Abandoned

“So … you wanted us to find you?”

“On my terms, but, yes. More precisely, I wanted you to find Eric Kellerman and think it was me. That would allow me to retire unincarcerated.”

It all shivers into place. The discrepancies in the profile. The notes. Letting Heather go intact, grabbing me. These weren’t accidents; they were planned, purposeful anomalies.

“Kidnapping you was key,” she continues, “as I knew it would provide motivation like nothing else.”

I press the silencer into Mercy’s forehead, hard. My hand shakes and my heart thunders. “So all that— everything you did to me—it was just for show?” My voice is too loud, almost a shout.

“Quiet, boss woman,” Kirby murmurs. “Don’t wake the neighbors.”

Mercy gazes up at me, unafraid. “It needed to be authentic.”

“And Leo?” I ask, the gun trembling in my hand. “Why him?”

She shrugs. “More incentive. When I found out who he was and what he was doing, I decided to utilize him as well.”

My stomach heaves, and I feel momentarily faint.

If…

I try to push the thought away, but it rolls over my resistance, inexorable and oh so ugly.

If I hadn’t used him in the undercover operation, he’d still be okay.

I want to vomit. I am filled with self-loathing and regret and a terrible rage. I stare at Mercy, and I search for something, a reason to wait. I see nothing, nothing at all.

I take one step back and raise the gun and I quiet my mind, but my mind is a hurricane of hatred and grief and it breaks that silence. I see too many things all at once, visions of light tracers and dark moons and Leo’s empty eyes.

“You deserve to die,” I whisper, the gun trembling in my hand.

“No one deserves to die,” Mercy says. “It just happens.”

A wide wind blows through me, pushing me toward a chasm with no bottom, an ocean with no shore. My senses have sharpened to an excruciating point. I can smell gun oil and the scent of shampoo. I hear Tommy’s foot shift on the floor and feel his eyes upon me like touching hands.

Don’t do this, Mother. I don’t want to be born in death. I don’t know who this voice belongs to. Is it Alexa? Is it the baby? Is it just me?

My finger tightens on the trigger, feeling the resistance that is both too much and not enough, a march toward destruction that can’t be reversed once the final step is taken.

“What are you waiting for?” Mercy asks.

A phrase rolls through my mind. It sounds like a gull’s cry, echoing above the wind.

The lighthouse! Swim out too far and the light goes out forever!

My finger moves back on the trigger, pulling it toward me.

I want to kill you so bad. I want to look into your eyes and pull the trigger and watch as the hole opens up and your life pours out. I want to know that you died because of me, because of what you did to Leo, because no one gets to touch my family like that and live.

I lower the weapon. Small rivulets of sweat run down my cheeks, dancing across my scars on one side. I feel as though I’ve run a mile and then boxed ten rounds.

I want to kill you, but I can’t.

“You’re under arrest, Mercy.” My voice quavers.

She shakes her head, a gesture of pity. “You’re weak.”

Tommy says nothing. He places a hand on my shoulder and squeezes it once, gently. He is with me.

“What an anticlimax,” Kirby murmurs.

But there’s a quality to her tone that tells me maybe, somewhere down inside her, she is relieved that I did not do what she would have done so easily.

I wade back in from the big, dark deep and collapse on my shore, while the lighthouse burns and the foghorn blows.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

AD Jones sits in the living room, watching me. I called; he came. Mercy Lane remains shackled and silent. Tommy is tense. Kirby is bored. “Sir?” I venture.

I can’t decipher the look he’s giving me. It seems weary and angry and rage-filled and sad. There is no confusion. It’s as though he’s been expecting to find himself in this place. He is not surprised, but he longs for all the moments that came before.

“I’m going to do something here,” he says to me, finally speaking. “Just this once.” He surveys Dali/Mercy, who is unperturbed. “Because she took your finger and your hair. Mostly, because you didn’t pull the trigger, which means you’re still a person to me.”

I swallow and nod. I’m unable to speak. My throat is choking suddenly with the force of unshed tears. Grief has replaced my desire to kill. My finger and my hair, he says out loud, but those just stand for all the other things, the things he means but has left unsaid.

“This is it, Smoky,” he continues. “This is what you get in return for what you’ve lost. This one pass. Just this once. You understand me?”

My eyes tell him that I do.

“Okay,” he says. “Here’s what’s going to happen.”

It was a simple lie, the best kind. I’d gone to AD Jones with my suspicions about the identity of Dali. He’d given me permission to poke around on my own. Everything else followed on the heels of that. The reverse GPS. The trip to Vegas. The confrontation based on manufactured probable cause.

Mercy Lane will be taken into custody by the AD and flown back to Los Angeles on the jet. Kirby will fade into the background, never here. Tommy and I will drive home while the AD flies in Callie and others to oversee evidence collection.

It’s a rickety story, full of holes, ready to leak, but it’ll be enough. We know how to break the law. It’s something you do quietly, with few witnesses, and only ever with those you trust.

“Your involvement has to be at a minimum from this point on,” he says to me. “I’ll handle everything else.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He sighs. The rage is gone; just the sadness remains. Watching him be sad is like watching rain fall against a mountain. Something solitary. He folds the sadness away after a time, back inside himself, and the rain ends. Just the mountain remains, eroded by such moments.

Mercy Lane clears her throat, attracting our attention. “Let’s bargain.”

AD Jones frowns at her. “What the fuck do you have to bargain with?”

“I’ve been weighing all the variables, and you haven’t left me with any options. You’re going to find evidence of the GPS tracker here, as well as other things. I could try to tell a story about kidnapping and attempted murder by the FBI, but I wouldn’t be believed. The only thing left for me to control is the comfort of my incarceration and whether or not I live or die.”

“It’ll be hell and then you’ll die,” Kirby chirps. “Count on it.”

Mercy ignores her. “The easiest way to lie is to not have to lie at all. If you’ll concede to certain comforts and agree not to pursue the death penalty, I’ll confess freely and accept whatever prison time you want to impose. Our stories will match and no one will ever be the wiser.”

She’s calm, reasonable, cold. AD Jones gapes. I touch his arm with a hand.

“You confess here, now, on video,” I say. “It has to be bulletproof. And you go to jail forever.”

She inclines her head. “Agreed.”

This is Dali, this is Mercy Lane. The face of pragmatism. Survival is the only prize worth having.