Дэвид Балдаччи - Mercy

Mercy started to open the door. “I’ll be careful. I’ll just go and take a peek. Okay?”

Blum’s defenses crumbled away. “Are you sure?”

“As sure as my name is Mercy Pine.” She leaned into the back seat, zipped open her duffel, and took out her Glock in the belt clip.

When Blum saw it she said, “Do you have a permit for that?”

“Where I got it, you don’t need a permit or a background check. And North Carolina is an ‘open carry without a permit’ state. I checked that before I came here.”

“Why did you do that?”

Mercy put the clip holster on her waistband and covered it with her sweatshirt. “I don’t like to get hassled by the cops if I can avoid it. What’s your phone number? I’ll text or call you if something pops.”

Blum gave her the number, and Mercy put it in her contacts list. Then Blum opened the glove box, plucked out a pair of small binoculars, and handed them to Mercy.

“Thanks. I feel like a real spy now.”

Blum said, “Please, please be careful. I don’t want to lose both sisters.”

Mercy got out, looked both ways down the road, then hustled across the street. She made a wide berth around the target property and promptly disappeared from sight.

Blum sat back in her seat, ran a shaky hand over her forehead, and started to pray.

A preoccupied Buckley sat in a chair in the dining room of the house, where the large furnishings still looked small in relation to the enormous space. Spector moodily leaned against the wall, while Stephen Marbury paced restlessly in front of them.

The house was closed for the season; its owners were at their other home in Colorado, which was probably even more splendid than this one. The property manager had been paid a large fee to allow them to use it for a couple of hours as a safe meeting place. No faces, no names, just cash.

“This puts me in a bit of a pickle, Mr. Buckley,” said Marbury, who, while he paced, seemed focused on the state of his wingtips rather than the measure of his client.

Buckley was barely listening. The phone call he’d gotten had more than ruined his day. Agent Pine had escaped. His men had been found, revived, and relocated before the police arrived, thankfully, but that was small consolation for the problems Pine’s gaining her freedom could potentially cause him. He said absently, “I never told Pine you had been hired by me. Only that Dolores Venuti would be seeking bail. I didn’t even say you would be the one seeking it. The connection is tenuous at best.”

“But I met with her today. They are bound to make the connection. And I had to identify myself to the police at the detention facility. They know who I am. They know I’m from New York. They can easily track me down.”

Buckley said distractedly, “Then I suggest that a vacation is in order. In another country. I can make the arrangements.”

Marbury started to whine. “It’s not that easy. I have other clients. I have a practice. I have a family.”

“Then go back to New York, and when the police question you, you will merely tell them that you received a cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars to come here and meet with Atkins, or Venuti, rather. You don’t know who sent it but you presumed she would know. When she didn’t have a clue, you were as puzzled as she was. I can provide the cashier’s check drawn on an untraceable account, backdated. You can say you hadn’t cashed it yet because you weren’t sure you were going to take the case. You came down here to get the lay of the land. Because you are a prominent member of the bar, after all. Now that you know the state of things, you want no more part in it. You have never officially appeared as her counsel or filed the requisite papers legally attaching yourself to her case. That will be the end of it.”

Marbury stopped pacing and stared at him, impressed. “That actually might work.” He added in an admiring tone, “You would have made a fine lawyer.”

“Yes, well, I’ve always aimed higher in life,” Buckley said tersely, drawing a smile from Spector. “And now that your personal welfare is accounted for, please provide me with the information I need.”

Buckley had called in Marbury so he could meet with Desiree Atkins and milk as much information out of the woman as possible under the pretense of legally representing her. There were few ways to get in to see a prisoner, but being a lawyer was one of them. Buckley had no interest in Atkins’s being granted bail. He had tried to use the lawyer’s being able to talk to Desiree as leverage to make Pine provide him with information about El Cain, in exchange for sparing Pine’s life. And now Pine was out there somewhere, no doubt gunning for him.

Marbury sat down across from him, placed his hands on the table, and then clenched them. He looked ready to commence either begging for mercy or lying on the witness stand.

“She is an abominable woman. Insufferable whiner. Everything was someone else’s fault. She’s not quite right in the head, in my opinion. Might make for a good legal defense, actually.”

“Yes, yes, most assuredly, I think we can safely conclude that any person who imprisons and tortures another is not in their right mind,” said Buckley.

When Spector glanced at him with hiked eyebrows, he read her mind and added, “If it’s done solely for the sadistic pleasure of the person doing the torturing. But if it’s done for the purposes of obtaining vital information? Well, even our very own government has done that .”

He looked back at Spector with a superior expression and she finally glanced away.

Marbury looked puzzled by this back-and-forth, but ended up ignoring it and plunging on. “Since I told her the attorney-client privilege would protect anything she said, the idiot woman told me that an FBI agent and her associate had tricked her into confessing to killing her husband in Georgia on the same night that this Rebecca Atkins escaped from where she was being imprisoned. She was furious about that and wanted me to get the evidence thrown out.”

Spector stepped forward and said, “Did she question who sent you to her aid?”

“Not in the least. She strikes me as someone who sincerely believes that aid will come whenever she damn well needs it. The fact is, since she’s a fugitive from justice, no judge would cut her loose. She’d simply disappear again.”

Buckley clearly didn’t care about bail or Desiree Atkins. “What did she tell you about El Cain?”

“She hadn’t seen her since that night in Georgia.” Marbury paused to rub at his mouth. “Until Cain walked into her jail cell earlier today with an older woman.”

Buckley and Spector exchanged a significant glance.

“You didn’t mention that on the phone. How did it come about?” asked a frowning Buckley.

“They just showed up. She had no idea they were coming. The older woman and Pine had visited Atkins previously. They said that they wanted to discuss doing some kind of deal with her. She didn’t know the details yet. They were going to get back to her.”

Buckley glanced at Spector. “You really need to work your contacts at the FBI to find out more about Agent Pine.”

“I actually found out some things. I was going to discuss them with you when all this happened.”

“Well, I’d like to hear them now.”

“Okay, first, Pine’s apparently a world-class agent, but she’s definitely a lone wolf. She could have climbed the Bureau ladder, but has no interest in doing so. Currently, she’s assigned to the Grand Canyon area and lives in a town called Shattered Rock. It’s a one-agent RA,” she added, referring to a small FBI Resident Agent office. “Carol Blum, the ‘older woman,’ is her assistant there. But it’s odd that she’s out in the field with Pine on a case. That’s not how the Bureau operates. And this El Cain matter is obviously a cold case, so I was confused as to why Pine was even involved at all. I mean, it’s not her area of responsibility. I asked that very question, but my contacts had no answers.” She added in a warning tone, “But by all accounts, Peter, Pine is good, I mean really, really good. We need to tread carefully.”