Saving Mercy

by Abbie Roads

  Piece by piece, the glasses fell off his face. A cut across the bridge of his nose leaked a meager stream of blood, but then red stuff splashed out of Dolan’s schnoz, over his mouth, down his neck, and onto his professional G-man shirt. The blood captured Cain’s attention. He felt its pull, felt part of him wanting to go to it, to touch it. Why the fuck was blood always so alluring? His father. His father had made him that way. He yanked his attention from all the crimson.

  And then Cain saw what Dolan had been hiding behind those sunglasses.

  The guy had two black eyes. The kind of twin shiners a person got from a broken nose.

  Oops. Looked like he’d just re-broken the thing. Didn’t feel one bit of remorse. In fact, he was tempted to thump the area again for good measure.

  “Where the fuck is she, or I swear to Christ, I’ll bash your nose so far into your brain they’ll have to open the back of your skull to find it.” He cranked back his arm, prepared to hit the asshole even harder this time.

  Dolan cupped his nose. “I’m trying to find dot.” His voice was nasal, his words muffled behind his hand, but Cain was pretty certain he’d heard correctly.

  “You’re trying to find a dot?” He snatched Dolan up by the lapels again, lifting his ass a foot off the pavement. “I’m not in the mood for bullshit.” He shoved him back down.

  Dolan raised his arm in a defensive gesture. A gesture that reminded Cain an awful lot of himself as a child trying to fend off blows from his father. He stepped back from Dolan and dropped his fist. It was clear the guy didn’t intend to fight back. Hello. He had a fucking gun strapped to his waist. He could just fucking shoot Cain if he wanted, but he obviously didn’t want to.

  “Not dot.” Dolan’s words came fast. “Daught. As in short for Daughter. That’s her name. Daughter.”

  Dolan didn’t have a daughter. Shit. Maybe he’d hit the guy too hard. Maybe some of his nose cartilage was rubbing up against his brain, making his smarts center short out. “Man, you don’t have a daughter.” He tried for a calmer tone.

  Dolan stared up at him. “Her name is Daughter. That’s the name your father insisted she be called.”

  That’s the name your father insisted she be called. “What the—”

  “I’m looking for your sister. Your twin sister.”

  Standing and thinking at the same time took too much effort. Cain let his knees fold and went down on the pavement in front of Dolan.

  He had a sister? A twin sister? His mind whirled through the past, searching for some hint that he’d had a sibling, but he found nothing.

  And there would never be something because the reality was he couldn’t trust one fucking word from Dolan’s mouth. The guy was lying. Again. He’d lied about Mac wanting him to work at Liz’s. He’d lied by omission by not admitting that every FBI agent had access to the photo with the symbol on it. Oh, and the cherry on the lie-by-omission sundae—that Mercy had been taken. There was no reason to think Dolan had suddenly started spouting truth.

  “You’re a fucking liar. I might’ve bought your bullshit before, but I’m not buying this. I don’t have a sister.”

  “Every asshole, dickheaded thing I’ve done is to find Daught.” Dolan’s face was red, his eyes watery, his voice ragged with emotions Cain recognized. Anxiety. Anger. Anguish.

  This wasn’t just a case for the guy. This was something more. This was Dolan’s white whale. Almost every lawman had one. The case that got its hooks in and wouldn’t let go.

  “Daught’s been missing since the Dawsons died.”

  “The Dawsons? The home where I found the first blood painting? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Thirty years ago, the Dawsons adopted a baby girl. You’re thirty. Seems more than reasonable you might be twins. A nonnegotiable part of the adoption agreement was that the girl be named Daughter. A weird request, but the Dawsons honored it.”

  Cain’s mind went back to what he’d seen through the blood. The mom and dad had seemed a bit older—he just hadn’t thought about it at the time. And they’d had a little girl. “Wait, wait, wait. I think I hit you too hard. The Dawsons had a daughter who was killed alongside them.”

  “That was Emily. They adopted her ten years ago, shortly after Daught left for college. The day Daught’s family was killed, she got a photo in the mail. One of those old photo-booth photos. It was of a young woman and your father as a young man. There’s a major resemblance between Daught and the couple in the photo. Her real parents. She’s got your eyes and mouth, but looks more like your mother.”

  “Mac would’ve told me about a photo of my father.” Wouldn’t he? “He definitely would’ve told me if the only remaining Dawson family member had gone missing. It’s a vital part of the case.”

  “Mac doesn’t know.” Dolan sucked in a sigh. “No one knows.”

  “How does no one know? Everyone should be all over this.”

  Dolan held up his hand in a wait-for-it gesture. “Daught and I… I was… We were… I don’t know… We had something.”

  What Dolan meant seeped into Cain’s ears. “You saying you were in a relationship with a family member of the victims?”

  “I’m saying I was starting something with her before all this shit went down. Before her family was murdered.” Dolan’s expression went distant, like he was seeing something from his and Daught’s past. “Daught was still reeling from finding out about her parents and little sister when she got the photo of your dad and a woman who looked like her mom. Before we could figure out what to do about any of it, I got hit in the face with a two-by-four out of nowhere. Seeing that board coming at me was the last thing I remembered for a whole two days.

  “When I woke up, Daught was gone, but there was a note pinned to my shirt like a goddamned baby bib. I’m watching every move you make. Look for her, and she dies.”

  There was a picture of his mom. “You know who my mom is?” The words popped out before he could contain them. According to his father, Cain’s first victim had been his mother—she’d died from his birth. But that was all he knew. There were no medical records. No birth and death certificates. There was no body. Not even a name. Nothing about the woman who’d birthed him, except for what his father had decided to tell him.

  “All I had was the photo.”

  Cain wanted to see that photo. Wanted to look into the eyes of the woman who’d birthed him. In that moment, he realized there had always been a gaping hole inside him. An empty space where a mother should’ve been. Liz had done her best to fill the gap. But this could give him something—even if it was only a photo. “I need to see the picture.”

  “When I woke up, it was gone too. The one thing I could use to prove a link between the Dawsons and your dad and you. I know I’ve lied. I know you don’t have any reason to trust me. I know you’ll probably hate me forever, but I did it all to find Daught without directly looking for her.”

  Was he really going to believe Dolan? Maybe he shouldn’t, but Cain did. He wanted to believe him. Wanted to think there might actually be a family member out there who was normal. Someone he shared a biological connection with who could prove to him that evil wasn’t in the genes.

  They sat on the pavement in the path of the truck’s headlights, like it was normal to sit in a prison parking lot in the middle of the night, having a chat about life’s most important issues.

  “Why insist she be named Daughter?”

  “Your father is Adam. You are his son, Cain. You’ve heard the biblical implications. He thinks he’s the father of… I don’t know, a race of people or something. In the Bible, none of Adam’s daughters had names. That’s why your sister’s name is Daughter. At least that’s the best I can come up with.”

  “I don’t see how any of this is related to finding Mercy.” That’s the only thing that mattered right here, right now.

  “Everything is
fucking related. Not in a ‘two plus two equals four’ kind of way, but more like a ‘two times x equals six’ kind of way. That symbol from twenty years ago, the symbol everyone thought was just Mercy’s dying doodle on the wall… I just heard Killion say he fucking made that using Mercy’s hand. He did. And that symbol was placed where Daught’s family was murdered.

  “If you’d seen the picture you’d know—Daught is your sister. Killion’s daughter. It’s all related. It has to be. The timing is too coincidental for it not to be. The thing I can’t seem to make fit is Liz Sands. What role did she play in all this?”

  Dolan looked out into the night for a moment, then glanced at Cain. The guy’s eyes were bloodshot, his nose was already swollen to twice the normal size and skewed to the left, and those twin shiners… He didn’t just look pathetic. He looked fucking pissed off. “This thing with Daught is big. No one is looking for her. Not her coworkers at her counseling practice. Not her friends. No one. Don’t you see? Someone made that happen. For Daught to have gone missing and for no one to be looking for her, someone orchestrated a cover-up of mammoth proportions. I can’t directly look for her without endangering her life. But maybe by solving the murders… I don’t know. Maybe I’ll happen upon something that leads me to her.

  “I thought if I got you in front of Killion, there would be something, some hint, some word, something about Daught. But there was nothing. It was all about you and Mercy.”

  Mercy. My Mercy. Created just for me. “You said you knew where she was.”

  “I know she’s not here. So that means she’s somewhere else.” Dolan voice carried a duh-are-you-stupid tone. He cupped his nose and rose onto his knees and then stood. He swayed, then caught his balance. With the blood all over his face, he looked like a damned vampire.

  Cain stood and moved toe to toe with Dolan to look into the guy’s eyes. “Tell me what Daught means to you.” His voice was hard and unforgiving. He needed to know if Daught meant as much to Dolan as Mercy meant to him.

  Dolan looked out over the parking lot toward the prison. He swallowed, the sound loud enough to be heard over the low rumble of the truck. A muscle jumped in his cheek. He locked eyes with Cain before he spoke. “She means more to me than anyone else in my life. I’d blow up the whole fucking world to get her back.”

  It was the tortured look on Dolan’s face that made Cain completely believe him. Dolan had lied and done some bad shit in an effort to find Daught. Cain would’ve done the same—and worse—to find Mercy. “I’ll make you a deal. Two assholes are better than one. We find Mercy alive and unhurt, and I’ll help you find Daught.”

  Dolan held out his hand to shake on it. Cain took the guy’s hand, pumped it twice, then they walked back to the truck and climbed in.

  Cain rummaged under the driver’s seat until he found a smashed roll of paper towels and then tossed them onto Dolan’s lap. “Clean yourself up. You look like you lost the fight.”

  Where was Mercy? Where was Mercy? Where was Mercy?

  From the moment Dolan told him Mercy had been taken to this moment, Cain hadn’t had a chance to think about where she’d be. And once he asked himself the question, he realized he already knew the answer.

  Cain shifted the truck into gear and jammed his foot on the gas. Tires squealed against the parking lot pavement, then caught.

  The moment the clock had hit midnight, it’d become the twenty-year anniversary of the Ledger murders.

  At the road, Cain cranked the wheel to the left. The back end of the truck slid before catching. He pressed his foot to the floor. The old beater revved, shuddered, then surged forward. Traveling at the speed of light wouldn’t be fast enough to get to Mercy.

  “I guess you have an idea where Edward Payne took her.” Dolan unrolled a wad of towels, tilted his head back, and held the mass to his nose.

  “The place where it all started.”

  “The house? Isn’t that too obvious? Too dangerous? And the place is alarmed against sightseers and trespassers. Doesn’t really sound feasible.”

  “She’ll be there.” Something deeper and wider than a gut feeling told him that’s where he’d find her.

  “But what if she’s not?”

  “She’ll fucking be there.” There was no room for argument in his tone.

  Dolan took his cell phone from his pocket and dialed.

  Cain drove and listened as Dolan went through all the channels to be patched through to the sheriff’s office nearest Mercy’s childhood home. Dolan pulled the phone away from his face and hit the speaker button while they waited. Finally, when a dispatcher came on the line, Dolan explained who he was and the situation, ending with: “I have reason to believe Mercy Ledger is being held captive at the Ledger home. I need some units out there. Right now.”

  Silence stretched longer than it should have before the dispatcher answered. “Um… Is this a joke?”

  “What part of this sounds like a goddamned joke?” Dolan’s voice rose to a near shout.

  “This is the twentieth anniversary.” The implication: we’re expecting some pranks.

  “This isn’t a joke. I’m not pulling your leg. I’m dead serious that Mercy Ledger’s life is in danger out there.”

  Across the line, they both heard the dispatcher suck in a deep breath and then let it out. “Look. I can tell that you’re concerned, but we haven’t heard anything from Hale Security. And they have that place wired top to bottom, inside and out. If someone so much as pulls in the driveway to turn around, they know it. They have motion sensors and window and door alarms. If she was out there—if anyone was out there—Hale Security would’ve notified us that they were investigating and asked us to be on standby. We haven’t heard a word from them.”

  The dispatcher’s words echoed in the truck. Dolan glanced at Cain, his face full of doubt.

  “She’s fucking there. I just know it.” Cain knew he sounded like a feral asshole and couldn’t help it.

  “I need to speak with your superior.”

  “I am the superior tonight.”

  “Fucking son of a bitch.” Dolan ran a hand through his hair. “Can you contact Hale Security and just ask them to double-check that everything is buttoned up?”

  “That I can do. Hang on.”

  The truck sped down the country road, the speedometer hovering between eighty and ninety—maxed out for its age. “We’re forty minutes away.” Cain heard the mix of urgency and fear in his voice. “The locals could be there in fifteen.”

  “I know.”

  “They can’t gamble with her life.” Panic dominated Cain’s tone.

  Silence ruled for five minutes until the dispatcher came back on the line. “Okay. I talked to Hale himself. He said there’s nothing on the monitors to indicate anyone is out there. Everything looks secure.”

  Cain’s stomach fell.

  “But Hale said he’ll drive out there—he’s about twenty minutes away—and look things over just to ease your mind.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Dolan said.

  “He’ll call us if there’s anything suspicious. And I gave him your number to confirm that all is quiet when he gets there.”

  Cain spoke up. “Tell him we’re thirty to thirty-five minutes out and will be there shortly.”

  “Will do. And I hope you find her.”

  Dolan ended the call and put the phone back into his pocket. Neither of them spoke. There was no need. Nothing to say.

  Cain tried not to let his mind wander to what Payne had been doing to Mercy all day. Instead, he focused on the road, on the miles and time passing, counting off each minute, each mile in his head like some perverse countdown.

  Twenty minutes passed. No call from Hale.

  Five more minutes passed. No call from Hale.

  Six more minutes passed. No call from Hale.

  Cain turned onto the ro
ad Mercy had lived on as a child. He shut off the truck’s lights. Coasted forward to keep the engine quiet.

  “There it is.” Dolan pointed, but he didn’t need to. Cain recognized the place. Hell, everyone recognized the house. Not just because people had died there, but because Mercy had survived.

  The house sat in the country. Not the kind of isolated countryside he lived in, but the kind of country where the yards were more like fields and the neighbors next door were a quarter mile away. A truck with a logo of some sort on the door sat in the driveway. Must be Hale Security. But why the fuck hadn’t the guy called?

  The house looked dark, uninhabited, but Cain felt in his bones that Mercy was in there.

  At the edge of the property, he pulled over and cut the engine. A gently curving drive shone silver in the moonlight as it led around the back of the house. The house itself was only one story. In the daylight, its red brick gleamed bright as blood. But tonight the house looked black. The extra-large front window that spanned half the length of the house was rimmed in stark white, looking like a portal to hell.

  Cain reached up and disabled the dome light, then got out of the truck. Dolan followed. Neither man needed to talk about a plan. The plan was simple. Get Mercy. Dolan had the authority to arrest Payne, and Cain would let him. After he was done with the guy.

  Dolan grabbed his arm. “Play this safe. Stick to the shadows to get up close to the house. We need to do some recon before we make a move.”

  Cain nodded his agreement, but had his mental fingers crossed. When it came to Mercy’s safety, he wasn’t promising shit.

  Like two fucking cartoon characters, they ran from tree to tree, then up beside a window.

  Cain eased over, inch by inch, to get a glimpse inside. Nothing. A black curtain or sheet blocked the entire window. Made sense. Having the curtains wide open would only lead to more gawkers.

  Dolan pointed for Cain to go one way around the house and motioned that he would go around the other.