Page 147 of Mercy (The Sins Trilogy 3)
A scream in my throat, I try to round my back and pull my knees to my chest, my skin crawling. Is he going to rape me first?
He laughs, the sound smug. Powerful. “Oh yeah. I wanted to feel those tits all those years ago, when you were younger and firmer. But that fucking Blackwood. He got in the way. Made me a laughingstock. All because of what? I woulda shared if he’d wanted. I ain’t that picky.” He chortles again, then pulls me up off the ground and presses his lips to mine.
As I struggle, I smell mint. And my mind is back in the dream, where a guy whose breath smelled of mint and alcohol was forcing a kiss.
I twist away as violently as I can, and he lets me fall back to the ground. “That’s why you’re doing this?”
“Nah. Not now. I gotta wait for Blackwood. He needs to pay too. Otherwise it won’t be complete. Would’ve been easier and cleaner if you and him didn’t move so quick. Gettin’ squished by a car is a lot faster than drowning in a bayou.”
It finally clicks in my fear-sluggish brain. The hit-and-run driver on the highway. The driver outside Julie’s apartment who tried to kill me and Tony. He’s determined to finish what he started, this time with Tony as a bonus. My gut ices with terror.
“You know shrimps and crabs eat your skin, don’t you? ’Specially that soft face. Kind of a question if they eat while you’re still alive or wait until you’re dead. Either way, you’ll be dead. And unlike my whiny little wife, you won’t never get found. I’mma make sure both of y’all stay down forever.”
I remember the recording—what he said. “Did Margot send you after me?”
He blinks. “Margot?”
“You said, ‘Margot sends her regards.’”
“Ah, that?” He laughs. “She’s got no guts to go after what she wants. Oh no. Tried to keep her hands clean, but can’t nobody get what they want that way.” He turns his head and spits. “She wanted to punish Anthony, but couldn’t be seen to do it herself, you know. Too worried about what people would think. So that’s where I came in. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have told me to attend that concert you were playing at.”
Oh my God. So she planned it all from the beginning? She wasn’t just marginally involved like I thought? “There’s a recording of you that night. The police will have to investigate.”
“Shee-it. That don’t prove anything. Is there a date on it? Does it say I killed you?” He shakes his head. “Margot, that stupid bitch. She was paying Sam for nothing. I told her, but she wouldn’t believe me. So worried about her damn reputation, how everything’s gonna look. She loves that pity she gets ’cause she lost her daughter, and she likes it that she can use it to get people to do what she wants. Fucking castrated her husband with it.” Casually, he pops another breath mint into his mouth. “She was my wife, I’d beat her till she got over herself. But since she ain’t, I guess I’ll just do her a favor and kill that shit son of hers she hates so much.”
“Tony won’t come,” I say, sickened by his vileness. “He doesn’t know we’re out here.” The forest is too big, with too many trees.
“Oh, he’ll come. Probably already saw the text I sent him. He knows exactly where he killed his baby sis—”
Caleb’s eyes suddenly go sharp, and he plunges his hand into my hair and yanks me up. I cry out in pain, my eyes stinging with tears. Dreadful anticipation rushes over me, making me hot and cold in succession.
Pushing me in front of him, he jabs his gun hard into my jaw.
Terror thrums. I didn’t realize he had a gun.
“Nuh-uh,” Caleb says. “Not so fast, partner.”
Oh no.Tony’s standing between two huge trees, pointing a gun. “Tony, run!” I yell.
His face set, he barely spares me a glance. “Let her go, Caleb.”
“Do I look stupid?” Caleb chuckles. “I been waiting for this moment a long, long time.”
