Hot Mercy (Affairs of State Book 2) (32 page)

There was no answer. Not so much as a sparrow’s twitter interrupted the silence.

Mercy had an idea. “Tell them I’m the American woman’s daughter. Tell them I received the photograph they took of her and I thank them very much for helping her.”

Sebastian’s head snapped around. “You don’t know that they took the photograph. Mercy, they might be the ones who beat her.”

She focused on the tiny flame still burning in her breast. For months this was all she’d clung to. Hope. The fragile possibilities beyond the realm of the possible. “I’m giving them the benefit of doubt,” she said and climbed out of the Jeep.

“I would not trust them, missus,” Ivan said solemnly. “They are ignorant, primitive people.”

Mercy ignored him, already walking away. She stepped off the dirt road, waded through waist-high grass. Praying she could make her poor attempts at Ukrainian and rusty Russian understood, and they wouldn’t take offense at her using their enemy’s language, she called out, “I’ve come to take my mother home. Talia’s her name. I want to tell you how—” her voice cracked with emotion “—how
deeply
I appreciate your help.”

“Mercy.” Sebastian caught up with her. He wrapped an arm around her, trying to draw her back and away. “Don't do this to yourself.”
ere attacked in public places. . My best, Kathrynn Florida, but back the following week. Why not give all of this some though

She shoved past him. One trembling step at a time, she moved forward, pushing aside scratchy stalks of grass, moving toward a second ruined cottage when no one responded from the first.

“
Mi amor
.” Sebastian shadowed her. “You aren’t even carrying a weapon. Be reasonable.”

She ignored him. “Please!” she called out, again in Russian. “I want to thank you for your kindness. I’d be honored to repay you for my mother’s food and shelter.”
Always start out as a friend—right, Dad?

The tall grasses ahead of her shifted although an earlier breeze had died to nothing. Mercy thought she heard a low rustling sound. She stopped moving. Held her breath. Felt her heart lurch in her chest.
Please, God. Please give me this one miracle. I’ll never ask another thing of you.

The tasseled heads of grain just ahead of her flicked once, then parted. A wizened, brown face materialized. A man. Mercy froze, taking in details as more him became visible. The flesh of his face, framed by his high collar and wool cap, was distorted by a mass of scar tissue and dark, coin-sized moles.

He pursed his lips and studied her intently. He was so short that she had the impression he was still in a half-crouch, as if prepared to dash away at the slightest threat. “Tell them go away,” he whispered, surprisingly in English.

She glanced over her shoulder at Sebastian and then at Ivan, both men less than twenty feet behind her. “They won’t hurt you. They hate the Tambovs as much as you do.”

The man’s eyes lit with silent laughter. He bared brown picket-fence teeth. “That much?”

“If I tell my friend and driver to leave,” Mercy reasoned, “I won’t have a way to take my mother home.”

He still hadn’t admitted having Talia, let alone knowing anything about her. But she thought she saw a glimmer of indecision in his filmy eyes. And that gave her courage, and something to pray for.

“They won’t hurt you. They are my friends.” She wished she knew the right Ukrainian words. “Please!”

“Tell them stay there,” he said. “You come. You only.”

She wasn’t stupid. If these people were as devious as Stefan and his friends seemed to think, this could well be a trap. Though God knew what the old man’s motive might be for hurting her, other than simple viciousness.

She turned and called out to Sebastian and Ivan, “Back away. Wait for me at the car.” Neither man moved.

Sebastian was scowling at her. She flashed back to another time and place. Don Sebastian Hidalgo, beside her on his big white horse, Hermanito, charging down a steep arroyo. On another rescue mission. That same dangerous glint in his eyes. And behind it, that same dark terror—not for himself but for her.

“Mercy.” He took a step forward.

“Trust me to do this,” she begged. “Don’t follow us. I’ll be back, with or without her.”
Pray that it’s with! Oh, God.

When she turned around again, the squatter was studying the ground. She realized then that he actually was standing up as straight as he could, but his hunched back reduced him to not much more than four feet tall.

“Let’s go,” she said.

She followed the little man toward one of the cottages. Why, Mercy asked herself, did she put any faith in him? Maybe she’d gone at least a little insane from desperation. She couldn’t explain what caused her to believe that her mother was nearby. But she felt it. She sensed Talia’s essence all around her. Was her presence a physical thing, or only in spirit? She didn’t believe in ghosts, at least she didn’t think so.

The old man was hobbling off ahead of her—an emaciated creature with a mask of scars and a crooked back—but he scuttled along at a remarkable speed. She watched him sprint ahead and through the open doorway of the only building around with an intact roof. She had to duck to avoid striking her head on the low wooden lintel.

As soon as she straightened up inside the musty smelling, dim interior, her hopes collapsed. The place was utterly barren. Not a stick of furniture. The only visible living things, beyond herself and the gnome, were a pair of immense gray rats, which beat a hasty retreat for shadowy corners.

Mercy swung around to face the old man. While her back had been to him, he’d picked up what looked like a broken table leg. He stood between her and the door, making escape all but impossible. He raised his club in front of him, eyes gleaming maniacally, and lurched forward.

“No!” Mercy gasped, jumping to one side, arms extended to ward off a blow.

He winced at her reaction and shook his head, mumbling something. Stepping around her, he made for the center of the room where he banged the end of the club on dusty floor boards.

Mercy stared as a section of floor rose up on hidden hinges. The old man caught the splintery edge of the boards with one hand and held the trap door open, waving Mercy toward a black abyss.

“Come, come,” he chirped, flashing her a gleeful smile. “Quick, miss.”

She hesitated. What if Sebastian was right? What if this turned out to be a trap? 

“You want to see mother.
Nyet
?” He looked irritated with her lack of enthusiasm.

“
Da
.” She took a deep breath and stepped cautiously down rickety rungs that disappeared beneath her feet into utter darkness. The old man followed, closing the hatch behind him, shutting out even the dim light from above.

Now Mercy could no longer see him, the steps, or anything else. She knew he was still there, on the ladder overhead, only because of the scrape of his shoes on the wooden rungs and his raspy breathing. The air in the subterranean room was chilly, dank, and smelled of the earth, body odor, and kerosene.

When her foot found solid ground she sensed they were no longer alone. Someone lifted a shade from over a lantern. Gradually, her eyes adjusted to the weak light. Mercy began to pick out shapes. A stolid looking old woman with unkempt hair but cheekbones Parisian models would envy held up an oil lamp and stared at her anxiously. Then the woman turned and glared at the old man, as if demanding an explanation of the intruder’s presence.

Mercy searched the room, saw no one else. The tiny room was furnished with a square table, two wooden chairs, and a wall of metal storage shelves. The man gestured toward them. She moved closer, finally realizing something else was behind the shelves. A flimsy metal cot, like those she’d seen at the militia’s headquarters, had been pressed up against the rear wall of the room. On it lay a small, shapeless something.

The woman looked at Mercy with what might have been kindness. “She bad hurt. Do what we could.”

She? Her mother?

Or was this lump an injured animal, or the dead body of a stranger? God—it could be anything! But the old man had already raised her expectations and the warmth of fresh optimism worked its way up through her body, from toes to heart to brain—until her head grew light with anticipation and the crazy, dizzy, joyful belief that this just might be Talia. Alive!

Trembling, Mercy threw herself down on the dirt floor beside the cot. She tentatively touched the rough blanket over the uppermost lump. A shoulder?  The flesh underneath the bedclothes was warm but only thinly covered the bones. The figure flinched at the light pressure of Mercy’s fingertips. A hand appeared and drew the blanket tighter. Short of prying the fabric out of the shockingly thin fingers, Mercy couldn’t get a look at the creature’s face or any other part of her. 

Mercy leaned closer.  “Mom?”  She waited, her heart thud-thud-thudding so loudly in her ears she feared she wouldn’t be able to hear an answer. “Talia O’Brien, is that you?” Tears coursed down Mercy’s cheeks. “Please, speak to me. Mom?”

The man stepped up behind her. “She have no clothes. No papers. We don’t know who she belong to.”

“We take Polaroid,” the woman added gruffly. “Give to friend. He take to American embassy.”

Mercy realized they couldn’t have known that an agent of the same man who had tricked her into spying for him in Mexico had intercepted it. It was that same photograph that had started her search for her mother. It occurred to her that this couple, without access to a doctor, had been waiting all this time for the embassy to send someone for her.

The woman said in Russian mixed with a smattering of English, “Swine beat her. Face swell up so she cannot talk. Body broke. We give her medicine but she don’t get too better.”

Oh God…oh God…oh God!
was all Mercy could think. The figure on the cot had moved, if only a little, so she must be alive. But the blanket was clutched even tighter than before. Mercy slid her hand soothingly over the trembling shape. She didn’t dare whip away the fabric for fear of frightening whoever was in there even worse.

“We stole her while they slept,” the old man said, giving her a sly wink. “They drunk. Drunk and sleeping from—”

His wife grasped his arm, stopping him from going on.

It wasn’t difficult to guess what he’d started to say. That was why the monsters had kept her alive for as long as they did. They’d raped her. Mercy squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered, feeling ill.

“She not wake up when I take her,” the old man said. “Later, she scream and scream and—” He shook his head. “We have to keep her quiet, see? Or they find us. My wife, she make borscht for her, weak so she swallow it, with special herbs.”

“To quiet her,” the woman explained. “To help pain.”

All this time!
Mercy thought.
All this fucking time she’s been here, with no doctor.
In a filthy hut when she should have been in a hospital.

But was it really Talia? Or some other unfortunate who had crossed the Tambovs. Whoever she was, when her attackers woke up to find her still alive, they would have finished her off. It was a miracle this bizarre couple had been able to spirit her away.

“Can you bring the light closer?” Mercy asked, her heart near to bursting. One moment she longed for this to be her mother, and the next she felt terrified that it would be. How she’d suffered! She stared at the obscure shape, continued to smooth her hand over it, sensing the tension in the body lessening at her touch. An orange radiance brightened the area behind the shelves as the lantern moved nearer.

Mercy located the woman’s head beneath the blanket with gently probing fingertips. “It’s all right, I won’t hurt you,” she whispered. “Please. I just want to help.” The fingers that had locked down the edge of the blanket released. Mercy lifted the moth-eaten material and gently brushed away matted clumps of hair of an indeterminate color. A face appeared, filthy, misshapen from the pounding it had taken.

Even so, it was a face as familiar to Mercy as her own. A beloved face.

“Mother!” she cried.

                                          36

Sebastian sat in the Jeep, palms clamped to knees, spine rigid, staring straight ahead. Waiting. As soon as Mercy left him in the field, Sebastian had run back to the Jeep and grabbed a pair of binoculars he’d noticed sliding around on the floor as they drove. He watched her disappear into one of the cottages with the old man—thinking all the while,
No, no, no…this is bad.
But she had insisted, and there was nothing he could do at that moment.

Now the pulse in his throat counted off agonizing seconds. What was taking her so fucking long? Either her mother was in there or she wasn’t. Either the old man knew something or he didn’t. How long did it take to find out what she needed to know?

He shot a look at their driver, who had pulled his cap down over his eyes and leaned back in his seat. Soldiers could sleep anywhere, anytime. Sebastian had never acquired that skill. His body burned with bottled-up adrenaline. He needed to move.

He had only just started to pace up and down the road beside vehicle when a muffled wail came from one of the huts. “Damn it!” He launched himself toward the tumbledown houses. Why had he let her go in there alone?