Mercy (Queen's Birds of Prey 1)

Apparently, his parents had been hording antiques, coins, and old smelly baskets to sell off when they’d gotten older. Yes, he had stolen them. And after finding out what some of the pieces were worth, he was going to find the man he’d sold them to and kill him. The dealer had given him nothing compared to what he should have gotten.

Mom cried for a bit more, and he told her to drink her tea. It was laced with poison, much more than he should have given her all at once, but he’d been pissed off and wanted her to pay. Fucking bullshit. No money? He wished he could dig her up and kill her all over again, and his father.

His dad had been hard to kill off. Saul had been feeding him the poison in the candy that he loved—an entire four-pound box of chocolates just for him. But after eating only a couple of them, his dad had tossed them out, saying they were tainted. Dad had known what Saul had been up to. So he’d gone outside with him when he’d been gathering wood for the fireplace, and hit him in the head with the axe. No more waiting for him to die off.

Mom had blamed him for Dad’s death immediately after finding his cold body. Saul had only stuck around to see the reaction on Mom’s face when she found Dad. But she’d looked right up at him and pointed her finger at him to blame it all on him. There wasn’t any way that he could convince her that she was insane for thinking that. She’d even told the police that she thought he’d done it.

“There isn’t any way that my husband fell on that axe, Officer. He was very good at putting it back with the blade protector on it. He paid thirty dollars for that thing, and he made sure it was used every single time after cutting wood.” The officer glanced at Saul and told Mom that perhaps he’d forgotten. “No, he was always good at it, as I said. He never wanted any of the kids, ours included, to be able to fall on it or take it for whatever reason. My son here did it to him. For whatever reason, Saul killed him off. And now I’m worried that he could be coming after me next.”

The officer had taken him aside. “If I find out that you killed your father, Saul, I’ll come after you myself. That was a good man there, and if you ended his life for no reason other than you could, then you’ll regret it. I promise you.”

Saul had learned to have a face that no one could read. It had served him very well over the years before that day, and since. All he did was stare at the man, looked at him straight in the eye as if he had nothing at all to fear from him. And he didn’t. No one frightened him.

Mercy did. She scared the shit out of him. And he knew better than to try and take her as someone that he’d hold for ransom. Nor would he take Joel. He’d be hell bent to stay with Mercy, and she might well come after Saul just for him taking Joel.

It would have to be the child. First of all, she’d cause him no trouble. Lifting her out of that chair might be hard; she could be heavy from just sitting on her ass all the time. Saul was sure that he’d be able to manage it. And after he killed her—and he would, no matter what—what would she need with the wheelchair anyway? She wouldn’t.

He’d been holding onto the newspapers that he’d found all over the place here. They were outdated, of course, but he really wasn’t going for anything to read. He wanted them to wrap her body in. The shower curtains had all been stolen away, he’d seen, so Saul had to improvise.

The previous owners had even done him a solid by not filling in the holes from when the gasoline tanks had been taken out. Even the big earth mover was sitting there ready to use. Saul hadn’t ever driven one before, wasn’t even sure this one worked, but it would go a long way in making sure the kid didn’t have animals dragging her body off when he was done with her. If it didn’t—oh well, she’d just be part of something’s dinner.

Saul didn’t have a plan. He’d never been one to work things out before he did them. He was more of a wing-it sort of person. Sometimes it even worked in his favor for not having anything set in stone. Most of the time, especially of late, he would have to wing-it all the way to the end. Which, he surmised, had served him well too. No one knew the plan any better than he did, so he didn’t have to worry about someone fucking him over.

Laughing, he decided that he needed something to eat other than candy bars. The day before he’d been arrested, Saul had found a vending machine and had busted it open. Everything in it had been expired, and it wasn’t until he’d eaten two of the candy bars that he noticed that some rat, the four-legged kind, had gotten to them.

Cutting off the chewed-up part had become tedious, so he started biting around their bite marks. He’d forget to look where he was biting sometimes, but all in all, it had filled his belly. But it was making him slightly ill, the sugary diet, and he thought about walking into town to get a meal.

Saul wasn’t sure how he was going to get his meal—he only had about four cents on him. At the police station he’d tried to claim that they’d taken the ten he had in his wallet, but that hadn’t panned out. They had a digital recording of what they’d taken from him, including taking a picture of the contents of his wallet.

“People are so distrusting nowadays.”

Laughing at his own little joke, he walked along the highway towards town. It wasn’t that far, hardly a mile, but he hated walking all the same. He was just about to leap off the road to avoid an oncoming car when he saw who it was. His brother was coming toward him in a brand new car. Flagging him down, he was surprised when Joel didn’t run him down.

“You out looking for me?”

Joel didn’t say anything, just handed him a grocery bag full of food. Then when he got the second one from his brother, Joel just drove on. After turning around in the parking lot where he was staying, Saul watched him just drive away. Like they were just a couple of people sharing the same road.

Going back to the hotel, he looked over what he had. Saul wasn’t sure if he’d poison him or not, so he took extra care in looking things over. Everything was sealed up, but that didn’t mean shit when it came to the availability of syringes nowadays. Saul even shook up the water bottles, making sure they didn’t have a leak in them, before he sat them aside.

“Water just isn’t going to cut it, Joel. You should know that a man like me would need something stronger.” Laughing, he set the cans of food on the table as he wondered how Joel thought he was going to cook the stuff. It wasn’t until he was at the bottom of the second sack that he realized that he’d sent him some canned heat. “Well, if that don’t beat all. Didn’t even know they made sterno cans anymore.”

With the can opener he’d unearthed too, Saul sat about making himself a nice dinner. There was a can of meat too, some sort of stew stuff, and lots of vegetables. While he normally wouldn’t have touched the things, he was hungry enough to eat them too.

After stuffing himself on all the contents of both bags, he looked around for a note from Joel. Surely, he’d let him know that he was on his side in this. Or at the very least, let him know when he was coming back with more food. Nothing. Not even a phone number he could call him on.

“What is this world coming to? A man can’t even call his own brother up and ask him when’s

a good time to kidnap his daughter?” Laughing harder, he laid back down on the bed. He really had worn himself out, walking that little bit of a way, and realized that he’d have to start taking better care of himself.

The girl was going to be his biggest payday yet. He hadn’t any idea how much to ask for, but it was going to be at the very least a million bucks. It might be more, then he’d come down if they said they didn’t have it. But at least that much, and he would be happy with his work.

Not satisfied. Never that. He liked money and the things that he could buy with it. And how it made him feel when he could flash it around like he had it all. It was seldom that Saul was with a lot of cash. Usually he just had a twenty or a fifty when he was really lucky. Then he’d wrap it around a bunch of ones. Or sometimes when he was really strapped, he’d just have it around a bunch of paper. Usually didn’t work well, but he could fool a few chumps.

Closing his eyes, all that Saul could think about was coming into his money. One way or another, he was going to get a piece of the pie. Hell, he thought with a laugh, he might just take the whole fucking thing. Turning over, the springs caught him just as he was moving and tore a long scratch in his back. Damn it all to hell, he was going to make the girl pay for this.

~*~

Mercy knew what was going to happen. At least she had a good idea what was going to go down. Saul was going to try and take Miley, and Mercy decided that she might just let him. Justified homicide would make her feel pretty good about killing the bastard. Mercy looked up when Piper entered her office.