Page 79 of Turn That River Red

I seek out Mercy again. Seek out her terror and her sorrow. It’s the same intoxicating blend that I felt when I first glimpsed her by the Concho River, her hair almost silver in the early morning moonlight.

I’ve been chasing that beautiful fear since I heard her elegant scream. Chasing it all the way to this miserable moment, me smoking a crumbling cigarette with an insistent hard-on and the only woman I’ve wanted in years sobbing and cursing my name.

“I don’t know how to deal with this shit,” I say to the dogs. Max whines and cocks his head. Roxi ignores me.

I stand up, letting the cigarette burn between my fingers instead of smoking it. I mean to pace around, to try to work off some of this energy, but I find myself drifting over to the damn freezer, the lock still on the floor from where it must have dropped when Mercy opened up the lid.

I open up the lid now and sigh into the cold billowing air. Because there he is, right on top:

Raul.

I wish I hadn’t killed him, which is an unusual feeling for me. Wish I’d just talked myself into the Church of the Well without the chaos. Mercy knows I’m a killer, but Raul’s the only one she’s really angry about. All her rage and suffering and she’s never once thrown the others in my face—not that pissant guard and certainly not the asshole who assaulted her, Pierce or Price or whatever his name was.

I hoist out the sack containing Raul and drop it on the workbench. Close up the freezer. Lock it. I tell myself I’m going to cook him, that I’m going throw all his meat in the smoker and get a month’s worth of jerky for my trouble.

I tell myself that, but it’s a lie. What I want, what I really want, is to undo his death so Mercy will hate me just a little bit less. But Hunters can only revive ourselves, not our victims.

But I cannoteat him. That’s something. I can wrap him up, give him a proper burial someplace. I’m not sure where they buried the remains of his they did find—not sure if they even buried him at all. I dragged Mercy away from the compound before the funeral service.

Christ. No wonder she hates me.

I take my phone out and turn it back on, ignoring the onslaught of messages from Charlotte. Instead, I do a quick search of Raul’s name. I’m surprised by what I find.

An obituary page—but not one put up by the Church of the Well. It was put up by his family, and it seems they’re the ones who buried him, not Reverend Gunner. Whether that’s because I was terrorizing the church this past week or because Reverend Gunner’s a hypocritical shithead, I don’t know.

But I do know that they laid Raul to rest in Cocana. Not the church compound.

And yeah, I’m jealous of him, even if he is a bag of meat.Mercy cared for him in a way she’ll never care for me. But maybe I can do this thing for her, put his body back together, so the last thing she remembers about me is that I tried. I tried to be good. Tried to act human.

And then I’ll let her go.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

MERCY

The back door slams, loud enough I hear it in the bedroom where I’ve been curled up and weeping for the last few hours. I immediately tense up, trying to draw into myself.

Especially as heavy footsteps thud down the hallway and stop outside my door.

I freeze in the bed as if Ambrose really is the boogeyman, and I’m a little girl who thinks the monster won’t see her if she doesn’t move.

The door creaks open.

“Mercy.”

He says my name the way he did before, when I thought he was a preacher and I liked how his rough hands explored my skin.

And God help me, but my body still reacts as if I haven’t learned the truth of him.

“Go away.” I face the wall, refusing to look at him.

“I will.” Which is a lie, because he steps into the room. “But I need to tell you something first.”

I keep staring at the wall, curling my hands into my chest.

“Your clothes got here,” he says. “I didn’t tell you, but I bought you some shoes.”

I don’t know why, but that makes me roll over. Ambrose fills up the doorway, half hidden in the hallway’s shadows.

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