Finding Mercy: The Next Generation Read online

  3

  What the hell was I doing? I should’ve waited in my car while she changed to go to the game. Actually, I should’ve just met her there. But, for some stupid reason, I’d suggested we not only go get something to eat before the game but we take one car.

  “I’ll just be a second.” Her voice sounded a bit nervous and why shouldn’t it? I was basically a stranger and I’d just invited myself into her home. I was getting ready to tell her I was going to wait outside when she stopped at the door and turned to face me. “Listen. Before we go in, I’ve been totally caught up in this case and everything else has fallen to the wayside.”

  “Okay.” I wasn’t exactly sure what she was trying to tell me, but it seemed to mean something to her.

  I obviously hadn’t given her the response she wanted if her sigh and eyeroll were any indication. “My house is a freaking disaster. I don’t want you to think I’m a slob. I mean, I am, but not a dirty one.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Yes!” she huffed. “A big difference. There’s shit everywhere, but it’s clean shit. Like clutter. Not gross shit, like mold. Okay, there may be some trash on the counters, too. But I’m not growing science experiments or anything.”

  There was an unusual tic in my cheek and something that felt a lot like a smile pulled on my lips.

  “Now, I gotta see what ‘clean shit’ looks like.”

  “I’m serious, Jason.”

  “I am, too, Mercy. Open the door.”

  I wasn’t sure why she cared what I thought about the state of her home, but, clearly, she did.

  “I haven’t cleaned out my fridge in over a month. I think there’s pizza in there from two weeks ago. I would never judge you because your house is dirty.” Her perfectly shaped left brow lifted, calling me on my lie. “Okay. I would totally judge you if there were thirty-two cats living in there and you had litter boxes all over the house. I also might not sit down. Or eat anything.”

  “I don’t have a cat.” She smiled her light-up-the-room smile. I’d been noticing way too much about her lately. The way she wore heels on Mondays and Fridays but not the other days of the week. She preferred Diet Coke over regular and drank more coffee than anyone I’d ever known. She also lived off of sugar, which was damn impressive considering she had a body . . . what the fuck?

  I shook my head to dislodge the improper thoughts and waited for her to open the door.

  “I swear I’ll be quick,” she told me once we’d entered and she tossed her cell phone and keys on the counter.

  “No alarm?” I asked when she unclipped her shield and pulled her duty holster free from the waistband of her slacks.

  “No.” She placed her gun on the counter and put her hand on her hip. “Before I leave the room, do I need to talk to you about gun safety and tell you never to touch a loaded weapon?” she teased.

  “Is that a speech you have to give often?” I was joking but why was there a twinge of jealousy tied up in those words?

  “Funny.”

  “Funny, ha-ha? Or funny because it’s true?” Why the fuck was I pressing for an answer? “I’m kidding. Hurry and get changed, I’m starving.” I tried to cover up my out of character behavior.

  She hurried out of the room, leaving me alone in her kitchen. It was nowhere near as bad as she’d made it sound. There were a few dishes in the sink and some drive-thru bags on the counter, but it wasn’t the pigsty she’d made it out to be. I wondered if someone from her past had harped on her about clutter. There were also some stacks of papers here and there, but she was right, it was clean shit lying around. Women confused me, they worried too much about stupid stuff that no one cared about. I peeked into the living room and there were shoes on the floor and some books stacked on the coffee table along with remotes. Her house was lived in. It was warm and inviting. I could imagine her coming home from a long day and plopping down on her couch, putting her feet up and watching TV.

  The unmistakable, over-autotuned voice of Britney Spears blared from Mercy’s phone and I wasn’t sure if I was in a state of shock or panic.

  “Shit!” Mercy yelled from her bedroom. “Please hit the ignore button on my phone.”

  Thank God. If I had to hear “oh, baby, baby” one more time I may have had to shoot her phone. I swiped the ignore button, ending the call and not even two seconds later it rang again.

  “For fucks sakes. She’ll just keep calling. Please answer it and tell her I’ll call her later.”

  It was an odd request, however, if it meant it would end my suffering, I’d do it.

  I slid the green call button and before I even had the phone to my ear, I heard a woman speaking. “I have an emergency and you send me to voicemail? That’s low. Quick, second date tonight, my blue strapless with the silver heels or my LBD with the gold strappy sandals? I don’t want to scream easy but I don’t wanna look like a nun either.”

  What the hell was happening?

  “Hello. Earth to Mercy! Blue or black?”

  “This isn’t Mercy.” Before I could get anything else out the woman all but screeched.

  “Who the hell are you and why are you answering Mercy’s phone? And don’t lie to me, I can track her phone. I have an app for that.”

  “Well, since you have an app and all, she’s changing.”

  “Changing? Who is this?”

  “Jason Walker. I work with Mercy.”

  “I know who you are.”

  I wanted to ask how she knew who I was but I didn’t. The conversation was weird enough. “Good, then you know she’s safe and sound.”

  Mercy came rushing into the room, hopping on one foot trying to shove her other foot into a sneaker. She’d pulled her long hair up into a ponytail and her face was as red as a beet.

  “Here’s Mercy.” I started to hand the phone over before I pulled it back. “For the record, go with whichever dress covers more.”

  “Covers more? Did you miss the part where I said I didn’t want to look like a nun?”

  “Men like to be teased. To have to use their imagination. So cover up,” I told her.

  “Right. And the shoes?”

  “The sexier of the two.”

  “Awesome. Thanks. Tell Mer I’ll call her tomorrow. I have five minutes to get dressed. Bye, Jason Walker.”

  She hung up. Weirdest fucking conversation I’d ever had in my life.

  “Who was that?” I asked, as I set Mercy’s phone back on the counter.

  “That was Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday?”

  “That’s her name. She’s a five-foot-nine ball of crazy. When we were in high school, she was an honest-to-God runway model. Sorry again about asking you to answer that. She has no boundaries and will call over and over until I answer.” Her words may’ve sounded like Tuesday annoyed her, but she was smiling huge. “She’s my best friend. Well, my only real friend, actually.”

  “You’re not going to ask what she wanted?”

  “Don’t need to. It’s Friday night, second date with Len, and I heard you telling her what to wear. I assume two back-to-back calls were because she was in full-on meltdown mode not knowing what to wear.”

  “You’d be right. She do that often?”

  “Do what? The second date thing or the meltdowns?”

  “Right. She does both frequently.”

  “Right you are. Ready to go?”

  This was starting out to be a bizarre evening all the way around, but strangely it was the most fun I’d had in years. Wasn’t that some shit? I was a thirty-year-old man and I considered going to a co-worker’s home and talking to her best friend fun. Christ, when had my life turned to this? The niggling guilt slammed into my chest, reminding me I had no business going anywhere or doing anything fun. We were working on a case, not playing grab ass.

  “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  4

  Something was off.

  Jason had gone from smiling to stoic in two-point-five seconds. He wasn’t being mean, or a
jerk, or necessarily quiet. He’d talked on the way to the burger place next to the high school. He was polite, made small talk while we waited for our food, but the conversation was work related. He hadn’t even commented on Tuesday’s ringtone. Come on, what sane person wouldn’t make fun of me for having a Britney Spears ringtone? Especially after I’d asked him if he listened to boy bands.

  When our check came, he pulled out cash and refused to allow me to pay my half. We should’ve taken the bill and expensed it, but he blew that off, too. The shift was strange and it was starting to give me a complex. Was it me? Was my house not tidy enough? Did Tuesday piss him off?

  “Listen, I’m really sorry about Tuesday. I hope she didn’t annoy you or something.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “So, is something else bothering you?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I don’t know. You seem a little frosty since we left my house.”

  The pain that flashed in his eyes took my breath, and I wished I could pull my careless words back. The emotion was quickly masked, and I was fast learning he’d perfected the look. You know the one? The look of indifference. Once upon a time, I, too, had been so caught up in my grief I’d taught myself to be emotionless. Blank. Giving nothing to no one was easier.

  “Didn’t realize talking about an ongoing investigation was considered frosty.”

  “Never mind. Sorry.”

  “We should get to the game.”

  Well, that ended that conversation, and now me and my big mouth had made things uncomfortable. He was practically a mute on the way to the high school. The few times I’d asked his thoughts on the case or ran a scenario by him he used the least amount of words possible to answer. My lack of filter kicked in one more time as we were walking to the stadium.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything—”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I mean—”

  Jason stopped and turned toward me. He was a good six inches taller than me, but with a scowl on his face and looking down at me, I would’ve sworn on a stack of bibles he was six-feet taller. He looked like one pissed off man.

  “Drop it.”

  “Okay.”

  He turned and walked off in the direction of the bleachers. My stomach dropped, and I wished at some point in my life I’d learned to keep my trap shut.

  “You coming?”

  I didn’t answer, I just moved. No more talking for me, God knows, I’d done enough for one night. He found us seats next to a group of kids and helped me sit. It would’ve been a lot easier to ignore my silly infatuation if he’d stop doing little things that made me like him more.

  The game started, and we both were concentrating on the conversations around us. Trying to eavesdrop while fans cheered all around was not the easiest task. But I’d heard the kids behind us mentioning a girl named Stella would be at a party and she had the hook up. I’d also heard one of the girls saying she was going to try to get Keith alone tonight and, by the way Jason stiffened next to me, he’d heard it, too. The more the teenager went on about how she was going to corner the undercover narc, the more I was worried for him. And not because I was afraid Keith would cross the line with an underage girl, it was all the ways she had planned to get what she wanted from him.

  “Shit,” Jason mumbled.

  Shit was right. Her fail-proof plan included spiking his drink with ecstasy.

  I yanked my phone out of my bag and sent Keith a text warning him of the teenager’s plan and about Stella being there.

  His emoji text back had me shaking my head. The stupid okay sign a clear indication my original assessment of the age gap was correct.

  Jason glanced at my phone and lifted his chin in question. I turned the screen so he could see and he actually smiled.

  “I guess your plan to use duct tape wouldn’t work so well in today’s text-only world. I’d say you’d need to tape his fingers together, but you might want him to use those.”

  I couldn’t believe he’d said that. Not that it wasn’t funny, because it was. But I’d never heard Jason make an inappropriate joke. I had my quip locked and loaded but I opted to keep my mouth shut. I’d already put my foot in it too many times tonight. And it was crap shoot whether or not he’d get my sense of humor. Most people didn’t, staying quiet was my best option.

  After a few moments he knocked his shoulder into mine and said, “Nothing? Really?”

  “Oh, I have plenty. I’m just a little surprised I’d have to explain to you that if tape was needed on his hands to prevent him from emojiing me to death that would leave his mouth free, therefore I wouldn’t need his fingers.”

  His head tipped, and he barked out a laugh. I was so enthralled with the way the muscles in his neck bunched I’d missed the sound entirely. I wasn’t sure what he’d found funny, the fact I’d said “emojiing” which I was pretty sure wasn’t in the Oxford dictionary or that I was alluding to being eaten out. The more I thought about what I’d said, the more I couldn’t believe I’d said it. Well, I could, I said stupid shit all the time. I just couldn’t believe I’d said it to him.

  “At this point, I don’t think I’d know what to do with either.”

  Holy dear God in heaven above, he just said that?

  “Eh. I’m sure it’s like riding a bike. Once you hop on the seat and start pumping away it will all come back to you.”

  My hand flew to my mouth like I had to physically restrain it from embarrassing me further. Who needed their mouth duct taped shut now? Sheesh, I was such a fucking idiot.

  This time when he laughed, I closed my eyes and listened. The sound was magical. A mythical noise that he’d kept hidden for so long. Damn, he had a great laugh, but I was never speaking again. I needed to have my mouth wired shut when I was near him.

  “Damn, you’re funny.”

  Unfortunately, the look on his face wasn’t. Hot. Cold. Smiling. Sad. His emotions were making me sea sick.

  5

  “Walker. James. We need you in the conference room,” Bruce Adams called into Mercy’s office on his way past.

  “You know what that’s about?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  Bruce was our narc’s handler. He was also a damn good detective. He was the head of the drug task force for the county. He was one of the few cops that welcomed the help of the DEA. There was a reason we had an office in this area. The I-95 corridor was one of the most heavily used freight routes in the US. It spans from Canada to the tip of Florida. With the ease of the major interstate it also meant drugs were also easily trafficked. When the DEA moved into the area, we were met by some resistance. But Bruce Adams saw a chance to get drugs off the streets. He didn’t care who got the credit, or which agency’s numbers got a bump in bringing in a large bust. His only interest was to stop drug deals and to prevent more deaths. I respected the hell out of him.

  Mercy quickly grabbed her notebook and files and disappeared from her office. Why the hell was I still working upstairs in her office? I had a perfectly good one downstairs. I had an actual desk in there, too, not a cramped side table. When I first started working in Mercy’s office it was out of convenience. We were talking the case out, sharing information, going over reports, and planning the operation. Now I’d settled into a routine of coming up here, working next to her, and talking to her throughout the day. Either I’d pick up lunch and bring it back or she would. We’d eat in her office together, talking and laughing about non-case related stuff. And, sometimes, we’d even gone out to eat together. It was easy to be around her. Too easy, as a matter of fact. I liked her, she made me feel normal, like my old self. Our conversations were always light, we’d never discussed our private lives. She’d never asked about my family, and I never inquired about hers. The only thing that came close to being personal was Tuesday. We’d talked about her second date, what she’d worn, what happened, and how she’d already gone on a first date with someone new in the two weeks since the football game.

  I wa
nted to ask why Mercy never went out on any dates, but thought better of it. Maybe she was dating, hell maybe she had a serious, steady boyfriend. She was a beautiful woman, and I imagined there were men lining up for the chance to take her out. She was quirky and funny, too. She was also brash and had no filter. She blurted out whatever was on her mind, consequences and hurt feelings be damned. I actually liked that best about her. You always knew where you stood with Mercy James, she didn’t pull punches. When she thought someone was wrong, she said so, then she backed up her reasoning with facts. She was a breath of fresh air in my polluted world.

  After today, I had to get away from her and go back to working in my office. If I needed something I could come up here. I’d been telling myself it was out of laziness, not wanting to walk up a flight of stairs, that I was staying in her office. The lie was easier to swallow than the truth. Because acknowledging the truth meant admitting I enjoyed her company.

  “You coming?” Scott Mann, another SA working the case, asked.

  “Yeah. Right behind you.”

  I stood and looked around Mercy’s office. Much like her home it was organized clutter. Clean shit, as she called it. Her life, her living space were so much different than my own. You could feel her personality all around you. Not in mine. Mine was devoid of any signs of life.

  By the time I’d made it to the conference room Mercy and Bruce were in deep discussion. They were sitting close together looking over surveillance photos. Scott, Ellen Mckenna, and Paul Hollman, all agents from the building, were sitting, waiting to start. I took the seat farthest from Mercy and Bruce and tried my best not to stare at the duo. I had no right to feel the jealousy that was bubbling up. I had no claim on her time or attention. Yet, it still pissed me off.

  Bruce stood and walked to a large, rolling white board and pointed to a picture of a teenage girl.

  “Stella Jones. Keith was able to track her down and confirm she was there selling her Adderall. Her parents have been notified, and they confirmed her prescription had been filled that day, so she had a thirty-day supply to unload. Not surprising, she’d sold the entire bottle at the party.”