Дэвид Балдаччи - Mercy

She looked at the back door. It was open. The killer’s exit? The storm was raging out there now, and copious amounts of wind were being driven through the opening. If they could catch the bastard who had done this...

She looked back at Bertrand. She had lost an agent. The first time ever. Her fault.

“Lee!”

Pine jerked her head at Mercy, who was pointing at the cabinets. After finding Bertrand, Pine had forgotten about the smell of smoke. Now that dilemma was presenting itself front and center.

The cabinets were flaming up, the fire racing across the lacquered wood like someone had dumped gas on paper and struck a match. Pine had never seen a conflagration build that quickly.

She whirled around, forgetting about the fire just for a moment, and with good reason. It had been replaced by something even deadlier to them. For in her mind, Pine once more saw all the large oxygen tanks strewn around the house.

This was no longer a residence in the suburbs.

This was a bomb. Just about to detonate.

She grabbed her sister’s arm and pulled her along. “This whole place is going to blow.”

They reached the front porch and ran the short distance through the driving rain to the Porsche. Any second Pine expected to be hurled off her feet from the blast wave of a house disappearing and taking her and her sister along with it.

We’ll just be ash. Cremated together.

She flung open the driver’s-side door and Mercy did the same on the other side.

An instant later everything turned black, for both of them.

Pine opened her eyes for a moment and then closed them. She did so again, fighting against the feeling of cement lodged between her eyelids and her face. It was like being in a nightmare and struggling to open your eyes to see the terrible things coming for you.

Finally, they stayed open and she was staring at a low ceiling of whitewashed brick. A brick ceiling was quite unusual. She slowly sat up and stared over at her sister. Mercy was sitting upright on a bunk, her back against the wall.

Pine looked around and took in the barred and chicken-wired window and barred door. “Where are we?”

Mercy shrugged. “We look to be in jail.”

Pine stood on wobbly legs, put a hand against the wall to steady herself, then stretched out her back. “Okay, I feel like I was hit by a tank.”

“Same here, but I don’t remember what happened after I opened the car door.”

Pine nodded and glanced out the window at the foreboding terrain outside. She also saw the high fence topped by concertina wire. “What the hell is this place?”

“Saw a guy with an AK walking by out there earlier.”

Pine checked her pocket for her phone. It was gone, along with both her pistols.

“Yeah, they took my gun, too,” said Mercy.

Pine sat down on her bunk, rubbed her eyes, and said in a bleak voice, “They killed Neil Bertrand. And the Atkinses are dead, too. And we’re here.”

“Yep,” said Mercy. “I think we got played. They were obviously waiting for us there.”

“But how could they know we were going to visit Wanda?”

“Don’t know. I wonder if the house burned up or blew up first,” said Mercy.

“Whoever took us was waiting for us in the Porsche. When I opened the door, I thought I saw something, but then everything went black. They might have hit us with some gas or something.”

Mercy nodded but said nothing.

They both perked up when they heard footsteps. It was a man dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. He was carrying two trays. He put one down, and waited. Then another man appeared, dressed similarly. He was carrying a riot shotgun, Pine noted, like they used in prisons. It was designed to kill over a wide, shallow field of bodies.

The first man unlocked the door and slid the two trays through.

Pine looked at each man; they did not look back at her.

She said, “Can you at least tell us where we are?”

The first man locked the door and they both left without speaking or ever looking at them. It was like they had left food for two invisible people.

Pine picked up one tray and handed it to Mercy while she took the other. They sat on their bunks and ate the food and drank the glasses of water provided.

When they were finished the same two men came back and retrieved the trays. This exact timing made Pine believe they were under surveillance.

Five minutes later another man appeared.

Peter Buckley had on jeans, a white collared shirt, a tan vest, a brown corduroy jacket with olive-green elbow patches, and a pair of all-weather boots.

He pulled up a chair and sat down, facing them from the other side of the bars.

He looked first at Pine and then settled his gaze on Mercy.

“You’re the guy I saw at the house, with the lawyer,” said Mercy.

Buckley said nothing, he just kept staring at them.

Pine let this scrutiny go on for a bit before saying, “Well, we’re here.”

Buckley looked at her. He didn’t smile, he didn’t chuckle, he didn’t look grim or angry or triumphant. He simply appeared curious.

“Yes, you are.”

When he spoke Pine’s suspicions were confirmed. He was the man who had spoken to her when she’d been kidnapped.

“You killed an FBI agent. And two other people,” said Pine.

“No, the Atkinses had a heart attack or a stroke when my men broke into the house. They never touched them.”

“And Agent Bertrand?”

“He was supposed to have been anesthetized, as you two were. Unfortunately, things went awry. They’re not sure how the fire started, but there’s not much left of the house. The important thing is that you are both here.”

“How did you know we’d be at the Atkinses?” asked Pine.

“We hid a tracking device in the Porsche after my colleague took Ms. Blum. And we had the Atkinses’ line tapped. We heard your conversation.”

Pine closed her eyes for a moment, inwardly seething at this oversight on her part.

“And do you also have Carol Blum?” she asked after she reopened her eyes.

Buckley nodded. “She is an important part of this.”

“And what exactly is this ?”

Buckley turned back to Mercy. “You killed my brother.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“What I meant to say was you didn’t know you had, but you did.”

“That’s as clear as mud.”

“His name was Ken. You stopped him from hurting Rosa. He pulled a knife and then a gun on you. You beat him up.”

Mercy sucked in a breath and looked over at Pine. “He wasn’t dead. I checked his pulse. And even though he hit his head, he wasn’t a quad. I checked that, too.”

Buckley said, “He later died of a brain aneurysm, probably from his head hitting the ground.”

Mercy eyed him more closely. “I saw you at that house and thought you looked familiar. It’s because you look like Ken around the eyes and jaw.”

“You said he deserved it,” Pine pointed out. “It was kill or be killed. And she didn’t even know he was dead. So what exactly are you trying to do here?”

Buckley crossed one leg over another. “It’s payback, but it’s complicated payback. Not really connected to the incident with Ken and your sister .”

Now Pine sucked in a breath.

Buckley smiled at her discomfort. “Yes, we know all about that. What you two represent is symbolic, really.”

“Again, clear as mud, as my sister said before.”

“The government caused my father’s death, and turned my mother and my sisters against the rest of the family. I was the only one to really make anything of myself. The payback is against the government. Since I, of course, can’t do it directly, I am going to do it indirectly, using you two.”