Page 89 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“Shut up. What I’m saying is, calling a normal, emotionally stable guy a ‘wannabe’ would have either sent him packing, or made him step up and prove his value to the club. As far as hazing goes, your outburst was small potatoes. But with Boyle, it shattered him. Shattered a fantasy that, most likely, based on his home life, was a sustaining, driving force for him. Without it…” He shrugged. “You’re talking total mental breakdown, or the creation of a new fantasy as a means of staying afloat.”

“And the new fantasy,” Ava said, “was making Mercy pay.”

Alex nodded.

“Jesus,” she muttered, rubbing at her forehead, and then she turned back to Mercy. She petted his arm the way you would soothe a horse, steady, slow strokes down the length of it, from elbow to wrist. She sighed. “Regina said that he mentioned the clearing specifically, but that he also said, after they’d slept together, when he was sex-drunk and stupid, that he was, quote, ‘going to poison all the places that made’ you.”

“Metaphorically?” Colin asked.

“She wouldn’t know what a metaphor is,” Ava quipped. “But I’d assume so, yes.”

“Shit, we need to call Knoxville,” Colin said.

Mercy shook his head. “No. No, he already had his crack at Knoxville. He’s here now. This is about the early years.” He looked at Ava, at the pretty, beloved lines of her face, somehow lovelier with fatigue, and ferocity. “I was a loser kid. There’s only three places here that made me.

“Home. Here. And the swamp. But Harlan’s not a boatman, so he’ll go where the swamp took me, at the end of every day: home.”

Twenty-Three

“I want to wait for my vice president. That should be him pulling in now.” Walsh gestured toward the clubhouse door, and the roar of bike engines on the other side of it, with his water glass. He wasn’t hooked up to an IV drip anymore, and though he still had the shakes, he could keep food down, now, and was clear-headed, despite the fatigue.

Boomer materialized at his side and set down a sandwich on a plate. PB&J, easy on the stomach.

Walsh nodded his thanks and forced himself to take a bite.

Across from him, arms folded, both of them leaning backward against a table, Agents Daniels and Nowitzki looked put-out with the delay, but only a little. They’d walked in minutes before, after passing through the security checkpoint at the gate, and both of them wore tense and wary expressions.

“We talked to a few trusted colleagues at Quantico,” Daniels had begun, and Walsh had told them to hold on.

A moment later, the front door opened, and Aidan and Tango walked in looking a little tense and wary as well.

Aidan caught Walsh’s gaze across the room as he approached, though, and grinned. “We–” He cut himself off when Walsh tipped his head toward the agents. “Oh. Hi.” He came over to sit on the bar stool beside Walsh, and Tango moved around behind it to start pulling drinks with a clatter of glasses and ice. “I’m assuming you guys have news?” he asked the agents, and with his elbows braced back on the bar, and his knees spread easily, and his expression one of practiced boredom, he looked startingly like Ghost. Like Ghost when a very young Walsh had first met him, still shiny-cocky with youth rather than swaggering with tried and true experience. Theylooked alike, Ghost’s sharp-boned face, and broad brow, and enviably thick hair, still mostly black even now, but Aidan didn’t hold himself, any part of himself, the way his father did. He did now, though, and Walsh wondered if it was an effort, or if, in Ghost’s absence, he’d taken on his mantle unconsciously. It was a lovely thing to see…if only it wasn’t predicated on a lie.

Jesus.

Nowitzki seemed unable to keep a sneer in check as she regarded Aidan, and her partner cleared his throat pointedly before saying, “Yes. As I was telling Mr. Walsh,” he said to Aidan, and then addressed both of them, gaze shifting back and forth, “we called our supervisor back at Quantico, originally, and he told us not to worry about Boyle, and to stick to our assigned investigation – even when we pressed him about the missing child.

“So I called a different colleague, one I trust.”

“Yeah, ‘cause trust in the FBI gets a man far,” Walsh drawled, and ate more of his sandwich.

“This is a friend,” Daniels said sharply. “My friend first and an agent second, and he said Mike Chambers came to visit him a few days ago, before he went AWOL.”

Walsh stopped chewing, and glanced over at Aidan, whose brows lifted.

“I trust that name’s familiar?” Daniels said.

Walsh shrugged.

With an impatient noise, Nowitzki said, “Deputy Directors Sawyer and Hames are both dead.”

Walsh caught movement from the next stool, Aidan shifting, and then settling. Good boy. He shrugged again and said, “Am I supposed to know who they are, or care?”

Fox had called earlier about what went down with Hames, and Walsh was still sweating over it: over the target on the Virigina team’s back, and the sudden, reckless decision for Ianto fly up and join them. Abacus was a singular person? Who thehell?

For now, he crammed the last corner of his sandwich in his mouth and watched Daniels give his partner acut it outlook.

To Walsh he said, “My buddy got tapped to take over all of Hames’s active cases.”

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