Page 109 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

He started when he caught sight of Duet. She wore a tank top with a sport coat overtop of it, but her left arm wasn’t through the sleeve; rather, it was strapped across her chest in a sling, and he caught a glimpse of thick white bandaging on her bicep.

She noticed his gaze, and gave a wry half-smile. “Yeah. I had a run-in with Boyle’s pet hooker.” She made a face. “Okay, that’s not fair to hookers: I had a run-in with Regina Carroll. Can’t say I’m a fan.”

The last he’d heard of Regina – and he’d known right from the start that trusting her was stupid, but Boyle had been dead-set – she’d been “taken into custody,” Boyle’s words, byLécuyer’s wife and the party she’d traveled south with. He hadn’t known the idiot had attacked an FBI agent first. “She cut you?”

“Shot me.”

“Holy shit.”

“Just a graze.” She touched the outside of her arm, and he caught the fast flicker of pain that crossed her face at even that light contact. “The doctor was being cautious.”

Caution was something he needed to exercise as well. He checked his phone, and found that he’d already been gone almost ten minutes. Scanned the parking lot, searching for anyone suspicious. “Okay, I can’t dick around here. What do you want from me?”

Her brows jumped, a littleokaygesture, like he was being unreasonable. “Do you have proof of life of Remy?”

He pulled up the photo he’d sneakily taken on his phone just before he left, and showed it to her, the time stamp visible on the screen. “Whole and unharmed, despite the little shit’s best efforts to get eaten by a gator.”

“A what now?”

He shook his head; no way was he wasting time on that whole story. “Boyle’s holding him a half-mile up the road, at an old abandoned gator depot. He’s got two dozen toughs to back him up, and they’ve got a treasure trove of weapons. He said something about a prisoner swap…?”

Duet blew out a breath that fluffed her hair, and shook her head. “Yeah, Felix agreed to one, apparently. Him for the kid.”

“Boyle’s going to torture him. He’s got a whole setup going on.”

Her head turned toward the street, but her gaze narrowed and stayed on him. “I’d imagine he knows that.”

“Have you been with him? Talked to him?” At this point, Fallon kind of hoped Felix got the better of Boyle. He didn’t givetwo shits about either of them, but it was Boyle who stood to make his life a living hell. If he got to live, that was.

“No, just the brother.”

“The profiler?”

“Yeah.” Her gaze narrowed another fraction. “I hear you guys tried to kill him on the way down here.”

“Boyle, not me. None of this shit has been my idea.” He sliced a hand through the air for emphasis.

“Right. You’re just trying to live to diddle more kids another day, huh?”

“Look,” he huffed. Tension was winding tighter and tighter in his stomach, and he couldfeelthe time slipping away. “This isn’t about us. Do you want the kid back or not?”

“Obviously.”

“Okay, well, then, if you call in–”

A truck started up behind him, loud as close thunder, and he jumped, might have even yelped, and spun around.

A man stood directly behind him, and his hair was a muddy brown color, styled into a mullet, and he wore a denim jacket with the sleeves cut out of it over a dirt-streaked wife-beater. But there was no mistaking his eyes; those were unfortunately familiar.

“Shit.” Fallon scrambled for his hip, the gun there, and behind him, Duet said, “Don’t.”

He didn’t need to look to know that she had drawn on him.

He held his empty hands out to the side, and breathed, and stared into those haunting, clear blue eyes that had blinked coyly at him in the Knoxville precinct; invited him into a bar bathroom; and then laughed above him in a dark room somewhere, when he was tied down, and drugged, and beaten, and he’d thought he was about to die. He didn’t know the young man’s name, but that didn’t matter: he wastrouble, in every sense of the word.

As Fallon stared at him, Blue Eyes lifted a hand in a snarky little wave. “Hi.” One word, but his accent was decidedly British. Then, in a passable Cajun drawl, he said, “Remember me?”

“Christ,” Fallon muttered.

---