Mercy Kill

by Lori Armstrong

  Curtly, Dawson said, “I expect to see you in my office by noon. Are we clear on that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And since you’ve had such a long day, I’ll follow you to make certain you don’t fall asleep at the wheel.”

  He had no idea how dangerous it was to be around me right now. “Not necessary. I’m sure Deputy Moore would be happy to ensure I get home all right.”

  “No problem, Mercy,” Kiki said.

  I stepped back and headed toward my truck, ignoring the stares of the people who’d stuck around to watch the show. Word of this humiliation would spread like wildfire.

  And the worst of it wasn’t over yet.

  SIX

  Kiki flashed her lights once after I turned down the driveway leading to the cabin. She spun a U-turn on the gravel road and headed back to town.

  A hot shower did nothing to induce sleepiness. I slipped on my flannel pajamas, grabbed the bottle of Wild Turkey, and climbed into bed.

  With my back to the headboard and bundled beneath a goose down comforter, I wasn’t feeling warm. A coldness had permeated me since the moment I’d seen J-Hawk’s body.

  I swigged straight from the bottle, swallowing slowly, savoring the mellow burn. I repeated the process until my head was muzzy and my thoughts could bounce around freely, instead of obsessively returning to the brutal way J-Hawk’s life had ended.

  In the past few days, I’d tried to reconcile J-Hawk the soldier with Jason the civilian. I thought the lines were too rigidly set for me to see him as anything but the Army Ranger with nerves and balls of steel.

  Now, I feared I’d forevermore see him covered in blood.

  I let my head fall back into the pillows. Another slug of whiskey, and drunkenness overtook me.

  I dreamed of the night I died.

  Booze flowed freely. Crappy techno music vibrated the table and my teeth. A rainbow of laser lights cut through the clouds of smoke. Scantily clad, sweat-slicked bodies gyrated to the beats on the elevated dance floor.

  Definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

  I preferred the barbed-wire compound to this.

  I knocked back my seventh—or was it my eighth?—slug of whiskey. As I slid forward on the plastic-coated bar stool—and eww, I didn’t want to consider why everything in this nightclub was encased in plastic—a large male hand squeezed my upper thigh.

  I was buzzed, but not nearly drunk enough to let some wet-behind-the-ears junior officer cop a feel. “Remove your hand, flyboy, or I’ll cut it off at the wrist.”

  The hand dropped like a stone. But the British airman—full of machismo and rum—wouldn’t let up. “Come on, luv. Relax. We’re here on R and R.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “You’d rather be back at the hotel?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He snorted, and it wasn’t nearly as charming as when Hugh Grant did it in the movies.

  Besides, it hadn’t been my idea to slink into a crowded nightclub in Bali. I’d succumbed to peer pressure from A-Rod and J-Hawk, lured by the chance to get shitfaced.

  “Would you like to dance?” Lieutenant Happy Hands asked in his British lilt.

  “To this techno shit?” I shuddered. “Hell no.”

  J-Hawk laughed. “Gunny prefers two-stepping to hip-hopping. It’s a South Dakota thang. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “That’s rich, coming from a North Dakota plowboy,” I shot back. “Tell me, J-Hawk, did you hear about the North Dakotan who stepped in a pile of cow shit and thought he was melting?”

  Anna nearly fell off J-Hawk’s lap, laughing. “She’s got your number.”

  “And you’ve got it, too, baby.”

  A-Rod smooched him on the nose. Then the mouth. The smooch turned into a full-on make-out session.

  Jesus Christ. They were adults. We were in public. Not to mention J-Hawk was married—and higher-ranking than either A-Rod or me.

  J-Hawk was in select company as far as knowing about our team. Not even J-Hawk’s trainee Lieutenant Happy Hands was aware of our designation in the murky military soup known as the “division of special troops.” He believed we were attached to the Pentagon, since we were stationed in Indonesia with JCET, training the Indonesian Special Forces, Kopassus. We had a little more freedom to roam around the country than those stuck in the world’s sandboxes, but we were supposed to be discreet.

  J-Hawk and A-Rod weren’t being discreet at all. Lieutenant Happy Hands and I had both been dragged into this situation so the amorous couple could knock combat boots in a real bed in our hotel, instead of sneaking trysts on cots or in the back of a helicopter.

  A-Rod scooted off J-Hawk’s lap and tugged him to his feet. “Time for a little dirty dancing.” Her eyes flashed me a warning. “Don’t leave.”

  Damn woman knew me too well. I’d purposely chosen a table closest to the exit so I could make a quick getaway. I hated being exposed from all sides—I preferred my back to the wall. I hated the crush of people surrounding me. Mostly I hated that I was unarmed. “Fine. But you’ve got thirty minutes, and then I’m outta here.”

  She nodded, and they headed to the dance floor.

  “You sure you don’t want to dance?” he asked again.

  “No. But I’d take another shot.”

  He ordered two more. After we chinked our glasses together, and knocked it back, he gave me a curiously disdainful look.

  “What?”

  “Are you a lesbian?”

  The question might’ve bothered me if I hadn’t been asked it a billion times before. “You think I’m a dyke because I’m career military? Or because I’m not ripping off my clothes and yelling—‘Whoo-ee, take me right fucking now, you hot English flyboy!’”

  “If the strap-on fits …”

  “I like men. I like sex. I just don’t like you.”

  His smirk faded. “Why the bloody hell not?”

  “Because you’re too pretty. Too young.”

  Indignant, he demanded, “So if I was old and ugly?”

  I lifted my shot glass. “I’d do you in a heartbeat.”

  Lieutenant Happy Hands scowled.

  I sipped the whiskey and wondered how long the lieutenant would stick around now that there wasn’t a chance he’d get lucky with me.

  He pushed to his feet and jammed his hands in his pockets. “Think I’ll stroll and—”

  The rest of his words were lost in the explosion that shook the rafters.

  I hit the ground and reached for my gun, only to come up empty-handed. Before I had a chance to process the screams competing with the blaring music, another explosion rippled through the building, louder and more intense than the first. Light fixtures crashed, becoming bombs of glass and gas. From my position curled on the floor, I saw the lieutenant’s polished dress shoes, which meant he was still standing.

  Why wasn’t he ducking for cover? I screamed at him, but the sound was lost in another explosion.

  The table wobbled. I managed to roll out of the way before it crashed and the marble top decapitated me, but the heavy iron pedestal table base pinned my lower torso to the floor. I tried to pull myself out of the path of people racing for the exit. My hair was stepped on, entire chunks ripped out by the roots. Several hard kicks to the head made me woozy. My ears rang. Blood trickled down my face and neck. People fell on me. No one helped me up, rather they used my body as support to scramble back to their feet and get the hell away.

  The real horror of the situation hit me; I’d lived through countless battles and mortar attacks, I’d dodged sniper rounds, only to be trampled to death in a sleazy nightclub.

  Through the pain and panic, I glanced up when Lieutenant Happy Hands attempted to shove the table off me.

  Before I could mouth “thank you,” another blast rocked the building. Our eyes met and the words dirty bomb flitted through my mind as I watched nails imbed in him, turning him into a human pincushion.

  The young flyboy dropped to his knees, blood g
urgling from his mouth as he tried to speak. He fell forward, his big, heavy body landing on my legs. I reached for him, digging my fingers into the fabric of his shirt, intending to yank him away so I could finally free myself. Immediately, another bloody body riddled with shrapnel fell on top of me with enough force I felt my rib crack beneath the deadweight. Panic like I’d never experienced set in. My arms were pinned to the front of my torso as my fingers gripped a dead man’s shirt.

  I couldn’t move at all.

  I screamed until my lungs were devoid of air. I thrashed, but when I moved my head, a jagged chunk of fluorescent tubing dug into my neck, dangerously close to my jugular. Trapped like an animal. An ominous screeching followed a deafening groaning sound above me. I looked up through the haze of smoke as a steel girder splintered. Shards of metal whizzed through the air like flying razors as the remnants of the ceiling plummeted to the earth. The bodies piled on top of me took the brunt of the impact, as the roof joists bounced around me like pieces of a life-sized Erector Set.

  My relief that I hadn’t ended up a shish kebab was short lived. Weirdly colored flames licked across the gaping hole above me. Debris floated down. Paper of all sizes and colors swirled in an industrial blizzard. At first the flaming pieces burned to ash before they hit, dusting my face with gritty powder. But the pieces got progressively bigger and were strangely warm when they landed on my skin. I squinted through the dusty air and realized the paper had been replaced by plastic.

  Chunks of plastic backing that’d been attached to insulation floated down.

  The pieces were getting bigger.

  And I couldn’t move my head.

  One piece of warm plastic landed on my lips, and I puffed out a breath. It floated away.

  Okay. If I could just keep blowing away the plastic pieces, not allowing anything to cover my face, eventually somebody had to notice me. Eventually someone had to come by and rescue me, right? Firemen, police, ambulance crews, militia?

  Where were A-Rod and J-Hawk?

  They’d been on the dance floor when it blew up. What if they were dead, burned beyond recognition, wrapped in an eternal lover’s embrace?

  I couldn’t think about worst-case scenarios because I was in one.

  Warmth dripped down my cheek. For a second I thought I was bleeding. Maybe crying. But it wasn’t tears. It was water. I squinted at the ceiling. The flames above me were now tendrils of sooty black smoke.

  Oh God. They were spraying something on the fire, and it was weighting down the plastic. Now the pieces were splatting like raindrops. Sticking like glue.

  No! I screamed. Stop! Turn off the goddamn water!

  But no one heard me above the pandemonium.

  A wet chunk splatted onto my right eye. I pursed out my bottom lip and attempted to blow upward, like I had as a girl whenever my bangs hung in my eyes. I puffed out breath after breath until I was dizzy from lack of air, but the warm plastic had molded to my forehead.

  Dread and panic created a lethal cocktail, and I debated the fastest way to die. Crank my head to the side and let the glass sever my jugular? Bleeding out wasn’t painful.

  Was it?

  Yes. I remembered the guard in Afghanistan. I sliced his throat, watching gurgling foamy blood dripping from his lips as he struggled.

  Payback is a bitch, ain’t it?

  With half my vision compromised by the plastic molding to my forehead and eye, I didn’t notice the larger chunk of plastic until the sheet covered my entire face. I gasped, allowing the warm plastic to line my mouth. The immediate suction pulled the plastic into my nostrils, too. I couldn’t breathe. At all. My heart raced so fast it nearly burst.

  I was suffocating.

  I pushed at the plastic with my tongue. Closed my jaw and tried to grind my front teeth through it or even bite a little hole that’d allow the tiniest bit of air in.

  No such luck.

  I used my last breath to try to force the plastic back out, but it’d formed to my mouth like shrink-wrap.

  My lungs were devoid of air. My chest felt full, yet it was empty.

  My life didn’t flash before my eyes, nor did a montage of my favorite memories, or a vision of unrealized hopes and dreams. No, my last thought was regret that I hadn’t died in combat, in uniform, as a soldier.

  My body twitched. The throbbing in my head abated. Consciousness faded. Then nothing.

  I sputtered awake now, like I had then, with big gasping breaths and no freakin’ clue where I was or what’d happened.

  Fuck. I pushed back in the darkness of my room, heart jack-hammering, blood pumping hot and fast; clammy sweat coated my brow, my neck, my chest, my belly. Even my toes were damp from pure fear.

  As much as I hated combat nightmares, this one was worse. It was a memory, not a fucked-up collection of faraway places, random body parts, death, destruction, and the graphic vileness of war. This had really happened.

  I’d died.

  Jason Hawley had brought me back to life. He’d dug me out from beneath the pile of bodies and debris, peeled the plastic off my face, and given me mouth-to-mouth. He returned me to the land of the living almost by sheer will.

  Of course, I hadn’t known any of it until days later.

  For a while I’d considered calling him Jesus, secretly hoping he’d rechristen me Lazarus, but J-Hawk hadn’t found any humor in it.

  During my stay in the military hospital, I had plenty of time to relive that night. The term “reliving” something that’d killed me made me crazy. The army sent in shrinks to evaluate my mental state. I’d sent them away after answering the minimum number of questions. The army sent in a clergyman. I’d sent him away, too.

  But he was persistent. He kept coming back until I informed him I no longer believed in God because there was no afterlife, no heaven, no hell, no nothing. In the minutes I’d been dead, I hadn’t been shrouded in white mist. I hadn’t felt a sense of ultimate peace. I hadn’t seen the faces of my dearly departed loved ones. I hadn’t heard angelic voices warning me it wasn’t my time. Neither had I heard the devil’s gleeful cackling. Or felt the heat from the fiery pits of hell. None of the near-death experiences I’d seen on TV or heard about was true.

  Everything about the afterlife was a big, fat fucking lie.

  The clergyman never returned.

  I’d mostly blocked the Bali incident from my mind in my day-to-day life. But I was indebted to Jason Hawley in a way no one who’d never lived through a death experience could possibly understand. The only time we’d talked about that night, he said he saved me because he couldn’t have my death on his conscience.

  But now his was on mine.

  SEVEN

  My night had too little sleep and my morning wasn’t starting out better. No coffee. I dressed in my favorite Johnny Cash T-shirt, jeans, turquoise ropers, and my army of one ball cap. I didn’t wear a sidearm, but I brought one along.

  Once I hit town, I bypassed the Q-Mart for my morning cup of coffee. Margene, a sweet-natured cashier with a mouth the size of the Grand Canyon, would grill me about finding Jason’s body. I wasn’t in the mood to feed her gossip hunger just to fuel my caffeine addiction.

  Shocking, to see John-John’s El Dorado in the parking lot of the sheriff’s department. After I parked, he motioned me over, and I climbed in his passenger seat. The scent of patchouli nearly choked me. “What are you doing here?”

  “You didn’t get my text messages?”

  I shook my head. He wouldn’t find the humor in my remembering to bring a gun but not my cell phone.

  His piercing gaze wasn’t as unsettling as his clipped tone. “Why didn’t you call me last night?”

  As Clementine’s owner, John-John should’ve been notified immediately, probably before I called 911. Chalk it up to another instance of handling things myself. “Believe it or not, I was pretty damn frazzled. I waited for the cops to arrive, and it went downhill from there.”

  “Downhill?” he repeated. “Tell me everything tha
t happened after I left.”

  I laid it out exactly as I remembered it.

  A lull filled the air. John-John’s fingers tapped out the passing seconds on the steering wheel. When he finally looked at me, he was far calmer than I’d expected. “Let’s go in and get this over with.”

  “You’re coming with me?”

  “Of course.” His gaze dropped to my chest, and he rolled his eyes. “Really, Mercy? A FOLSOM PRISON BLUES T-shirt?”

  I smiled. “Just be happy I didn’t wear my I SHOT THE SHERIFF T-shirt.”

  Inside the reception area, a young chickie, who’d look more comfortable in a cheerleading uniform than in a county uniform, manned the receptionist’s desk. Blue eyes appraised us coolly. “The entrance to the jail is around back and down the stairs. But visiting hours don’t start until three o’clock.”

  This blond bimbo saw an Indian guy and automatically referred him to the jail? I braced my hands on her desk blotter and got right in her face. “I’m here to see Sheriff Dawson.”

  “And you are?”

  “Mercy Gunderson. He’s expecting me.”

  Her smooth brow wrinkled as if she should recognize the name. “Have a seat. I’ll buzz the sheriff.”

  But I was feeling ornery and stayed put during her brief phone call. Poor little twig. Made her nervous to have me looming over her.

  “Like I said, if you’ll take a seat—”

  “I’m fine right here.”

  Her berry-colored lips pursed, and she buzzed the sheriff again.

  Worked like a charm. She shooed us down the hallway to Dawson’s office. I wouldn’t have put it past her to spray the reception area with Lysol after we left.

  As acting sheriff, Dawson had taken over my father’s office. I’d been in here before; heck, I’d been arrested in here before. But it was still disquieting not to see the mounted antlers for the nine-point buck my dad had shot. Or the row of family pictures. Or the expert marksmanship award certificates adorning the south wall. Certificates that’d all been mine.

  Dawson stood and held his hand across the desk to John-John. “Thanks for coming, John-John.”