Operation Swift Mercy (6 page)

Once they were out on the freeway, Chase seemed to relax a little more and be
fore he could start again with his interrogation, she decided to
distract
his attention from her dilemma
. “So what’s a
medic with
the  U.S Navy doing here?
”

“Technically, I’m
not
a medic with the U.S navy at the moment. I’m not on duty—I ’m on leave.”

“Are you based somewhere close by then? It’s a long way to come on a holiday if you have to fly all the way from the States.”

“I’m based in Hawaii. I’m here for a wedding, actually.”

“Long way to come for a wedding. Is it family?”

“Pretty much.”

“Am I taking you away from anything? Are you supposed to be
helping with
the wedding?”

“Only if I’m dumb enough to be hanging around the motel where they can find me.
Hence why I’m staying elsewhere.
” He flashed her a grin and Mercy couldn’t help by appreciate once again how good looking the man was.

“I know I may have come across a little…”

“Pig-
headed, obstinate, stubborn…”
Chase
supplied helpfully.

“I was going to say
difficult,
” she murmured in a dry tone. “But anyway, I wasn’t thinking very straight last night and I’m sorry if I seemed ungrateful.”

“That’s okay—I guess it’s not every day you have a near brush with death.”

Mercy shot him a quick glance and saw that his expression remained carefully neutral even if his tone had held a note of sarcasm
.
“Yes, well anyway. Thank you.”

“Not a problem. Now where are we going?”

“I need to pick something up before I leave.”

“You’re leaving? Because of this ex of yours?”

“For a lot of reasons.”

“Do you really want this jerk to run you out of town? I told you, I’ll stay with you if you want to press charges. He won
’
t hurt you again
. I’ll make sure of it.”

Chase’s words touched her, they really did, but she couldn’t allow
well-meaning
feelings to get in the way of reality. “It’s safer if I just go.”

“So we’re going back to your house? Is there a chance we might be running into this ex- boyfriend of yours?”

Mercy thought she detected a hint of eagerness beneath his words and
was glad that was not going to happen
. For all his good intensions—Chase was not ready to face the likes of Nikkos and his goons. “We’re not going to my house.”

That seemed to disappoint him a little, but at least he stopped asking questions and she turned to look out the passenger side window…She wasn’t particularly excited about the destination
, and quite frankly, the sooner she got through this the better.

Chapter
Six

The old house was just as she remembered it from years ago when she was a small child. The weathered board planks were lopsided on the front, paint long since peeled away. It stood out against the more modern
duplexes
and units built around it. The developers were like vultures swooping on these old blocks—the huge back yards a relic from a time when city living had included a backyard for the kids to play in
.

Fumbling for the doorhandle, she turned to Chase and summoned a smile, thanking him.
“This will be great. I’ll be able to get a taxi from here when I’m done. Thank you again for everything.”

“I’ll wait for you to pick up whatever it is you need.”

“No, Chase. You need to go now,” she said in soft, yet firm voice.

“
Mercy, in my line of work
you learn to trust your gut instincts and right now
mine’s screaming at me that there’s something very wrong about all this …I’m not leaving. So I either come in there with you—or I stay out here in the car…but either way
I’m not leaving you here alone.”

God, this man was frustrating! Surely this was taking knight in shining armour a little too far?
But his words gave her pause, and nervously she glanced up and down the street cautiously. “Fine! Do what you want—I don’t care, I just need to get this over with,” she snapped, more from the fact her nerves were now getting the better of her, being in a place that brought back unpleasant memories for her and a meeting with a person she really didn’t enjoy being around. She didn’t wait to see if he was following or not, she climbed out of the car and shut the door with a firm thunk.

Mercy knocked on the front door, its timber warped, matching the rest of the old house and waited. She heard footsteps shuffling from somewhere behind the door, growing louder as they
drew
closer.

“Who is it?” The voice still sounded the same. The deep husky croak of a pack-a-day smoker.

“It’s Mercy, Maureen.”
Silence greeted her reply and for a moment she thought the old woman might be going to turn her away. Beside her she felt Chase shift his weight from one foot to the other, and
resisted
the urge to apologise or explain. He insisted on coming along for the ride—he could just continue to wonder what the hell he’d gotten himself into.

Slowly the door inched open and the smell of stale cigarettes and old house hit Mercy in the face, propelling her back to another time and place she’d rather forget.

“Who’s that,
”
Maureen squinted as she looked Chase up and down
.

“This is Chase. He’s a friend of mine. Can we come in?”

The old woman gave Chase a narrowed glare, but eventually turned and walked away from the door. With a sigh, Mercy took the fact that she didn’t slam
it i
n their face to mean they could follow
.
The hallway was
as
gloomy as the rest of the house. It wouldn’t have hurt to open a blind and window or two. She’d always hated this place—it
used to give
her the creeps…
it
still did.

Mercy led them into a room off the end of the hallway, and indicated that Chase should take a seat on the far side. There was not much she could do to protect him from the effects of passive smoke already in the room, but it might save his lungs from the direct path of smoke Maureen was sure to blow her way soon enough.

“Spose
’
you’re here for the parcel?”

“You got it then,” Mercy tried to keep the relief from her voice. It would have been just her luck for the damn thing to have gone missing.

“It’s out in the kitchen. Put the jug on while you
’re
out there will ya
’
. Save me old legs.”

Mercy sent Chase a swift glance, hoping he could tell she’d only be a minute, and went back into the hall toward the kitchen.
The kitchen table
sat in the middle of the room. The
chipped and faded Formica top,
which was all the rage in the fifties, was looking faded and worn, much like Maureen herself.
The
scratched and dull kitchen sink was
barely
visible beneath the stack of washed plates and coffee cups left there to dry.
Looking around, s
he spotted the parcel on the kitchen bench. She’d posted it before, the day she ended up floating down a river
, a
ddressing the parcel to Maureen with a note asking her to
hold onto the contents inside until she dropped
by and pick
ed it
up
. S
he quickly dug out the small
,
fabric pouch.
Mercy
smiled sadly as she stared at the locket. It was her most treasured possession. On her sixteenth birthday, her mother had been in an unusually happy place. It had been the first and last birthday present she’d gotten from that time onwards
,
from her.

From the lounge room she could hear the murmur of two voices, giving an exasperated shake of her head as she heard Maureen’s raspy chuckle and could only hope she wasn’t telling Chase something deathly embarrassing, but didn’t hold much hope
.
Crossing to the sink, the locket still in her hand, she filled the jug and set it to boil.

Securing the necklace around her neck, she curled her fingers around the locket and breathed a sigh of relief
.
Crossing back to the bench, she checked the remaining contents of the packet, and saw the cash was all still there.
Withdrawing a few of the notes, she scribbled a quick thank you note on the back of the parcel and tucked the notes inside for Maureen to find later
.
Taking one of the chipped cups from the draining board, she made a coffee for Maureen,
just the way she liked it with long life milk and two sugars.
Then picked
up her
parcel from the table
, and
carried it all
back to the lounge room.

Maureen looked up when she re-entered
the room
eyeing the cup in her hand with a quirk of her eyebrow. “What? You’re not having a cuppa? You didn’t even offer your man here
,
one.”

“We don’t have time to stay.”

“Rubbish. Sit down,” the old woman snapped.

Mercy knew it was pointless to argue, so she took a seat beside Chase and forced a tolerant expression to her face praying this would all be behind her soon.

****

The smell of
the old house wasn’t pleasant, but then again it wasn’t the worst place he’d ever been in either. Not by a long shot. He found it intriguing that this woman was somehow connected to Mercy—they were about as similar as chalk and cheese but he was keen to work it out. When Mercy left the room, Chase found himself being thoroughly scrutinized by the old woman. He fought the urge to squirm under her shrewd gaze.

“How long have you known my granddaughter?”

This was Mercy’s
grandmother
?
Chase swallowed back his surprise at that. “Not very long Ma’am.”

“You’re a Yank!
I knew a few American boys back in the day.” She let out a raspy laugh that ended
in
a wheeze
and Chase was half way out of his seat ready to help her when she waved him back and coughed up what sounded like
a lung
. “God, those were the days.” She sighed wistfully, before her gaze rested back upon him once again. “Reckon I would have given you a run for your money back then my boy.”

Chase forced a polite smile to his lips. “Yes, ma’am. I reckon you
probably
could.” Maybe she used to be a looker—but a hard life and too many cigarettes had obliterated all that years ago.

“So she got rid of that other one then?”

“Ma’am? Other what?”

“Other bloke.” She waved a dismissing hand in the air. “Of course I never met him, but I heard about him and I’ve seen photos. Never trusted a rich foreigner in me life. I told her to watch him—you can’t trust em
’
.”

Chase was about to dig into grandma’s memory a bit and find out more about
this
ex
for himself, but was interrupted when Mercy walked into the room.

She looked flustered. It was obvious these two women were not close, and Mercy seemed anxious to leave
.

“So you finally woke up to yourself and left that other fella then?”

“Yes, Maureen.”

“I told you he was no good didn’t I?”

Cha
s
e watched Mercy’s features harden and knew she was trying hard not to let the older woman provoke her.
This had to be one of the weirdest granddaughter/ grandmother reunions he’d ever witnessed…not that he’d actually witnessed that many before, but still…

“Find someone younger did he?”

He saw Mercy’s fingers tighten around the package she was holding.

“I have no idea. Look, we really need to get going,” she said hastily.

“You know what the trouble with you is? You’re too much like that no good mother of yours was. She never listened to a word I said either—never listened when I told her to get rid of the baby, I told her it would ruin her life
and it did,” she crowed throwing up her arms in disgust. “Your mother could have been anything she wanted to be
but then she
fell in with those
dope-head,
no
-
hopers
at school. You were the biggest mistake she ever made.
”

Chase didn’t want to hear any more, he saw that Mercy
was struggling to hold
herself together. The old woman’s cruel words
made
him
itch
to reach across and strangle an apology from her, but Mercy kept her emotions tightly reined
in, but she shouldn’t have to. He got to his feet, pulling Mercy up beside him. “It’s time to go,” he bit out, uncaring if the other woman took offence to his abrupt behaviour or not.