B.J. Daniels - Mercy

If this cold case of Rourke’s really was one she’d worked on—even as a street cop taking photos of the looky-loos behind the crime-scene tape—well, then she would have all the information in her files at home.

The engine turned over. Shifting into Drive, she pulled out without looking. A car horn blared. She slammed on her brakes. The driver of the vehicle swerved around her, barely missing her. Anywhere else but Seattle and the driver would have given her the finger.

Shaken, she looked back to see a second car. This driver had managed to stop in time. The driver impatiently motioned for her to go. She smiled a thank-you back at him and, her heart hammering, pulled out into traffic.

Fortunately, her apartment wasn’t far from downtown Seattle. She navigated the half dozen blocks, concentrating on her driving, still upset from her near accident.

As she pulled into her parking garage and shut off the engine, she tried to calm down. But it was useless. Seeing Rourke again had stirred up a cauldron of emotions that now roiled inside her. Loving Rourke hurt and always had, but she’d thought she had learned to live with it.

Today she’d realized how wrong she was. She smacked the steering wheel with her palm, hating him and the spell some woman in a photo had cast on him. She couldn’t let him jeopardize his career, not for some old cold case. Maybe especially for one he said he was doing for her. But even at that thought, she knew she couldn’t stop him.

The parking garage seemed to close in around her. She had been getting better. Her psychiatrist had said during her last appointment that he was pleased with the progress she’d made.

“I still get scared sometimes,” she’d admitted. “But I’m not so afraid when I leave my apartment now. I still check the backseat of my car. Not as often as I used to, though.”

He’d nodded sagely. “It’s wise to be aware of your surroundings, living in a city. You’re getting out more, then?”

“I’m shopping for my own groceries again and going to lunch occasionally with friends.” The last part wasn’t exactly true. She’d never had a lot of friends. But, unlike some people, she didn’t mind eating alone.

The doctor had studied her openly. “You seem better. Do you feel better?”

She had.

Now, though, she couldn’t catch her breath. She listened for the sound of footfalls in the cool dimness of the garage, suddenly afraid she was no longer alone. Logically, she knew there probably wasn’t anyone crouched in a dark corner of the garage, waiting for her. Just as she had known there probably wasn’t a boogeyman hiding under her bed when she was a child.

But once a boogeyman crawled out from under your bed in the middle of the night... Well, from then on you knew that he could be waiting for you in any dark corner—or dark alley.

For a while, she’d thought her badge and gun were like a powerful shield that would protect her. She’d let herself believe that she’d conquered her fears, that nothing could ever hurt her again as long as Rourke was by her side. He’d made her feel powerful and immortal, when in truth, she was that little girl cowering in the corner of her bed as the boogeyman loomed over her.

Laura let out a sob as she searched the dark recesses of the garage, then hurriedly opened her door and fled to the elevator. She punched the up button, hammering at it, before she dared look behind her. There were street traffic sounds beyond the garage, but no closer, more ominous sounds of footfalls coming from the dark shadowed corners of the garage—at least none she could hear over the pounding of her heart.

She turned back to the elevator, leaning on the button again. She heard the elevator car groan from somewhere inside the building. Her every instinct told her to take the stairs. Now! But with her leg...

The elevator opened noisily, the yawning doors revealing no one inside. She practically threw herself in, hit the ninth-floor button and punched Close a half dozen times before the doors slowly closed.

The breath she’d been holding rushed from her. Tears burned her cheeks. She leaned against the elevator wall for support. She wasn’t better.

CHAPTER FOUR

WITH NO TIME to spare, Rourke had flown into the Gallatin Valley near Bozeman, Montana, the next morning, rented an SUV and driven to Big Timber, following a map he’d printed out on the internet. Beartooth proved to be another twenty miles on two-lane blacktop toward snowcapped peaks, which, according to a sign beside the road, were the Crazy Mountains.

The town, if you could call it that, came as a shock even though he’d done a little research on it while waiting for his flight. Beartooth was what was left of a once-thriving mining town back in the late 1890s. All that had survived, other than some old stone buildings, was a café, post office and bar. Apparently, there had been a general store across from the café, but it had burned down last spring.

Thanks to the internet, he’d found a cabin to rent on the mountainside across the road from the café. He could see the cabin through the trees as he pulled into a spot in front of the café. He’d thought about stopping by the cabin first, but he was too anxious to see Caligrace Westfield.

The Branding Iron Café was easy to find, given how few businesses were left in Beartooth. As he climbed out of the SUV, he tried not to get his hopes up. The P.I. had told him that Caligrace Westfield had changed jobs and residences often over the past ten years. For all Rourke knew, she might have already moved on.

A bell tinkled over the door as he stepped into the café and was hit with the combined smells of cinnamon, bacon and coffee. He breathed in, his stomach growling, reminding him that he hadn’t had much to eat. He’d been too anxious. Just as he was now. Anxious and nervous at the thought of finally seeing the woman face-to-face.

He took in his surroundings quickly. A variety of brightly colored quilts hung on the café’s walls. He’d expected a more Western interior, given where the town was located—in the heart of ranching and farming communities.

There were only a half dozen tables arranged at the front of the café, with four booths along one side and a counter back by the kitchen with a half dozen stools. One large table at the front was full of ranchers he took for regulars.

“Sit wherever you like,” a young woman called over her shoulder without looking in his direction.

He chose a table at the front of the café that gave him a view of the whole place. He could even see into the kitchen via the pass-through on the other side of the counter. A thin, pale man—in his fifties, he guessed—was busy cooking to the distant drone of a song on the radio.

The waitress who’d told him to seat himself stood at the pass-through, her back to him. Her long, curly dark hair was pulled into a knot of sorts at the nape of her neck. Loose strands hung at her temples.

Rourke waited impatiently for the woman to turn around, thinking about the latest information from the P.I. he’d hired. Edwin Sharp, a seasoned private investigator who used to be a cop, was in his sixties. Rourke had liked him the first time he’d met him. He needed someone he trusted, and since he couldn’t do his own digging without making his situation with the marshals’ office worse, he’d hired the man.

“I found something,” Edwin had said cryptically when he’d called on Rourke’s journey to Beartooth. “Your...mystery woman didn’t exist until her seventeenth birthday, when she used a fake birth certificate to get her driver’s license and a social-security card.”

“How do you know the birth certificate is fake?”

“She wasn’t born at the hospital on the certificate because it doesn’t exist—never has.”