‘Well, not right then. After he put Mama in the back of the truck, he came back for me, to finish me off, I suppose. But someone drove into the parking lot. A cop.’ She frowned, the memory fuzzy. ‘Maybe? There were flashing lights and DJ thought they were cops. The car turned its headlights on us and it was so bright.’ She could remember the brightness, how it hurt her eyes. The fear. The empty pit of despair. ‘DJ ran back to his truck and drove away. Eventually paramedics came. One was a woman. I remember her saying that I’d be okay, that they’d help me. And after that I woke up in a hospital bed.’
‘They were not cops,’ Irina said, her voice thick, her eyes red. ‘I know this part, because I was working in the hospital when you were admitted, Mercy. Not in your ward, but I heard about the girl who’d been left for dead in Redding and airlifted to us. The girl who had two lockets that had the decoration that my Gideon wore on his chest.’
Mercy blinked at the woman. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘You were catatonic,’ Irina said. ‘You sat and rocked when you were healed enough. Before then, you just stared at the ceiling. For hours. It broke our hearts, the nurses.’
‘Who were the people, if they weren’t cops?’ Tom asked.
Irina shook her head. ‘I don’t know their names, but they would be listed in the police report. The driver was a security guard, a private one. I can’t remember his employer, but he did come in the day after you were admitted to see how you were doing. That was according to your nurse at the time, who was a friend of mine. She’s the one who told me about you. The security guard told her that he’d come to pick up his wife at the bus station, but that he was really early. He’d been sleeping in his car, out of sight of the shooter’s truck, when he heard the screams. He didn’t know what to do, so he figured he’d turn on his lights and maybe scare the shooter away. He felt bad that he didn’t get out of his car, that he’d “only” called 911, but he had no medical training, so he wouldn’t have known what to do. The paramedics were there in minutes.’
‘That was still brave of him,’ Mercy murmured, resolving to find the man’s name and thank him. ‘He saved my life that night.’
Rafe’s hand tightened on hers and he lifted his head. ‘We need to thank him.’
Mercy nodded. ‘I was thinking that. Can you get his name, Rafe?’
Tom was still frowning. ‘I’ll dig into the records for you. But I’m confused. You had two lockets when you were brought into the hospital – yours and your mother’s, I assume.’
‘Yes,’ Mercy said, not sure what his question was.
‘Well, I thought that the lockets were on heavy chains. Welded on. Impossible to break. How did you get both lockets?’
Mercy blinked again. She’d never wondered about that, but Tom was right. ‘He cut them off us.’ Another memory surfaced, this one not normally part of her nightmares. ‘He had bolt cutters and he cut them off us and buried them in the dirt. When he drove away, all I could think of was that I needed the lockets, so I crawled to where he’d buried them and dug them up.’
Gideon stared at her. ‘Why would he do that? Why bury the lockets?’
Mercy stared back. ‘I have no idea. Maybe he was trying to hide any evidence that would connect to Eden? I didn’t even remember that till just now. I just remember needing to get to the lockets.’
‘Because they were the last you had of your mother?’ Sasha asked.
‘Maybe. Or . . .’ It was a hard truth to admit, even now. ‘Or maybe the lockets were such a critical part of our lives, I felt wrong without mine even though I hated it. It was like an identity or part of our spirituality. It’s difficult to explain. Kind of like a talisman. Even though it was really a display of ownership.’ She shrugged.
‘Can you remember anything else about that night, Mercy?’ Tom asked.
She closed her eyes and let the scene play a final time. For now, anyway. She was certain she’d pay for opening the floodgates of her memories when she closed her eyes to sleep later. ‘He thought Gideon was dead. He said that we’d die there, like Gideon did.’
Rafe stiffened. ‘So he knew that Gideon had escaped to the bus station?’
‘Oh.’ Mercy’s eyes widened. ‘Oh yeah, you’re right. I don’t know if all the leadership knew Gideon had escaped, but I kind of don’t think so, because they would have hunted him down.’
Daisy grimaced, but Gideon’s face was scrunched in thought. ‘So if DJ knew I’d at least made it to the bus station,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘but thought I’d died there, does that mean he heard that from Waylon?’
‘Maybe?’ Mercy hadn’t considered that. ‘I mean, at the time we were reeling over the fact that you were dead. We didn’t know that Waylon had helped you escape, so it wasn’t anything we thought about. Later, when DJ said that you’d died at the bus station . . . well, I was in shock. I wasn’t thinking clearly about anything other than that Mama was dead. I didn’t give much thought to what Mama had said about you not being dead until you walked into my foster home a few months after I’d been released from the hospital.’
‘I’ve noted that DJ also thought you were dead and that his father might have told him,’ Tom said. ‘And that Waylon died not too long after. Understanding the culture and power structure of the cult could be key in finding them and bringing them down. Let’s go back to the people who were supposedly “devoured.” Of the four incidents you both remember, we know one was a lie. I mean, someone died, but it wasn’t Gideon. Is it possible that the others escaped as well?’
Mercy shook her head. ‘The other two that I remember, the people were identifiable. Now, their families? I don’t know.’ When Tom looked confused she sighed. ‘We moved the whole compound after each person was discovered. Their families did not come with us. Nobody ever spoke of them again. It was widely believed that they returned to the “world.” The “world” being not Eden.’
‘We know a few people escaped,’ Daisy said. ‘Eileen escaped back in November. Also Levi Hull, the young man who later killed himself and whose boyfriend got an Eden-style tattoo. He got out about seven years ago. There’s one other that we’ve been looking for. His tat is on Instagram, but you know about him, Tom.’
Tom nodded. ‘We still don’t know who that person is or was, but the search is still active. Gideon, what about the people you remember that Mercy doesn’t because she was too young?’
‘Oh.’ Gideon was still stroking Brutus, who occasionally licked at his chin. He frowned, thinking. ‘Marcia,’ he finally said. ‘Her name was Marcia. She had two kids, Bernice and Boaz. They were twins, but older than me, so we didn’t play together or anything.’ Then he inhaled sharply. ‘Shit, how could I have forgotten that? Marcia was Pastor’s wife. It was a horrible day when their bodies were brought back. Not recognizable. They were gone almost a week when they were discovered in a ravine. Their bodies had been heavily scavenged. I remember that church was canceled for a long time – days and days – because Pastor went off by himself to search for them, then later to mourn when they buried them. Nobody was allowed to play or smile or even talk. People walked around on tiptoes. It was awful. Mama drilled into my head that there were animals out there and we were not supposed to go outside the gates alone, ever.’