by Abbie Roads
His beautiful light-and-dark eyes locked on her. Something happened in her psyche—a subtle shift as if this man was the key to her lock, and he’d just opened her up, exposing all her vulnerabilities. And yet she trusted him to not harm the most fragile parts of her. Why? Because she knew his vulnerability too. Knew his past pain.
Their shared pain had always pulled her toward him, but she’d denied the sensation for so long that it had become normal. Not anymore. If soul mates really existed, his father had created him to be hers. What an intriguing thought. She’d spent so much of her life avoiding connections with people, fearing they’d get hurt, but what if—what if—Cain really was meant to be hers?
“I think we’re meant to be this way,” she said simply.
He gave one dip of his chin. God—that gesture was sweet and silent and a bit infuriating. She didn’t quite know how to interpret it.
A thud of a car door from outside pulled his attention to the window beside the bed.
“Mac’s here.”
Those two words didn’t sound profound. Didn’t sound like they should carry so much dread, yet they did.
Chapter 6
I’ve spent the past fifteen years as a corrections officer at Petesville Super Max. Of all the inmates, Killion was always the politest, friendliest, and most engaging. He seemed like the kind of guy you’d invite over for a beer and to watch the game.
—Joshua Beckers, corrections officer (retired)
Cain had survived some serious shit in his life. And yet standing here—in front of Mercy Ledger—he felt like a fucking coward.
“Cain?” Mercy’s tone drowned in an emotion that sounded an awful lot like fear.
He couldn’t look at her.
She’d been a trouper this time when she’d awakened, but that didn’t mean the next time she wouldn’t be scared shitless again. Her short-term memory was garbage. She probably wouldn’t remember this, and he didn’t know how long the meds would remain in her system. They could still be in there, still be sedating her from the full impact of being in the same room with him.
He’d been delusional to think she’d feel anything except fear toward him. The best thing was for him to adios, amigos before full-frontal awareness hit.
He forced himself to walk across the cabin and open the door. He lost momentum just before he stepped outside. The urge to look at her, to say something, nearly overcame his good sense. The door shut behind him. The familiar thunk of wood meeting wood was a period, the end of him and Mercy. He would never see her again.
Unless he revived his old stalking routine.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
No. No. No.
The idea of watching her appealed to him so much that he recognized the danger in it. He wouldn’t do that. He would pretend she didn’t exist.
Mac stood at the back of his car—trunk up, rummaging around inside.
Cain strode across the gravel drive toward him. The crunch and crack of rock underneath his boots echoed in the quiet. Overhead, clouds the color of sad days had settled just over the treetops, and he could feel the moisture in the air—the prelude to a downpour.
He rounded Mac’s trunk. Mac held his service revolver in his hand, not in the ready-aim-fire position, but just holding it like he would a sack of groceries.
“Here’s the rundown.” Cain sucked in a breath. “Liz asked me to take her. It was a stupid-ass idea, but I didn’t see any alternatives. If you had seen her, you would’ve done it too. Right now, she’s over the worst of the withdrawals. But her short-term memory is gone from the shock treatments. She’s more lucid than she has been, but she’s still a bit off balance.” Off balance—he was being intentionally vague. No way was he telling Mac about her so-called ability. Didn’t want the guy to think that she actually deserved to be in the Center, but he wanted to lay the groundwork of blaming the meds and shocks in case she mentioned it.
Mac settled his service pistol in the portable gun safe, shut the lid, and then checked to make certain it was locked. “Not taking a weapon around her until I can gauge her mental state.”
Part of Cain wanted to argue that she wasn’t dangerous and didn’t need such considerations, but she had been in the Center, medicated, and shocked. If anyone had a right to be a bit nutso, it was her.
“Last time she woke up, she thought I was…” Still couldn’t say the name. Mac gave a nod—he knew. Hell, everyone with eyeballs knew. “She ran from me. I found her in the middle of the road…” He couldn’t bring himself to say crawling away from me. That was just too damned shameful to utter out loud.
“You’re not him.” Mac’s tone brimmed with sympathy. Fucking sympathy.
Give him anger. Give him fear. Give him fuzzy-assed unicorns that shit glitter and gold—just don’t give him sympathy. Sympathy sucked a giant sack.
Mac put his hand on Cain’s shoulder, a fatherly gesture meant to offer silent comfort and solidarity. And it did. But only to a point. Didn’t change Cain’s need to get the fuck away from her before she got scared of him again.
Mac looked beyond him to the cabin. “So two days ago, Liz asked you to take Mercy?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d she seem?”
“She was fucked up from all the meds and shocks.”
“I meant, how was Liz?”
“If you’re asking if she was in her right mind, yeah, she was. If I hadn’t gotten Mercy out of there, she’d probably be dead by now. Liz saved her life.”
Mac studied him, really studied Cain’s face as if he were looking for the lie he might be telling. Only Cain wasn’t lying. And Mac would see that.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why haven’t you ever told me about this place? I’ve wondered where you go for days at a time. I would’ve respected your privacy. I just wouldn’t have worried.”
Heat crept up Cain’s neck, burning his cheeks. It was just like Mac to notice he would go off-radar, but not say anything until Cain opened the door. “I just… I needed… I wanted to be away from it all. Where no one could find me, and I could…” Draw the foul things I see on the backs of my eyelids every time I try to sleep. He clamped his lips closed. Jeesh, he didn’t want to have a confession session out here in the middle of the driveway.
“I get it. You wanted a place where you weren’t Killion’s kid.”
Mac had it backwards. This was the place where Cain could be his father’s son. Those journals buried in the woodpile proved that. Cain didn’t say anything. No words would be right. They’d either be a lie or the truth, and neither of those choices had a happy ending. Time for a subject change. “What did you find out about the symbol?”
“I googled it—an upside-down question mark with a slash through it.”
“That’s what the FBI has resorted to? Google?”
Mac held up his hand in a wait-for-it gesture. “That symbol also looks like the Christian cross with a hook in the bottom. I found an obscure post about the symbol. It means”—Mac sucked in a slow breath through his nose and spoke while exhaling—“slave of Satan.”
“Are you sure?” Cain packed his voice with theatrical disbelief. “I’m pretty certain it means property of the Tooth Fairy.”
Mac almost cracked a smile, his eyes crinkling in amusement for only a moment, but then settling into a grave and grim expression.
“That was my reaction too. And then I showed it to Stan Pitts. In the eighties, he worked a Satanic cult case. He saw that symbol tattooed on a guy who claimed to be—you guessed it—a slave of Satan.”
In the middle of Cain’s spine, right between his shoulder blades, a dull throbbing ache began. “Satanic-cult-ritual bullshit doesn’t fit the murders.”
“I agree. There was nothing ritualistic about the deaths of Mercy’s family. The Dawsons’ house was odd with the blood painting on the wall, but it didn’t have a ritualistic flair
. Stan agrees on those points. But it is strange.”
“Strange doesn’t equal slave of Satan.”
Mac didn’t say anything.
“Come on. You can’t be buying this shit.”
“I’m not buying it. But I am looking at the merchandise. And I am keeping in mind that whoever is involved might be wearing the merchandise. I’ve got a couple new agents looking through the old Killion crime-scene photos to see if that symbol shows up anywhere else.”
They both went quiet. Everything that needed to be said had been said, and there was no reason to stay. “Um…thanks for…you know…showing up. I know you had a case, and I don’t know what you had to do to be here instead of there, but I appreciate it.”
“I’m glad you called.” Mac stared into Cain’s eyes as he spoke. He might have been Cain’s adopted dad, but he did a fair imitation of an emotional mom at times. “I’m here for you. Have been from the beginning.”
When the guy got all sentimental, it always made Cain feel like a kid. Like he had suddenly shrunk a few feet and lost a few decades—and damn if he didn’t sometimes want to throw himself into those fatherly arms and pretend for just a minute that Mac really was his dad and that nothing that came before Mac existed.
But he couldn’t do that. Had never been able to do that. No matter how much he wanted to. Something always held him back. That something being his father and the life he’d lived before Mac. The things he’d done before Mac. The thing Mac didn’t understand was that Cain didn’t deserve him.
Cain did the only thing he could. He nodded and changed the subject. Again. “I need to get going. Keep me updated”—about Mercy—“about the case.”
“I will.” Mac gave him a slow, sad look, the kind that always made Cain feel like an asshole.
He should say something more. Offer some sort of…something to the guy. But he had no words. None. He wasn’t programmed that way. Didn’t speak that language. The language of affection and emotion.
“Listen.” Mac’s tone was in the serious range. “I don’t know everything that’s going on with the Liz and Mercy situation. Keep your eyes open.”
“I didn’t think anyone was looking for her.”
“I want to check a few back channels to be certain.” Mac was more protective than a momma bear. “Lay low until I give you the all clear. I’ll call as soon as I know something.” Mac gave him another long, assessing look, then turned and headed toward the cabin.
Cain watched until the guy hit the porch, then forced himself to turn away and head toward the car.
In the Mustang, a pervasive emptiness grew in his torso—as if someone had taken a giant ice cream scoop and hollowed him out one giant spoonful at a time. There was a name for that feeling.
Lonely.
He felt goddamned lonely.
After two days in Mercy’s presence, it felt different, odd, weird, not to have her nearby.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” Once he got back to his place, got back to his routine of waiting for Mac to call with the next case, life would balance out again. He was lying to himself. And he damned well knew it. Something had happened in that cabin with her. In those few moments when she’d been flirty and friendly with him, she’d ruined him. Given him a taste for affection when all he could afford was apathy.
He had the urge to look up, look at the cabin window, hope for one last glimpse of her, but he focused on turning the key in the ignition and then K-turned the car until it was aimed down the rutted drive.
Overgrown bushes and brambles slapped and smacked the doors, but Cain didn’t have the brain capacity to care. His mind overflowed with her.
At the end of the driveway, he let the car coast to a halt.
It didn’t feel right leaving her.
It didn’t feel right staying.
For her, he needed to leave. Didn’t want to scare her again. For him, he needed to leave. Didn’t want to see that look of fear on her face again.
He rammed his boot down on the gas. The tires chucked gravel, the back end fishtailed, then the car shot out the driveway onto the road with a skid and roar of engine. Nothing like speed to narrow his concentration.
He pedal-to-the-metaled it. The car surged forward, all its horses galloping. A quarter mile ahead of him, the road curved left, and he fisted the wheel—no brakes, baby. The car could handle it. And he needed the adrenaline to get his mind off her.
A tiny, gray sports car shot around the curve, coming toward him. It was the kind of car a guy with a small dick and a large ego would drive. The vanity plate read HEADOC. What the fuck was a headoc? And what was the point of getting a personalized plate if no one understood its meaning?
The small-dick-mobile zipped past him, but Cain kept his eyes on the curve in front of him. The Mustang roared with all the confidence of good ole American muscle. Tires hugged the pavement on the curve, momentum pushed against him, exhilaration flooded his system. And then the curve was gone and only a straight hilly road stretched out before him. He needed about fifteen more of those curves, and he just might make it home without obsessing about Mercy.
Mercy. How did she like Mac? She would have to like him. If Mac could win Cain over, the guy would have no problems with Mercy. But what if she—
“Fucking stop. Don’t think about her. Think about something. Anything. Just not her.”
His brain turned into a giant empty chasm with only one thought ping-ponging off the walls.
Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.
Goddamn it.
He searched the landscape for something, anything, to latch on to. The road. Yes. And the sports car that had passed him. It was probably a Porsche. Had that metrosexual foreign look to it. And that stupid-assed license plate. HEADOC. “He ad oc? Hea doc? Head oc?” He heard himself say the words—heard what his brain wasn’t putting together. Head doc.
Head doc, head doc, head doc bounced around inside his skull, colliding with his thoughts of Mercy. The world blinked out of existence, and he remembered how narcissism had screamed from the picture he’d seen of Dr. Payne on the Center’s website: perfectly tailored trousers and pin-striped shirt with genuine fancy-ass cuff links. The guy dressed like a Wall Street pussy, not a psychiatrist working in a state-funded facility. That Porsche was just the kind of car he would drive.
“Fuck!” Cain yanked his cell from his pocket and hit the button to call Mac.
Beep beep beep. The no-signal sound hammered into his ears.
He slammed on the brakes. Tires screamed. Rubber smoked. The car shuddered and bumped. He wrenched the wheel, the vehicle sliding and slipping over the pavement as it swerve-turned in the middle of the empty road.
Facing the way he came, Cain nailed the gas so hard his foot slammed the floorboards, punching his hip up off the seat. It seemed like a small piece of forever while the tires churned, trying to grip the pavement. And then he rocketed off going zero to sixty in only a fast jiffy.
The woods on either side of the car whipped by in a smeary blur of green. Only moments ago, he’d pulled out of the driveway, yet the drive back took hours. Tortured hours while he pictured Mercy’s eyes so wide the whites showed all around the irises. Pictured her mouth slit open in silent horror. Pictured her screaming for help. Screaming for him.
Something dark and terrible clawed around in his guts.
At the driveway, he jammed the brake at the same time he cranked the wheel. He was going too fast—fighting a losing battle with inertia and momentum. The car skidded off the road into the dense forest alongside the driveway. Bushes and brambles slapped and banged against the vehicle as if they were protesting its intrusion. His Mustang slammed into something big, immoveable, heavy enough to jostle him like a crash-test dummy, but then somehow all four tires hit gravel and he rocketed down the lane. The small-dick-mobile had been parked in the middle of the lane—just out of sight of
the cabin.
Every goddamned one of his fears was confirmed.
Cain mashed the brake. He didn’t remember slowing or parking—he just found himself sprinting for the cabin. Arms and legs pumping, each footfall an explosion of sound.
Ppggll… A gunshot.
A blade of terror sliced his sanity, his control, in half.
Mac hadn’t worn his gun. There were three people in that cabin, and Cain couldn’t afford to lose two of them.
He burst through the door and froze.
Mac lay on the floor, blood gushing out of a wound in his side in waves that mesmerized…hypnotized…relaxed…
Cain felt the pull, the urge to kneel in all that red and paint himself with its gooey warmth. He wanted to lavish his body in the wetness the way his father had taught him. No, his father hadn’t taught him. His father had forced him. His father had made Cain into the human version of Pavlov’s pups. But instead of ringing the bell before food, Cain had to wallow in blood before he’d be fed.
Blood was a savior. Blood was his nightmare.
He tore his gaze away from Mac—away from the blood—and found Mercy.
Her clothes were gone, and she was on her knees. Dr. Payne had his hand fisted in her hair, cranking her head so far back on her shoulders it looked as if it were about to tumble off and roll away. Against her neck—against the scar his father had given her—Payne scraped the muzzle of a gun, turning the old wound an angry red. An angry red that matched the welt Payne sported down his own cheek, the only thing marring his perfect complexion.
It was bad enough that Mercy was naked, but that wasn’t what sent a shard of ice into Cain’s brain. It was Mercy’s eyes. They were all wrong. They stared up at Payne, not showing one hint of fear. Instead, she actually looked…defiant. Like she double-dog dared him to carry out the threat his gun made.
That look on her face scared Cain more than anything. More than the gun. A sound came out of him. A sound he didn’t recognize, but one that felt as much a part of him as his heartbeat. He launched himself at Payne.
