Without Mercy (Mercy 1)

Fight, Nona! Save yourself! Oh, Jesus!

She scrabbled, trying to dig at her attacker’s wrists, force him off her, gain a little room so that she could drag in a breath. Just one. Anything!

But it was no use. The horrid hands tightened.

Help me. Please, someone help me.

Her lungs were on fire. Silently shrieking for air.

No! No! No!

Nona tried to yell, to scream, but no sound escaped, the air in her airway trapped and burning like all hell. She needed to breathe! To gasp. To cough! Anything!

If only someone would hear her, but the noises coming from her throat were only sick, frightening gurgles.

She writhed, frantically trying to buck the maniac off her, the sleeping bag bunching beneath her, bits of hay clinging to her hair. But the more she struggled, the stronger and more determined were the fingers at her throat.

“Die, bitch!” The words, a low growl, reverberated through the hayloft.

Oh, God.

No!

Blackness swam before her eyes. Pain ripped mercilessly through her body.

No! No! Oh, dear God, no!

She clawed desperately. Wildly.

Help! she silently cried, kicking, writhing. Oh, sweet Jesus, someone please, please help me!

Pain rocketed through her. Light splintered behind her eyes. Bursts of horrid, brilliant color. Her lungs were so damned tight, and she couldn’t think, could barely flail.

Please…

But it was too late.

She felt her life oozing away, blackness creeping over her.

Her hands fell limp at her sides.

The fingers around her throat clamped even tighter, crushing her airway.

Somewhere high overhead, the owl hooted and flapped his great wings, but she couldn’t see or hear him. The only sound was the rush of blood in her ears. The only vision was the shadowy face of her assailant.

In those last few seconds of consciousness, Nona Vickers realized that she’d lost more than her virginity this night; she’d also given up her life.

CHAPTER 14

Cooper Trent woke up in a foul mood.

After a restless night, he gave up, rolled out of bed, and slammed shut the window he’d cracked open, thinking that the cold mountain air would help him sleep. Not that it mattered, as this old cottage was so poorly insulated that the elements tended to seep right through the walls.

Daylight was hours from splitting the night sky, but that was just too bad. He wasn’t going to spend another second tossing and turning and wondering what the hell he was doing here. He thought about what he’d discovered in the past few months, and it wasn’t much. Something was going on beneath the surface of this institution, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it.

Some of the students had opened up to him about Lauren Conway. In his phys ed classes, he’d done a few lectures about stress and relaxation, leading students to talk about things that bothered them. In two classes, the topic of Lauren’s disappearance had come up. Student opinion seemed to fall in two categories: those who thought she had been killed by the school while trying to escape, and those who’d thought she made it. “I like to think that she got away from this school and away from her parents. I can just see Lauren living in some city somewhere with a job and her own apartment. She’s living a life and laughing at Blue Rock,” Maeve Mancuso had said, and her friends Lucy and Nell had agreed.

“Even though she was a TA and had come here voluntarily?” Trent hadn’t been able to follow Maeve’s reasoning.