But...
Sometimes, they would also tell the truth.
He stepped closer to the holding room.
* * *
NOELLE STOOD IN the snow. Her eyes were closed. Her hands outstretched. She was just a few feet away from the sheriff’s station. A monster was inside that station. A man with a soul darker than hell.
She had to face him again. It was her job. But every time she looked into his eyes, Noelle felt as if she were a helpless teen again. Lost and so scared.
Waiting to die.
Snow crunched to the left, and in an instant, Noelle spun around with her gun up.
Her firearm locked right on Bruce Mercer. He lifted his hands toward her. “Easy. I’m not the enemy.”
Sometimes, it was hard to tell which side Mercer was really on. “You kept my past from me.” She holstered her weapon.
“I thought the danger was gone.” He exhaled and advanced toward her. “I was very wrong.”
Her eyebrows shot up. Had the great and oh, so powerful Mercer just admitted to being wrong? Human?
“You weren’t alone.”
She had no idea what he was talking about.
“Has Agent Anthony told you that part yet?”
“He told me that he’d seen Porter. While he was undercover in Alabama, Thomas saw him with that terrorist group.”
“Ah, yes, well, is it surprising that Porter would have ties to others who wanted to maim and kill? Like to like, you know.”
Yes, she knew plenty about the darkness that hid within men.
“We didn’t have an ID on Porter then. Just a basic physical description. He slipped away.” Mercer heaved out a breath as he stared at the mountains in the distance. “We try our hardest, but there are always some that get away. For every killer we stop, another one is out there, waiting in the wings.” His voice lowered. “Some days I wonder if it will ever end.”
She rubbed her arms. The snow had felt good before, seeming to cool the fire that burned within her as it fell again, but now...
“Thomas was at the hospital because he needed to see you. He even went in your room, but you didn’t recognize him. You didn’t know him at all.”
Those words had her breath catching.
“Maybe Thomas told you he’d watched you over the years, but I don’t think you realize...quite how much. When your mother died, he was at the funeral. When your father passed, he was at the nursing home. When you graduated from college, he was in the audience. When you went on your first case with the FBI, he was shadowing you.”
She could only shake her head. That made no sense to her. “Why?”
“Because fifteen years ago, Thomas Anthony met a girl in the woods. A girl he said was the bravest, strongest person he’d ever met. He told me the girl was hurt and scared, but she kept fighting to survive, no matter what.”
She looked away from Mercer. She didn’t want him reading the expression in her eyes.
“Because fifteen years ago...” Mercer said again. “I think a twenty-two-year-old agent fell in love with that girl. With her strength and her courage, and he couldn’t bear to imagine her alone in the world. He wanted to keep her safe. To watch over her. So he did, in his way, and with every year that passed, every day that he watched her prove again and again just how strong she was, I think he fell for her even more.”
No, no, that couldn’t be true. “He would’ve said something to me.”
Mercer laughed at that.
Her head whipped back around toward him. She could never remember hearing Mercer laugh.