Page 193 of Fearless

Ava stopped three feet back from the two captives, folding her arms, not wanting to be close enough for them to even breathe on her.

And Mercy…Mercy transformed into the talkative, delighted caged tiger playing with his prey.

“Did you boys behave yourselves while I was gone?” he asked, cheerfully. He paced in front of her, and ripped the duct tape from both their mouths to the sounds of muffled yelps. He wadded the tape and chucked it into the trash can off to the side. He was all loose-limbed and juiced-up, a manic blend of tightly wound and completely at ease. This was his wheelhouse, his talent, his contribution to the club.

He came to stand behind her, both hands settling on her shoulders. “I told the lady here that you’d be happy to answer any questions she has. Don’t disappoint me.”

Ronnie looked petrified. Ava tried to dredge up some sympathy for him, but there was none.

Mason, idiot that he’d always been, had a scrap of resistance in him. He glared at her with undisguised hatred, a sneer tugging at his split lower lip. “How’d you stand it, Ron? How was anything worth having to put up with this bitch every day?”

Mercy’s hands left her. She heard him step back, boots scuffing against the concrete. Then he moved into sight, moving around her toward Mason with a pipe wrench in one large hand.

Ava didn’t glance away. She didn’t even blink when Mercy’s arm swung back in a great arc and the wrench crashed into Mason’s knee.

His scream was terrible, echoing in the high, steel corners of the garage.

As it died away to noisy gulps and hiccups, Ava looked at Ronnie. He was pale, face slicked with nervous sweat. He wet his lips and swallowed like he might be sick.

“When I was seventeen,” she said, “Mason abducted me, assaulted me, and when I told him I was pregnant, he kicked me in the stomach. You being his cousin” – she swallowed – “will know all that. Just like you knew exactly who I was, where I came from, what kind of history I had. And you pretended to care about me, pretended we were both strangers, when you knew everything about me.

“You can tell them” – nod toward Mercy – “who you work for, who you report to. I don’t care about that. I just want to know why, Ronnie. Why me?”

His eyes went to Walsh, to Ghost, to Mercy, coming to her with a feverish pleading.

“It’s over,” she said softly. “And you’re going to tell me.”

He took a deep breath, glanced over at Mason, whose head had fallen forward onto his chest, tears rolling down his nose as he shivered and gasped and wrestled with the pain. “Because…” He looked at her again, going limp with defeat. “You ran away from the club; you were angry. You were the weak link.”

She hadn’t thought there was any way this could hurt her anymore, but she’d been wrong. Yes, she’d run away. So furious and wounded, she’d been the vulnerable, the broken, theweakspot in the armor of the club.

She turned away from him, breath catching. She hugged her elbows and willed herself not to tremble.

“Why don’t you go on back, sweetie,” Ghost urged. It was an order, but he phrased it like a request, and that warmed her. “There’s nothing left for you here.”

She nodded, and moved toward the door.

Mercy caught her briefly, tipped her head back and let the extractor bleed out of him a moment, just Felix shining in his dark eyes for her. “I don’t ever want you to worry about these idiots again. Okay?”

She nodded.

One squeeze and he turned her loose. “Love you,” loud enough for everyone to hear and not caring that they could.

Ava paused at the door and turned back, one last look at the two men who’d tried to ruin her life. “I want you both to understand that none of this had to happen,” she said. “It isn’t like in the movies; evil always has consequences.”

Ronnie closed his eyes.

Ava looked at Mercy, at the admiration shining in his eyes, the love. “Make them hurt,” she said, and left the garage.

She heard the music fire up as she let the door to the shop swing shut behind her: Metallica, “Master of Puppets.” Heavy metal to cover the screams.

They didn’t hold onto their secrets. Foolish children never did. That was the thing Mercy had always found most beautiful about the array of knives he carried with him in a black canvas case – blades had a way of parsing a man down to his most basic, human parts, stripping away the buffers of money, power, pride. There was no ego under the edge of his knife. Nothing too private, too guarded, too precious to hold onto. Ronnie and Mason were no exception. They came apart at the seams like hand-stitched dolls, but still, Mercy pushed them, because he wanted their blood on his hands.

Ronnie, it turned out, was the ambitious of the two cousins. He wanted to study business law for the time being, sure, but he had greater aspirations. He had a taste for adventure. He wanted to be involved in corporate espionage. He’d had a meeting, after graduating from Georgia, with the CIA, wanting to learn as much as he could about getting into the intelligence game. His father, moneyed, entitled, had connections at the FBI. It was them Ronnie was working for. His cousin Mason Sr. wanted the Lean Dogs out of Knoxville, a takedown that would fuel his eventual run for senate, his climb toward Washington, and God knew the FBI would look kindly on anyone who could get the alphabet agencies into the inner circle of an outlaw organization fifty years in prosperous existence.

So Ronnie had taken initiative; an informal mission to gain intelligence on the Dogs through, as he’d phrased it, the “weak link,” cozying up to an officer’s daughter. The plan had been his idea, one encouraged by his cousins Mason and Mason. The elder, because he wanted to wipe out the Dogs. The younger because he hated Ava Teague’s guts.

The entire relationship had been a lie, down to the seemingly coincidental meeting at the tennis match almost a year ago.

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