Beg for Mercy (4 page)

“I’ve decided to waive my right to any further appeals. I’m tired of trying to work the system just to draw out the inevitable.”

“But that means… they’ll set an execution date.”

His head moved in an almost imperceptible nod. “Yeah.”

Her stomach flipped over and her turtleneck sweater started to itch around her neck. “No. No. I know you feel discouraged right now, but once you’ve had time to think about it—”

“I’ve had three years to think about it. Trust me, when you spend most of your time alone, there’s a lot of time to contemplate your life. I just want this over with.”

“I can’t let you quit.” But she could see the resolve on his face. Her heart thudded with panic and her fingertips went numb. He meant it. He was going to give up.

“You can’t leave me, Sean. You can’t do this to me.” Angry tears burned the backs of her eyes, and it felt like a giant fist was squeezing her chest.

For the first time today, Sean looked angry. “I’m doing this for you, Megan. I won’t let you waste your life—”

“No! Don’t you put this on me.”

“Fine,” he snarled. “I’m a selfish fuck. I’m doing this for myself. But I can’t take it anymore, Megan.”

His voice cracked and her heart ripped in half. His
eyes were once again dark and desolate, bright with unshed tears. “The first appeals took two years. The next one will take at least that long. Years I’ll spend in a nine-by-nine cell. And once in a while they let me out to walk around the yard like a fucking dog.”

“You’re alive,” she said, unable to choke back her sobs.

“I’m in hell.”

She shook her head, though she couldn’t deny the truth. She and her brother had grown up camping and exploring the wilderness in the Cascade Mountains. Sean was never happier than when he was out in the open air, nothing around but the vastness of nature to explore. For him to be confined to a cage was nothing short of torture.

But she couldn’t let him go so easily.

“Sean, I won’t let you die for something you didn’t do. We just need more time, and when we find out who the real killer is—”

She stopped at Sean’s derisive snort. “Come on, Megan. It’s been three years. Three fucking years and I still can’t remember a goddamned thing about that night. If there were any leads, any trace of evidence against someone else, someone would have found it by now.”

“Don’t say that. Convicts who’ve been on death row for decades have had their convictions overturned cause of new evidence.”

“Yeah, DNA evidence. And the only DNA found on or around Evangeline Gordon was mine.” He shook his head. “Hell, maybe we’re both wrong. Maybe I did do it.”

Megan swallowed back a surge of nausea. “Don’t say that. We both know you’re not capable—”

“You don’t know. You don’t know what I saw when
I was deployed. Shit like that changes a person, Megan. You see things, and you kill in the name of your country—”

“Shut up,” she hissed. “Do not spew that shit at me.” She’d heard enough of it during his trial, the experts spouting off about operational stress exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder, and traumatic brain injuries that could alter a soldier’s behavior. “You think I’m going to change my mind about you? It won’t work.”

Sean shook his head, suddenly looking a hundred years old. Beaten down. Utterly defeated. “All I know is that we’re both stuck. I don’t want this life for either of us.”

Megan could only shake her head as she struggled to swallow back her sobs, tried to conjure the words that would convince him to turn from this drastic course. “Please,” was all she could come up with. “Please don’t leave me alone.”

His firm mouth trembled a little as he spoke. “It’ll be better this way. You have to trust me on that.”

“How can it possibly be better for you to die for something you didn’t do? This isn’t right. This isn’t fair. You have to give me time to fix it.”

He shook his head and pressed the palm of his hand up to the Plexiglas divider. Megan placed her own palm against his. “Some things can’t be fixed. You know that. Sometimes you get dealt a shitty hand, and you just do what you can to pick up the pieces and move on. That’s what I want you to do.”

“No. I don’t know what kind of suicidal bullshit you’re trying to pull, but I don’t accept this. I’m going to talk to your attorneys, and when I come back next week—”

“Don’t come back.”

Megan stopped short, pulling her hand away from the glass. “What?”

Sean swallowed hard and shifted in his seat, straightening up like he was bracing for something. “This is it, Meg,” he said, his voice barely audible through the handset. If she hadn’t seen his lips move, she might have believed he hadn’t spoken at all. “I don’t want you to visit anymore.”

“Shut up, Sean. Of course I’m coming back.”

He shook his head. “I won’t see you.”

She fell back in her chair. He would do it too. He’d refuse to accept her visits, and the prison wouldn’t force him. “How can you do this to me, Sean?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. When he opened his eyes, they held the same peaceful resolve she’d fount>

“It’s my choice, Sean! Believe me, I can handle this as long as I know there’s still a chance you’ll get out of here alive.”

“There is no chance. And it’s time you accepted that.”

She had no words to convince him otherwise.

“I love you, Megan. You know that, right?”

“I love you too! But how can you say you love me and make a decision like this?”

“It’s all going to work out for the best,” he said. “Someday you’ll see.” He kissed his fingers and pressed them up to the glass. “Bye, Megan.”

Before she could react, he placed his handset back in its cradle.

“Sean! Wait!” she screamed, even though he couldn’t
hear her through the soundproof glass. Sean rose from his chair and went to the door to summon the guard.

Megan pounded her fist on the Plexiglas, but Sean didn’t so much as look back.

Sean silently followed the guard out the door. With the thick layer of plate glass muting her, he could pretend Megan wasn’t there. He didn’t turn to watch her go. He had to push it away, couldn’t let himself get taken in by her pain. Megan was strong. She would recover.

He shoved all thoughts of her aside. The emotion that had overwhelmed him at seeing her drained out as quickly as it had filled him, leaving him edgy and overstimulated like he always was after her visits.

The guard wrapped a hand around his arm and steered him through the visitor’s complex and back to the IMU cell block. Sean struggled to slow his breath, quiet his mind as every cell resisted the idea of going back to his hole.

He counted every clank of his shackles as they walked down the concrete blue corridor with its yellow cell doors. One, two, three, four… By the time he got to ten, he knew he wasn’t going to try to throw his cuffed wrists around the guard’s neck.

Eleven, twelve, he heard his guard speak. “What?” Sean said as he lifted his head. Then he realized the guard wasn’t speaking to him, but to another guard escorting a prisoner out of his cell for his exercise hour. It was the guy two cells down from Sean’s, the guy whose screaming jarred Sean from sleep most nights. He didn’t know what the guy was in for, didn’t care.

It was the first time in two years Sean had seen the man’s face. Their eyes met for a split second, and Sean registered a doughy face and a green tattoo creeping up the guy’s neck before he broke contact. He could feel the guy’s stare as the guards continued their conversation. Sean kept his eyes locked on the floor like a wary dog.

Heo interest in making any connection, no matter how small.

The slide of his metal cell door drowned out the squeak of footsteps, and Sean stepped inside. He clenched his teeth as the door clanged shut and put his hands through the slot without being told. Rattle, snick, the cuffs came loose and Sean pulled his hands back inside.

He sat down on his bunk. Stood up. Went to the sink, bent his head to drink from the faucet. Paced the length of his cell, forward and back, tracing the groove that had worn into the concrete floor from the feet of dozens of poor bastards like him.

Lying down on his bunk, he closed his eyes and tried to conjure up the blue sky and snow-dusted mountains surrounding his father’s fishing cabin. But all he could see was Megan’s face, pale and tight and wet with tears.

And another face, beautiful, delicate, with wide-set dark eyes that he’d sworn were pleading for help. His stomach twisted, and for the millionth time he wished he’d never agreed to go to Club One, where his “friend” Jimmy Caparulo had been working as a bouncer. Wished he hadn’t given in to his friend’s pleas to make amends after what Jimmy had done to Megan.

But he’d gone to meet Jimmy, and that night he’d met her. Evangeline Gordon. Beautiful, mysterious, and in Sean’s
eyes, vulnerable, though he’d never figured out exactly why. But she had that lost-little-girl-in-need-of-saving vibe he’d always been a sucker for, and once he’d picked up on it, he couldn’t let it go. Not that she’d given him a whole lot of encouragement. He’d barely convinced her to go on a couple of coffee dates in the two weeks he’d known her, and she never gave up anything about herself other than what he already knew. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from trailing after her to the club, even though Jimmy was off that night and he had no other excuse to be hanging around. She was upset to see him, but she wouldn’t say why. After that, the details went fuzzy. He had a vague memory of her agreeing to leave with him, a blurry recollection of her looking up at him with big, scared eyes and asking if he would protect her.

The memories after that were brutally clear. Her naked body, her cut throat. And blood. On the walls, staining the sheets.

Staining his hands.

He couldn’t protect her. He couldn’t protect himself.

He sat back up, his chest tight, his body coursing with nervous energy. He sprang to standing, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Jumping jacks. Ten. Twenty. A hundred. A thousand. Now jumps—bend, spring, land, until his legs shook and his breath labored. Push-ups, sit-ups, more jumping jacks.

For hours he bounced around the cell, until a tray of food passing through the slot in his door startled him from his frenzy. Ignoring the food, he collapsed on his bunk, his face salty with sweat and tears. He turned his face to the wall.

Megan’s hysteria rapidly gave way to numb purpose. No way was she letting Sean do this, she thought as she stalked away from the main building out to her car. She had Sean’s attorney on the phone before sh even backed out of her parking space.

“We can’t let him do this, Adam,” she said as she turned onto Highway 12. “We have to stop him.”

Adam Brockner let out a long-suffering sigh. “I’m not sure there’s much we can do.”

“Bullshit. There are always options. We can file a writ of habeas corpus, have Sean declared mentally incompetent—”

“Sean’s depressed but he’s not mentally deficient, and no judge will declare him so. We can try to delay, but Sean has made his wishes very clear, Megan. Don’t you think you need to respect that?”

Fury rose in her chest and she clung to it, its fiery sting so much better than the crippling grief at the thought of giving up on her brother. “He’s either suicidal or on some fucked-up martyr kick, trying to save me from myself, and you think I should respect that?” Thick raindrops spattered against her windshield. She forced herself to slow down as red brake lights flared in front of her.