‘I looked for you,’ Gideon cried. ‘I searched and searched. But I couldn’t find you. I’d think about what was happening to you and . . . God, Mercy, I’m so sorry. I should have looked harder.’
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry, too. But it’s not your fault. Not mine, either. You couldn’t have found us, because they didn’t want us to be found. Don’t cry. Please.’ A sob choked her. ‘Dammit, Gideon, you’re breaking my heart.’
Gideon drew a shuddering breath. ‘Sorry.’ He straightened, still on his knees, then cupped Mercy’s equally wrecked face. ‘I’m just making it worse.’
‘No,’ she said sadly. ‘You make it better. Now that I know the truth, it’s better.’
They were quiet for a long moment, and then Gideon looked around them. ‘It’s different, isn’t it?’
‘Some things, yes. Some things are the same.’ She gestured to the white crosses. ‘Graveyard’s in the same place.’
Gideon’s gaze dropped to the cross she’d uncovered. ‘Amos married again.’
‘And she died. The thought of him making her cross . . . it hurts. I remember the day he made yours.’ New tears streaked down her face. ‘“Gideon Terrill, Beloved Son”.’ Her voice broke again. ‘They wouldn’t let him put the cross on your grave. They said you’d sinned, a mortal sin, even. You’d killed. So you couldn’t be buried with everyone else.’ She swallowed hard. ‘So one night he woke me up and we snuck out of the gate to where they’d buried you. Or the body they said was you, anyway. Amos had made a little plaque. “Beloved Son”. He buried it a few inches deep, just enough that it couldn’t be seen. And we both cried. For you and for Mama, because Ephraim had already taken her away.’
Rafe hadn’t understood why Mercy had loved Amos so much, but he was finally beginning to. Yes, the man had allowed terrible things to happen to her. Yes, he’d remained in a cult that was so evil. But he’d cared for her. He’d loved her. He’d loved Gideon, too.
Gideon shuddered out another breath. ‘Thank you.’ He rose, holding out a hand, first to Mercy, then to Rafe.
Rafe eased himself to his feet, grimacing when his leg throbbed. He met Gideon’s gaze with apology. ‘I’m sorry. I should have tried harder to call you, Gid.’
‘Yeah. You should have.’ Then Gideon shocked him by pulling him into a hard hug. ‘But it’s okay,’ he whispered. ‘Thank you for bringing her here. I probably would have nixed the entire idea and she needed this. So did I.’ He let Rafe go. ‘But don’t do it again. Please.’
‘I won’t,’ Rafe promised.
‘Oh no.’ Mercy had moved to the far end of the small graveyard and was uncovering another cross. This one was natural wood, while the others were painted white. She looked over at them wearily. ‘It says “Comstock”.’
‘They put one up for Eileen,’ Gideon said. ‘I wonder who they killed pretending it was her.’
Because Eileen had escaped, only to have her life stolen permanently by a serial killer.
‘No. It doesn’t say “Miriam”. It’s her family, Gideon. Dorcas, Stephen, and Ezra. The date is November first of last year.’
Gideon cursed. ‘They killed them, too.’ Then he frowned. ‘Wait. They acknowledged their deaths?’
Daisy, Erin, and Sasha joined them at the edge of the graves. ‘They didn’t normally do that, did they?’ Daisy asked quietly.
‘No,’ Mercy answered for him. ‘Or if they did, they wouldn’t be allowed to be buried in the community graveyard, because it was “hallowed ground” and they’d been cast out, devoured by wolves.’ Her gaze returned to the cross. ‘Amos didn’t paint it. I wonder why.’
‘He always painted them,’ Gideon murmured. ‘Paint was expensive, but Amos always said that it was worth the cost. That we needed to honor the dead.’
‘November first would have been right about the time that Eileen escaped,’ Daisy commented. ‘She was found wandering by the side of the road up in Macdoel a few days later.’
‘And it jibes with what Ginger in the store said,’ Sasha added, then brought Gideon and Daisy up to date with what they’d learned in the Snowbush general store.
‘We were discussing who to call to secure the scene,’ Erin said. ‘But we’d have to go back to Snowbush and ask to use one of the shops’ phones. No cell service here.’
Rafe left Erin and Gideon to figure out who was best to call – who was closest and who they thought they could trust not to mess up the scene. He walked over to Mercy, who still knelt in the snow.
‘You’re going to get sick,’ he murmured. ‘Your jeans are soaking wet.’ Just as his were, drenched from the knees down and getting cold very quickly. ‘Hypothermia can set in quickly, even when the temps are mild like this.’
She rose, never taking her gaze from the wooden cross. ‘Eileen’s mother was good to me,’ she murmured. ‘I went to school with her brother, Ezra.’
‘Amos didn’t put their birth dates on the cross,’ Rafe noted.
‘I know. And he didn’t make individual crosses, either. He always made individual crosses with birth and death dates and something special, a message of some kind. Whatever the family wanted. I don’t know why he didn’t this time. Maybe he was rushed or maybe they wouldn’t let him, like with Gideon. The leaders would have packed everyone up and moved after Eileen escaped. That’s what they always did.’ She sighed. ‘I know it’s stupid, but I really have been hoping that the families of the dead really did get back to civilization, that they weren’t “devoured by wolves”.’
‘Not stupid,’ Rafe chided. ‘It’s never stupid to hope.’
She looked at him then, her mouth turning up in a sad smile. ‘Thank—’
But she never got to finish. A gunshot cracked the air, followed by a shrill curse behind them, and they spun to see Erin sinking to the snow. Which was rapidly growing bright red with her blood.
‘Down,’ Rafe barked, shoving Mercy into the snow, just as Gideon shouted ‘Gun!’ Rafe pulled his weapon, looking frantically for a shooter.
Fucking hell. Looked like Eden wasn’t so deserted after all.
Twenty
Modoc County, California
Monday, 17 April, 3.45 P.M.
Mercy looked up from where Rafe had pushed her into the snow. And she saw him.
Ephraim. He’d come from the far edge of the compound, from the direction of the school, but he’d made it as far as the church before he’d started firing.