Lori Armstrong - Merciless

He caught it with a piece of gauze. Took him a bit to speak. “You’ve asked why I got reassigned to South Dakota. You assumed I was demoted. In a roundabout way, I was. I was reassigned because my partner in the Minneapolis office allegedly committed a crime, and I refused to be part of the federal hanging party.” He sucked in a swift breath. “This needs stitches.”

“So I should ask Dawson’s doctor if he could patch up a bullet wound while I’m killing time in the waiting room? Wrong.” I pointed at the first-aid kit. “Use the butterfly bandages. I just couldn’t hold the skin together and put the bandage on myself.”

His eyes met mine. Not aloof like I expected but filled with concern. “I’ll help you, but you have to promise if this gets infected you’ll let a medical professional look at it.”

“I promise. Now tell me what happened.”

“This is gonna sting.” He sprayed the entire area with antiseptic. “My former partner joined the FBI after college. Top of his class, he could’ve done anything. Even the CIA was sniffing around. But he was Ojibwa and wanted to stay in Indian Country to help his tribe. Part of the reason for his choosing a branch of law enforcement stemmed from his witnessing his mother and his sister brutally raped and murdered when he was twelve. He knew who’d done it. The cops had known, and nothing was ever done because the man was a DEA confidential informant.”

My stomach twisted. “No one is untouchable.”

“Trust me, this man was. Then we found out, through not entirely legal channels, that this monster had recently raped and killed another ten-year-old girl. But the crime had been covered up because the Indian girl was in foster care. And because the DEA needed this sick fucker’s crucial information for a major drug op, they swept it under the rug.” He pointed at my leg. “Pull the skin as closely together as you can and hold it.”

I gritted my teeth and watched as he attached the butterfly bandages.

“The FBI and the DEA were convinced that my partner was the one who gutted the confidential informant like a trout a day before the man was supposed to deliver key information on a major drug shipment.”

“What was your part in it?”

“Mine?” Shay’s eyebrows rose. “None. The night this DEA snitch was killed, my partner and I were at a strip club sixty miles from the scene of the crime.”

“Alibied?”

He dabbed at the pooled blood. “Ironclad. Corroborated by two men we’d gotten into an altercation with after the… female escorts they provided for us earlier that evening tried to double the agreed-upon price.”

Four solid witnesses to alibi Shay and his partner’s whereabouts. “And the feds?”

“No charges were filed on the criminal side, but my partner lost his job with the FBI for moral implications.”

“That’s fucking ironic.”

“Tell me about it. I agreed to an immediate transfer out of the Minneapolis office, where I was third in line for the top slot. My ADA saw to it I was listed as a training agent for ICSCU. They sent me here. And I’m unofficially the DEA’s bitch. No matter where I’m transferred. For as long as they deem it.”

So many things made sense now. Including how Shay knew so much about Saro’s organization. He’d been part of a task force keeping tabs on my friend Jason Hawley’s criminal activities. Yes, he answered to Shenker, but he acted with a different vibe, as compared to other agents in our office. I’d chalked up those attitudes to male pissing contests-the new guy coming in and taking over. But it was more complicated than that… and a pointed reminder of how much I hated politics, in the office and in the military.

“Do you regret that decision?”

“No. I don’t live my life as black and white as you seem to believe I do. I’m Rah-rah! Go FBI! and all that shit, ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time.”

But there was that teeny percentage… that wasn’t completely above-board. Maybe we were more alike than I’d imagined. But I’d never seen those dark edges in him that existed in me.

“I know what you’re capable of, Mercy. I also know you don’t act unless you’ve been pushed into a corner.” He handed me two large bandages. “Keep this covered until it stops bleeding.”

“Aye, aye, Dr. Turnbull.”

“Don’t say that. It reminds me that my sister is the doctor in the family.”

Before I could ask for more information, he said, “Get some pants on. I’ll be in the kitchen waiting to hear about your night maneuvers, Sergeant Major,” and he left the bathroom.

Night maneuvers. I almost snorted. But it was a strangely apt description. I slipped on a baggy pair of jeans and returned to the kitchen.

Shay stared out the window. Without turning around, he said, “Where can we talk?”

We’d have privacy if we used the office, but I couldn’t tell him what I’d done in my dad’s space. Paranoid and stupid, but some ghosts are difficult to shake.

“Let’s go outside.” Jake had taken the dogs with him after he’d dropped Lex off early this morning, so we wouldn’t be hounded for attention. I shoved my phone in my back pocket and grabbed my coffee cup.

Another day of mild weather and no need to bundle up. But I shivered anyway as I curled my hands around my mug and stared straight ahead at the barn.

“Tell me all of it.”

Easier to confess what’d gone down without making eye contact, even when I’d mastered the art of looking a superior in the eye and lying my ass off.

No lies this time. I told Shay everything.

It wasn’t freeing. But it’d be hypocritical to expect absolution for guilt I didn’t feel.

And Shay didn’t offer it.

“You’re sure no one saw you?” he asked after a bit.

“Leaving the area?”

“That, and carrying a duffel bag of death across the reservation.”

I tossed my cold coffee over the porch railing. “I didn’t see a single person on my solitary eleven-mile run in the dark. Nor did any Samaritan on the rez offer assistance when I changed my freakin’ tire at midnight.”

“Was that intentional on your part? Making sure this altercation happened on tribal land so you wouldn’t have to deal with Dawson or his colleagues if you somehow got caught?”

“I didn’t choose the spot. He did.” The words And I won’t get caught went unsaid.

Another beat passed. “How do you think this will play out?”

“The tribal cops will find Naomi’s car first. I can hope, given what I’ve seen of their investigative techniques, that they’ll chalk it up to rez kids taking a joyride and abandoning the ride after crashing the car.”

“And Sheldon’s car?”

“The tribal cops’ll find that, too, I imagine, unless someone else finds it first, figures it’s an abandoned car, and decides the finders/keepers rule is in effect.” Which also happened frequently on the reservation.

“And if the tribal cops decide to look deeper?”

Deeper. I almost laughed. “Like bringing search-and-rescue dogs to the scene once they figure out Sheldon is missing? Well, if that happens, the dogs will find Sheldon’s body. Or what’s left of it. They’ll find him full of bullets. A common-enough caliber of bullets.”

“Will anyone report Sheldon missing?”

“Not until Monday or Tuesday when Sheldon doesn’t show up for work. Once that happens and the tribal cops get to his house? It’ll look like a break-in, and then they’ll find his mummified uncle. Then they’ll find Sheldon’s instruments of torture in the garage. Blood from the victims on that plastic curtain. Digitalis. From that point, it depends on whether they find his body. They might just assume Sheldon fled. But if the body is found, then the tribal PD will look at the victim’s family members as suspects. But Rollie is still in jail. John-John and Sophie were in Eagle Butte at a sweat ceremony.”