Merciless (30 page)

“Yes, Agent Turnbull.”

Turnbull herded me toward the street. Then he loomed over me. “Say something, Gunderson.”

I couldn’t.

“How long would you have allowed him to dress you down?”

I looked over at Sophie, rocking and crying. Then my gaze moved to John-John, staring
through me, his eyes vacant with shock. I met Shay’s gaze again. “I don’t know. I
just . . . froze.”

“There’s something else going on with them. Tell me.”

Turnbull and I had seemed to be on a sharing kick—at least from my end—since the night
of Verline’s wake, so I told him what I knew of John-John’s vision. Penny’s death.
My presence as the little black rain cloud of doom.

If I believed Shay wouldn’t discount it, well, I was wrong.

He towed me behind the ambulance. Then he stepped in front of me, blocking me from
everyone’s view. His strong fingers circled my wrist, and he lifted my own hand in
front of my face. “You see this? Is there blood on it?”

“No.”

“Did you string up your former housekeeper’s daughter like a hunting trophy?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t shoulder the blame.”

I blinked at him.

“A vision is no more relevant than a dream, Mercy. No one can assign real meaning
to it. And those who claim they can have usually been smokin’ too much peyote, or
hitting the firewater too hard.”

“But you’re the one who told me—”

“About your tie to the spirit world?”

I nodded.

“Not the same thing. I can understand why they didn’t call you when Penny went missing.
But your tie doesn’t have a damn thing to do with someone else’s vision.”

Numb, I mumbled, “Thank you.”

“This is gonna be hard. But you can handle it.”

“Because I’m a good agent?”

Shay curled my hand into a fist before he released it. “No, because you’re a good
person.”

I watched him walk away. Then I forced myself to seek out Sophie. I sat in the dirt
next to her, at a loss about how to help her.

Wasn’t long before she was leaning on me. Just her head on my arm. She stopped rocking.
Her tears continued to fall.

So did mine.

Finally, she wiped her nose and her eyes on her sleeve. “I’m tired, Mercy.” Her voice
was a breathless rasp of defeat.

“I’m sure you’ve spent the last day without getting much rest. You want me to take
you home?”

“No, John-John will need to. It’ll help him if he can fuss over me.”

“What can I do?”

I sat very still as Sophie’s back straightened and she looked me in the eyes. Her
lip wobbled. She firmed it and bit off, “Find who did this to my daughter.”

“I will. I promise. And if you need anything . . .”

“I’ll let you know.” Sophie touched my face, almost absentmindedly, the way she used
to when I was an awkward teenage girl. “How is the Sheriff?”

“Well, he hasn’t left me yet.”

She tsk-tsked. “You’re strong, Mercy. But I like that you don’t have to be so tough
with him. You’re a good match. Now with Lex living there . . . you have a family of
your own. You need that more than you know.”

This woman I should be giving comfort to . . . was trying to comfort me. More tears
fell down my face. “I miss you.”

“Ah, I miss you, too. You and your grumpy ways.”

I blurted, “Then why did you quit?”

She patted my cheek. “Because I thought it was my job as Penny’s mother to make her
last few months bearable. As much as she claimed she was getting better and the herbal
medicine eased her pain, I only had to look in her eyes to know she was lying. She
was dying. I just can’t believe it came to this . . .” She briefly closed her eyes,
then those sorrow-filled black pools were back on mine. “I never put much stock in
the way John-John interpreted that vision. I want you to know that had nothin’ to
do with me leavin’, no matter what he says, hey.”

I held my breath.

“I believe the reason he saw the darkness surrounding you was because you’re the only
one to make this right. But you’ll need to return to that dark place it took you so
long to get out of,
takoja.
Don’t let the blackness swallow you up again.”

My skin became a mass of goose bumps.

Then Sophie was on her feet, shuffling away.

John-John spoke to her before heading toward me.

I stood and waited, my head so fucked that I felt I’d drifted to another plane of
existence.

“
Unci
doesn’t blame you, but I do.”

And . . . I crash-landed right back down to earth.

“She didn’t have the vision.
I
did. I won’t put a rosy spin on it.”

“I will figure out who did this to your mother. Not because I need to prove that your
vision painting me the big, bad monster is wrong. You seem to have forgotten
I’m
the good guy. Go ahead and use your anger, John-John. You’re entitled to it. But
don’t direct your anger toward me. And keep one thing in mind.”

“What?”

“This may not be the end to your family troubles, but the beginning. You might not
like what I turn up when I really start to dig.”

“Don’t get dirt on my grandmother. Stay away from her. Don’t call her. Don’t stop
by. Don’t send her flowers. Don’t bring her food. Don’t
do nothing. Leave her be. It’s my job to protect her. Even from you. Maybe
especially
from you.” His trench coat made a dismissive flapping sound when he whirled around.

Took a long minute before I could move. Before I could breathe.

Ironically, I found my cool detachment in his heated words.

For the first time I noticed the crowd.

Gawkers were a part of crime scenes, something I hadn’t really paid attention to or
understood until I took a psych-ops class at Quantico. The crowd was a comfort of
sorts. It allowed humans to connect after a tragedy, letting them show sympathy while
at the same time allowing for the thank-God-it-wasn’t-me sense of relief. But all
too often with a violent crime, the orchestrator of said crime came to the scene and
fed off that shock and horror.

I took a more in-depth look at the dozen and a half people milling about. The crime-scene
photographer discreetly snapped photos of the crowd. Probably wouldn’t mean much as
far as comparing this case to the other two, since this scene was public while the
others had been off the grid.

Another round of sorrow rolled through me as Penny’s body was loaded into a black
bag and lifted into the ambulance.

Shay ended his phone call and ambled toward me.

“That was Director Shenker. Given your close association with so many members of the
family—”

“He’s pulling me off the case?”

“No. Take a deep breath, Gunderson. We think it’d be best if Carsten and I handled
the family interviews this afternoon. Shenker’s requiring you to take the remainder
of the day off, but he expects you at the VS offices on Eagle River tomorrow at the
usual time.”

•   •   •

I went home.

Dawson was working.

Lex was at Doug’s house doing yet another school project.

I went for a ten-mile run. I could’ve run another ten.

Sweaty, cranky, and carrying an armload of mail, I didn’t hide my annoyance when Jake
pulled up next to me as I walked down the driveway.

He rolled down the window. “You busy?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “Nice try. Come on, you need to clear your head. You ain’t been
out and about on the ranch since you got back from Virginia.”

I squinted at him. “Did Hope send you over here?”

“Yep. When we heard about Penny . . . Hope knew you had to deal with it, since that’s
your job, and she wanted me to make sure you were okay.”

My sister’s concern touched me. So I hopped into the passenger’s side of the truck . . . and
hopped back out when we reached the first gate. We bumped along the existing truck
tracks. I opened three more gates. Just as I began to get annoyed, Jake stopped at
the top of the rise and parked instead of cutting to the left and following the ridge
down to the closest pasture.

I climbed out and avoided stepping on a clump of cactus. The soil was sandy and dry
enough to support that type of vegetation. I didn’t understand how those flat and
barrel-shaped succulents survived the winter months, when the wind on this plateau
blew a million miles an hour and a heavy crust of snow covered everything.

The cactus would be here long after I was gone.

I skirted a pile of scat—it appeared rabbits enjoyed the view here, too—and stood
on the remaining chunk of a butterscotch-colored rock. Most of it had cracked and
tumbled away down the steep incline, leaving a chalky white trail of sun-bleached
shale.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I faced the wind. Not bitterly cold like this morning,
but with enough bite to remind me night would be approaching soon. I gazed across
the expanse of the valley. Skeletal trees followed the path of a dry creek bed.

The right side of the ridged plateau curved sharply, appearing flat
until it fell away into nothingness. Stand too close to the edge in springtime and
I would feel the earth’s pull, the ground shifting beneath my feet. Wanting me to
tumble down the hillside like the hunks of red dirt and jagged rocks scattered and
broken before me.

I’d walked this ridge more times than I could count. Always marveling at the topographical
variances, from summertime lush grazing areas down by the creek to the wooded section
that rimmed the bowl on the left. Everything I could see from this vantage point was
Gunderson land. My father had said it often enough, with pride, that I’d loved coming
here as a kid to look and lord over my domain. Knowing it’d be mine someday. And wanting
that ownership in the worst way.

Now the vastness humbled me. As did the responsibility of being steward to this land
for as long as it owned me.

Jake walked up and stood beside me. I wondered if he saw this the same way I did.
Or was his view more calculating? Hoping, come springtime, the creek would run high,
the grass would grow tall, and Mother Nature wouldn’t be the bitch, trying to test
a human’s resilience.

He handed me a can of beer.

I looked at him and managed a smile. “Thanks.”

He cracked open a Coors, and we drank in silence. Not rushed. Not uncomfortable. Not
pregnant with words that needed to be said but that neither of us wanted to speak.

Despite our past issues, Jake and I understood each other.

At least today.

That thought made me smile.

We each finished our cans of beer, but neither of us made a move to leave.

After a bit, Jake said, “Not everyone in my family believes John-John’s visions are
gospel, Mercy.”

His comment surprised me. “Why do I think the Red Leaf family was . . . I don’t know
if
supportive
is the right word, but maybe . . . accepting of his talents?”

“It ain’t like we got much choice, to be real honest.” He sighed. “
Unci
is hurtin’ about Penny. That don’t give John-John and Devlin the right to take their
pain out on you. Sophie ain’t happy about that.”

“You talked to her?”

“Of course. She’s . . . this whole thing rips me up inside, mostly for her. For all
her faults, loving too much ain’t one of them. With all that’s gone on in the past
few weeks, and since you were gone for months . . . I know you’re questioning your
place with her, Mercy. Don’t. She
does
consider you her family. Both you and Hope.”

A shard of pain lanced my heart that the woman who’d been a surrogate mother to me
was emotionally eviscerated and I wasn’t allowed to comfort her.

Before I let that thought weigh me down more, Jake handed me another beer. I gave
him an odd look. “Two beers in one day, Jake? Really? You got some bad news to tell
me?”

“Funny. Not bad news. But something you oughta know. Something you shoulda been told
a long time ago.”

Jake wasn’t a guy prone to drama, so the fact he’d brought me out here in the middle
of the ranch to talk to me set off all my warning bells.

“This is something you can’t tell anyone, Mercy. I ain’t kiddin’. Not Dawson. Hope
don’t even know. And you cannot let on that you know of this, to any of the people
who are involved. I gotta have your word.”

“You’ve got it.”

Jake took another gulp of beer. “You asked about the bad blood between the Red Leaf
family and Rollie Rondeaux. It don’t got nothin’ to do with us. Mostly, it’s between
the Pretty Horses family and Rollie. It started with Penny, Rollie, and Sophie.” He
paused with the beer can in front of his mouth. “Because Rollie is John-John’s father.”

Shocked, I gaped at Jake for almost a solid minute before I could speak. “Are you
serious?”

“Yep. Short version: Penny and Rollie had a fling while Rollie was married. Penny
got knocked up, had John-John, but wouldn’t give him the Rondeaux name. Rollie refused
to support her or the kid unless she did. Sophie got pissed off and said she’d tell
everyone—including Rollie’s
wife—about John-John’s parentage. Rollie made a threat—I have no idea what—and everyone
involved clammed up. Most secrets don’t stay that way for very long, but in this case?
It’s one that’s been kept for years.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Wyatt told me.” Jake crumpled the first beer can. “When he figured out that Levi
was my son. I’m pretty sure your dad meant it as a warning, since John-John hates
Rollie’s guts. He didn’t want that to happen between me ’n’ Levi when I told the boy
I was his biological father. Not that it happened before Levi . . .”

I squeezed Jake’s arm. I sometimes thought he suffered the most from Levi’s death.
He had the loss of what might’ve been. “Who all knows this secret?”

“The obvious ones: Penny, Rollie, Sophie, John-John. I’m sure he told Muskrat.”

“Devlin?” I asked, and then said, “Of course he doesn’t know. Devlin can’t keep his
mouth shut. So how’d my dad find out?”