Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) (36 page)

“Dumb bitch!” Clay growled, no more drawling. “Fuckin’ bitch! Wanna play rough?”

She sensed he’d be on top of her before she could make it around the corner and out of the alley. She dove for the gun.

Clay threw himself down on top of her. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and wrenched her head back. Tears filled her eyes, but she already had the gun in one outstretched hand. She fumbled for a safety release on the unfamiliar weapon.

Clay chuckled as he wrestled her for the weapon. “Sweet Jesus, you
are
stupid. Don’t know a Glock from a peashooter, do you, honey? Ain’t got no safety.” Ripping the weapon from her fingers he rolled off of her and came up onto one knee, the other foot planted—a shooter’s stance.

Mercy lay still on the hard ground, breath rasping in and out of her lungs. She stared at an oily spot on the pavement.
Regroup. Think. Don't give up yet!
When she looked up his eyes were dilated.
Either on something or just adrenaline-high.
He was having too much fun to let the game end just yet.

She glimpsed a flash of silver from beneath his left pants cuff.

A second gun?

Please! Please, God, let me have this one miracle.
She calculated the distance between them, afraid to go for it unless she was sure. But he was too far away for her to reach for the weapon, if that was even what it was.

He was ranting at her, still down on one knee to stay close to her level. His words washed over her. Something about a
lesson…retribution… payback.
How he hoped her mother was already dead. As dead as her daughter was going to be in another two minutes.

She refused to cry, refused to beg him not to kill her. She wouldn’t. . . just wouldn’t. Not in front of him. Not one tear, because that would give him too much satisfaction. She pressed her cheek into the grit that smelled of car and cooking oil and cat pee, and squeezed her eyes shut.              

He jammed the gun's muzzle against her lips. “It's time,” he sang the words, giving them a nasty trill at the end. “Say your pray-ers, little girl.”

Sweat oozed from every pore in her body. Her body trembled violently. She was sure she was going to vomit. Serve him right, she thought. Puke all over his ugly suede Hushpuppies.

“No prayers? Not even gonna plead for your life?” The gun’s snout had warmed on her lips. He pressed it harder. She felt the muzzle bruising her tender upper lip as it forced the flesh harder against her teeth.

A voice inside her head screamed,
No, no, no! God, please, no—I don’t want to die!

She cracked one eye open, saw his finger ease down on the trigger.
Click
.

But her head didn’t explode. Nothing happened.

Mercy’s terror morphed into outrage. He was still toying with her? Somehow she contained her fury.
Don’t lash out! Concentrate. Wait for the right moment.
The more time he took, the better her chances. Maybe.

“You thought that was it, didn’t you?” Clay settled back on his heels in a squat. “I pull the trigger. Boom! Headlines read: Rich bitch eats bullet! Girlie brains decorate posh Georgetown alley.” He shrugged. “Naw. That was just for practice. But maybe the next time I pull the trigger, it
will
fire.” He withdrew the gun from her mouth. To her surprise, he held the weapon out toward her on his palm, fingers open and flat, inviting her to reach for it. She narrowed her eyes at him. Of course he’d just pull it away at the last moment, getting an even bigger charge out of her frantic attempt to snatch it from him.

He continued his taunting. “I keep asking myself, do I really want to pull the trigger this time? What do you think, hon? Am I sure I want to kill you?”

She glared at him.

“Ah, well, no final words then?” His faux friendliness changed abruptly. He closed his fingers around the pistol, taking back his “gift,” then slid forward another few inches on his knee. His eyes lost their avuncular corner crinkles and turned cold. Snake eyes fixed on her from less than a foot away. “Yeah, I guess I am sure. Bye-bye, sweetie.”

Her hand shot out, fingers reached under his pants cuff toward the metallic glint just above his sock. Instead of coming out of the ankle holster with a gun in her hand, she was gripping a knife. An ivory-handled, silver-trimmed knife. The slim blade flicked open in her hand.

Without thinking, she stabbed deep into the closest patch of bare white skin―which happened to be Clay’s ankle. He swatted her hand and the knife away. Blood spurted from his leg.

The gun went off, deafeningly close to her ear. Something hot grazed her temple. A bullet? As if someone had hit the mute switch on her brain, all sound stopped. Clay’s mouth shaped words of agony, or curses. She couldn’t tell which; she couldn’t hear a thing. Not even her own screams for help.

Rolling onto her side to get her legs underneath her, she leaped to her feet. So did Clay, gun in hand.

Don’t back away and give him a shot!

She stepped straight toward him. The startled moon face loomed close, tan eyes brimming with evil and hatred. But also with pain from the knife stick.

Now the nearest part of him was no longer ankle; it was his face. And the knife was still in her hand. She took a quick half-step back, just enough to give her room for a full sweep of her arm. She slashed the knife blade upward in a rapid diagonal arc.

Clay’s mouth was still working, no doubt hurling vicious threats, although her sudden deafness had turned him into a mime. Her blade cut across his lips, up through his cheek toward his left ear. Blood rose to the surface of the wounds and started to ooze out.

Her peripheral vision sensed a figure in the doorway above them—for just a second, but then it was gone. Had someone seen them and run for help?

Clay alternately tried to protect his face and push her away with his free hand. She couldn’t tell where his gun hand was. All she could do was to keep moving in on him, fighting the urge to turn and run, staying close enough to make shooting her difficult but just far enough back to give her room to work with the knife. If she ran now, he’d bring her down with one shot.

He awkwardly twisted his gun hand behind her, as though hoping to put a bullet in her back, but he must have been worried about shooting himself too. A second later, she realized he actually was firing the gun—although she still could hear nothing. She felt the vibrations of each shot through the ground beneath her feet but, so far, didn’t think she’d been hit. All the while, she’d kept her arms moving in forceful, broad strokes, as though she were swimming through air. A powerful backstroke swipe with her free arm to fend him off, another swish with the knife to do as much damage as possible. Stroke, stroke, stroke—a freestyle race for her life.

Mercy kept at him with the knife. Slashing at any nearby or exposed part of Clay—forehead, wrist, thigh, chest. She watched blood pour down from the gash at his hairline, into his eyes, blinding him. His hand shook so hard he could only get off two more shots, and they flew wide. At last the gun dropped from his fingers to the ground. He staggered back against the alley wall. His legs gave out under him and he slid down the wall, staring up at her in disbelief.

She would have gone after him. Would have stabbed and cut and shredded the bastard until he was dead. . .dead. . .dead! But someone grabbed her knife hand. Then an arm closed tightly around her waist, pulling her off of the demon with the red-pulp face. A warm breath feathered her ear. A voice spoke soothingly to her. Her hearing was slowly returning, enough for her to recognize words. . . and
him
.

“It’s all right, Mercy. It's over. I'm here now. The police will take him now. He can't hurt you. He can't hurt anyone.”

Sobbing, she dropped the knife and turned her head to look up past Sebastian's dark-stubbled chin and into blue-black eyes shadowed with concern.

“You're here,” she said.

“
Si
.” He turned her in his arms, pressing her body to his chest, and caressed her tear-streaked cheek with his rough fingers. “I'm here,
querida
.”

44

Sebastian parked Mercy’s car in front of the elegant old townhouse. Carmen-red roses grew in profusion in the tiny front yard, reminding him of her house in Mexico City. She was a woman who loved color. She
was
color. When he was around her, his world ignited.

He had kept glancing at Mercy, sitting silently beside him as he negotiated the streets, relying on the directions Maria had written down to help him find her house. She looked so fragile, so damaged, curled up in the passenger seat, her brown eyes distant, staring out the side window at everything or nothing. He knew she must be hurting. Her face was blossoming bruises. Maria had whispered to him that she knew Mercy’s ribs still bothered her sometimes. He wished she’d let him take her to the hospital to get x-rayed. She might have reinjured them in her struggle with Clay. Might have fractured them again, or broken something else.

He pulled the keys from the ignition and ran around the car to her side. She’d already opened the passenger door, but he took her hand to help her step unsteadily out onto the sidewalk. They hadn't spoken since he'd promised Maria and Evelyn, the woman he’d learned was the manager of the gallery, that he'd drive her home.

Mercy’s eyes still held that distant, unfocused glaze that told him she was replaying the events of the night. Probably second guessing herself, probably feeling unnecessarily guilty for having cut up her attacker. He wanted to tell her to stop beating herself up. He knew it had taken her weeks after their raid on the compound to forgive herself for having taken lives. His daughter had said as much to him. But this man, tonight, was no better than the slavers. Men like that didn’t deserve to live. Unfortunately, telling her what he believed—well, that wasn’t likely to shorten her self-flagellation. Mercy, he’d learned all too well, had a mind of her own.

“You didn't have to do this,” she murmured as she took his arm to negotiate the short cobblestone walkway from the street to her door, as daylight began to fade. “But thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he said, silently thanking God that she had survived.

She held out her hand for her keys but he pretended not to see and unlocked the door himself, pushing it open for her. He followed her inside. She turned to look up at him with dazed, trapped-creature eyes, glistening with held back tears.

“He's with the police. They won’t let him out on bail.”

“Yes, of course.”

“You've been through a lot tonight. It will take a while to process and for—”

“I won't forget,” she said. “Don't tell me to forget it, Sebastian, because I can't. I thought I was going to die. I thought he'd—”

“I know. Hush. I know.” He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her.

“And Maria,” she choked on his daughter's name, sounding on the verge of returning to hysteria as she pressed her face into the lapel of his coat. “Oh, God, I was terrified she would follow us outside and he'd hurt her. Or Evelyn. Or some innocent guest who peeked out the door and saw him. I felt so helpless!”

He checked the impulse to laugh, remembering how she’d ridden into a gang’s den to free their captives, then imagining the fury that must have propelled her to defend herself tonight. Although he hadn’t arrived in time to see anything but the very end of her confrontation with Lucius Clay. “You are anything but helpless, my love.”

She stiffened in his embrace.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“You called me...you said, 'my love.'“

“I did, didn't I?” His heart swelled with gratitude for this woman who had come into his life. He'd never expected to feel like this again, not after losing Maria's mother. And yet, here was this amazing woman who had chipped away the ice around his heart with her devil-may-care insistence upon doing what was right, no matter the cost. She'd won over his daughter with her art and her tenderness. Then she'd captured him, heart and soul, with her intelligence, kindness, and beauty.

“Please don't say things like that,” she said. “I know that men casually toss off that word—
love
. You, and everyone in Mexico City it seemed, told me about your many women. I won't be one of your harem. I won’t, Sebastian.”

He frowned, shaking his head at the realization that she just didn't know. “Mercy. Do you have any idea why I came to Washington today?”

“To see Maria, of course.”

He touched his lips to the top of her head and smoothed a hand down the curve of her back before tucking her more firmly against him. He wanted her to feel his arousal. He wanted her to know how profoundly she affected him—sexually as well as in so many other ways.

“No,” he said. “That wasn't the reason I came.”

“Oh?”

“I needed to see you. I couldn't stay away.” He bent to kiss the little hollow just at her right temple.

She made a soft sound down low in her throat. A sign of surprise? Of pleasure? Both?

He moved her away from him just enough to look down into her wide, suddenly dry eyes. “Maria skypes me nearly every day. She tells me about her school, her new friends, how much she loves living here and visiting you at the gallery.”