cozying up with that emotion since he’d been a child. Shame was a stalker, always there, always watching, always waiting for its chance to ravage his fragile hold on normalcy.

  He scooped the books off the mantel and into his arms. Shit. Where the fuck was he going to put them? He hadn’t thought beyond the need to hide them.

  The room was sparse. A fireplace. A full bed. A large cupboard that contained foodstuffs and supplies. A small table and chair. No good place to ensure she wouldn’t stumble across them.

  Outside. He’d put them out there. He opened the cupboard, grabbed a plastic grocery sack stuffed in the back corner, shoved the books inside, then went back out to the porch and around the side of the cabin to the woodpile. He shifted the top logs forward and shoved the sack into the space between the cabin and the wood, then restacked the logs until they appeared untouched.

  He forced himself to walk calmly back to the car, despite the way his heart skittered around his chest as if he’d just escaped a death sentence. He flung open the driver’s door and scooted the seat forward. He’d never wished for a back door on his car until this moment. He contorted himself into an unnatural position—feet and legs on the ground outside the car, torso and arms inside, trying to gather her limp body to him, while not causing her any more pain or banging his damned head on the ceiling.

  God, she smelled of sweat and barf and a chemical stench that he assumed was the meds working their way out of her system. He backed out of the space, cradling her to him, and began walking toward the cabin.

  “Uhh…” The sound wisped from between her lips, yet it may as well have been an air horn to his ears. Every muscle, every fiber, every cell inside him locked on her. Her head lolled against his chest, her arm flopping out at an awkward-looking angle. “Idontfeelgood.” The sentence came out in one slurred mass that took his mind a moment to translate into individual words, each with its own meaning.

  “You’re safe now. No more drugs. No more shock treatments.” In the light of day, the bruise on her cheekbone was a grotesque mound of black. Christ. Her cheek could be broken. If he ever happened across Dr. Payne… “I’ve got you, and I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  Her head jerked against his chest, and she uttered something else that he couldn’t understand.

  “Everything’s going to be—”

  Her body tensed so suddenly he almost dropped her. A slick stream of vomit gushed from her mouth, sliding down her chin into her loose smock top and wetting his chest. He stopped and stared down at her to make sure she’d finished and wasn’t aspirating. When nothing else came out, he leaned his head back on his shoulders and looked up into the foggy abyss.

  This day was just getting better and better.

  He tried to find a breath free of stench, but he was surrounded. He thought she’d stunk before? That had only been the plateau on the way to this new peak of reek. “Okay. So here’s the plan, and I need you to be on board with it. I’m going to have to clean you up. You stink. You gonna be okay with that?”

  Her face, mashed in the barf on his chest, gave a little jerk.

  “I’m taking that as agreement.” He carried her onto the porch and set her in the rocking chair. She was too weak to sit up straight and slumped half over the side. Oh well. For the moment, it was the best he could do.

  Eyes still closed, she mumbled something that he chose to hear as acceptance.

  “I’ll be right back.” He yanked his shirt over his head and let it fall on the porch floor. Splop.

  Inside the cabin, he grabbed a sweatshirt for her to wear—she seemed so cold—a washcloth, a towel, and a bar of soap and set all of it out on the porch rail. She hadn’t moved from the way he’d set her. Then he went around back to the hand pump and pumped fresh spring water into the bucket.

  It was gonna be cold, but at least she’d be clean.

  Back on the front porch, he set the pail down and stared at her. There was so little left of the Mercy he had covertly watched for so many years. The woman in the rocker was frail and fragile and bruised. Nothing like the dignified, composed woman she had always appeared to be.

  “Okay… So…here we go. I’m just going to take your shirt off and clean you up.” His face went hot—goddamn, he was probably blushing. Fucking blushing. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen a naked woman before. He’d seen too damned many. The hybristophiliacs—he hated using their cutesy name, Killer Killion’s Kissers—loved flashing him their boobs like he was their own personal Mardi Gras. They couldn’t have sex with an actual serial killer, so why not fuck the son that looks almost like one? Or at least they tried. Both women and men. Yeah. Not fun.

  His hands shook like a junkie’s. Get a goddamned grip. He clenched his fists so tight they trembled, then released them. Much steadier now. He reached for her shirt and stopped—his gaze locked on the thick, puckered scar ringing her neck like a pink choker collar. How she survived was a miracle no doctor had been able to explain, and seeing it up close, Cain had to agree. Nothing short of magic and wonder and a bit of divine intervention had allowed her to live through that. She really was a special human being.

  He began drawing her shirt up her torso. He didn’t mean to ogle, but he couldn’t help noticing—he wasn’t blind—the concave stomach, the line of ribs, the…black goddamned bruise the size of a softball. The edges were a fading rainbow of color from stormy sky to sage to sick yellow.

  Liz hadn’t been bullshitting him. “Do your ribs hurt?”

  “Likeasonofabitch,” Mercy murmured, her words slurred but understandable. He was surprised she was even awake enough to respond. She lay slumped exactly as he had set her and looked completely unconscious. The meds. Maybe her mind was aware, but her body wasn’t quite up to speed.

  “I’ve got to pull your shirt up over your head. Can you lift your arms for me?”

  This time she didn’t say anything and didn’t move. So much for her cooperation. He started with her right arm, lifting and threading it through the shirt, then did the same with her left, moving extra slow because of her ribs, and finally pulled the material over her head. She sat bare chested in front of him, and the one thing his eyes locked on wasn’t her breasts or the bruise. It was the filigreed cross scored—scarred—into the flesh over her heart.

  Chapter 4

  As we near the twenty-year anniversary of the Ledger murders, it is important to re
member that Adam Killion has never confessed. To this day, when confronted with DNA and scientific evidence, he refuses comment. Friends and even some staff at Petesville Super Max have periodically questioned whether this man could actually commit the crimes he’s incarcerated for because he always seems like “such a nice, normal guy.”

  —Lee Sheets, the Manseon Dispatch

  Wood crackled and snapped from the small blaze in the fireplace. Shadows and bronze light fought each other for dominance in the small room—the shadows seemed to be winning. Cain didn’t mind one bit. The darkness concealed him, smothering the constant worry over Mercy’s reaction when she finally recognized him.

  She’d been conscious, unconscious, and in some crazy in-between state, but from one moment to the next hadn’t been able to remember a danged thing—courtesy of the shock treatments. And so far, she’d been too out of it to recognize him, but the time was coming.

  He settled his hand on Mercy’s forehead—an act that reminded him of Mac—and felt her temperature. For the past two days, she’d run hot with a fever, vacillating between chills and sweats as the drugs metabolized out of her system. But now, her skin felt cool and dry. The fever had broken. Finally. They were turning a corner, speeding down a one-way highway that would end either in her acceptance or her total rejection of him.

  Her eyes blinked open so suddenly he yanked his hand off her head as if he’d been caught coppin’ a feel.

  “How are you feeling?” He’d asked her the question a dozen times over the past days, but hadn’t always gotten an answer.

  She turned her head to him, her face scrunching up, most likely from her bruised cheek. “Wow. I feel drunk and hungover at the same time.” Spoken with a clarity of tone she hadn’t possessed in previous days. “And a little bit like I’ve got the flu. But, hey, I’ve been worse.” An out-of-place cheerfulness infused her voice.