Page 23 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“We poaching?” Devin asked.

“No. Not here, at least.” Mercy picked up a drumstick, and hurled it overhand across the water. It landed with an unremarkable plop twenty yards away. “We’re feeding.” He cranked the motor, and steered them closer to the sandbar and the sleeping gators there.

Over the roar of the engine, he said, “These are the shy boys and girls out here.” As they approached, all but one of the sunbathing gators scrambled off the sandbar and into the water. Mercy steered one-handed and chucked chicken legs into the ripples they’d left behind. “But in a day or two, they’ll be coming right up to the boat asking for a hand-out like the ones on the tourist routes do.”

It must have clicked, then, for Devin, what Mercy was trying to do, because his belly laugh cracked high above the drone of the motor.

Nine

Sun House was a confectionary yellow Queen Anne Victorian mansion nestled in a grove of live oaks trailing long beards of moss. Three stories, laced with ornate white gingerbread, it was too large to see all of it from one angle. Ava glimpsed blue iris and great skeins of white phlox through the bars of the ten-foot wrought-iron fence that bordered the property. An upstairs window was open, white drapes swaying gently within.

If the place was a brothel, it was a successful one.

You can’t miss it, Bob had said on the phone.It’s yellow as the sun itself.

It was.

Ava reached up under her jacket to check the holster was secure at the small of her back, squared her shoulders, and marched forward.

Until a hand clasped hers, and tightened like a vise.

She swung around, fist already cocked back, and Tenny lifted his brows above the lenses of his sunglasses.

“If you’re this trigger happy already, I’m not liking our chances inside,” he drawled.

Ava tried to wrench her hand away, and found she couldn’t; his fingers tightened cruelly. “Let go,” she hissed, and his head tilted. His brows went down. She couldn’t read his gaze through the dark shades, but his mouth curved upward in a smile that had her redoubling her efforts to get loose. “I swear–”

“What’s wrong, honey?” he asked, in a Southern accent that was less ridiculous than Jeff from Spring City. He sounded like someone from north Georgia, or even eastern Alabama, soft and twangy without being over the top. It soundednatural, andit startled her into stillness. “I thought you wanted to do this. You sounded so excited before.” He swung her hand back and forth.

With his other hand, he lifted his glasses, and above his smile, his eyes flashed, sharp and direct. Without moving his mouth, he whispered, in his real voice, “You’d better start playing along,honey, or you’re going to give away the game before we even get in the door. Iwarnedyou.”

He had.

Shit.

She took a deep breath, and willed some of the angry tension from her shoulders, and nodded. “Okay.”

His brows went up again.

She tried to do something apprehensive with her face, and eased in closer to him. “I do want to do it,” she said, and though she thought she didn’t sound like an anxious lover about to engage in her first threesome, Tenny nodded, flicked his glasses back down, and closed the gap between them. “I guess I’m just nervous.”

“That’s alright, baby.” He swapped her hand to his other one, so he could put his arm around her shoulders and draw her snug against his side. The shape of him reminded her of teenage Aidan, so startlingly different from Mercy’s solid breadth. “We’re doing it together,” he said, “and we always have fun together, huh?” He pressed his smile against her hairline, and whispered, “You must make it believable. If they have cameras, or microphones–”

“I know, I know,” she whispered, and looped her arm around his waist.

Together, they headed down the sidewalk, following the corner of the iron fence, until they reached the gate. There was a buzzer, as promised over the phone. And a small, black eyeabove it she knew was a camera. It was for its benefit that she turned and pressed her face against Tenny’s shoulder.

Tenny pushed the buzzer, and an intercom crackled. “Hey there,” a friendly, female voice called. Dare she sayflirty. “What can I do for y’all today?”

In his Southern accent, Tenny said, “We’re the McAllisters, here to talk about the arrangements for our wedding?” A little questioning lilt on the end.

“Let me see…oh, here you are. Yes, the McAllisters. Y’all come on in.” A chime sounded, and the gate unlocked and swung inward on automatic hinges.

Halfway up the front walk, Ava glanced over her shoulder and saw it swinging shut on its own. “Can you–” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he whispered back. “Of course.”

“Anyone ever accuse you of being overconfident?”

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