Page 14 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

She linked her hands together and said, without prompt, “People have been asking about Felix.”

Ava’s stomach wanted to somersault. It didn’t, but it could have, at a different time. “Who’s been asking?”

Barbara shook her head. “That doesn’t matter to me.”

Oh, God, the still-sane, still-rational part of Ava’s mind suppled.She’s gonna make us jump through hoops.

“Miss Barbara,” Ava pressed on, heart pounding. “Felix is–”

“His kid’s missing,” Colin broke in. “That’s why we’re here. His and Ava’s oldest. Remy. Named after the old man. Someone kidnapped him.”

Ava shot him a warning look, but he was staring at Barbara.

“Remy?” she asked, and a chill skittered up Ava’s back. Barbara knowing his name wasn’t any sort of threat, but the way she repeated it, as if she’d already known, broke Ava’s arms out in gooseflesh.

Barbara tipped her head, mulling it over, lips compressed. “Felix did always love that man. More than he deserved.”

For the first time since she decided to come, standing in the clubhouse hallway while Mercy tried not to fall apart, and begged her to go to London instead, Ava wondered if she’d miscalculated. She knew no one in this city, and had had no one from which to glean information. She remembered Barbara as small, and tidy, and self-possessed, regal in her quiet, understated way. She still was those things…but Ava also remembered her as genuinely caring about Mercy. Feeling empathy for him, and trying to be kind in their brief encounter.

Maybe she still did care for Mercy, but Ava wasn’t him.

Barbara had also spent a large chunk of her life looking after Dee Lécuyer. No one did that without loyalty. And Dee, Ava remembered well, had not only hated her on sight, but hated her son as well.

Coming here had been a mistake.

But. In for a penny.

In as neutral a tone as she could muster – pretty damn neutral, given the near-complete shutdown of higher emotional functioning lately – Ava said, “Miss Barbara, the man we’re looking for, the man who took Remy, is an FBI agent.”

Again, she didn’t seem surprised. Her head tilted the other way, gaze boring into Ava’s face, where she could feel the first prickles of sweat gathering at her hairline, and on her temples. “His uncle?”

Shit. She knew about Alex.

Colin shifted his weight, a sudden flurry of movement, then settled again, like he’d meant to say something, and then thought better of it.

“No,” Ava said. “Alex Bonfils is helping us.” Across the room, leaning against a peacock-printed armchair, Reese caught her gaze and gave the faintest shake of his head that she read asdon’t reveal too much. She didn’t intend to, but this wasn’t a normal source of information. She felt like she’d stumbledunknowingly into a chess game half-asleep. But no one else stood a better chance of getting info out of Barbara. She said, “How do you know about him?”

There were women who would have smirked, fluffed their hair, taken a bit of relish in knowing something someone else didn’t. Something that had been kept secret for more than thirty years. But not Barb. Her eyes were a clear, amber-gold, striking against her dark skin, and they stared and stared and Ava wanted to shiver again.

“Remy – Remy the elder – wasn’t as careful as he thought he was. Poor Felix never knew what he got up to, but Dee kept an eye on him. She knew about Colin” – she nodded toward him – “and Alexandre all along. The woman – the mother – used to go to the same hairdresser. Dee used to talk with her, sometimes.”

“Jesus,” Ava muttered. “Did she reveal herself?”

“No. But I suspect Tina knew who Dee was.”

Ava envisioned it: she’d never seen a photo of Alex’s mother, but Remy had a type – like his sons, she thought, reflecting on Jenny, on Agent Duet – stacked and blonde. (She really was an outlier, wasn’t she?) In her mind’s eye, she saw Dee squared off from someone who could have been her sister, looks-wise. Tense, toothy smiles, and saccharine compliments. Small talk, and feigned interest in mentions of work, family, children. Had Alex’s mom talked about him?I’m so proud of my boy, he’s in training to become an FBI agent. What about Dee?I hate my sonuvabitch son so much he pretends I’m already dead.

There were other, more pressing questions to ask, but the one that formed on Ava’s tongue needed to come out, or drive her crazy forever for missing her shot. “Dee didn’t want to be with Remy –shelefthim. So why was she so obsessed with him? Why’d she keep tabs on him?”

Thatfinally landed like an arrow. Barbara blinked, and, afterward, her gaze skated across the room. It snagged onsomething – maybe Reese, going by her slight frown – and then returned. Her eyes weren’t so impassive this time. “Dee was complicated.”

“So’s cancer. It’ll still kill you.”

The first glimmer of emotion touched her: frown lines deepening around her mouth. “She–”

Out of patience, Ava decided to swing the hammer, and sweep up the glass if necessary. “She was a bitch,” she said, coldly, and Barbara’s brows jumped, once.

Colin muttered, “Oh, fuck me.”

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