Page 100 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

He was an awesome creature to behold. In the moment, it didn’t matter how many pushups Harlan had done, what records he’d broken on the range or the obstacle course, how many arrests he’d made or suspects he’d killed in the line of duty. He felt reduced to a child again. Like Little Red Riding Hoodstumbling out of the forest and straight into the jaws of the Big Bad Wolf.

You’re making a mistake, Fallon had said one night on the road, drinking vodka out of a gas station coffee cup and shaking his head with disgust.I know you think you’ve got things under control orwhatever – the continued head shaking said he didn’t think that at all –but this man is going to end our fucking lives. Do you understand that? He’s going to carve us into little pieces and make Hannibal Lecter look like a fucking joke.

Maybe Fallon was right.

The moment the thought crossed his mind, Harlan grabbed it by the scruff and threw it aside. No. No, fuck that. He wasn’t some pussy, some coward. He wasn’t–

Felix –Mercy– stepped in close, huge boots neatly avoiding the blood splattered all over the floor. Up close, heat radiated off his body, and the smell of sweat, and algae. He tipped his head down to meet Harlan’s gaze, and Harlan, face hot and pulsing, had to tip his headback. Somehow in the intervening years, Felix had grown taller.

No, not Felix. Felix wasn’t in the room with them at all.

Mercy said, “I’ll give you credit, digging up a sister I didn’t even know I had. Points for creativity.” His voice was very low, and standing this close, Harlan swore he could feel the vibration of it through the air.

“There’s–” To his shame and horror, his voice was only a croak. He wet his lips and started again, but not before he saw Mercy’s pupils expand: the excitement of a hunter who’s weakened his prey. “There’s no shortage of people who hate you. It wasn’t hard to find someone who wanted to help.”

Mercy’s head tilted the slightest, predatory fraction. “Help with what? Snatching kids?” His head tilted the other way. “Makes sense you’d use a woman, I guess. Real men don’t hurt children.”

The suggestion infuriated him. To be thought of as such an unworthy opponent, that children were the only enemies with whom he could engage. He flexed his hands on the counter, felt his arms and shoulders bunching – and caught a flash of movement as the Englishman eased to the side and adjusted his aim, so he’d have a clear shot around Mercy’s side. But it was only a momentary glance, gaze drawn back to Mercy’s face, the awful, still, animal malice of it.

He bared his teeth. “I didn’t hurt him. I’m not going to.”

“No?” Mercy wasn’t seething. Far from it. He wascalm. “Where is he now, then?” He turned his head side to side, a slow, theatrical sweep, and then his gazesnappedback to Harlan, frigid and inhuman, his pupils still blown. “That must mean he’s with your buddy Fallon, huh? Helikeskids, doesn’t he?Especiallylittle boys.”

“Fallon knows not to touch him.”

“You’d think he’d know not to touch any kids, but…” Mercy spread his hands, shoulders lifting.What’re ya gonna do?

“He knows I’ll kill him myself if he does anything stupid.”

“Kiddie-diddling stupid? Or stupid like what you’re doing right now?” He pointed to the space between them. “Because, I gotta tell you,” he continued, the words conversational, his tone that wrong, wrong, wrong voice of someone who’d shed every last trace of humanity, “this is monumentally stupid on your part.”

He didn’t step, but he inhaled, and his shoulders lifted, and all the tendons and thick muscles shifted in his arms, and he leaned forward with intent.

Harlan couldn’t get his throat to work this time, an aborted swallow that jacked his throat and turned his voice hoarse. He was vibrating, and he couldn’t decide if he was excited or petrified, or a combination of the two. “What would be stupid,” he said, “is not letting me walk out of here. Becauseif I don’t make the rendezvous point in an hour, my men have orders to kill the boy.”

Mercy nodded, gave a little shrug with his mouth. “Sounds about right.”

Harlan was starting to get the feeling that he might actually get to leave under his own power, and it intensified that jackrabbit-heartbeat, giddy feeling in his chest. “The same rule applies every time I go anywhere alone. Your wife tried to shoot me yesterday. What if she’d succeeded? You need to keep a tighter leash on your woman.”

A grin split Mercy’s face, and his eyes sparked, a twisted delight and amusement, like Harlan had said something hilarious, and was about to get decked for it. “Oh, mon cher. You really don’t understand my old lady, do you?She’sthe one who holds the leash. And she doesn’t pull on it very often.”

Harlan’s mind flashed to the letters he’d found bundled and banded in the bottom of Ava Lécuyer’s dresser drawer.Fillette. That was what he called her, what he’d always called her. He thought of those rumpled, dusty skin mags under his childhood bed, and then thought of the letters, all those letters, bleeding a religious-like devotion.

Again, Harlan was struck by the piercing, squirmy notion that he’d made a huge mistake. That he should have killed the wife instead of taking the boy, the fastest way to cut the man off at the knees – no, at the heart. Because against all odds, by some strange miracle, the beast was capable of love.

But, no, this was good. This was right. He didn’t make mistakes of of that magnitude.

And there was still time to take care of Ava, an idea that gained appeal by the second. The bitchhadtried to shoot him.

Mercy shifted again, just an expansion of his chest, really, but it reminded Harlan acutely that he needed to pay attentionto the moment at hand. His breath caught, and it was an effort not to shrink back.

“Alright,Hank.” He leaned hard on the name – he remembered! – and sliced Harlan right down to that prospect he’d been, awed and trembling. “What was this little stunt? Get me out here? Kill me? It didn’t work. Now what’s your move?”

There was only one option, really. “To walk out of here, unharmed. Or, like I said, your kid’s good as dead.”

The feral smile slipped away, and it was as if it had never been there. Mercy nodded. “Then what? I kill more of your men at a secondary location and we do this dance again?”

Harlan’s thoughts raced. He conjured and dismissed a dozen scenarios between blinks, and finally cobbled together a compromise between his original intention, and what he was now faced with. “No. I’m tired of the games. I want a fair exchange.”

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