by Abbie Roads
“No.” She aimed the word at him, using a tone she recognized because she sounded like her mother.
She moved in front of Cain, shielding him from Dolan.
Cain’s eyes moved, tracking invisible events playing out in front of him. Like how a person’s eyes darted around during REM sleep—except his eyes were open.
Hands shaking, she reached out to him and roughly grabbed his bloody face, trying to ignore the fact that she was also touching Liz’s blood. “Cain. Look at me.” Her tone was a command, an order to be obeyed. “Look. At. Me.” She repeated the words once, twice, twenty times until something flickered in his eyes—a spark, a bit of life, a bit of humanity that brought him back from wherever he’d been lost. His eyes shifted, finding her. Seeing her.
“Mm…Mmm…” His mouth was closed, the sound coming out like a hum. “Mercy?” No longer were his eyes the blank pools of the sociopathic. Sadness and shame lived on his face. It hurt seeing such a strong man looking so vulnerable and wounded.
“It’s okay.” Her chin trembled when she spoke.
He shook his head, denying her words, then nabbed her by the waist and buried his face against her stomach. Heaving, ragged breaths came out of him—the sound a serrated, violent thing. For a moment she wondered if he had asthma, but then somehow she knew. Breathing was his only defense against the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him.
She understood. It was the price of loss. A price she had paid twenty years ago. A price he was paying now. His sadness was her sadness. His shame was her shame. They were united in shared hurt—had been from the beginning.
How could she ever have thought he reminded her of Killion? Killion wasn’t capable of feeling pain. Only a good man could hurt this badly.
He wrenched away from her, crawled the few feet to the edge of the porch, and vomited. She went to him, but he held his hand up, blocking her. “Stay away.” He choked before another round of gagging started.
Everything inside her screamed to go to him, but she sensed he would fight her, and she didn’t want to make him feel worse. She was rooted in place, unable to look away as his insides tried to visit the outside. He clutched his head.
Dolan moved in beside her. “Shit. I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” The words came out absentmindedly—her attention focused on Cain.
“Didn’t know any of this. His process. How he got his information. That this was what happened to him. I thought he was just being really private when he wouldn’t let anyone but Mac on scene while he worked. Thought he was overly sensitive for needing a few days off between jobs.”
“He’s going through this because of you?” She didn’t know what to call it. Wasn’t even sure what Dolan meant. “This is Liz’s house. Someone he knew. Someone he loved. And you asked him to do this?” Her volume rose with each word. Her hand clenched into a fist, longing to have a meet and greet with his face.
“I-I didn’t know.” Truth filled his face, but that still didn’t give her the warm fuzzies for him.
“How could you do this to him? To a friend?”
Dolan’s face was washed of all expression, almost like a shield had fallen over it. Almost like he was trying to hide how he really felt. Total poker face. She wished she could see his eyes. They’d tell the truth.
She pointed toward the kitchen door. “Go get a towel and a bowl of water.” Dolan jumped to fulfill her command.
She moved closer to Cain and rubbed his back as he continued to suffer. This time he didn’t fight her, probably because he was too busy trying to keep his guts from coming out his mouth.
When Dolan returned, she gestured for him to set the items on the porch floor next to Cain. She dipped the towel in the water, and Cain turned bloodshot eyes on her. Anyone else would have seen hate and anger in his glare. She saw what he really felt. A shame so deep its teeth had taken a bite out of his soul and enjoyed the meal.
She reached out and smoothed a sweaty lock off his forehead. He flinched away from her. “Don’t touch me. Just leave.” His voice cracked.
“No.” She dipped the corner of the towel in the water and wiped the blood off the side of his face.
He shifted away from her, out of arm’s reach. “Don’t make me fucking beg. Just go.” He snatched the towel from her, plunged the whole thing in the bowl, and then wiped his face and body. His hands trembled like a Parkinson’s patient, but it was the way his back bowed, curving in defeat, that made her want to cry.
* * *
Mercy was lost.
Dolan had told her to turn on County Road 17. And she had. But there was nothing on County Road 17. No cars. No houses. Not even a hint of civilization. Gray skies and desolate fields surrounded the car, giving the landscape a lunar vibe—like she was driving them across the moon, instead of Ohio.
The only break from the nothingness was a patch of trees in the distance. After two years of being in a giant cage, the wide-open space made her feel oddly overwhelmed. Like the world had expanded and she’d shrunk.
Maybe Dolan had said County Road 16. He should be the one driving Cain home. He knew where to go. But he’d suddenly been too busy to take care of Cain. Said he had favors to call in and asses to kiss and didn’t have the time. The guy was no friend.
She glanced at Cain leaning against the passenger door, eyes closed—hopefully sleeping off the headache. She’d drive down every road searching for the house number 6260 before she woke him to ask for directions.
Bzzzz…
Cain’s phone on her lap vibrated. She snatched it up, not wanting the slight sound to disturb him. She divided her attention between the road and the cell phone, trying to determine how to answer a call without wrecking.
“Hello?” A tiny, disembodied voice came from the phone.
Crap. She’d somehow answered it with a touch. She jammed the thing to her ear. Silence swelled the line.
“Hello?” Her volume hovered at whisper level. Didn’t want to wake Cain.
“Oh…I’m looking for…Cain.” The voice sounded tired and slurry, but she instantly recognized the speaker.
“M—” She almost said his name, but stopped herself. If Cain was awake, he’d want to talk to Mac, and she wasn’t sure if that was the smartest idea when Cain needed all his energy to keep his head from exploding. “Mercy. It’s me, Mercy. Cain’s sick. Migraine. Vomiting.”
“Dolan had him working on Liz’s murder?” All the drowsy vanished, leaving plain rage. “The son of a bitch. I told him no. Told him not on this case.” He sucked in a shaky-sounding breath, and when he spoke, the fatigue was back in his tone. “Not when Cain looked at Liz like a mom.”
“It was…” Mercy didn’t have words to convey the depth and breadth of what Cain had been through, so she went with the simplest word. “…bad.”
“It’s always bad for him.” Mac sighed a sound full of miles of sympathy. “He thinks he’s a monster for what he does. He never lets me help him. It’s like he wants to punish himself.”
Mac’s words plucked a chord of truth. Cain had been the same with her.
“When he’s feeling better, tell him…tell him it’s my fault. Me being shot is my fault. He’ll blame himself. He’s always so willing to think of himself as the bad guy. He’s not. He’s one of the best human beings I know. I’ll explain more when I see him. Can you tell him that for me?” Mac’s volume began to fade. Mercy strained to hear the last of his words.
“Yes. I will. Don’t worry… I’ll take care of him.”
“Good. He needs you.”
He needs you. He needs you. He needs you. The words wouldn’t stop echoing in her mind. Probably because they strummed that truth cord too. He did need her. No one should have to suffer alone. No one. Especially not him. Mac’s words just confirmed what she already suspected about Cain.
But none of that changed the f
act that she had to leave; it just delayed the inevitable. The consequences of staying were too great, but for now she’d do anything to ease him.
The line had been quiet for a while. “How are you?” She waited for Mac’s answer, but he was gone.
He was doing well enough to call. Well enough to check on Cain. That was something.
She set the phone in her lap and glanced at Cain. He hadn’t moved.
Ahead, a nondescript gray, battered mailbox jutted crookedly out of the ground with the numbers 6260 stenciled on the side.
Mac was going to be all right. She had found Cain’s place. Things were looking up.
She slowed the car and pulled into the drive. Gravel crunched and popped underneath the tires. The driveway was no short little lane. Nope, it ran smack through the middle of a field heading toward a stand of trees at least a half a mile away. Through the naked branches, she glimpsed a gray clapboard farmhouse with white shutters and a gleaming tin roof. It was small, neat, tidy, and not at all the kind of place where she’d picture Cain living. Not that she’d really had a picture. This just wasn’t it.
“Drive past the house, and park in front of the barn,” Cain murmured without moving.
The lane forked at the house, one side leading to the dwelling, the other continuing on through the middle of another field. She took the fork leading away from the house, heading toward a copse of trees a quarter mile away. Questions lined up in her head, but she had to trust he knew where he was going. ’Cause she sure as hell had no idea why they drove past the house.
It wasn’t until she drove past the grove of winter-dead woods that she saw the barn.
Only it wasn’t a barn in the traditional sense of haylofts, cows, and chickens. This barn had been converted into a house. A spectacular showplace of wood and glass and wide porches flanking both sides of the structure.
“You live here?” Awe gave her tone an airy quality.
He grunted an affirmative.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. It looks so homey and warm and rustic. Perfect for this location. Perfect for you.” She didn’t realize she’d been talking out loud until she stopped.
He hadn’t moved. Didn’t indicate that he’d heard her, though she knew he had.
She parked in front of the barn. Cain reached for his door handle and started to get out.
“Wait. I’ll help you.” She and Dolan had half carried him out to the car at Liz’s, and he didn’t look any better in the twenty minutes that had passed.
Cain ignored her so absolutely she might as well have been invisible. Not going to work, buddy. She shut off the car and raced after him. His face was the same sick hue as the sky. He shielded his eyes from the cloudy light with a hand. At least he wasn’t puking.
She inserted herself underneath his arm.
“Don’t need your help.” His voice was chipped and sharp, meant to cut.
“I know.” She put an extra bit of spring in her tone. He couldn’t argue when she verbally agreed with him. But then there was that whole actions-speak-louder-than-words thing. She wrapped her arm around his waist.
He tried to resist her help, tried to move away, but his efforts were weak and lacking. It was easy to take over when he was locked in the vise of a migraine. She felt the moment he stopped defying her, felt some of his weight drop on her shoulders—and almost staggered. Thankfully, she caught herself or he would’ve returned to fighting.
She helped him to the front door. But front door sounded so ordinary and plain, nothing like the two massive barn doors that had to be at least ten feet tall and just as wide. Beautiful wrought-iron scrollwork patterned each. Cain tapped a control pad set in to the wall and revealed a backlit panel. He punched in a few numbers. She heard a click, and then the doors parted wide enough to let them enter.
A grand—only grand was too small a word—staircase rose up, up, up through the center of the barn to a dark loft tucked against the roof. The space had to be at least three stories above everything on the main floor.
On either side of the stairs, the structure was wide open. One side held a dining area with rough-hewn yet comfortable-looking furniture. The other side was a living room. Along the entire back wall was a modern kitchen. And dotting every wall were windows. More windows than she’d ever seen in a dwelling.
Most people would have blinds or curtains, something covering those windows, but it would be a tragedy to obstruct the view of fields and trees and the wonderful openness of the outdoors.
Consulting for the FBI must pay well. Maybe she needed to get in on that gig.
Cain moved forward. She went with him as he started up the stairs.
Behind them, she heard the soft sound of the doors coming back together to shut. Must be on a sensor. “This place is amazing. I mean, wow. Just wow. Everything is so…” She struggled to find a word. “…unique.”
He pretended he didn’t hear her and continued up the steps with her serving as a living crutch. The staircase had looked beautiful from the bottom, but halfway up she realized it was a torture device. Her legs—unused to physical activity, let alone stair-climbing—began to burn, and his weight didn’t help. She started breathing heavily. Man, she was out of shape.
With each step higher, the light faded a bit more. At the top, a soft darkness full of shadows and shades of gray dominated. Made sense he’d design a bedroom like this when he had these kinds of headaches.
He pitched away from her, moving toward an open doorway. Without a thank you or a fuck you, he shut himself inside the room. She tiptoed toward the door and pressed her ear against it, listening. The sound of water hitting tile came to her. A shower. He was going to wash all the blood off. Totally understood how that could be a priority, even with a migraine.
She turned and faced the darkened room. Her eyes had begun to adjust to the dimness, and she could make out the shape of a king-size bed beneath a large window covered with blackout curtains. Across the space, there appeared to be another doorway. She headed in that direction, found a light switch just outside the door, and flipped it on.
The light seemed garish and overly bright after the darkness of the room. Then she realized she was staring into Cain’s walk-in closet.
One way to get to know someone was to look inside their closet. The space was way larger than the amount of clothing in it. Boots and tennis shoes and some dress shoes were lined up in a neat row under a shelf. A few dress shirts hung on hangers, alongside a few pairs of dress pants. But mostly his clothes were stacked in neat bins. One bin held workout pants, one T-shirts, one sweatshirts, one jeans, and others held socks and underwear.
She reached in the bin and nabbed a pair of black boxer briefs. An image floated into her mind of him wearing them. And then another—better—image of him not wearing them. Her heart pumped a stream of longing through her entire body. Now was not the time to be thinking about jumping his bones.
She snagged a pair of sleep pants and a T-shirt and dashed out of the closet, flipping the light switch behind her. Blackness swallowed everything, blinding her. Ahead of her, she heard the bathroom door open, and she could just make out the shape of him walking into the bedroom. It was too dark to see any details, but shape was all she needed.
His shoulders were so broad, his waist so trim. Her gaze shifted downward, locking on that place she shouldn’t be looking. She squinted, trying to see in the dark. Too bad she didn’t have a pair of those night-vision goggles. Damn. Was he wearing a towel?
“Clothes.” She thrust out the pants to him. He took them and then put them on while she tried and tried to see through the dark. He walked over to the bed, drew back the covers, and lay down. He turned his back to her and sighed a breathy sound of pain and sorrow.
That was enough to knock her out of horny-land. She pulled her filthy shirt over her head, and put on the clean T-shirt she still held, then let the sle
ep pants she’d put on ages ago fall down to her ankles. She needed a shower, but he needed her more—whether he’d admit it or not.
She padded to the other side of the bed and slipped under the covers, facing him.
“No. Don’t.” His tone was that of a petulant child, arguing just to argue.
She scooted closer, slipping her arm underneath his neck, and pressed herself in to his body. He smelled clean and warm and safe. And even though she was in his bed to offer him comfort, her body eased, relaxing more than she had in years.
His body was rigid with tension—he was two seconds from pulling away. “Shh… Just let me hold you.” She ran her hand through his hair. Felt the dampness of it on her fingers.
As if the balloon of his tension had popped, all the hardness in him turned to softness and he melted against her, shifting to find his place of comfort. He nestled his head on her shoulder, his arm around her waist pulling her tighter in to his body. And it felt so right. So natural to be like this with him, as if they truly were meant for each other.
Part of her knew they were. No one else could ever understand her the way he did. And he needed her to show him he wasn’t a monster, but a beautiful soul who’d survived some bad shit.
Tonight, she’d lie here with him, soaking in the sensation of his arms holding her tight, of his warm breath fanning across her chest, of holding him just as tight as he held her, of feeling at home for the first time in her life.
A tear slipped out of her eye and tickled its way down her cheek because tomorrow she would leave.
Chapter 12
Seeking high-quality photos or videos of Cain Killion or Mercy Ledger, or both, for upcoming twentieth-anniversary special. Payment negotiable depending upon content of photos/videos.
—Celebrity News X
Cain awakened and felt for her in the bed, but she was gone. Rainy-day sadness weighed on his heart. It was stupid—beyond stupid—but he wished he could’ve woken with her still in his arms. It would’ve made facing the day and the phone call he needed to make a bit easier. Hell, a lot easier.
