Twenty

Nineteen

Remy was hungry. He had been for hours, now; he wasn’t sure how many.

At first, when Boyle tied him up in the back of the van the day he snatched him from school, and in the motel, just before Boyle shot the man with the greasy hair, his belly had been too full of butterflies for hunger to feel like anything more than a hollow, queasy ache that felt more like the time he’d eaten too much shrimp and woken in the middle of the night to find he’d thrown up all over his bed and himself. “Good ol’ Tennessee shrimp,” Daddy had said, chuckling, as he helped him, shivering, into the bathtub so he could peel off his soiled pajamas. “Fresh from the ocean.”

“There’s no ocean in Tennessee, Daddy,” he’d pointed out.

“My point exactly, kiddo.”

But at some point on the long drive to New Orleans, the initial panic had given way to his more usual worries. Boredom, longing for his friends, his family. Thirst. Hunger.

Which was chief among his concerns at the moment, as he dragged the end of a stick through the sand of the embankment upon which he currently sat, insects droning all around him, the occasional fly landing on the tips of his ears and nose to be batted away. He’d had a handful of dry beef jerky for breakfast, and Fallon had told him they would “eat later,” but so far that hadn’t happened.

He'd spent a whole day in the sprawling, rose-decorated house with the lavish yard with the woman Boyle had called his “Aunt Regina.” Remy didn’t believe she was his anything, much less his aunt. Mama had two brothers, one of which was younger than Remy himself, and Daddy had two half-brothers, both of whom looked just like him. But the blonde woman with the orange tan and the dry smoker’s laugh didn’t look like anyone he knew. She’d said she was Remy’s grandmother’s daughter, no relation to the Remy he was named for, but Remy knew all about lying, and how often people did it, especially people who didn’t like his family, so he thought of her simply as Regina, no relation.

She’d offered him food. A little. The yogurt she gave him for breakfast, before she walked him back up to the room in which he’d awakened and locked him in again. He spent a long, boring time staring out the window at the lawn below, occasionally testing the window to ensure it hadn’t come miraculously unstuck since the last time he tried. Lunchtime came and went, shadows shifting across the floor, and his stomach was growling, his head light and woozy before a knock finally sounded at the door, and a different woman brought him a sandwich on a plate. It was crunchy peanut butter, which he’d never liked, but scarfed down anyway, still ravenous afterward. At home he had breakfast, lunch, and a snack. That night there were no snacks, and no dinner, even.

The next morning, this morning, Fallon came to get him, and said, “Come on, we’re leaving.”

There had been a moment, walking from the house to the car parked in the driveway, when Remy contemplated running. Fallon’s grip on his shoulder was loose and distracted, and he knew he could duck out from under it, and dodge any attempt at a re-grab. But the property was encircled by a high, black metal fence, even across the driveway. There was a wicked gate, there, one that Fallon let them out remotely by punching a code into a panel through the rolled-down window. And so Remy climbed into the backseat, and buckled his belt, and asked about breakfast. Fallon had chucked the half-empty package of jerky over his shoulder, and now Remy was hungry again, stomach empty and gnawing.

He dragged the stick – it was a good stick, sturdy, and straight, without any poky bits sticking off the sides – through the sand, a crosshatch tic-tac-toe board. He drew a circle in the top right square, and then an X beneath it. Another circle, another X. Tic-tac-toe. Then he swiped the stick hard, back and forth, and erased it.

He twisted around to peer over his shoulder at the hulking, green-streaked metal building in whose shade he was sitting, and saw that Fallon was still on the phone, pacing back and forth across the rickety length of deck that ran along a large, square pool that didn’t look fit for swimming.

He’d asked what this place was when they arrived, and at first Fallon didn’t answer. Just turned off the car, pocketed the keys, and climbed out. Fallon, Remy had learned, was either very scatter-brained, or now so thoroughly frightened of Boyle that he was prone to lapse into dazes, either not hearing or not understanding a question when Remy asked it.

“Where are we?” Remy asked, three times, as they walked toward the mildewed slab sides of the building. It had lots of big, gridded windows, and a small door, but Fallon turned left when they reached it, and waded through the hip-high weeds to go around to the back of the building. “Where are we? Where are we?”

When that yielded no answer, he’d said, “What is this place?”

“Shut your fucking yap,” Fallon sighed, without any heat. He paused, and turned back, one hand on his hip and the other gesturing up at the side of the building. “It’s an old defunct gator processing depot.” His lip curled, and he shuddered. “Why anyone would want to…” He trailed off, shook his head, and said, “Boyle says they built a new one, and this one’s suitable.”

“Suitable for what?”

“Nevermind.” He’d turned around and kept walking.

Behind the building, they’d found a patch of sand beach along the edge of the glittering green-black water, a rectangular, concrete-lined pool with a narrow deck above, a series of roll-top doors that let into the building, and an empty boat slip and dock, with room for dozens of boats to tie up.

When Fallon turned his back on him, and started making phone calls, Remy wandered down to the scrap of beach, and had been sitting there ever since, drawing in the hot white sand with a stick, stomach rumbling, wishing he was home and could go into the kitchen and get a packet of Swiss Cake Rolls out of the box in the pantry.

He wondered idly what his brother and sister were doing; if they missed him; if they knew what had happened to him. What about Mama and Daddy? Daddy, he knew, or one of his uncles – short hair, he recalled, and tried not to get too excited – was looking for him. Had followed Boyle and Fallon to Louisiana. He would be hard to find, out here in the wildness, but he didn’t reckon there was anyone better able to navigate the swamp than Daddy.

“Jesus Christ!” Fallon shouted, suddenly, and Remy twisted around to see that he was still on the phone, one hand clenched in the hair on top of his head, big sweat rings staining his shirt beneath his arms. “I told you – no, I told you not to bring her into this! And now look what’s happened!”

He yelled some more, but Remy tuned him out and turned back to the water.

Something glided toward him across the surface. Slow, but making steady progress, moving from the eye-watering brightness of the sunlight into the shade cast by the tangled trees that bowed over the shoreline.

It was a triangle of three bumps. Two in the back, one in the front. A wake of ripples spread behind the trio of little humps as they cruised toward him, but, at first, Remy could make no sense of them. It wasn’t any sort of bird, that he could tell. Nor was it a turtle, unless it was three small turtles swimming in formation.

Then his mind flashed to the mural painted on his bedroom wall, and he knew what he was seeing.

Alligator.

He jerked up straight. The stick fell out of his hand, and then he scrambled to pick it back up, equal parts thrilled and terrified. “Da–” he started, and was crushed all over again by the knowledge that Daddy wasn’t here, that he was in the company of men who hated him, and hated Daddy more, and he might as well have been all alone.

The gator swam closer, passed out of the shadows and back into the sunlight, and the water was shallow enough that Remy could begin to make out the shape of it beneath the surface, a shadow against the green, the lightness of its belly wrapping up its sides and along its bottom jaw.

He’d been entertained since birth with stories of Daddy’s gator-hunting days. Big Son was as real and mythical as Santa Claus in their house; he could have recited a dozen safety tips by heart had anyone asked for them: chief among them, don’t get bitten. Your arm might look fine, afterward, Daddy said, but that sucker’s gonna rot right off with infection. Gators have nasty mouths . Remy knew they could move fast, and that death by gator was an ugly thing.

But for some reason, he couldn’t move. He sat rooted, the sun burning the backs of his bare legs, transfixed by the sight of that huge shape gliding so gracefully beneath the water, only the tip of its snout and the lumps of its eyes showing.

It drew closer, and closer still, close enough for Remy to see the back-and-forth sweep of its tail, thicker around at the base than his waist, its power held lazily in check. Close enough for its ivory teeth to wink at him through the murkiness. Closer, its hanging claws dragging through the underwater weeds, stirring the sand on the bottom so it boiled up and clouded the water, concealing the beast’s shape until only those three points above the surface were visible once more.

Closer…closer…

“Holy shit!”

Hands clamped painfully onto his arms and dragged him backward just as he heard a raucous splashing in the water. Fallon hauled him roughly across the sand with a cry of alarm, lifting him clear off the ground, and then overbalancing, so they toppled end over end into the weeds.

Remy scrambled out of Fallon’s hold and pushed up onto his knees, winded, scuffed, and bruised, to look back at the beach.

The gator was up on land, propped up on its front legs, head cocked and jaws open. Remy heard a low, guttural growling sound, and realized it was spilling from the gator’s mouth, just before it ducked, and slid backward into the water. The green froth closed over its head and slopped, and rippled, and then the gator was gone without a trace. Remy’s gaze tracked back and forth, searching for the reappearance of the three bumps farther out, but he didn’t see them.

“Oh my God,” Fallon wheezed behind him, still sprawled out in the grass. “Holy shit – holy Jesus – are you stupid , kid? Do you want to get eaten?”

Remy stood.

“Oh my God – I can’t believe – Jesus fuck, fuck this fucking monster-infested place! What kinda lizard needs to be that big? Fuck! If you’d gotten eaten, Boyle woulda killed me. Shit!”

Remy waded back through the weeds to the sand while Fallon continued to rant and steam like a boiling-over kettle on a stove. The water was still, now, save a few last ripples. He walked right up to its edge, and stared down into it, seeing nothing but his reflection, and the washed-out white of the sky above.

Then, movement. A bubble. It shivered up to the surface, and burst.

Remy sucked in a breath…

But it was only a school of minnows, mouthing at the muck the gator had stirred up.

“Are you kidding me?” Fallon grabbed his arm, just below his elbow, and yanked hard.

Remy bit down on the end of his tongue to keep from crying out, and had no choice but to turn and follow Fallon as he marched back up the steps to the deck that overlooked the pool. He stumbled, and Fallon jerked him up the next step. Pain burst in his arm, and he closed his eyes, and bit on his tongue until he tasted blood.

“Are you trying to die, you stupid little shit?” Fallon snapped. His voice was high, and tight, and sharp enough to pierce the bubble of pain that swelled up around Remy as his arm screamed in the man’s grip. “I swear to God–” He fell silent, and thankfully slackened his grip, when the rumble of an approaching engine reached them. “Jesus,” Fallon muttered, let him go completely, and started down the deck toward the side staircase that led around toward the front of the building. He paused, though, and glanced back. Aimed an unsteady finger at Remy in warning. His hair was flattened and flecked with dead grass, and there was a thick smudge of dirt on his cheek.

“Stay there. Stay away from the water . Do you understand me?”

Remy rubbed at his arm – the sharp pain had eased, but it throbbed, and ached, and he thought something might be really wrong with it – and nodded.

“Say it. Say it out loud.” Fallon was still breathing too hard, chest heaving, and his eyes were too big and white-rimmed. He was terrified, Remy saw, and didn’t know if it was of the alligator, or of whoever had just pulled up, gunning the engine so that it roared again and again.

“Okay,” Remy said. “I won’t go near the water.”

Fallon watched him another moment, then turned and continued around the building.

When he was gone, Remy turned back so he faced the water. It was glass-smooth, now, save the tiny plinks and plunks of dragonflies dipping to snatch water bugs.

I’m a good swimmer , Remy thought, and he was. His heart was still running rabbit-fast from fear and adrenaline after his near-miss with the gator.

But he was a good swimmer.

And Fallon, he’d just learned, was much more afraid of gators than he was.

They slept late. Later than they should have, Ava thought, the moment her eyes snapped open and she realized the sun was already bright and warm through the windows. She lay on her back, hips twisted to the side, toward Mercy, arms over her head and feet flexed at an odd angle. Her back felt like she’d fallen down a flight of stairs, and she couldn’t even blame it on pregnancy weight, because she wasn’t showing yet.

Beside her on the spread-open sleeping bag – it was far too hot to sleep with it zipped shut – Mercy snorted, face mashed into his pillow.

Ava turned her head to survey the other sleeping bags. Hers and Mercy’s was laid up on the bed, which was saggier and more painful than she remembered from their honeymoon. Maggie had elected to take the couch, and she was still curled up on her side there, draped with a moth-eaten blanket from the trunk at the foot of the bed. Toly, she saw with faint amusement, slept like a kid, starfished out in his underwear on top of his sleeping bag, long hair caught in his mouth. Devin had his hands folded over his chest like a corpse prepared for a funeral, and only the faint whistling of his nose gave proof of life.

The other sleeping bags were empty.

Slowly, careful not to wake Mercy, and her back flaring in teeth-gritting protest, she turned over, and slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed. She’d slept in her clothes, so she stepped into her unlaced boots, and retied her hair as she tiptoed across the floorboards and then let herself out on the porch.

There was a rickety wood bench on the ground just in front of the rail, and that was where Colin and Alex sat, drinking out of blue stoneware mugs. Reese, Tenny, and Gray were sparring.

Poor Gray was taking on both of them at once – but holding his own. She suspected Reese was going easy on his brother, but Tenny was relentless, insulting and instructing in the same breath.

“…you have to put your hand up here – no, idiot, like this–”

Alex sat nearest her, and turned his head at the sound of her boots on the steps. “Morning.”

“Morning.”

He offered his mug, and she accepted with a murmured thanks. Only to jolt when pink grapefruit juice swept across her tongue instead of the expected coffee.

“You’re not supposed to have coffee anyway,” he said, hint of a smile in his voice.

She flipped him the bird and handed the mug back.

His grin was tired, lazy, a white crescent against his sun-darkened face, and so Mercy in that moment that she blinked in surprise before turning back to the action.

Gray dodged a strike from Tenny, but turned in time for Reese’s strike to pull short just shy of chopping him in the jugular.

Tenny made an unhappy sound, and said, “You’re pulling your punches.” After a beat, Ava realized he was talking to Reese.

Who pulled his hand back, straightened, and said, in a too-innocent voice, “Do you want me to actually hurt him?”

“I want you to challenge him,” Tenny shot back hotly, and ran at Gray while he was distracted.

“No fair,” Ava called.

“Life’s not fair,” Tenny said.

Gray’s eyes bugged, but then, to everyone but Tenny’s delight, he gathered himself and turned a backward fall into a backhand spring, and landed lightly on the grass several body lengths away.

Colin gave a two-note, impressed whistle.

Alex clapped.

Tenny shot them two fingers before swiping a hand through his hair and turning back to Gray. “You got lucky that time, just because you–”

Alex leaned in closer and said, “Jesus, he’s like this all the time, isn’t he?”

“More or less. It’s worse with Gray. He has your classic deep-seated inferiority complex that he overcompensates for with a lot of…” She gestured to him, the way he was still ranting at Gray, hands waving around. “ That .” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I think he’s afraid Reese will decide a brother’s just as good as a husband and dump his ass.”

Without pausing for breath, Tenny rounded on her, and said, “Hey, stop making shit up. Can a brother suck his dick? I don’t think so. If anything, I have a superiority complex, and I–”

Reese had edged closer, unnoticed, and pressed a gentle hand over his mouth, stifling him.

Ava grinned, and Colin and Alex chuckled, and Tenny shot them double birds before shaking Reese off and lighting back into Gray.

The screen door, sagging thanks to the years of humid weather, scuffed over the floorboards, and Ava turned, expecting Mercy, but saw Toly instead, squinting at the brightness of the sun, dressed, now, and holding a mug of his own.

“Your man is up,” he offered by way of greeting, slurping coffee as he came down the steps. To the sparring party, he called, “Do you want to wear yourselves out before the day even starts?”

“Not all of us are drunk on nausea medication all the time,” Tenny returned, and Toly scowled.

Ava remounted the stairs and left them to their bickering.

Mercy was indeed up – sleep-rumpled and scratching idly at his stomach through his wifebeater while he stood over the stove. Maggie was up, too, folding up blankets and sleeping bags.

“Hi, sweetie,” she greeted, tiredly. “Coffee’s on – or, well.” She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe not.”

“Is there any juice besides red grapefruit?”

“There’s orange, baby,” Mercy said, gesturing with his spatula toward the fridge. It was a relic of the fifties, the sort of thing probably called an “ice box” in its day, but it, miraculously, still ran, and she found a jug of OJ inside.

“Was the power still on?” she asked as she poured herself a mugful.

“Nah.” Mercy scraped eggs onto a plate and then started cracking more into the pan. “The wires were still there, and there’s a generator, but I didn’t want to waste the gas on it. Devin was able to hook us back up to the transformer through the way.” He gestured again with the spatula toward the woods, and Ava had no idea how far “through the way” was, could only be glad of cold juice and the hum of the window AC unit.

Mercy stirred the eggs, and glanced back over his shoulder at Maggie, who’d moved on to tidying the couch cushions where she’d slept. She turned, caught Mercy’s gaze, then nodded and headed for the door. “I’ll go see what the guys are up to.”

“Stupid shit,” Ava called, and Maggie’s responding wave seemed to say of course .

When she was gone, Ava sidled closer, and Mercy’s arm lifted automatically so she could duck beneath it and wind both arms around his waist. She rested her temple on his chest and watched his other hand perfectly scramble eggs. “What’s up?” she asked, just because; there was a lot that was “up,” and none of it was good, and all of it had to be gnawing on his stomach worse than hers.

He hesitated a moment, spatula dragging back and forth, scraping the bottom of the skillet. She felt and heard him swallow, before he said, “This woman. Regina. Do you think she’s really Dee’s?”

She’d broken the news of Regina’s existence – and role in holding Alex’s mother hostage – outside last night, when he’d come to check on her during her first, and ill-timed bout of morning sickness. His smile, radiant after hearing the news of her pregnancy, had frozen, and then cracked. For one awful moment, she hadn’t known if he was going to scream, sob, or simply dive into the water and swim far, far away from the information she’d delivered. But then, like a slowly collapsing bridge, his expression had fallen, and tucked into itself, and he’d gone somber, massaging at the spot between his brows as though it pained him. “Okay,” he'd said. “Okay, we’ll…we’ll deal with it in the morning.” And they’d gone back inside, and despite Alex’s knowing look, no one had broached the subject after catching a look at Mercy’s expression.

Now, though, it was time to face the reality of Regina, and what she’d done, and what was to be done with her. Before heading out into the swamp in their borrowed boat, they’d stashed her safely at the NOLA clubhouse, where she could be barricaded and guarded, and where Alex’s mom, Tina, could catch a few safe hours’ sleep, too nervous to stay in her own home overnight.

Ava rubbed at Mercy’s stomach and said, “I think she believes she is. Only a DNA test could prove that she’s your – that she’s related to you,” she corrected quickly. Sister wasn’t going to be a word he ever used in this case. “But I think if she was lying about who she is, or who she thinks she is, she would have spilled her guts when Tenny shot out her kneecap.”

“Probably.” He had to take his arm from around her shoulders to dump the eggs onto the plate. “Can you hand me one of those cans of SPAM?”

She plucked one from the shelf and said, “If you don’t want to see her–”

“No. I think I need to.”

“She didn’t say much, yesterday. I think she was going into shock. Alex patched up her knee temporarily, and Tenny had some morphine tabs. Bob agreed not to give her any more this morning so she’d be clear-headed enough for us to talk to her.”

“What did she say yesterday?” he asked, head bent over the counter as he sliced the SPAM into thin flats that he then slapped down into the skillet.

“There was a lot of cussing and screaming and crying. Then she said, ‘It’s Harlan’s fault, it’s all him, don’t hurt me !’ Like she wasn’t taking hostages and shit.”

She leaned back against the counter and watched his profile, searching for a reaction, finding only the blank concentration of a chef committed to his meal.

In that moment, she could have happily strangled Regina. (Maybe not just in that moment.) Of all the people Boyle could have gone to…of all the people they could have needed to question to get to Boyle…

But that was the point, wasn’t it? That was Boyle’s whole play: getting Mercy. Devastating him physically and emotionally, playing with his psyche, driving him crazy in every way he could.

If she could go back to yesterday, if she could just look before she crossed the street toward Tina Bonfils’s house, she could have shot straight through Boyle’s windshield and ended all of this.

Except…she wouldn’t have known where to look for Remy.

Frustration swelled up from the pit of her uneasy stomach; filled her throat, pushed hard on the back of her tongue. She closed her eyes and swallowed against it, but it had brought the tide with it, that awful surge of black waves that wanted to drown her.

They might never…

If they didn’t…

If Boyle was…

Something warm and soft pressed against her forehead, and she opened her eyes to realize it was Mercy, kissing her. He held a tin camp plate set with a modest portion of eggs, toast, and fried SPAM, as much as she could likely manage given her current state.

“Eat,” he said, softly, as he pulled back, and gathered up more plates to take to the others outside.

~*~

Devin had been out in the boat, and pulled back up to the dock while they were finishing breakfast on the porch. He leaped lithely up onto the dock, and tied off the boat like he’d been doing it all his life, further proof of his wild and storied background. He carried a thermos, and hoisted it in greeting as he walked up to the lawn. “Three of your lines are taut, big man. Strung tight as a guitar under the water.”

Mercy nodded. “That’s three caught, then. They’ll keep ‘til later.” He added his plate to the stack of dirties Gray was collecting. “We’re heading into town, now.”

Within ten minutes, they’d gathered what they needed, dosed Toly with Dramamine, and piled into Mercy’s boat to make for dry land. Ava rode up front, where the breeze of their passage flowed up over the boat’s low windshield and ruffled her hair. It wasn’t cooling, because there was nothing cool about the swamp in high summer, but the air flow eased some of her nausea. This was a much larger, finer boat than the narrow little thing Mercy had piloted on their honeymoon, but, somehow, she felt less safe in it. Like they were a big, white target gliding over the water, too-obvious and too-loud. She scanned each swag of moss, each low-hanging limb, each suspicious clump of yucca up high on the shore for signs of snipers or binoculars.

They reached the marina unscathed, though, where they’d left their vehicles.

Alex hesitated when they were halfway across the parking lot. “Actually…” he began, when Colin asked what he was doing. “I want to catch up with Dandridge and see if he’s learned anything new.”

“Too chickenshit to go back to the clubhouse?” Colin asked.

“No. I left my mother there, for God’s sake.”

“Yeah, but your mother wasn’t the one getting the dirty looks,” Tenny pointed out, grinning. He turned to Mercy and said, “You should have seen him. Shaking in his boots.”

“Shut up.”

“Fine, go,” Mercy said with a waving off gesture. “While you’re at it, get Dale to run Regina Carroll through the system and see what he can find out about her.”

Alex nodded, and held out his hand to Tenny. “Can I have the Jeep keys?”

When Tenny only gave him a narrow, suspicious look, Reese reached down into his pocket – “Hey, you wanker” – and tossed them over.

“Do you need me?” Ava heard Colin ask Mercy, quietly. “I feel like someone should keep tabs on him.”

Mercy nodded. “Yeah, go. Make sure he doesn’t go running back to his fed buddies.”

The rest of them weren’t all going to fit in the Rover, so they unloaded the bikes in the trailer. Mercy, Gray, and Toly mounted up. Ava leaned in to kiss him, before he started his engine. “See you there.” Devin jangled the keys and said, “Ladies?” He turned an extra wide smile on Tenny.

“Piss up a rope, old man,” Tenny said, without any animosity, and called shotgun via launching himself into the front passenger seat.

When they were on the road, Devin following along behind the bikes, Mercy leading the way toward the clubhouse, he said, “Now, Mrs. Big Man.”

“Ava,” she supplied, grinning despite herself.

“Oh, I know your name, love. But Mrs. Big Man is more fun to say.”

“What am I, then?” Maggie asked, chuckling.

“Mrs. Boss Man, of course.”

The parking lot, when they arrived at the clubhouse, was packed . A full cadre of bikes slanted across the width of the porch, and trucks, and vans, and cars jammed in nose-to-tail across the gravel of the lot. The house itself, and its property was much smaller than Dartmoor, and for a minute, she thought they’d have to park along the grassy shoulder of the road. But a Dog stepped out through the gates, spoke to Mercy and the others, and then walked back to the window of the Rover. With a little surprise, and a little more amusement, she noted that he rounded the nose of the car and approached her window, rather than Devin’s.

She recognized him from yesterday, a sunbaked, good-natured Cajun with freckles across the bridge of his nose and a premature shock of gray along his dark hairline. Whiplash.

“Hey, Whip,” she said when she buzzed down the window. “Full house?”

He grinned. “Morning. They all turned out to see your man.”

Of course they had, because he had always been beloved by all his brothers, no matter the chapter, no matter the circumstances. She smiled, and wanted to cry, too, and instead asked, “Is there room for us to park?”

“Yes, ma’am. Y’all come on in and I’ll wave you into a spot we’ve got saved.”

There was indeed a space available for the Rover, right up close to the porch. Neither Devin nor Tenny made a smart remark about her being special, or getting preferential treatment. In fact, a quick glance proved they’d both gone unusually sober. There was a strange, vibrating hush in the air, and they could feel it, too.

Mercy parked fast, and came to open her door for her; reached his hand in, and she took it, and let him help her out of the Rover, though she wasn’t unsteady on her feet. It was for him, she knew; the arm he slipped around her waist, the way he held her against his side as they walked for the door, was about him needing support. She put her arm around him in turn and kept their sides pressed together, despite the heat, and the way her shirt clung to the sweat on her skin.

The strange hush that had begun when Whip waved them through the gates followed them up onto the porch and through the door, into the clubhouse. A crowd of Dogs was gathered, and their faces lit up with a near-reverent light when they caught sight of Mercy.

This was a living legend that had been born here. That had served his stint as prospect here, and earned his first patches here; he’d sewn them to his cut right here in this very room. This was their Merci , who they’d dubbed Mercy, for all the mercy he’d never dispensed, but who was so full of love, enough to make a smaller man sick with it.

Pride swelled within her, for all that he’d overcome, and all that he’d been before, and all that he was now. A pride so sweet and buoyant that it finally crowded out the dark tides that had plagued her for weeks.

“Hey, brother.”

“My man.”

“Welcome home, Felix.”

They stepped forward, one after the next, to shake his hand, and embrace him, and Mercy did it all one-armed, because he refused to let go of her; which meant the Dogs then turned to greet her, with deferential ducks of their heads, and soft “ma’am”s.

Bob was the last to make his way forward, and he put his big arms around both of them. Pressed close, Ava could hear his murmur to Mercy of, “You ready for this?”

“Yeah,” Mercy said, but his arm tightened around her.

~*~

Yesterday, they’d left the decision about where to keep Regina up to Bob, knowing that he understood the magnitude of her identity. So she and Mercy followed him, down the back hall, and then out the back door. The rear lot was even weedier and more jungle-like than the front, pines shading the heaps of kudzu and the waving stands of Johnson grass. There was a shed butted up against the fence, windowless, and with a rusted tin roof. A narrow track beaten through the grass led to it, and when they reached its door, Ava spotted the two shiny new Master locks securing it, top and bottom.

Bob produced the key, fitted it into the top lock, and then turned back to regard them, a silent question in his gaze. Mercy nodded, and he turned the key. Once, then again. The shed door came open with a squeal of old hinges, and out rolled a staggering wave of heat flavored with old mildew, and fresh urine. It was dim, the only light thin stripes of eyewatering yellow through the gaps in the shed’s siding, some of which, Ava noted with alarm, were large enough to wriggle fingertips through. With enough time, and enough leverage, a healthy adult could likely work a board loose, and then another, and another…

But as her eyes adjusted, she saw that hadn’t been possible, because there was a support post in the center of the shed, and Regina’s hands were pulled back behind her, and chained together around it.

She sat on her ass in the dirt, her once-bright dress dirt-streaked and rucked up to reveal streaks in the orange bottled tan on her thighs. Her shoes were gone, bare feet dusted with dirt where they were stuck out before her. Her bum knee was heavily swaddled in white bandages, and beneath the sharp ammonia tang of piss – there was a bucket in the corner, Ava saw, and figured she’d been forced to suffer the indignity of someone helping her relieve her bladder – she caught a metallic whiff of blood.

Regina’s hair lay in snarls over her shoulders, damp with sweat and greasy at the roots. She didn’t lift her head until after the door was open and they’d filled the threshold, and then she did so slowly, as though her neck wasn’t strong enough to support the motion.

But Ava could find no pity, and certainly no empathy.

And Regina’s eyes, when they found Ava’s, glittered with hatred, still, despite her ordeal. It was a look Ava had seen before, glaring up at her from a sickbed pillow.

She was Dee’s daughter all right. Right down to the wicked heart of her.

Bob said, “We tried to feed her, but she spit in our faces. She’s had water, though, and no morphine today.”

Sweat, Ava saw, was pouring down her face. Some of it was the heat, but most of it was likely pain. She was shivering, too, hair rustling like restless snake tails across her chest. She bared her teeth at sight of them, and that was pain, too.

Mercy released Ava, finally. He didn’t let go so much as his arm flopped away and down to his side, as though it had gone numb. He stepped forward, shoulders lifting higher and higher, until he stood directly over Regina, boots straddling one of her bare feet. From behind, Ava couldn’t read his expression, but she could see the tension streaking down every line of him, the absolute, deadly stillness of each muscle. The only movement was the rise and fall of his ribs as he breathed, but that was silent, and slow.

He wasn’t shocked.

Wasn’t wavering and heartbroken.

He was furious .

The moment Ava realized that, she realized what she needed to do. For their family, and for Remy, but for Mercy, too, on a purely personal level.

She stepped up beside him, and slid her hand into his, interlacing their fingers. “Let me talk to her,” she whispered, but loud enough for Regina to hear.

He didn’t respond.

Regina’s lips closed over her teeth, and she sat up straighter with a grunt of effort, head tipping back against the support post so she could peer at Ava through low-lidded eyes.

“You go back inside with Bob, and I’ll find out what she knows.”

When he still didn’t respond, she turned to him, and found him already staring at her, his eyes wider and wilder than she’d seen since…she didn’t know when. A long time. He looked scared . And when his hand tightened on hers, she knew that he was scared for her. He didn’t want her here in this shed with Regina, wanted to spare her, and shield her, and keep her far, far away, just as he’d wanted to with Dee when they were first married.

“Come here,” Ava murmured, and tugged his hand; towed him back out into the sunshine. “Hey.” She took his other hand, and stood opposite him. “Listen to me: I want you to let me do this.”

“Ava–”

“I want to do this for you .”

“No,” he said, but not very firmly, and his eyes tracked back and forth across her face, glazed and febrile. “I can’t let you…be in there…with that…” He shook his head. “It’s my mother. It’s my problem. I don’t want you to…” He trailed off when she squeezed his hands hard enough that both their knuckles turned white.

“Baby,” she said. “I’m not…” She started to say afraid , but bit it back. Met his gaze head on, and said, “I was with you in Dee’s house eight years ago. I wasn’t here when you were growing up, but I only needed to see her one day to know what she did to you back then. I don’t know what that’s like, baby. I always knew my mom loved me, and I know she loves me still. I know that Dee…” She bit her lip, not wanting to say more in front of Bob. I know your mama hated you, and I know it hurts, still; that your hatred was born of pain .

Changing tack, she said, “As awful as she was, I’ve always been glad that you didn’t kill her with your own two hands, even if you wished you had. I wouldn’t want you to live with that on your conscience, just like I don’t want you to squeeze information out of your sister.”

His throat jerked as he swallowed, and his voice came out rough-edged. “That thing in there isn’t my sister.”

She didn’t correct him, because she knew, by the paleness of his face, that he’d recognized Dee in her, and that he rejected his relation to her so violently that he couldn’t allow himself to accept it, at least not out loud.

“And she knows where Boyle took Remy, and–” He swallowed again, and Ava didn’t know if he could continue. His hands flexed in her grip, tendons leaping in his forearms, and she was afraid, for a moment, that he would rip away from her, storm into the shed, and do something irreversible.

“I know she does,” she said, firmly, “which is why she needs to be questioned, and it’s why I want to be the one to question her.” She leaned in closer, and whispered, “Please, Felix. Let me do this. I can do this . And I know you want to protect me, but you don’t have to, not from something as pathetic as her, and I can handle myself.” She forced a smile. “Look who I’m married to: you think I don’t know my way around a knife?”

He let go of her with one hand – but only so he could wipe it down his face. His eyes were dry, but a sheen of sweat had sprouted on his cheeks and forehead. “I don’t want you to have to,” he said, softly. He sounded lost.

“Somebody has to,” she prodded, gently. “And no one’s gonna ask more specific, or tougher questions than Remy’s mama.”

He didn’t agree right away, but he drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and then kept breathing, open-mouthed and unsteady.

“I don’t – I always have a secretary,” he said, a last-ditch stall effort, but she could see the way he was unbending toward the whole notion, that he was going to let her do this, and was so relieved her knees felt wobbly.

Before she could say that she would go inside and find one, easy as anything no need for him to worry, a voice spoke up. “I’ll do it.”

They both turned, and there stood Gray in his prospect cut, pale hair curling and sticking to the sweat on his forehead, his expression calm. Reassuring. He held Mercy’s tackle box in one hand, and Ava thought he must have gone back to the car for it.

“I’ll help Ava,” he said.

Ava could have kissed him. She’d been planning on fetching Reese or Tenny, but she wasn’t sure Mercy’s shoulders would have dropped with such a sudden release.

“See?” she said. “Gray’s gonna help me. We’ll be fine.”

He nodded at Gray, and then dropped his head, was still another long moment. Finally, he drew in an unsteady breath, stepped in quickly to kiss her forehead, and then turned her loose and walked away. He seemed to sink down into himself, growing impossibly smaller and smaller as he walked around the side of the clubhouse, and eventually disappeared.

Ava took a deep breath, and shoved her worry for him aside. For the moment.

She turned to Gray, and held out her hand. He joined her, and passed over the tackle box.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Whenever you are.”

Together, they turned and went into the shed.

~*~

Whether or not it was genetic – and Alex was convinced now more than ever that it was – the thrill of violence that had gripped him in the theater parking lot amidst blazing gunfire and dying enemies utterly abandoned him when it came to Regina Carroll. When he thought of harming a woman – even one who’d held a gun on his mother, even one who’d been involved in the kidnapping of a child – his stomach shriveled up and sweat bloomed beneath his clothes.

Several miles from the clubhouse, his belly began to unclench. But as he relaxed, he began to note the way Colin was studying him from the passenger seat.

“Stop,” he finally said.

Colin, of course, did not stop. In fact, he twisted further in his seat so his shoulder was braced against the window, head turned entirely in Alex’s direction. “I’m trying to decide if you still might puss out on us.”

Alex was too tired at this point to be mad about it. He sighed. “You understand I killed – I murdered people the other night.”

“The fact that you just said murdered isn’t disproving my theory.”

“What theory?”

Colin shrugged. “That you’re happy enough to go along with things – but at some point, you’re going to be asked to do something you can’t, and then you’re gonna go running back to the FBI as fast as you can go.”

Alex bit back his initial response, because it was clear, at this point, that both his brothers were trying to get a rise out of him. “Again, I think all the murdering more than proves my willingness,” he said, flatly.”

“But you don’t like what’s gonna happen to Regina?”

“Why? What’s gonna happen to Regina.”

Colin didn’t grace that with a proper response, merely scoffed.

“I know what Mercy does for the club. I’m not a moron.”

“No, just a gentleman.” He said it like an insult.

“Sorry I’m not as comfortable with torture as you,” Alex muttered.

It was quiet a beat. Two. Enough beats that Alex skated a glance to the passenger seat, and found Colin facing forward, arms crossed, frowning. “Why do you think I came with you?” he finally asked.

“Oh, gee, I dunno, ‘cause I’m a traitor?” Alex said, but without any heat.

Colin shook his head. “I don’t like that shit either. I’m not…” He scratched at his jaw, day-old bristles rasping. “You ask anyone in the club, and they’ll tell you I’m the asshole, and Mercy’s the nice guy. He’s a big teddy bear, and I’m just a jerkoff who they put up with ‘cause I come in handy sometimes.

“But Mercy…I’ve never met anyone who does what he does and who isn’t, like, you know, a psychopathic serial killer.”

Alex didn’t point out that, technically , Mercy was a serial killer. Partly because he knew what Colin meant: Mercy wasn’t out stalking innocent women; didn’t get hard tailing someone home from work, and slipping into their house while they slept, and waking them with a knife at their throat. But mostly because, after knowing him for this long, after sitting across from him while he cooked, and prattled on about the heat of the pan and the fat content of the butter, it was impossible to classify Mercy amongst the kinds of monsters he’d spent his career profiling. As an agent, he’d been trained to think of life as life, of murder as murder; if you took another man’s life outside the line of duty, you were a criminal and an inhuman killer, plain and simple.

But it wasn’t that simple. A life wasn’t a life, and killing wasn’t the same as the premeditated, cold-blooded murder of innocents.

“In the parking lot,” he said, and his tongue felt dry and wooden in his mouth. “With those guys Boyle sent…I was…” Oh, just say it. Say it felt good, say you liked it . He swallowed with difficulty. “I think it’d be really easy for me to get used to that sort of thing.”

He heard the rustle of cloth as Colin shrugged. “Sure. You spend time with this crew long enough, and you stop thinking about dialing 911 and start making sure you’ve got enough ammo. But most of the guys don’t – can’t – do what Mercy does. He’s a breed all his own.” Colin said it with a marveling tone.

“We’re his brothers, though.”

“Yeah, and lucky for us, Remy passed on a nice damn head of hair.” He raked his hand through his own, so the short, thick black locks fluffed and gleamed in the glare of sunlight coming through the windshield. Remy’s half-Cherokee heritage showed the most notably in their hair, deepest black that turned blue in certain light, heavy, and slick, and glass-shiny.

“But we’re not all the same, you know,” Colin added, almost gently. “The three of us. I’m me, and you’re you, and Mercy’s…something else entirely.” The wondering tone, Alex noted with a glance, had manifested into a wide-eyed look. “Don’t worry.” He grinned, a little nastily. “You’re not gonna, like, turn into him.”

“I wasn’t worried about that,” he said, sourly, but on the inside, a long-held tightness eased.

Alex had called ahead, so when they pulled into the precinct parking lot, Dandridge was waiting for them beneath the steel awning that shaded the front doors. He lifted a hand in greeting, and when they joined him, he said, “Let’s go to my office.” They walked that way, through the cool, white-painted halls without speaking, and once inside, Dandridge locked the door, and then closed the blinds.

“Can’t be too careful right now,” he said, and now that they were inside, under the harsh tube lights, he saw that Dandridge had sizable sweat rings under each arm. He produced a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face before sitting down behind the desk. He produced a small key from a different pocket, and used it to unlock his top desk drawer, from which he drew a file folder.

Alex traded a look with Colin, who shrugged with his eyebrows.

Dandridge opened the folder on a deep breath and said, “Okay, so. You both went to public school?” He flicked them a cursory glance.

“Yes.”

“Yeah.”

“So did Boyle. And, Colin, he was one of your classmates.” He turned the folder upside down and slid it across the desk toward them so they could lean over it together.

To the left was a photocopied yearbook page in black and white. Senior portraits. Boyle looked so different, that if not for his name printed beneath his photo, Alex would never have recognized him. He was scrawny-skinny, with ears that stuck out like mug handles, and an unfortunate haircut that looked self- done with kitchen shears. Pimples lined his jaw, and his eyes bore a frightened, rabbit-in-a-snare sort of look undercut with the kind of vacant anger Alex had seen in the school photos of every mass killer he’d ever tracked.

To the right was his school file: proof that Boyle had entered the city of New Orleans public school system at the age of seven, and proceeded all the way through graduation. His grades were average, and he didn’t have any disciplinary action on record: no suspensions or time spent in alternative school.

“Shit,” Colin said beside him, and then he stabbed at Boyle’s photo with his pointed finger, sending the page skidding and nearly bashing Alex in the nose in the process.

Alex reared back. “What?”

“That kid – that kid, he–”

“Who, Boyle?”

“I didn’t know it was Boyle.” His voice had taken on a high, frantic edge. “He never said what his name was, and I didn’t ask – I wasn’t friends with the little creep.”

When Alex looked at him, he found his shoulders cocked at a defensive angle, his face pale.

“I didn’t know,” he repeated, and Alex sent a look to Dandridge, who was watching Colin with shrewd, narrowed eyes.

“Didn’t know what?” Alex asked. “Clearly, you met him.”

“No, it wasn’t – I didn’t meet him. I saw him once, and I only remember it because it was so fucking weird.”

“Not weird enough for you to mention months ago when Boyle first showed up?”

“I didn’t know it was him! He looks totally different now, and it was ages ago!”

Dandridge held out a soothing hand. “Nobody’s blaming you for anything. Just tell us what you can remember.” It was exactly the sort of thing all officers used on frightened witnesses and children, and Colin was panicked badly enough that he didn’t seem to notice

He scrubbed both hands down his face and said, “Oh, fuck .”

“Colin,” Alex prodded, ungently, and Dandridge sent him a cool it look.

Colin dropped his hands, and his expression was haunted. He looked like he’d run here on foot, wan and sweating and spacy. “Fuck,” he said again, and his gaze returned to the yearbook photo. “It was nothing – it was barely even a full minute. I was running late for U.S. History, and this kid – Boyle – came up to me at my locker, and his eyes were all” – he gestured at his own in a telescoping way that suggested instability – “and he asked about–” He froze, hands still suspended in front of him, and his face got somehow paler. “Shit, he asked about Dee. He was all, ‘Is Felix Lécuyer’s mom a whore?’”

Alex felt the blood drain out of his own face. Even in high school, an awkward and doubtless unpopular seventeen-year-old version of Boyle had already been searching for information on Mercy. Ava had described him as a stalker, and he’d been stalking Mercy for a while .

“Jesus Christ,” Alex breathed, “that’s how he knew about Regina.”

“But…” Colin’s gaze shifted wildly between them. He pushed both hands through his hair, and then linked them behind his neck. “He was still in school. He wasn’t a fed, and at that point, Mercy hadn’t even done anything!”

Dandridge leaned forward to check the dates on the file, and said, “He was already patched in by then.”

“Yeah,” Colin said, “but he hadn’t–” He checked himself, and glanced around the room, as though searching for a hidden camera or bug. “Met his mom’s boyfriend yet,” he finished, head tipped to a meaningful angle.

“I don’t think that matters,” Alex said, thoughts spinning, ramping up faster and faster. The professional part of his brain had kicked into high gear, and left him blessedly analytical, so he didn’t get sucked into Colin’s panic vortex. “At this point, he wasn’t thinking about arresting him. He was trying to learn about him. Find – find some sort of inroad.”

“If that’s what he asked you, I think it’s clear he already knew what Dee Lécuyer did for a living,” Dandridge said. “He was just looking for confirmation.”

“What the fuck is wrong with this guy?” Colin asked, half-enraged, half-bewildered.

“He’s obsessed,” Alex said. “It started early, is my best guess, maybe during puberty, when his body was a wreck of hormones. He saw Mercy – I don’t know, somewhere. With these sorts of attachments – parasocial relationships – the obsessed party can build an entire fictional friendship or romantic partnership based on a single encounter. Almost bumping into someone at the store; passing each other on the street. In the case of celebrity worship, they watch all of that person’s movies, or shows, or music videos, whatever. With regular people in their lives, things usually escalate: the obsessed party tries to orchestrate a meeting, or at the very least finds a way to observe the target of their obsession.”

“Spy, you mean,” Colin said. “Boyle spied on him.”

“He could have, certainly. He must have learned who Dee was and what she did somehow.”

“But why ?”

“There’s no logical reasoning behind it. For most people, admiring someone from afar is never more than a fleeting fantasy. Wondering ‘what if.’ But when someone is as obsessed as Boyle, it becomes a dominating factor of that person’s daily life. He would have thought of Mercy constantly. Constructed elaborate fantasies. Sought to become a physical part of his life in any way–”

“The club,” Colin said, jerking upright in his chair.

“What?”

“Boyle found Regina through Dee, obviously. But if he stalked Mercy long enough, then he knew he was a Lean Dog. If you were a young guy obsessed with someone in a motorcycle club…”

Alex sat up straighter, too. “You’d try to prospect.”

“Yeah. Shit.”

“Bob’ll have to help on that front,” Dandridge said, and reached for the file.

Alex stayed him with a hand, and snapped a photo of both sheets, first, then shut it and slid it back across the desk himself. “Speaking of Regina Carroll, did you run her name?”

“Yeah.” Dandridge let out a big breath and his brows jumped in an eloquent gesture. He turned to his computer, and clicked the mouse. “She entered the foster system at thirteen – mother, adoptive mother, whatever she was – died of cancer, and there was no father or other relatives in the picture – and was placed in sixteen different homes before she aged out at eighteen.”

“Christ,” Alex muttered.

“She’s been arrested seven times since, but never convicted. Possession, drunk and disorderly, solicitation, solicitation, and petty theft. Somehow” – he made a face – “all her arrests wound up getting heard by the same judge, and he dismissed the charges on each.”

“One guess how she managed that,” Colin said.

“Yeah. So she’s never been what anyone would call a good girl. Obviously, I can’t confirm whether she’s related to Mercy without a DNA sample.” He glanced between them, expectantly.

“I don’t know if we can swing that,” Alex said. “And, honestly, I’m not sure it matters.”

~*~

It didn’t take long. Ava hadn’t figured that it would. She had met stone-cold, stoic women in her life, but she’d known straight off that Regina wasn’t one of them.

She pressed the pump on the soap dispenser once, twice, three times, and then lathered her hands beneath the hot tap. It wasn’t scented, gently-cleansing soap like she kept at her own sinks at home, but tough, industrial-grade stuff, designed to fight motor oil, grit and grime. It worked beautifully on blood, even under her nails, when she scraped pink suds carefully beneath each one.

Gray had been perfect help, handing her items from the box before she could think to ask for them, silent suggestions she gladly took. He had a small, spiral notebook, and the notes he’d taken were printed in small, tidy block letters, easily legible, but coded so that they didn’t sound like the forced confessions of a tortured woman. When Ava was done, and she knew she’d learned all that Regina could offer, he’d started wiping down Mercy’s tools, and nodded toward the notebook he’d set on the window ledge. “I’ll take care of her,” he said, still in that calm, almost-soothing voice. “If I need help, I’ll ask Bob.”

Ava had pocketed the notebook, thanked him with a look and a nod, and come inside to wash her hands. She wanted them to be clean when she went in search of Mercy.

When the water ran clear, and her nails were tidy and translucent, she washed the sweat from her face, finger-combed and retied her ponytail, and then drank great, gulping mouthfuls of cold water directly from the faucet, head tipped under its spout. She regarded her reflection critically. She looked tired, ragged, really, but there was no evidence on her person of what she’d done.

Her mind, she found, when she probed it, was neither locked up with shock, nor screaming in horror. She felt the same sort of urgent numbness she’d been feeling since Remy was taken. Guilt over the past half-hour didn’t factor into it at all.

She passed through the common room, where Maggie was sitting down with the rest of their party, all of them eating sandwiches and drinking sweet tea. There were three empty chairs at their table, three full plates, three sweating glasses of tea, for her, for Mercy, for Gray. But Maggie didn’t try to make her sit down and eat, yet. “He’s on the porch,” she said, quietly, and that was where Ava headed.

Mercy was sitting down on the far end of it, on a wooden bench hollowed out in three places by decades of denim-clad butts. He had one of his knives – a small one – in his hand, and was attempting to pick a splinter from the palm of the other, brow pinched in concentration.

Ava smiled to herself. For all of his carefulness and gentleness, his hyper-awareness of the size of his hands, he’d never been any good at removing his own splinters.

She claimed the seat beside him and cupped her hand under his. “Here, let me.”

He passed over the knife without hesitation, and Ava leaned in close to get a better look. It was a fresh one, long and jagged, edged with gray paint that proved it had come from the weathered porch rail just in front of them. It had embedded itself fully, and though no part of it stuck out helpfully, she could see the point of entry clear enough.

“Okay. Hold on.” She folded his knife and set it on his thigh so she could pull her own, smaller knife from her boot. It had a narrow, fierce tip which she fitted into the entry point on his palm, and then very, very carefully sliced through the topmost layer of skin all down the length of the splinter. As ever, Mercy didn’t flinch, and she managed to lift the skin without drawing blood and then flick the splinter neatly away with the point of the knife.

Afterward, she brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed the groove in his palm. When she looked up at him, he was smiling at her, crooked and wrong. He didn’t ask how it went – she thought he was afraid to know the answer – so she volunteered the information freely, bringing her other hand up so she could trace the splinter’s path with her fingertips.

“The bad news,” she said, and realized once she’d started that she was speaking to him in the same voice she used on the kids, low, and slow, and soothing. It seemed appropriate in the moment. “Is that Regina doesn’t know where Remy is currently. But,” she added, quickly, when his eyes sparked with rage and defeat, “she did have some things to say about Boyle.

“Remy was at Sun House,” she said, and Mercy’s hand closed around hers, snapped shut like a bear trap. “With Boyle and Fallon. They got jumpy and moved him yesterday morning, before–” Now it was her turn to stumble, and it was her throat that closed, while his grip stayed tight on her hands, as she thought about ships in the night, and missed chances, and the stupidity of struggling to drag herself out of her hotel bed because she was tired . While she and Tenny had been making smart remarks about Isabella Duet at Café du Monde, Boyle had been shoving her boy into a car. “Before we arrived,” she finished.

“They only spent one night there, but she’d known they were coming from the moment he left Knoxville.”

His gaze sharpened, and his grip eased. Focusing on the logistics helped to drag you back from flailing panic, she knew well. “He’d been in contact with her before.”

“For several months. She couldn’t remember exactly, just said before Mardi Gras. Said he came to see her at Sun House, and refused to take no for an answer when the girl at the door told him she didn’t see clients personally anymore. When she finally agreed to at least meet with him, he introduced himself and said he needed her help bringing down a, quote, ‘highly dangerous fugitive from justice.’ The idiot really thought Boyle was deputizing her or some shit. Like no one could help him bring down the big bad wolf except the hooker with a heart of gold.”

“Before Mardi Gras,” he mused. “That was back when Alex got called in.”

“When the bodies were first discovered, yeah.” She shook her head. “I bet Dandridge wishes he could go back and unring that bell.” Didn’t they all? “But, anyway, she was fully onboard. When Boyle left town, he kept in touch, kept telling her he was going to need her soon.”

“Did she already know who I was?”

“Yeah.” Here, she sighed. “I don’t know what her intentions were, but Barbara told her about you originally. Over the years, she entertained more than a few Lean Dogs, and she asked some questions. Covertly, of course. Before yesterday, none of the NOLA Dogs knew she was your – that she was related to Dee,” she amended, hastily. “So she already felt a certain way about you, and then Boyle came into the picture–”

“She never stood a chance,” he said.

“No.” For her part, Ava felt no remorse, but she searched Mercy’s face for some sign that he did. He was tight-mouthed and grim, but he didn’t look sorry. Not about Regina.

“Boyle didn’t tell her where they were going,” she said, “but the night before, when he was” – she swallowed a sudden surge of nausea, imagination too vivid on certain details – “ with her , after, he started talking. Mostly about you, and she didn’t tune in for all of it, but she was able to learn a few things.

“I was right about him stalking you,” she said, with no joy for having been proven correct. “She said he went from being proud of himself, smoking a cigarette, to sitting up and shaking. He dropped the cigarette and she said the bed would have caught fire if she didn’t snatch it up. He got this, in her words, ‘freaky’ look in his eyes, and said, best as she could recall, ‘All those years watching him. Him rejecting me, and now…now this. Now I’m in control.’”

“Watching me?” Mercy said, incredulous. “Watching me where? And rejecting ? I don’t…the only man who’s ever hit on me is Ian, and he wasn’t serious about it. I never rejected …” Slowly, his eyes widened.

The roar of an engine drew both their attentions, and Ava turned her head to see the Jeep skidding back into the parking lot, fish-tailing in the gravel. Alex was behind the wheel, and threw it in park right in front of the porch, behind the row of bikes, and scrambled out with his phone held aloft.

“Guys! Guys, you’ve gotta see this! Boyle was–”

“The clearing,” Mercy said, and his face went white. “Shit.”

“What clearing?” Ava asked.

Colin joined Alex at the nose of the Jeep and they came up the stairs together, shoulders so wide they almost got stuck. Alex looked urgent, but Colin looked like Mercy: like he’d seen a ghost.

“The little fucker went to school with me and I didn’t even remember . I never even knew his name .” Colin snatched the phone from Alex and shoved it into Mercy’s hand.

The screen was filled with a photo that looked like it had come out of a yearbook: the cheap tux, the velvet blue backdrop, the sad attempt at airbrushing away acne spots.

“This is Boyle?” Ava asked, and then she saw the name beneath the photo that confirmed it. “Shit, he looks nothing like that now.”

In the years between his senior portrait and his jackbooted arrival in Knoxville, he’d clearly had dental work, had his ears pinned back, grown into his face, and developed a rigorous fitness routine. Stunned herself, Ava couldn’t blame Mercy or Colin for forgetting they’d seen him before.

“It was nothing, it was so much nothing, it was one conversation – not even a conversation! Like, two sentences,” Colin said, hands thrown up in supplication, surrender, or both.

“What was nothing, Colin?” Ava asked.

“He talked to me – I didn’t know! I didn’t – but he talked to me. At school. We were in the same grade, and one day this kid came up to me in the hallway – and I’d never met him before! And–”

“ Colin ,” she said, again using her Mother Voice.

“This dorky fucking kid came up to me and asked if Mercy’s mom was a whore,” he finished with a huff. “I’d never seen him before, and I never saw him after, but when I saw that picture…” He gestured to the phone.

Alex looked to Mercy. “Colin said you guys used to hang out and swap dirty magazines in some clearing out in the swamp.”

“Yeah.” Mercy gazed at the phone another minute, then passed it back, jaw set, tendons leaping in the side of his throat. His eyes had gone shark-black and flat. “And then he prospected, and he said his name was Hank.” His throat jerked. “And I told him to get fucking lost, because he was an idiot wannabe.”