Without Mercy (Mercy 1)

Jules stared at the edges of the frozen Lake Superstition, where the seaplane was tethered in ice. In this weather, there really was no way in or out of here.

Charla followed her gaze. “I’ve never seen that much ice on Lake Superstition, though we get our fair share of snow. This area of the Siskiyou Mountains is always inundated.”

“You don’t mind the isolation?” Jules asked, feeling the spit of tiny crystals of ice against her face.

“I can honestly say it’s cozy in the winter. Blue Rock Academy might be geographically challenged, but we’re prepared for anything. We could probably even survive a nuclear attack.”

Prepared for anything except missing students and murder, Jules wanted to say. The woman seemed ridiculously smug about Blue Rock’s resilience.

“I even think at one point there was a fallout shelter on campus, though I’ve never seen it.” Charla laughed and explained that the campus was self-contained, with stores of food, two generators, extensive tanks of propane, and gasoline. There was a radio/communications station as well as a clinic. Though there was no doctor on staff, Jordan Ayres was soon to become a nurse practitioner, and Kirk Spurrier, the pilot, had once been an EMT.

Glasses fogging, Charla seemed to think that the school’s medical bases were covered. Jules didn’t agree, but she held her tongue, nodding in all the appropriate conversation lapses while holding the hood of her ski jacket tight at her chin. Even in her boots, with her warm socks, her toes were starting to feel numb.

As they made a circuit of the campus, Jules asked, “How long have you been here?”

“Eighteen years in April,” the woman said proudly. “I was the first person Reverend Lynch brought on board. I helped him organize and hire the teaching staff. Back then, when the school was new, there were only a few of us.”

“And before that?”

“Oh, the property was in disrepair.” She waved a gloved hand toward the buildings. “Horribly so. It had been donated to a church in the late forties to be used for family retreats and counseling, but the facilities were neglected and run-down. I think the reverend’s father came here as a child, then later brought Reverend Lynch here when he was a boy. Hunting and fishing, that sort of thing. Years later, when Reverend Lynch came up with the idea of the academy, he thought this would be the perfect spot. Isolated and idyllic, close to God. He found some investors and worked hard to fulfill the dream. Now the academy is a standard for learning institutions throughout the country, probably the world,” she said proudly.

“And Mrs. Lynch, she’s a part of this?” Jules asked, thinking of the angry conversation she’d overheard between the reverend and his wife.

“Oh, of course.” Charla’s face lost a little of its animation, but her smile returned, as if on cue. “Mrs. Lynch’s father, Radnor Stanton, was a major investor in Blue Rock Academy. He was a philanthropist. An entrepreneur. Made his fortune in shipping, I think.” She waved a gloved hand, as if Stanton’s occupation was of no consequence.

But it explained the mansion in Seattle. “I take it he’s passed on?”

“Ten years ago and it’s too bad,” she said. “He was a good man. Far-sighted, like the reverend.”

“And maybe Reverend McAllister?” Jules prompted.

Charla sighed. “He’s … different. The board of directors wanted to have someone more youthful on the staff, I guess, and he was available, but he believes the students should, you know”—she made air quotes—“do their own thing. Have their own personal relationship with God. He seems to disdain order and doctrine.” She slid Jules a look. “As I said, different.”

“I know what you mean. Nontraditional.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“But the two ministers, they work well together?”

“Reverend Lynch says ‘there are many paths to God.’”

“And Mrs. Lynch agrees?”

“Cora Sue? Who knows?” Charla said hotly.

“And their marriage? How is it? What with him being here most of the time and she in Seattle.”

“It makes it easier for her,” Charla said with a trace of bitterness.

“And him. Without the wife around, well, he can … do whatever he wants.”

Charla turned horrified eyes on Jules. “Are you suggesting that Tobias would cheat on Cora Sue?” Her back was really up. “He would never do anything of the kind. He is not an adulterer.”

“And Cora Sue?”

Charla stopped dead in her tracks. “This is none of your business or mine,” she said. “Reverend Lynch is a good man! Kind, just, and extremely forgiving …” There was a hint that she wanted to say more but thought better of it.

Jules pushed, “Even when his wife …?”