Cry Mercy

by Mariah Stewart

  Her eyes skipped from face to face.

  ���That’s what I thought. So yes, of course, I vote to keep her on.���

  ���If she stays, there may come a time when we will have to protect her,��� Mallory told them quietly.

  ���If and when that time comes,��� Robert told them, ���that’s exactly what we’ll do.���

  TWENTY-NINE

  Hey, sleepyhead, wake up.���

  Emme opened her eyes to see Nick leaning over her. He pushed the hair back from her face and kissed her.

  ���Trula said I could come see if you were awake, but that I couldn’t stay up here. I don’t know what she thinks we’d be doing with Chloe running around.��� He kissed her again. ���On the other hand������

  ���Nick,��� she pushed against him and tried to sit up. ���We need to talk.���

  ���In a minute.���

  ���Seriously. We have to talk. It’s important.���

  ���Okay.��� He eased back and turned on the lamp on the table next to the bed. ���Is something wrong?���

  She sat and pulled the pillow up behind her back, and then she began. She told him everything.

  When she finished, she sat back against the pillow, her face wet with tears, and waited for him to react. When he didn’t, she said, ���Nick, do you understand what I’m saying? I’ve been lying to you since the day we met. Aren’t you going to say something?���

  ���Do I call you Emme, or Ann?���

  ���Nick, please don’t make light-���

  ���I’m not. Does any of this change who you are? Or what you are to me?��� He shook his head. ���Not a bit.���

  ���I’m going to lose my job, Nick.��� She held his hands. ���They’re not going to let me stay after this.���

  ���Are you sure about that?���

  She nodded. ���Mallory is loaded for bear, and I don’t blame her. I made her look like a fool. She was the one who checked my references, she was the one who hired me.���

  ���She’ll get over it.���

  Emme looked at him as if he had two heads. ���I don’t think this is the sort of thing one gets over. This was their first case. I was their first hire. I’ve made her look incompetent to Robert and everyone else. She has every right to be pissed at me.���

  ���She didn’t seem that pissed when she was in the kitchen awhile ago. She was asking if you were still sleeping.���

  ���Probably because she’s waiting to fire me.���

  ���I wasn’t getting that vibe, Em.��� He played with her fingers. ���If the worst does happen, you’ll find another job.���

  ���I’m going to have to think things through a little better. I can’t keep uprooting Chloe. She deserves better than that.���

  ���Look, don’t make any rash decisions. If you need a place to stay, there’s the farm. You’re welcome to stay there for as long as you want. And hey, if worse comes to worst, I can always teach you how to replace chrome, or tune up an engine.���

  She tried to smile, but was having a hard time pulling it off.

  ���You have to stay around at least long enough to help me put together a memorial service for Belinda, but I’m hoping you’ll stay longer than that.���

  Before she could reply, the door flew open and Chloe blew in.

  ���Oh, yay! You’re awake. Trula said it’s time for dinner and we’re all going to eat together in the big dining room.��� She turned to Nick. ���Robert’s dining room has a fireplace. And a secret panel. Father Kevin showed me. Wanna see?���

  ���I do. I always wanted to see what was behind a secret panel.��� Nick squeezed Emme’s hands and stood. ���We’ll wait for you downstairs, Em.���

  Emme nodded and watched Chloe drag Nick from the room. The gods must be having a fine laugh at my expense, she thought. All my life, I’ve been searching for what I’ve found here. Friends, a sense of belonging-and Nick��� well, he’s the man I always hoped I’d find. The thought of leaving was almost too painful to bear.

  She exhaled and swung her legs over the side of the bed and slipped her feet into her sandals. She needed a few minutes to splash some water on her face and compose herself, and then it would be time to face the music.

  She was unprepared for what waited for her downstairs.

  Robert had opened several bottles of champagne, and when Emme came into the kitchen, he was proposing a toast to Belinda’s memory.

  ���Ah, you’re just in time,��� he told her. ���We’re remembering Belinda. Well, Nick is remembering her, and sharing some of her with the rest of us.���

  Trula handed her a flute.

  ���She was a pretty happy kid,��� Nick said. ���It’s good to think about that right now, to look back on the good times.���

  ���That’s important.��� Trula patted him on the arm. ���You need to think about the good times. It doesn’t make the loss less painful-only time can take away some of the sting-but the good memories will keep her alive for you.���

  ���I’ll drink to that.��� Kevin drained his glass. Robert offered a refill, but he declined. ���I have a meeting in about an hour at the church,��� he said.

  ���Since when do you have meetings on Saturday nights?��� Robert asked.

  ���Since something came up that I would like to discuss with a member of my parish.��� Kevin put his glass on the counter and turned to Trula. ���What can I take in to the dining room for you?���

  ���Everything’s already there. We just all need to-���

  ���Wait a minute,��� Emme said. ���I feel like the nine-hundred-pound elephant in the room, and all you can think about is eating.���

  She looked from one face to the other.

  ���Do you really think I can sit down to dinner with you all, then turn in my cell phone and leave?���

  ���You’re not leaving, Emme.��� Robert put his glass down. ���We understand that you did what you did because you felt you had no choice.��� He glanced across the room at Chloe. ���We all agreed that given those circumstances, each of us probably would have done the same thing.���

  Emme turned to Mallory. ���Is that how you feel?���

  With some apparent reluctance, Mallory nodded. ���I don’t like it, but Robert’s right. I don’t know that I wouldn’t have done the same thing. And you are exactly what you said you were. A good investigator. I don’t know that I’ve worked with better.���

  ���I don’t know what to say,��� Emme told them. ���I was so sure that-���

  ���Not another word,��� Trula said. ���Dinner’s getting cold. If you want to discuss this any more, you’re going to have to do it over pot roast.���

  ���Trula has spoken.��� Robert grabbed a bottle of wine from the counter and began to usher everyone toward the door.

  ���I’m afraid I can’t stick around for the celebratory dinner, Emme.��� Susanna swung her bag over her shoulder. ���I’m afraid I have another commitment. But I’m delighted that you’re on board with us. I think you’re a real asset.���

  ���Thank you, Suse,��� Emme said, and hugged her before she left.

  ���I’ll see you all on Monday,��� Susanna called to the others before leaving by the back door.

  ���Where does she go when she takes off like that?��� Emme heard Mallory whisper to Trula, who shook her head and whispered back, ���Beats the devil out of me.���

  ***

  She’d already missed the entire day, but Susanna had planned ahead. When she wasn’t wa
iting for Emme to return, she was in meetings talking about Emme or listening to someone else talk about Emme. She was relieved when the vote was taken and everyone-even Mallory-agreed that Emme deserved a place on the staff. The time between meetings was spent on her computer, studying topographic maps and eliminating roads she’d already traveled. There were some she’d driven early on that she thought perhaps she hadn’t investigated far enough the first time. Before she crossed them off for good, she needed to be certain. One road in particular had stayed in her memory. It had wound around and around a mountain on a narrow path, but had been navigable. Something she’d noticed on one of the maps she’d downloaded, however, seemed to indicate hairpin turns, the two lanes very tight. She’d drive much of the night to get to her destination, but she didn’t really mind. She knew that someday she would find the place where Beth Magellan’s car had been hidden all these many months-if not this weekend, then possibly another.

  Susanna had asked herself a hundred times how much longer she’d make these trips, how many more weekends she’d spend driving alone on side roads, peering down ravines and checking guard rails for scrapes of brown paint that would match the color of the Jeep that Beth had been driving that day. She hated to admit how obsessed she’d become, but that was the truth of it. There would be no peace for Robert until the Jeep was found, so finding the car was the key for both of them.

  In some ways, the trips were a comfort to her. She was doing something for the man she loved, and with luck, someday he’d understand just how much of herself had gone into these journeys. She wasn’t unaware of the risk involved, of course. She knew it was possible that she’d discover what had happened to his wife and he’d still see her as his best friend, nothing more. But she clung to the hope that once the truth was known, once he knew for certain that Beth had left this life, when he looked for love again, maybe someday he’d look to her.

  Susanna was smart enough to know that the odds might not be in her favor, but they were the only odds she had. She would look until she found, and then the next act would begin. She didn’t know how the play would end, but she would see it through.

  THIRTY

  Needle in a haystack time.

  Susanna took the exit from the turnpike Beth Magellan was believed to have taken the morning she disappeared. There’d been an accident eastbound between two exits that had resulted in the first one being closed and all the traffic diverted. Beth may have been one of the first cars to encounter the detour after the road was blocked off, and may have been directed off the turnpike before all of the detour signs had been put in place. That would have left Beth to figure out on her own how to find her way back to the turnpike with some twenty miles between where she got off and where she should have gotten back on.

  Over the past two years, Susanna had considered most of the possibilities and traveled most of the roads that would have been the most logical choices, as had the state police and the private investigators Robert had hired. But Susanna figured she had one advantage over all of them: She’d known Beth fairly well for several years, knew how the woman thought.

  The scenario that played out in Suse’s mind had Beth finding herself in a line of traffic that was not moving. She’d have been in a hurry to get home. Maybe Ian was fussing in the backseat, maybe she was frustrated at not having her phone with her. She was always talking to someone when she was driving. It was the one thing Robert consistently criticized her for.

  What would Beth have done under these circumstances?

  Might she have decided not to wait patiently for the police to direct the cars off the turnpike? To Suse’s way of thinking, she’d have driven on the shoulder of the road and slipped off the turnpike exit as quickly as she could. With no signs to direct her, perhaps Beth might have done what Suse could see herself doing under the same circumstances: she’d have asked the person in the tollbooth. There was a good chance she’d have been directed to the main road, and hopefully that would take her around the mountain.

  The main road off this stretch of highway was a two-lane affair that went through one small town after another, and at first glance might have appeared to be the most logical, took her down the mountain, not up. There were signs that pointed toward this town or that, one state or county road or another, but for a stranger, the signs meant nothing. The last time Susanna had followed this same road, she’d taken the route that led her down the mountain. Today, she’d go in the opposite direction, and see where that would lead.

  It wasn’t long before she noticed that the road narrowed around those hairpin turns, and that some of the guard rails at several of the turns bore numerous scrapes, battle scars from vehicles that may not have fared quite so well as she had so far. She had to slam on the brakes several times to take the turns on all four wheels, and on more than one occasion, opposing traffic had caused her to hug the right side of the road a lot closer than was comfortable. On an icy road, drivers could find themselves one misstep from disaster.

  The sudden blast from the horn of the SUV behind her startled her and caused her to jump, and she swerved even closer to the guard rail. The driver of the SUV was right up to her rear fender and made no effort to back off. As she rounded the curve, her foot on the brake, she saw a driveway up ahead on the right, and she practically slid into it to get out of the SUV’s way. The driver laid on the horn as he passed her, his middle finger in the air, and she watched him disappear down the next hill at a speed she couldn’t even imagine on a road like this.

  That’s how it happens, she thought as she caught her breath. That’s how cars get pushed off the road. If this had been winter, any accumulation of snow or ice on these roads would have been deadly.

  And then she recalled that Beth and Ian had disappeared in the dead of winter.

  She checked her rearview mirror for oncoming cars, then drove back onto the roadway. Several hundred yards ahead was a slight clearing. She pulled over and parked. She stuffed her bag under the front seat and locked the door after she got out. She walked back to the curve where the SUV had crowded her and studied the metal guard rail. It was dented and bore the scrapes of many a passing car. She stepped over it and walked downhill a short distance. The bottom of the ravine was littered with old tires and plastic trash bags holding God knew what. From somewhere below she could hear the sound of a stream, but there was little else to break the silence.

  It would have been a place like this where Beth went off the road, she thought, only higher up the mountain, maybe. Someplace where a car could go over and be hidden from view by trees or thick undergrowth that even in February would prevent it from being seen from the road.

  She walked back to her car, knowing she was right, in theory. All she had to do now was find the right road, on the right mountain.

  Three hours later, she stood behind a guard rail that did its best to wrap around an exceptionally narrow turn. On the opposite side of the road, a huge piece of rock jutted out from the side of the mountain and hung partially over the left lane. A driver coming uphill in the right lane, unfamiliar with the configuration, might well overcompensate if a vehicle was coming too quickly from the left. Susanna found a safe place to park and again set out to explore, the fourth or fifth time she’d done so that day.

  Since she had been following possible routes Beth might have taken, Susanna assumed that Beth would have approached this particular curve on the right side. She walked along the road and climbed over the barrier, noting that there was ample room at the end of the guard rail for a car to slip between it and a tree that had apparently not only stood witness to a number of accidents, but had itself been a victim on numerous occasions.

  ���Everything from a Mini Cooper to one of those big mean pickups must have bounced off you,��� she said, taking note that the gashes on the trunk were of varying heights.

  She stepped around the tree and looked down. The hill dropped off sharply and the trees grew in dense clusters, their branches and leaves forming a green
wall. Now, in the summer, the foliage could hide just about anything down there. In midwinter when the trees were bare, however, she was pretty certain any car that might have gone over on this side of the road would have been visible. She started back to her car, then on a hunch, walked across the road and stepped over the guard rail, which was much lower on this side of the road.

  ���Oh, come on, Beth,��� she said aloud. ���You could help me out here.���

  She stood at the top of the incline and studied the topography. Beneath her feet was solid rock, and looking down the mountainside, there were mostly rocks below for maybe fifty yards. Beyond the rocks an overgrowth of shrubs disappeared over a ledge. Susanna crossed the road to the place where the curve began, and thought back to the impatient SUV that had come up behind her earlier and startled her with a loud blast of its horn. What if she’d been driving into a curve like this one, on so narrow a road, and had been surprised by such a blast. Would she have swerved to the right, or to the left? If to the right, she’d have bounced off that tree, wouldn’t she? But if she’d swerved to the left���

  If she’d swerved to the left, might she have gone into the curve in the opposing lane? And if she had, she’d have looked up to see that rocky overhang right there. If she’d tried to overcompensate, if she’d hit ice��� what might have happened to the Jeep? Might it have scraped through between the rock and the railing?

  She stepped over the rail and made her way down the rock as far as the ledge and looked over. She almost missed it, but the sunlight bleeding through the clouds caught on something down below and sent a beam back up through the trees.

  It could be nothing, she told herself as she made her way around the rocks and down into the ravine, or it could be chrome, or a mirror. She made her way down as far as she could safely go, but it wasn’t necessary for her to go any farther. Through the thick growth she could see the back quarter panel of a brown vehicle, and she knew.