Without Mercy (Mercy 1)

“I don’t think we should wait,” she said, thinking of Shay. Was her sister safe? God, what if the killer were, at this moment, extracting his own special vengeance on her? Jules’s stomach turned sour and the night seemed so, so long. “What time is it?”

“Don’t know. Probably close to four.”

“Still two, maybe three hours before dawn,” she thought aloud. “The last time he hunted, he killed two people. Before that, if he did kill Lauren, only one, but maybe he’s escalating, one, two, and tonight maybe three? What if poor Maeve is just the first of many?” She looked down at the dead girl once more, and her stomach threatened to heave.

Trent took hold of her arm. “You’re jumping to conclusions,” he warned. “Don’t go off the deep end on me. Okay? I need you to think straight. Got that? You have to be clear.”

She was nodding but trying to step toward the door, to get out, away from the gloom and death that lingered here.

“Just wait,” Trent said, fingers tight over her arm. “Hold the lantern up. High. Like this.” He wrapped her fingers over the handle of the lantern he’d suspended over Maeve’s body. “There. Hold still.” Retrieving his cell phone from his pocket again, he flipped it open, hit a button, and began taking pictures of the dead girl.

Each time the camera in his phone flashed, illuminating Maeve’s fixed gaze and gray face, Jules cringed.

Click. Another image of death.

“I might not be able to call on it yet, but this damned phone can still serve a function.” He took two more shots as a nervous horse whinnied. “Just in case we have to leave, I want a record of how things looked when we got here.”

Click. Click. Click. Three new, ghastly images.

Trent continued. “I would hate to leave and come back to find the girl moved or missing or I don’t know what.” Walking away from the body, telling Jules where to redirect the lantern’s beam, he took some photos of Omen’s damaged stall, then returned with a measuring tape, which he pulled out to the length of one foot. He lay the tape by Maeve’s hand, near the knife. “Just for some idea of perspective,” he said before snapping several more images.

Footsteps sounded outside.

Jules’s heart leapt to her throat.

Trent grabbed his pistol and trained it on the door just as it opened. Frank Meeker, weapon drawn, eased inside. “Police!” he said, as Trent lowered his pistol.

“Glad you’re here,” Trent said as Meeker’s gaze slid around the stable to land on Maeve’s body.

“Another one?” he asked as Jules, eyes turned from the death scene, nodded. “Son of a bitch.” Meeker shook his head sadly and holstered his sidearm. “Son of a goddamned bitch.”

CHAPTER 40

Cooper Trent!

Shay, lying on her twin bed in the dorm, remembered why he seemed so familiar.

Jules had dated him. It had been during that weird time when the whole family was off-kilter. Max had just remarried and had a new baby, pushing Shay even further away from him. Edie had snagged all that she could of Max’s money, then retreated, going back to Rip Delaney, a son of a bitch if there ever had been one. It had been obvious to everyone, except love-besotted Edie, that Rip Delaney had only started seeing her and married her again for a shot at her part of the Stillman fortune, the pittance she’d received from divorce number two.

Greed, greed, greed. It had always come down to money with Edie. Same with Rip.

Then there was Max Stillman, dear old Dad. No, make that Max Senior as now there was a Junior for him to dote on. At six, Max, the younger, Shay’s half brother, was rumored to be hell on wheels. Good. Served her father right. It had always bothered Shay that Edie had been pregnant when she’d married Max and it had crossed Shay’s willing mind that Edie had trapped Max with her pregnancy with Shay and that was the reason he’d never been close to his only daughter.

“Who cares?” she muttered now, but felt heat at the back of her eyelids. The truth of the matter was that Maxwell Octavius Stillman was just another self-indulgent creep who had cast Shaylee aside like last night’s leftovers once he became a father to stupid little Maxwell Junior.

Even before “Maxie” was born, Shay’s dad had never really had much to do with her, and she couldn’t even say it was to get back at Edie. Nuh-uh. Max just didn’t give a damn.

Not like Rip Delaney had with his kid. Yeah, he’d been a loser with a capital L, always screwing around and getting into debt because he gambled, but at least he’d loved Jules. Sickeningly so.

Disturbed, Shay brought her thoughts back to the present; reined in those old emotions that were too painful to think about. Especially when Shay fantasized that her father had never met Hester, wife number 2, had never conceived her half brother …

Quit thinking about it! So your old man’s a prick, so what? Just focus on the here and now.

Shay was keyed up tonight, unable to sleep. Unlike Crystal. Shay’s roommate was currently dead to the world, her head buried under her pillow, her neck exposed, the odd-looking dragon tattoo barely visible in the half-light as she softly snored.

Earlier, Shay had heard the power go off, the rumble of the furnace fading into stillness. She’d clicked on her flashlight, just so the darkness wouldn’t close in on her. So she wouldn’t feel so alone.

When the backup electricity had powered on half an hour later, she’d gone to the window and spied two people walking swiftly along one of the campus paths, Jules and Cooper Trent, Shay’s pod leader, huddled together. Trent had touched the crook of Jules’s arm as they slogged through the drifts in the predawn hours, when no one except the security patrols was supposed to be out.