Never Cry Mercy (15 page)

Another hour or so passed with no visitors. And another after that. I began to think that it'd be a wasted day. How many more were to come? Were they content to let me rot in the cell?

I managed to doze off again, but sleep wasn't meant to be. Vernon entered the room, cleared his throat. I got to my feet and went to the edge of the cell. He only took a few steps into the room, held the door open, and shot me a quick nod and a smile.

Then Reese entered. She glanced at Vernon, then rushed to the cell.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"There's a lead," she said.

"Now don't get too excited," Vernon said. "And don't think you're off the hook just yet."

"What happened?" I said.

"A couple witnesses came forward," he said. "They saw a man enter the house about an hour prior to when you and Reese stated you found the bodies. Then they saw you guys, too, and the time they gave coincides with your call to me. The description they gave of the first man was vague, but they did say there seemed to be a difference between him and you."

"You get the guy yet?" I asked.

"No," he said. "But we think we'll have him by nightfall."

"So what's this mean for me?"

"I'm not going to keep you here. But don't go far, Jack. If this other suspect checks out with a super tight alibi, or our witness recants, I might have to bring you back in."

"How long would you say I have?"

"Forty-eight hours," he said. "Lay low and stay out of trouble. Don't go barking up any trees. Know what I mean? This town's troubles aren't yours. You need to forget everything that happened. Stay away from Darrow and his guys. I can't help or protect you if you go down that road."

He unlocked the cell, then handed me a folder with my wallet and cell phone.

Reese and I didn't wait around for any more advice. We left through the back door. Adrenaline shot through me so fast I barely noticed the smell of the grilled meat nearby. We hopped in Reese's car, drove straight to her apartment. I had concerns about going back, but she insisted. Once there, I showered and changed. Reese had a fresh cup of coffee waiting for me on the table. Not the best I ever had, but nowhere near as horrible as the stuff at the police station. She'd gone out for food while I was cleaning up and had brought back a couple burgers from the bar. I scarfed down all of mine and half of hers.

"Good?" she asked, smiling.

"Best I've had in a while," I said.

"It's my recipe, you know."

"No, I didn't know that. Don't recall you ever making me a burger before."

"Yeah, well, I guess we didn't get much time to hang out in my kitchen back in New York."

"No, we didn't."

"It's a shame." She leaned back and stared out the window. "I really think we could have changed each other's lives."

I glanced out the window in an attempt to see what she was focused on.

"Don't you think?" she asked.

"I'm pretty sure we changed each other's lives. If things hadn't gone down the way they did, you wouldn't have ended up in the program. I probably wouldn't have turned the corner I did, either."

The events of those two weeks set me on a path of darkness. It took years, and the grace of a young child named Mandy, to set me right again.

Reese leaned forward in her chair, elbows wide on the table, one hand supporting her head. "Tell me about what you've been doing."

"Not much worth talking about. Working for the highest bidder. Tons of collateral damage. Far too many friends lost and gone."

"They died?"

"Some." I wiped the plate with the tip of my finger, scraping off the remaining cheese. "Others are out of my life either by choice or necessity."

She held my gaze for a long second. "I miss my life back home. The sights and smells and action of the city."

I said nothing. There were times I missed it, too. Rather, I missed certain people who'd I always associate with my time in New York. Coincidentally, Reese was one of them, even though I'd known her for a few short weeks.

"Where will you go after here?" she said.

I shrugged, not sure if I wanted to talk about it. There was too much left to do in Texline.

"Just gonna drift some more?" she asked. "Solve the problems of one little town after another?"

I wiped my face with a napkin, smiled at her. "You make me sound like some hero in a book series. I'm not that good of a guy, Reese. If I've got nothing invested in a place, I couldn't care less what happens there."

"You don't have anything invested here." She bit her bottom lip.

"I've got you. I've got Herbie and Ingrid, and they're dead because of me."

"You don't know that to be true."

"You don't know that to be false."

"So...you still haven't said what's next."

"Mia," I said. "I'm gonna track down my brother and find my daughter and we're gonna leave and sail until we're on a nearly-deserted island tourists rarely visit. We'll create a life there. One that not a damn soul knows of. I won't be tracked down and coerced into a job. I won't be found by anyone. We'll just live."

"That sounds kinda nice," she said. "Maybe a little boring, but the right kind of boring."

"Then leave the program and come with me."

"Right now?"

"Why not?"

"We'd have trouble getting out of the country, don't you think?"

I laughed. "That's the least difficult part of all this."

"What's the most difficult part?"

"Getting used to the fact that you make a better burger than I do."

She stood, walked around the table, stopped in front of me. Her knees pressed into my thighs. She ran her hands through my hair, over my shoulders, down my back.

"Come on, Jack. Let's take care of those wounds."

Chapter 35

Crystal River, Florida, 1988

Jack clutched the comforter on his bed in an attempt to pull himself up off the floor. His legs were wobbly, weak. He looked back and saw the guy unbuttoning his pants. The man looked down at him and laughed.

Jack summoned his focus and lunged up and forward onto the bed. He clawed his way toward the headboard.

"Saving me time," the guy said. "Appreciate that. But don't think it's gonna earn you any favors. The ending ain't gonna change. You're nothing more than one of those whores or kids from over there."

Jack faked a sob, forced his body to convulse. The performance earned a laugh from the man. Perhaps it eased the guy into false sense of dominance, thinking this would go easier than he could have imagined.

The bed near Jack's feet dipped. The guy kneeled at the edge. He felt the guy's hand on his leg, gripping and digging into his flesh. He forced another fake sob, all while sliding his hand underneath the mattress. The hilt felt cold at first touch. Jack worked his hand in further, cutting his finger on the blade and grunting in pain as he did so. The guy punched him in the back. Jack grunted again.

He had the knife in his grasp and pulled his hand free from the mattress as the guy pulled him toward the middle of the bed. Jack resisted the urge to swing frantically. No, if the man knocked the knife free, it'd be over. There wouldn't be a second chance. So Jack waited.

The guy grabbed and tugged on Jack's shirt, lifting his torso off the bed until the shirt gave way and ripped. He wasn't sure how much more he could take. Those tinges of panic surfaced. The voices of his family battled it, keeping it at bay. The man wrapped his hand around Jack's shoulder. He felt the guy's weight lift.

It was time.

Jack inhaled quickly and deeply. He pushed himself down into the mattress, then exploded up and around, swinging his arm in a controlled arc. The knife cut through the man as if he were made of butter. It penetrated his abdomen to the hilt. Jack twisted and turned and spun the knife clockwise, counterclockwise. Blood sprayed from the wound, warm across Jack's bare torso.

The guy stared down, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. A hollow scream turned into a high pitched grunt.

Jack pulled the knife free and struck again, this time aiming for center mass. It plunged in deep. And again Jack twisted and pulled the handle side to side. The man swung weakly at Jack's head. Jack returned the blows, landing a right cross on the man's chin, causing him to collapse forward.

The full weight of the guy smothered Jack. Unconscious, the man was like a massive paperweight. Jack squirmed underneath, working toward the edge of the bed. He managed to dump the guy over the side. The guy groaned after hitting the floor. He wasn't dead, but it couldn't be long judging by the amount of blood that covered Jack and the bed.

He hopped over the man, then spun and delivered a running kick to the guy's temple. He had to make it to his father's room. His dad kept a pistol in there, although the hiding spot changed every so often. But it would be in there somewhere. And it would be loaded.

Chapter 36

The sun had set, casting Reese's bedroom into shadows. She had countered by lighting an oil lamp. The sheets rose and fell with her relaxed breathing.
 
It felt good to be at rest, and it might be my last chance for a while. Unless Vernon showed up with an arrest warrant and locked me up again. The chances of that seemed slim at the moment. Several hours had passed, and we hadn't heard from him. My mind slipped into overdrive, and I wondered where they were in the investigation. Had they caught the guy?

Perhaps sensing my shift toward anxiety, Reese rolled over and placed her hand on my chest. She smiled at me as her fingers worked up and down my sternum.

"What?" I said.

"Let's do it," she said.

"Again?"

She smiled. "Not that. Let's go to that island."

"All right. Gotta find Mia first, though."

It had been a while since I'd reached out to Sean. It might not be a bad idea to do so in light of recent events. The plan had been for me to disappear for a while, let things settle down. But now that Darrow had opened up an agency backdoor channel, and brought my name to light, someone was bound to start digging. And if that someone was Frank Skinner, I might never make it home again.

Wherever home was.

"Reese?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell me about Darrow."

She propped up on one elbow. "What do you want to know?"

I rolled to my side and mirrored her. "Why did he blow your cover?"

"He didn't."

"But he knows who you are, what you did, and that you're in the program."

"Yes, and that's because he vets every person that comes into this town."

"He's got some solid contacts. Figured out who I was."

She didn't look surprised. "I don't doubt it."

"What's he into?"

"He's got his hands in everything, really."

"Any legit stuff?"

"Some housing developments, though those aren't around here. Closer to Dallas. He owns a couple restaurants there, too. And a specialty grocery store, of all things."

"So why doesn't he live there if that's where his legal operations are located?"

"Because this small town offers him no opposition. He couldn't go someplace like Dallas and operate like that. Think about it. The police, FBI, CIA, DEA, who knows what other acronyms, they'd be all over him there."

"So not everything is above water then."

She exhaled and closed her eyes. "You already know that."

"I do, obviously. But I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly what it is."

She rolled over onto her back, letting her chin fall toward me. "Take a guess, Jack."

"Drugs."

"Of course."

"Illegal immigrants."

"Yup."

"Guns."

Reese started to answer, but hesitated. Her eyes narrowed as her gaze traveled toward the ceiling.

"Is that a yes?" I asked.

"It's a not quite," she replied.

"Not quite guns. Simple enough, I guess."

"Right."

"Knives?"

She laughed. "Come on, Jack."

"Arms in general, then. He's moving heavy stuff through here. Well, not quite here, but close. Got a nice private location where buyers can come to purchase automatic weapons, heavy artillery, explosives, and the like."

"You didn't hear it from me."

"So he figures out you're a cop, someone who could disrupt his operations, and he just lets you live?"

"Well, there's a reason he figured out I was a cop. See, the file the FBI put together was solid. His first go around, all he knew was what they said about me."

"OK. So, what's the reason?"

"I started snooping around. I knew his guys—Linus and the others—were bad dudes. They had crap jobs, and no prospects, yet they all had nice stuff. Their wives and kids didn't dress like they were poor. These guys walked around like they owned the town. And the locals were scared of them. Well, most, anyway. A few, like Ingrid and Herbie, stood up to them. Anyway, it didn't take long to track them to Darrow. I started watching him. All it took was one anonymous phone call on my part, and he nailed me. His contact scratched below the surface and uncovered my life history."

"And yet he let you live."

"He did," she said. "He's not a total asshole, I guess."

"In all these years, why haven't you ever gone to anyone? Notified the FBI?"

"Darrow has clients around the world. He doesn't care who they are, or what they do. These people aren't boy scouts. You've fought people like this for years."

"The terrorists," I said.

She nodded. "Yeah, he knows them. And he told me he'd give me up to them if I crossed him. The line was already cast. That's what he told me. If something happened to him, the hook would be set."

That explained the secrecy, and why Reese had been reluctant to do anything. Of all places, the program had set her up in a town where everything could be unraveled.

"He had me brought out to some deserted area," I said. "They beat me, dragged me out there. Had me walk a half-mile to a little cabin to meet with him. And when I got back to town, I was arrested. Linus drove me right up to the cops. They were waiting in the middle of town. Guess they figured I'd bail out of the truck if we went to the police station."