Saving Mercy

by Abbie Roads

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 they 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 damn 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 flopped 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 damn many. The hybristophiliacs—he hated using their cutesy name, Killer Killion’s K
issers—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’d 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 remember 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.

  “Do you remember where you are?”

  “Ward B of the Center of Balance and Wellness. The name doesn’t fit. It should be called the Center of Indifference. No one here cares—except for Liz. You know Liz?” He opened his mouth to answer, but she bulldozed over him, her words coming out in a rush. “She looks like Nurse Ratchet, but her personality is all Mary Poppins. She always lets me stay up past lights-out since it’s the only solitude to be had in the whole place. Once, she snuck a cupcake in on my birthday. Now isn’t that sweet? She—” The words were speeding out of her mouth.

  Not that he was complaining. He preferred her hyped up over out of it, but she might backslide if she didn’t stay somewhat calm. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. Take a breath. We’ve got all the time in the world here.” Had to be the meds or lack of meds—some strange part of the withdrawals—causing her diarrhea of the mouth.

  She grabbed in one good breath, then was off again. “You know there aren’t many people to talk to in here.” She turned her voice down to a whisper. “Everyone’s crazy. I mean really crazy. Certifiable. It’s hard to carry on a rational conversation with someone who keeps talking to the demon that lives in their ankle. You ever have that happen? Where you’re talking to someone, and all of sudden they lift their foot up in front of their face and start having a conversation with it? It’s a bit off-putting, if you know what I mean.”

  Her expression was full-on seriousness, and he probably shouldn’t laugh—definitely he shouldn’t—but he couldn’t help it.

  A smile—no, it wasn’t quite a smile—tipped the corners of her mouth, giving her a look that said she was thinking about something pleasing.

  “We’ve hit a new phase of your withdrawals. Speed talking.”

  “Oh my. Your voice. Wow. It reminds me of dark chocolate, a hot bath, and sex and—”

  “Apparently your mental filter is malfunctioning.”

  “—sweaty, dirty, hard fucking.”

  Holy Christ. Just the words sex, sweaty, and dirty had his dick going all skyscraper inside his jeans, but when she said hard fucking, he blacked out for a moment. When his mind came back online, it decided to flash him images of what sweaty, dirty, hard fucking would look like with her. Her nipples brushing against his chest as he rammed into her with a pace and depth and exuberance he’d never experienced.

  He needed to change the subject, but couldn’t remember how to get his mouth to form words. He might’ve swallowed his damned tongue.

  “Why do you suppose your voice sounds like sex on a summer day? It’s because I’m horny. I haven’t had sex in five years. That’s a long time, you know. I have needs.”

  He finally figured out how to flap his lips, while making sound to form actual words. Maybe he’d had a stroke. “Jesus Christ, woman.” The words exploded out of him. “You’ve got to stop talking about sex.” He scrubbed his hand over his eyes, trying to wipe out the mental images that still played. “You’re speaking every single thought that floats into your mind. No goddamned censor. It’s gotta be the meds or the shock treatments causing it. Something.”

  Her bottom lip pushed out in an utterly inappropriate—but adorably kissable—pout. “I don’t see anything wrong with talking about how I feel. Maybe that’s why I can’t get out of this place. I won’t open up. Won’t let Dr. Payne-in-My-Ass into my mind. Maybe if I—”

  “Christ on a crapper. You’ve got to stop for a moment.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off. “I need you to listen for thirty seconds. A minute tops. Then you can talk about sex, Dr. Payne, and your feelings all you want.”

  “You can’t go putting sex, Dr. Payne, and my feelings in the same sentence. Wrong. So wrong.”

  “Won’t argue about that. But I need you to keep your lips closed.”

  Pain pinched her features as she lifted her hands, placing them over her mouth. It should have been a comical gesture, but all Cain could see was her hurting. It had been five days since Dr. Payne had injured her, and the fact that her body still suffered scraped his justice bone. If he ev
er got the guy alone, he just might uncage that part of himself that thirsted for blood.

  Cain cleared his throat and emptied his mind of those thoughts. “There are some things you need to know right now. Important things. Like you’re not at the Center. You’re safe in a cabin in southern Ohio. You’ve been withdrawing from the meds for the past two days. Your short-term memory is shit from the shock treatments. I’ve been taking care of you the whole time.” He spoke the sentences as if they were a list he’d memorized—probably because he’d said the same thing so many times before. “That’s why we keep having this same conversation and you can’t remember it.”

  She lifted her hands off her mouth. “Cool. That works for me. Never liked that place.”

  Ooo…kkaayy… She obviously wasn’t fully grasping reality. “You’re not going to remember any of this, are you?”

  “Probably not. Not when I’m feeling half drunk.” She put her hand back over her mouth, but her eyes sparkled with laughter.

  She might be more coherent, but she definitely wasn’t fully functional. “I just want you to know. You are safe here. I won’t let you go back there. And I won’t hurt you. I would never hurt you.”

  She lifted her hands off her mouth again. “I trust you. I’d know if you were some creepy asshole. You’re the kind of guy a girl feels dainty and delicate around.”

  Yeah. She’d trust him until she actually saw him in full light, when fully aware. “Um…” He didn’t know what to say. Time for a subject change. “I need you to drink some water for me. It’ll help flush the drugs out of your system. I’m going to help you sit up.” He slid his hand underneath her back and helped her upright.

  “Man, everything hurts. Feels like a busload of sumo wrestlers sat on me.”

  He shoved the pillow behind her back. This was progress. The first time she’d been upright in days. “Dr. Payne did a number on you. Looks like he hit you in the face, the ribs, and on your thigh.”

  A furrow of thoughtfulness dug into her forehead. “I don’t remember any of that. You’d think I’d remember something like that. Why can’t I remember it?”