Without Mercy (Mercy 1)

Trent nodded. “In a pile with her clothes.”

“She … she wasn’t wearing her clothes?” Shay whispered, and bit her lip. “Why not?”

“Why was your hat there?”

“I don’t know! The last time I saw it, it was on the hook by the door in our room. That’s where I put it. How it got … wherever she was.” She looked at Trent. “Where was she? In Dre

w’s room?”

“In the stable.”

“That’s enough,” Lynch said. “We’d better wait for Sheriff O’Donnell before we question her further. He promised to come out personally, with the detectives.”

“The sheriff? Detectives? This was an accident, right? They got themselves trampled or fell or …” Shay’s eyes were huge, dark with fear.

Trent felt for her. “They always look into accidents.” He didn’t want to panic the girl, but it seemed too late.

“Police officers, yeah. Accident-reconstruction people … but that’s not what he’s saying.” Shaylee sank down in the chair.

Trent said, “Detectives are called when someone dies.”

But Shaylee would not be reassured. “Wait a minute, you don’t think that someone …” She swallowed hard, blinking back tears. “Wait a friggin’ second. Do you think that I …?” She looked from Lynch to Trent, and some of the color returned to her face. “The talk about my hat—you think I’m responsible for whatever happened to Nona and Drew? Do I need a lawyer or something?” She was more than scared now. Terrified. “What the hell happened to Nona?”

“A lawyer?” Burdette repeated, her eyebrows rising as if she were truly surprised. “Shaylee, you’ve been watching too much TV.”

“This is over,” Trent said. “When the sheriff gets here, he’s going to want to talk to a lot of us, so for now, let’s just wait.”

But Shaylee lowered her head into her hands, a gesture of surrender. “Don’t you have cameras everywhere around campus? In the dorm rooms? In the hallways? Even in the stable?” She turned accusing eyes at Reverend Lynch, who blanched visibly. “Then everything’s on tape, right? So why the hell am I here being treated like some kind of criminal? Look at your sicko—probably illegal—tapes and let me go.” Finding Trent as her only ally in the room, she turned big, pleading eyes up at him. “And I don’t mean back to the dorm. I want out of here. Someone call my mother. Tell her what happened, that kids are dying, okay? I want to go home. And I want to go now!”

Jules was hungry and tired, and her butt was starting to ache like crazy from hours of sitting behind the wheel of the car.

Still, she drove, eyeing the road ahead. This part of I-5 was a treacherous gray snake that curved and twisted through the steep, forested mountains of southern Oregon. Having been behind the wheel for over seven hours through most of Washington and Oregon, she stepped on the accelerator, her Volvo’s tires singing as she passed semis that crept up the hills, then barreled down steep inclines.

Her stomach was rumbling, her mood decidedly souring. Sleep had eluded her this week, the recurring nightmare of her father’s death creeping through her subconscious, images of Cooper Trent interspersed with the horror of blood seeping over the hardwood floor.

After popping a couple of headache pills with two cups of black coffee this morning, she’d only stopped for a burger and a Diet Coke from a drive-through outside Portland. No wonder her stomach was roiling.

She’d drunk most of the bottle of water she thought to pack, and her headache was back, inching its painful way through her skull.

In the past few days, she’d cleaned out her refrigerator, prepaid her rent, and settled Diablo in with her neighbor, Mrs. Dixon, who’d been delighted—actually clapping her hands—at the prospect of caring for her favorite cat. Jules had also squared things with Tony and Dora at the 101, left messages with Gerri and Erin that she would be “out of town” for a while, then offered up a flimsy excuse to Edie about a possible teaching job in Northern California.

Now, with her head throbbing, Jules had to look ahead to her ultimate goal. If Blue Rock Academy was all it was cracked up to be, then fine, Shay would have to do her time. But, if Jules’s suspicions that the school wasn’t the shining institution for youth it claimed to be turned out to be true, then Jules intended to spring her sister and let the whole world see the academy for the sham it was.

Edie would have to deal with her daughter and find Shay a day facility. Or, if that didn’t work, Shay would have to swallow her considerable pride and attitude and live with Jules.

As the miles sped away, doubts assailed her.

What if you’re wrong? What if everything down at Blue Rock is totally on the level? What if you ‘re, as your ex so often said, an alarmist, a person looking for a good conspiracy?

“I’m not,” she said aloud as the radio station she’d picked up around Eugene started to fade. Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl,” part of the station’s playlist from “the eighties biggest hits” was rapidly being replaced by crackling static.

She hit the SCAN button and heard the remnants of an old Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson tune about mamas not letting their babies grow up to become cowboys.

In her mind’s eye, she saw Cooper Trent’s rugged face: crow’s-feet fanning out from deep-set eyes that shifted from green to gold in the sunlight. Straight hair, forever mussed, streaked by hours in the sun. A nose that had been broken more than once and a jaw that could be set so hard a pit bull would be envious. Not Hollywood handsome by any means, but strong and sexy and a major pain in the rear.

“Damn it!” She clicked off the radio. “Go away,” she muttered, not allowing her mind to linger on that son of a bitch. What had she been thinking, falling in love with a bull rider and, as it turned out, a bullshitter? What was the saying? When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Yeah, well, that’s the way it had been with Trent, and she was ticked at herself for even having the tiniest thought of him.

“A long, long time ago,” she reminded herself, and flipped on her wipers. Rain mixed with snow had begun to fall.