She’d dissolved into tears that morning, during her pleas that he go to a doctor. He’d finally caved, but he was being an asshole about it.
“What if it was me who was sick?” she asked. “What would you do if I was sitting there, eat up with fever, my whole arm going putrid?”
“Feeling dramatic, are we, Miss Brontë?” he asked.
“Feeling abused,” she corrected. “Answer the question, Mercy.”
He sat on the sofa, hands clasped in his lap, sick and miserable. He glanced away and said, “I’d take you to the ER.”
“Exactly.” There was no sense of triumph in his admission. She wouldn’t feel better until he’d been examined and prescribed some heavy antibiotics.
The phone rang and she stepped to answer it. “That’s Aidan. Are you ready to go?”
He extended his arms to demonstrate that he was. Leather jacket, hair tied back in a queue, Colt in his waistband, shotgun propped against the sofa.
She nodded and answered. “Hey.”
“Hey, you ready?” Aidan asked, sounding only a little more awake than he had last night.
“Yeah.” She gave him directions to Lew’s from the clubhouse, Mercy chiming in when she needed help remembering the street names.
“Be careful,” Aidan admonished before he hung up, and it warmed her cold insides, made her feel like help was near at hand, just moments away.
“Okay,” she said, turning back to Mercy. “They’re gonna meet us. We should get going.”
Someone knocked on the front door.
Ava jumped.
Mercy lifted his brows. “Your brother get himself a teleportation device?”
She ignored the joke. “That man we dumped – he was alone. I didn’t see anyone else with him. I didn’t–”
Mercy lifted a hand, telling her to calm down. “I’ll just go see.” He stood and collected the shotgun. “You’ve got your piece on you?”
She nodded, laying a hand on her bag and the shape of the gun within it.
“Good. Stay behind me. If I tell you to, run. Okay?”
Like hell was she going to leave him behind while he was in this condition.
“Ava,” he said, firmly, like he was lecturing a child, “run if I tell you.Okay?”
“Fine,” she muttered, and followed him to the door.
Mercy leaned over and twitched one of the lace curtains aside first, before he unlocked the deadbolt.
Larry O’Donnell stood on the small porch, wringing a pair of leather work gloves in his hands. Ava noticed the nervousness in him first thing, and figured Mercy did too.
“Hey, man,” Mercy greeted. “Look, now’s not a good time. We’re heading out.”
Larry didn’t seem to hear him. He twisted the gloves and swallowed, throat working. His mouth opened, lips quivering, his leathery face eerily slack.
“Larry.” Mercy reached out and put a big hand on the man’s shoulder. “What is it?”
It took three tries, the breath whispering through his shaking lips, before Larry finally said, “I didn’t want to. You have to believe me, Felix, that I didn’t want to.”
“God,” Ava whispered, the blood draining from her face. Panic stole over her, rendered her motionless, stalled her heart for one awful second.
