The Truth (Butler Ranch Book 5)

by Heather Slade

  He was familiar with the place.

  “Calder overheard,” he added. “I think he’s planning to be there.”

  Mercer nodded again. Calder was about to act; he could feel it in his bones. He only hoped that, when he did, he left Lena out of it.

  “We’ll meet there prior to their expected arrival,” Mercer told Max. “I’ll brief Paps.”

  “Incoming,” Paps said, motioning toward the front door of Il Conti later that evening. Mercer turned around in time to see Alex Avila walking into the bar area, where he was seated. When he turned back, Paps was gone.

  She sat at the bar, a few stools over from him, and chatted with the bartender. A few minutes later, Calder joined her but showed no signs of having recognized Mercer.

  Instead, he leaned in and kissed Alex’s cheek, before she leaned away from him. They talked briefly about the wine she’d ordered, and then she suggested they move to a table.

  Mercer sent a message to Paps, confirming that he was still at the bar and that Max was at a table in the dining room. He also let him know that Calder had joined Alex, and it appeared that he’d invited her to meet him there.

  Several minutes later, Maddox walked in with Lena. Mercer wished he’d been the one sitting at the table in the dining room rather than Max, only so he could see everyone’s reaction. Calder was likely the only of the four who had prior knowledge of who would be there, since he’d obviously been the one to invite Alex Avila.

  It wasn’t long after Maddox and Lena had stopped by Calder and Alex’s table, and then took their seat at a table not far from them, that Alex stormed out. Maddox wasn’t far behind her.

  Mercer stayed where he was, but alerted Paps. When he saw Calder approach Lena, he decided to move into the dining room and join Max.

  “You’re looking very mature this evening,” Mercer heard him say.

  “Fuck you,” Lena hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Now, now. Is that any way for you to talk to the former love of your life?”

  It didn’t appear he rattled her, in fact, Lena looked bored. “What do you want?”

  “The list has grown somewhat since the last time we talked, sweetheart.”

  “I can’t help you. Find someone else to blackmail.”

  “I disagree. I think you’re in the perfect position to help me get everything I’m after.”

  Mercer realized he was holding his breath, willing Lena not to react, and she didn’t. She wore the mask of disinterest well, and he was proud of her.

  “Stay the hell away from me,” were the only words she said to him before Maddox returned to the table a few moments later.

  In the conversation that followed, Maddox shut Calder down when he tried to discuss the rumor that the Avila family’s Los Caballeros Winery had a bond issue.

  When Maddox stood to leave and offered to walk Lena out, her eyes met Mercer’s for the first time since he’d entered the dining room.

  He shook his head and turned to Max. “Let’s get her out of here.”

  Max stood and walked toward the restrooms. Mercer motioned with his head for Lena to follow, and then heard her decline Maddox’s offer and excuse herself.

  Mercer sent a message to Paps that Max was transporting Lena, and to be on standby. It was only a few minutes later that Mercer watched as it dawned on Calder that Lena wasn’t coming back, and left himself.

  Paps followed Calder to the Tablas Creek Winery and stayed until another of their team could take over his surveillance.

  Mercer had been back at the house in Harmony a little over an hour when Paps walked in with Lena behind him.

  “I want her gone,” he said after she’d gone into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Does she really need to do that?”

  “I hear you. Although I felt sorry for her last night. Earlier tonight too.”

  Paps pretended he was falling off his chair.

  “She was contrite.”

  “It’s an act.”

  Mercer didn’t like Lena anymore than the rest of them did, but every once in a while, he thought they could be a little more understanding of the hellish life she’d been forced to live.

  “Heard from Razor?” Paps asked.

  “No. Should I have?”

  Paps shook his head. “Not a bad assignment.”

  “Seriously? You’re gonna go there?”

  “Nah, just givin’ you some shit.”

  He had plenty of it swirling around him; he didn’t need more from Paps. He got up and walked away.

  “Callin’ it a night?” he asked.

  Mercer nodded before he shut the bedroom door behind him.

  It was one in the morning on the East Coast, and since Razor was the lead on Quinn’s detail for the time being, Mercer didn’t expect to hear from him or anyone else, and he hated it.

  For the last almost year and a half, there’d been very few days he hadn’t known what she’d eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, where she’d gone, and who she’d talked to. Not knowing those things was making him crazy.

  It was worse than that, though. She wasn’t speaking to him, and it was his own fault.

  Mercer got up and went back to the kitchen where he found Paps still sitting at the table.

  “I’m going to tell her the truth.”

  Paps shook his head. “No, Eighty-eight, you’re not.”

  “I’ll lose her.”

  “Tell her now, and you will for sure. There won’t be any coming back if she’s dead. Let her be mad at you. Hell, let her hate you if it’s gonna keep her safe.” Paps paused. “You know this.”

  10

  Quinn found Mr. Sharp’s business card sitting on the kitchen counter. After the call from her mother, she’d forgotten she was supposed to call him.

  “Mr. Sharp? This is Quinn Sullivan. You asked me to call,” she said when he answered.

  “Call me Tabon, and yes, I did.”

  “Something about the interview?”

  “Right. My guess is you’re not any more anxious to get back to the city than I am. Why don’t we meet tomorrow at ten? How about at Michael’s?”

  Quinn agreed, thanked him, and ended the call, but didn’t set her phone down. Instead, she stared at it, wishing she’d hear from Mercer.

  She hadn’t heard from him after she’d ended their call—although she shouldn’t have expected to, since she’d essentially hung up on him.

  She thought maybe he’d send her a text, but there’d been nothing. Maybe she shouldn’t have been such a bitch about his reticence to talk about himself and what he did for a living.

  She set the phone down on the counter, went upstairs, put on her bikini, and grabbed a towel.

  It wasn’t until she was settled in a beach chair that she realized she hadn’t picked her phone up on her way out. It didn’t matter. She’d put Mercer in the same category as her mother had always been. There was no point in checking her phone to see if she’d heard from either of them.

  “I can’t eat another bite,” Tara said when the waiter asked if they wanted dessert.

  “I can. What about you?” Aine asked.

  “Sure, what sounds good?” Quinn answered.

  Both twins had a sweet tooth, and she never minded having a bite of whatever one or both of them ordered for dessert. She wished they’d hurry it up though; this dinner was dragging along much the same way her day had.

  She hadn’t been at the beach very long, that afternoon, before the rest of the tribe joined her.

  “You left this inside,” Ava had said, tossing Quinn’s phone on the towel next to her.

  “Thanks,” she’d muttered, wishing no one had noticed. Not having her phone with her had been freeing. Of course she’d had to look then, to see if Mercer had tried to contact her, and of course he hadn’t, which left her in a foul mood for the rest of the day.

  She wasn’t alone in that either. Her four friends seemed equally grumpy, even Aine, who was almost a
lways in a good mood.

  “Too bad your interview is here tomorrow,” she muttered. “I’m ready to go back to the city.”

  Overhearing, Penelope scowled at them. “Thanks a lot.”

  “It isn’t personal, Pen,” said Quinn. “It’s just…”

  What? That it was the beginning of summer and none of them had a promising romance? It made them sound so pathetic. “How long are you staying?” she asked, not finishing her prior thought.

  “Through the Fourth of July, at least.”

  Quinn had no reason to get back to her apartment. Even if her interview went well tomorrow, the position wasn’t due to be open until the end of summer. No one was in the city in July or August.

  “Can I stay?”

  A smile broke across Penelope’s face. “Yes!” she practically shouted, and high-fived her.

  “I’m sorry, Pen,” said Aine. “Can I stay too? I don’t know why I said I wanted to go home.”

  Ava and Tara both chimed in, saying that neither of them had wanted to leave in the first place.

  “So it’s settled,” said Penelope. “Fourth of July party here on Fire Island.”

  Quinn tried to muster the appropriate level of enthusiasm, but she wasn’t staying because she wanted to party.

  “Have you heard from him?” Aine asked on their walk back to the house.

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t very nice when we talked last night.”

  “Maybe you should reach out to him, then.”

  She’d been thinking the same thing all day, but every time she picked up her phone to send him a message, she’d decided against it. When he left, yesterday morning, he’d told her he’d stay in contact while he was gone. He hadn’t asked Quinn to do the same.

  There was no point trying to fall asleep. It wasn’t happening. Reading, which usually worked, at least to quiet her mind, wasn’t helping at all.

  Quinn had always been an insomniac. Her mother told her that even when she was a week old, she didn’t sleep. “You’d shake yourself awake. It drove me crazy,” she’d tell her. The only time she didn’t have trouble falling to sleep was when she was with Mercer.

  Her fingers itched with the need to send him a message, if only to say goodnight. It was two here, which meant it was eleven on the West Coast. He’d probably still be awake, wouldn’t he? She tossed and turned another fifteen minutes before she finally gave in and sent him a text.

  Hi. She held her breath, waiting to see the moving dots indicating he was responding.

  Why are you awake, precious?

  What would she say now? Because she was worried that he was mad at her for being mad at him?

  Before she could decide what to say, Mercer’s caller ID showed up on her screen.

  “Hi,” she answered.

  “Quinn,” he sighed. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

  She smiled. “It hasn’t been that long, although you probably don’t want to think about our last conversation.”

  “We need to talk about it.”

  “Now, or when you get back?” She got out of bed and paced, too antsy to sit still.

  “Both.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you remember when I told you to trust your instincts with me?”

  How could she forget? It was something he’d said more than once. “Yes.”

  “I need you to do that now, precious. There are things I can’t discuss with you, certain questions I won’t be able to answer.”

  “Because of your job?”

  “Yes,” he answered simply.

  “And that’s why there’s nothing about you online.”

  “That’s right…” He hesitated, but she didn’t speak, waiting to see if he’d continue. “Close your eyes, Quinn.”

  She sat back on the bed and did as he asked. “Okay, they’re closed.”

  “Tell me what you see when you think about me.”

  “The first thing is the way you smile at me.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “Safe,” she said, before she could stop herself. There was more she wasn’t sure she could admit. Cherished, but even more than that.

  “What else?”

  “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “You feel safe, so tell me.”

  “Loved.” She closed her eyes tight and clenched her jaw, waiting for his response.

  “Trust that.”

  “But…”

  “Please, precious. Trust your instincts. Trust me.”

  “I want to.” She hated doubting him; it made her doubt herself.

  “Can you?”

  It took her a while to answer. She wanted whatever she said to be honest. Quinn closed her eyes again, and thought about him. Her feelings were the same as they were moments ago. “I can,” she finally said.

  “I’m glad. Now tell me why you’re awake in the middle of the night.”

  “You.”

  “I was afraid that’s what you’d say. Are you feeling better now? Do you think you can sleep?”

  “Can we talk a little while longer?”

  “We can talk all night if you want to.”

  —:—

  It wasn’t long before Mercer knew Quinn had drifted off. He kept the call active, just in case she woke up, but after a while, he knew she wouldn’t, and pressed the “end” button.

  He was asking a lot of her, but Paps had been right. He couldn’t tell her the truth about himself, or how he knew her, yet. First, they had to figure out what Calder was doing back in the States. When they did, he hoped it would somehow lead them to either find Doc and Leech alive, or confirm they were dead. Either way, at the end of their mission, he intended to take Calder out, and without it being said, he knew Paps and Razor felt the same way.

  Mercer couldn’t afford this lack of sleep. The next few days could lead to the break they’d been waiting for, and he needed to be rested in order to act on it. He closed his eyes and willed himself to think about Quinn rather than the bad guys he was protecting her from.

  When he opened his eyes again, the sun was shining through the bedroom window. He looked at his watch, shocked that it was after ten. How had he slept so late, and why had Paps let him?

  He got up in search of a cup of coffee and an answer to both questions.

  After he’d had his first cup of legal stimulant and was on his second, he went in search of his partner. He found Paps sitting in a chair on the back deck of the house, staring off into hills behind it.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said when Mercer closed the back door and sat in the chair next to him.

  “It is. Is that what you’ve been doing all morning? Thinking about how beautiful California is?”

  “I didn’t say California was beautiful. I said those hills were. Good sleep?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. You?”

  “Been up since dawn.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “No reason to. We’re in a holding pattern for the time being. Oh, by the way, Skipper got the job.”

  “Wait. What? Did she go back to the city?” God, he really hated not getting her reports.

  “Tabon decided to interview her on the island instead.”

  Mercer laughed and shook his head. “Tabon, huh?” He’d rarely ever heard Paps refer to anyone by anything other than by their code name.

  “That’s who he is when he’s her boss.”

  “He’s never her boss.”

  “You seem in better spirits today.”

  Mercer told Paps about the conversation he had with Quinn in the middle of the night, and how afterwards, he’d been able to sleep and so had she.

  “Tell me what Razor meant when he said history repeats itself.”

  Paps took a long time to answer, as though he was mulling over whether to tell Mercer the story. “You know that side of Lena you said you saw last night?” he finally asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s how s
he used to be all the time.”

  “When she and Doc were together?”

  Paps nodded. “He fell pretty hard, but in the end, it wasn’t destined to be between them.”

  Mercer sure as hell hoped Razor wasn’t right about the history thing. He was convinced he and Quinn were destined to be together, and he didn’t want anything to change that.

  “Why not?” As long as Paps was talking, he figured he’d keep asking questions.

  “After she was raped, Barbie changed. Who wouldn’t have? The bastard literally beat her within an inch of her life.” Paps was quiet for another minute, but then turned to look straight at Mercer. “Doc tried, but what could he do? By that point, he was too important to the team for him to quit, not that he would’ve. Serving his country was everything to Doc. That’s who he was. There was no way he could give it up for Barbie, and then years later, for Peyton.”

  “What about Quinn?”

  “That’s complicated, and since no one asked my opinion at the time, I can’t comment on the decisions they made.”

  Mercer understood. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t bring himself to ask his next question. Did the answer really matter?

  Paps continued. “Doc always did what he thought was best for both of them. He supported them in every way he could, although neither of them would’ve ever hurt for money.”

  This was part of what Doc hadn’t read Mercer in on. He knew the kind of money he, Paps, and Razor made now, but Doc couldn’t have made that kind of money before they started K19. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have been enough to support Lena and Quinn for the rest of their lives, particularly considering the way they lived. “Why not?”

  “It’s Elisabetta’s money. It always has been.”

  Mercer recognized the name. “Lena’s mother?”

  Paps nodded.

  “That’s how Doc got the land.”

  Mercer was doing his best to follow along, but Paps’ economy of words was making it difficult.

  “She left it to him.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  Paps phone pinged and he looked at the screen. “Maddox and Naughton found the house and the winery.”