‘Not yet.’ He tossed her a lopsided smile. ‘But I can look at myself in the mirror, so that’s a start, right?’
She gave him a decisive nod. ‘Right. I’m proud of you. Your father would have been too, God rest his soul.’
His shoulders sagged, like a weight rolled away. Not all of the weight, not by a long shot, but enough that he thought he could eat his mother’s supper without it sitting on an anxious stomach. ‘Thanks, Mom.’
Sacramento, California
Monday, 17 April, 11.30 P.M.
Rafe stopped his pacing to glare at Mercy. ‘Mercy, are you even listening to me?’
She startled, because clearly she hadn’t been. She was sitting on the sofa in Daisy’s old place, her cat on her lap and a cup of tea in one hand. Her other cat had claimed the back of the sofa, lying behind her head, curled around her neck like a purring mink stole while she absently scratched its head. She’d been staring at Rafe’s bulletin board, her gaze unfocused.
She blinked at him now, then smiled serenely. ‘No.’
He wanted to rant at her, he really did, but he found himself laughing instead. He sat beside her, turning so that he faced her. ‘At least you’re honest about it.’
She sipped her tea and gave the cat in her lap a long stroke. André had brought the two cats and all their supplies downstairs to the studio apartment when they’d returned from Reno. Mercy had immediately cuddled up with Rory, and the cat’s loud purrs indicated that he was on board with helping her manage her anxiety. It was working, because she seemed to be sitting in her own little bubble of calm.
‘You already knew the answer, Rafe. I’m not sure why you even asked the question.’ She raised a brow. ‘I tuned you out an hour ago.’
He drew a breath, praying for patience. ‘Dammit, Mercy. If you don’t listen to me rant, how do I know you won’t do it again?’
‘I know, I know. I shouldn’t have made myself a target. What was I thinking? Do I have no instinct for self-preservation? How would Gideon have survived if I’d been shot?’ She smiled dryly. ‘I heard you the first three hundred times, all the way from Reno. After that it seemed like . . . overkill.’
He snorted again. ‘Stop making me laugh. I want to be mad at you.’
She stopped petting the cat to pat Rafe’s knee. ‘You go right ahead and be mad all you want.’
‘Now you’re patronizing me.’
She smiled. ‘Yep.’ Then she sighed. ‘I’m sorry I scared you.’
‘But not sorry that you popped up like some sacrificial Whac-A-Mole?’
He’d caught her midsip and she coughed, setting the cup aside while she got her breath. ‘Sacrificial Whac-A-Mole?’ she sputtered.
‘Yes.’ He glared at her. ‘You made yourself a damn target.’
She sobered and he could see that under her nonchalance, she was deeply affected. ‘Yes, I did. You did it for me. So did Gideon. And so did Erin.’
He knew what she meant. Back in February, they’d all put themselves on the line when she’d been abducted by a killer. ‘We’re cops. We were doing our jobs.’
‘No, you weren’t. Well, Erin may have been. I think she was the only one who followed any kind of procedure. You took chances. And Gideon . . . he would have traded his life for mine. Do you really think that I could have watched you all be picked off by Ephraim while I did nothing? Do you think so little of me, Rafe?’
Rafe opened his mouth, then shut it again when he realized he had no comeback to that.
She reclaimed her cup of tea, never breaking their eye contact, knowing that she’d made her point.
He rubbed his hands over his face, leaving them there. Hiding behind them like a little kid. Vulnerability was not fun. ‘You scared me,’ he murmured. ‘I thought I’d lose you.’
She tugged one of his hands from his face, threading their fingers together. ‘I get it. But, Rafe, I stood up to him today. Well, I didn’t stand. I knelt. But I looked him in the eye and I didn’t back down. Don’t take that away from me. Please.’
His heart immediately softened. ‘All right. I won’t. At least I’ll try not to.’
Her smile lit her eyes. ‘I didn’t zombie out.’
He chuckled, both at her words and her delight in them. ‘I noticed that. What made the difference?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that. In the airport, I wasn’t expecting him. Ephraim, you know.’
‘I know.’ Rafe had to tamp down his fury at the man who’d tried to take Mercy yet again. If he could have, he’d have broken Burton in two. ‘But you were expecting him today?’
‘Yeah, kind of. I mean, you said yourself that I was looking around like I expected him to jump out from behind a tree.’
‘And then he did,’ Rafe said ruefully.
She shrugged. ‘It’s creepy, knowing he was following us. It’s creepy, knowing the store owner in Snowbush was on the phone as soon as we left. All of it’s creepy, but I’m so tired of being afraid. Today I wasn’t.’ She made a face. ‘Okay, I was totally scared, but I held it together.’ She hesitated, then showed him the scratches on the inside of her left wrist. ‘Sometimes a little jolt of pain is enough to derail the panic attack.’
He turned her hand, examining the deep gouges with horror. ‘You did this to yourself?’
‘Yes. I don’t mutilate myself, Rafe. I’ve never done that. But I realized a while back that I could distract myself with a little . . . something. For a while I wore a snap bracelet. One of those things that smokers or cussers use when they’re trying to quit. Farrah gave it to me when I was trying to quit smoking a few years ago and one day some guy on campus got in my space. He’d been asking me out for weeks and I kept politely refusing. Then one day he got tired of asking, I guess. I was so scared and I think I’d already zoned out.’
Rafe’s jaw hurt, he was clenching it so hard. ‘And then?’
‘Then he saw the bracelet and I think he thought it was funny to snap it. It . . . snapped me out of the zombie zone and I kneed him in the nuts.’
Rafe barked out a surprised laugh. ‘Good for you.’
She smiled at him. ‘I don’t know how to shoot like you guys, but I’m not entirely helpless. I wield a mean can of pepper spray. And I have a Taser, but I left it back in New Orleans.’
That she should have to arm herself made him angry as well, but that was more a fact of life than due to Burton. ‘I’m glad you found a way to derail the panic attacks, but I hate that it hurts you.’