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23
Mercy
The early morningsun should have lit up the streets of the Bend with a cheerful glow. Instead it caught on splatters of blood staining the roads and sidewalks—and here and there the wall of a building. The legs of a corpse that hadn’t yet been found protruded from one alley we drove past in the van. Several of the worst streets were cordoned off with police tape, cops swarming the place and hauling away bodies.
Other than a few other cars we passed, the police were the only people we saw out and about. All the businesses were closed; none of the regular civilians dared to leave their homes.
As we cruised by a house that had its door bashed in and pools of blood drying on the front walk, my stomach flipped over. “How many people did they kill?”
“It’s still not clear,” Gideon said, peering at his laptop. He had his full arsenal out today, the screens mounted in the back of the van all flicking from feed to feed, his tablet on the bench beside him. “I couldn’t keep track of them last night. The Storm’s people burst out of vehicles all over the place, broke into all kinds of buildings, shot the people inside or mowed them down as they tried to run. I’m not sure how many were even their actual targets vs. bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
That possibility made me feel even more sick. That psychotic asshole Xavier had taken things even further, gone on some fucking rampage through my city, and now look at it. Who the fuck did the Storm’s pricks think they were, anyway? My hands clenched into fists.
Then my gaze caught on a familiar store up ahead. I stood up abruptly. “Hey, stop for a second?”
Rowan pulled over. He glanced at the street ahead and then back at me. “Isn’t that…?”
A man was carrying sagging boxes from a convenience shop on the corner to the back of a pick-up truck, where a few suitcases and pieces of furniture were already stacked. A woman and a little girl stood huddled off to the side of the door, watching him work, their gazes darting around nervously.
“Mercy?” Wylder prompted from the passenger seat.
I swallowed hard. “I used to come here with my Grandma. The owner was the son of one of her friends.”
Mr. Phillips looked as if he’d aged a decade in only a few months. I remembered him a smiling man at the counter who always used to give me a lollipop even when I was too old for it. When he turned back toward the store now, I only saw exhaustion and fear in the lines on his face.
Another man poked his head out from an apartment window over the neighboring store. “Phillips, are you closing up permanently?”
“Yes, son,” Mr. Phillips said, pausing by the door. “It’s time to move on for good. Might be better for you to do the same if you can.”
I stood transfixed as he grabbed one more box from the store and then locked the door. A FOR LEASE sign hung in the now-dingy window. As he put a hand on the small of his wife’s back to lead her and his daughter to the truck, his gaze passed over the van as if he didn’t see it at all. Maybe he couldn’t see anything except the new horizons he was fleeing toward.
The urge gripped me to run after him and yell at him for abandoning his home to these monsters. But Mr. Phillips was doing the best thing he could, wasn’t he? He was protecting his family the only way he knew how, taking them away from this hell before it was too late.
Anger flared through my queasiness. The Storm had changed my home for the worse, first by manipulating Colt into bringing chaos to the streets and then swooping in to claim territory. They had turned this place into a literal horror show, the streets red with blood. And what had I been able to do about it?
As much as I hated my father, I almost wished he was alive. He would see what his mistake had done to his home, and maybe he’d have done something to fix it. He’d been cruel, but he’d known these streets.
I couldn’t bear to watch any longer. The guys were studying me, uncertain of my reaction. “Let’s just keep going,” I said, dropping back onto the bench and taking a few deep breaths. The combined scents of my four men wrapped around me, settling my nerves just a little.
As Rowan pulled away from the curb, Gideon looked at me, an expression I couldn’t read on his normally impassive face. His mouth tensed as if he was about to say something but couldn’t quite decide whether he should.
Before he could, Wylder motioned to him. “It was mostly Red Shark people the attackers were after, as far as you can tell?”
Gideon nodded. “They hit several locations where I’d already noticed Red Shark activity. My best guess would be that this was a concentrated effort to end the threat they posed completely.” He frowned at the laptop’s screen. “And it seems to have worked. There were at least a couple of Red Shark hideouts they mustn’t have known about, and I have footage of several people packing up and driving off from those, right out of town.”
Kaige turned from where he’d been standing with his hand on the back of Rowan’s seat. “The Red Shark’s guys took off?”
“What was left of them. The offensive worked.”
The jolt of the van’s wheels over a pothole made my gut lurch harder. “Then the Storm won that battle.”
“And that means they’re now in a perfect position to focus all their attention on crushing the Nobles,” Wylder said grimly.
“Not if we have anything to say about it!” Kaige declared, smacking his balled hand into his palm.
“Right,” I agreed, wishing I had something—or better, someone—to punch right now. “We’re not letting those bastards get away with this.”
I didn’t need my father. We’d beaten Colt, and we’d destroy these assholes too. The Storm and his men were going to pay for what they’d done to this place. If I had my way, by the end of this they’d wish they’d never even heard of Paradise Bend.
