Merciless Read online

  “Sixteenth-century Scottish history,” he mused. He frowned. “You didn’t have a case on my brother, did you? That’s his passion.”

  She gave him a glowering look. “Your brother is terrible,” she said flatly. “Winnie Sinclair must have the patience and tolerance of a saint to live with him.”

  He glared at her. “My brother is not terrible.”

  “Not to you, certainly,” she agreed. “But then, you’ll never have to marry him.” He chuckled.

  “My mother was a MacLeod,” she added. “Her people were highland Scots, some of whom fought for Mary Queen of Scots when she tried to regain the throne of Scotland after being deposed by her half brother, James Stuart, Earl of Moray.”

  “A loyalist.”

  She nodded. “But my father’s family were Stewarts with the Anglicized, not the French, spelling, and they sided with Moray. So you might say they united warring clans.”

  “Did your parents fight?”

  She nodded. “They married because I was on the way, and then divorced when I was about six.” Her eyes became distant. “My father was career military. He remarried and moved to the West Coast. He died performing maneuvers in a jet with a flying group.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She remarried, too. She has a daughter…a little younger than me. We…don’t speak.”

  He frowned. “Why?” he asked without thinking.

  “I had a child out of wedlock,” she said. “When she found out, she disowned me. She’s very religious.”

  He made a rough sound. “I thought the purpose of religion was to teach forgiveness and tolerance. Besides all that, didn’t you just say she was pregnant with you when your father and she got married?”

  “Well, it doesn’t work out that way sometimes with religion, and the important point to her was that she was married when I was born. We were never really close,” she added. “I loved my father very much.” She cleared her throat and flushed. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to speak of such personal issues on the job.”

  “I was encouraging you to,” he replied quietly. He studied her with open curiosity. “You love your son very much.”

  She nodded. “I’m glad I decided not to end the pregnancy…” She almost bit her tongue off. She grabbed the phone and pushed in numbers. “I forgot to make your lunch reservations!”

  Which she never did, considering it a menial chore. But he didn’t mention that. He’d upset her by asking personal questions. It hadn’t been intentional. He wondered about her private life, about the child.

  While she was talking, he went back into his office. He’d meant to apologize to her for Cammy’s rudeness, which he was certain that she’d overheard. Then he’d been distracted by the photo of her child. She had thought of ending her pregnancy. Why? She seemed very maternal and conscientious to him, but perhaps she’d never wanted to be pregnant. Accidents did happen. It was just that his clearheaded administrative assistant didn’t seem the sort to have amorous accidents, of any type. In the past four years, he didn’t recall seeing her date anyone at all.

  He sat down behind his desk and recalled her pregnancy. The Bureau didn’t discriminate, although her condition hadn’t gone down well with some people. But she’d been very quiet, very discreet, during the time she carried the child.

  She’d almost died having the child, he recalled. It had disturbed him when he got his first look at her afterward. She’d been pale, listless, devastated by the ordeal.

  He’d put that reaction down to pain and drugs following the caesarian section, but now he wondered even more about her history, about the shadowy father of her child.

  The phone rang. He picked it up.

  “It’s Sergeant Marquez,” Joceline said formally and put him through.

  “Marquez,” Jon said. “What are you up to?”

  “If you’re going to mention my run-in with the computer thief, don’t you dare,” came the dry reply. “I’ve already been the subject of extreme censure from everybody up to and including the mayor.”

  “Really? Perhaps they had a glimpse of you running nude down the street and were impressed.”

  “Get a life, Blackhawk, you’re just jealous of the attention I got,” Marquez scoffed. “I’ll bet if you ran nude down a street, nobody would even notice you!”

  Jon laughed uproariously. “We’ll never know.”

  “Anyway, what I called to tell you is that Harold Monroe beat the human trafficking charges with a hotshot public defender and got cut loose after the parents suddenly refused to testify,” he said. “I know the D.A.’s office probably notified you, but sometimes they’re slow. I wanted to make sure you knew.”

  “You’re not the first person to tell me. The guy’s a total loon and incompetent at that. He can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”

  “Even people who fumble can perform amazing feats,” Marquez said. “You watch your back.”

  “I’ll paint a target on it, so Monroe won’t have so much trouble finding me.” Jon chuckled. “Thanks for the concern, though. I appreciate it.”

  “No problem. You still following soccer?”

  “Not so much. My video game is taking over my life.”

  “I heard.” There was a pause. “You helped a tenth-level warrior get a bag to carry his loot in, over in the Barrens.”

  Jon’s eyes popped. “Yes.”

  “It was one of my alts,” Marquez chuckled. “See? You never know who you’re playing with.”

  “Which reminds me, did you know that my brother’s brother-in-law plays, too? He’s got an 80 death knight.” He gave the name.

  “Good grief, he fought the Horde with me in Darkshore a few months ago on the pier, before it was destroyed when the expansion came out!”

  “He’s formidable.”

  “I’ll say, he saved my butt. You just never know, do you?”

  “That’s what makes it so exciting.” Jon hesitated. “You ever going to get married?”

  “Look who’s talking! Wasn’t your last date that public defender who only went out with you to try to get information to save her client?”

  Jon’s face hardened. “Yes.”

  “She should have known better. I thought she was a little young for you.”

  “Twenty-two, to my thirty, almost thirty-one. That’s not so much.”

  “It’s a generation.” Marquez chuckled. “But she had an agenda.”

  “It almost got her disbarred.”

  “At least you didn’t have her taken out of your office in handcuffs.”

  “That woman was a call girl,” Jon snapped. “I can’t even tell you what she did, and in my own damned office! It was all my mother’s fault.”

  “Cursing in a federal office is not correct behavior and could get you censured by the SAC, sir,” Joceline’s blithe tone came over the phone.

  “Stop eavesdropping!” Jon railed at her.

  “And raising your voice is another infraction of the rules of common courtesy,” she reminded him.

  “Joceline!” he growled.

  “There’s a public defender out here who wants to speak to you.”

  Jon hesitated. Marquez was chuckling softly.

  “Oh, not that one,” Joceline replied at once, with a laugh in her tone. “This one is male and quite handsome.”

  Why did that anger him? “I’ll see him in a minute. Send him to the canteen and show him where the coffeepot is.”

  “That would be a menial chore, sir,” Joceline replied blithely. “As you know, I don’t perform menial chores. It’s not in my job description.” She hung up.

  Jon slammed his hand on the desk. “One day I’ll have you hung on the flagpole!” he growled.

  “Temper, temper,” Joceline said, sticking her head in the door. “You’ll ruin the finish on your desk. I asked Agent Barry to show the visitor to the coffee.” She gave him a smug look. “Apparently agents don’t mind making coffee. Is that in your job description?”

  He picke
d up a magazine and hefted it, with glittery black eyes.

  She closed the door with a snap. “Assault with a deadly weapon…!” came through it.

  “A gaming magazine isn’t a deadly weapon!”

  “Gaming magazines are against agency policy…” Curses ensued.

  “Sir!” Joceline exclaimed haughtily.

  Jon actually groaned. Marquez was laughing outrageously.

  “One day I’ll pour my lunch over her head,” Jon muttered.

  “Make sure it’s something delicious,” Marquez suggested. “I’ll let you get back to the wars. Just wanted to make sure you knew about Monroe.”

  “Thanks. I really mean it.”

  “Hey, what are friends for?” the other man asked. “See you.”

  He hung up.

  Jon glared at the closed door before he got up and opened it.

  Joceline was sitting at her desk, looking angelic. His indignant expression made her bite her lower lip. It would never do to laugh.

  The public defender, a slender young man with his blond hair neatly trimmed, came down the hall carrying a plastic cup with black coffee in it. He made a face.

  “Don’t you have anybody here who can make a decent cup of coffee?” he complained. “You could take rust off old cars with this stuff.”

  “I make excellent coffee,” Joceline said dryly.

  The visitor looked at her. “Why aren’t you making it, then?”

  “It’s not in my job description, sir,” she said with a vacant smile. “I don’t do menial tasks.”

  “You’re his secretary, and you won’t make him coffee?”

  “I am not a secretary, I’m an administrative assistant and a paralegal,” Joceline corrected. “And Mr. Blackhawk would faint on the floor if I ever did such an odd thing here.”

  “I wouldn’t faint,” Jon said indignantly. He paused. “I’d have heart failure.”

  “Fortunately I know CPR,” Joceline said. “You’re safe with me, sir.”

  Jon glared at her.

  “Don’t make an enemy of her,” the public defender suggested. “If you drink coffee like this for long, you may have need of her medical training.” He made a face and put the cup down on Joceline’s desk.

  “Please don’t do that,” she told him. “I’m not responsible for unsupervised beverages. If it spilled on a computer, the agency would have to ask you to replace it.”

  “How would it spill on a computer?” he asked.

  Joceline’s hand moved toward it. “It’s sitting in a very bad place,” she said, and indicated the laptop computer just inches away. “If my hand slipped…”

  The public defender removed the coffee with a grimace. “I never,” he began.

  “Give me that.” Jon took the cup of coffee, walked down the hall and dumped it into a potted ficus plant.

  “How cruel!” Joceline accused when he returned and tossed the empty cup into the trash can beside her desk. “What did that poor plant ever do to you?”

  “Nobody ever waters it,” he muttered. “It won’t complain. And don’t you dare,” he added narrowly.

  She cleared her throat. “I don’t even know anyone who has connections to plant abuse societies.”

  “With my luck you’d start one,” Jon muttered. “Come in. Harris, isn’t it?” he asked the public defender as he opened his office door.

  “Bill Harris,” the defender said, nodding.

  “Have a seat. Now what is it you need to discuss?”

  Joceline was late because she had to finish typing up three letters, and then print them out since Jon needed hard copies of them. The printer ran out of ink and it took her forever to find the cartridges. Then it ran out of paper and she had to open another carton. She was looking at her watch and grimacing when she finished. She only had ten minutes to get to the day care facility before it closed. The owner was going to be furious. She’d been warned about this once before.

  “What is it?” Jon asked when he noticed her expression.

  “I have ten minutes before the day care closes,” she began.

  “Get out of here,” he said easily. “I’ll finish up.”

  She hesitated.

  “Go on!”

  She grabbed her purse. “Thank you, sir.”

  “No problem.”

  She made it, but with only two minutes to spare. The taut expression on the owner’s face when she arrived spoke volumes. Joceline was worried even more because there had been complaints about Markie’s behavior at the day care.

  “If this happens again…” the woman began.

  “It won’t,” Joceline promised. “I’ll arrange for someone to pick him up, if I’m ever asked to stay late again.”

  The owner sighed. “You work for a federal office. I suppose you can’t keep regular hours.”

  “It’s difficult,” Joceline agreed. “I need the job too much to refuse overtime.”

  “My husband was a federal agent, many years ago,” the woman said surprisingly. “He was always on call.”

  “I suppose it was rough for you, too.”

  The woman looked surprised.

  “I know the wives of a couple of our agents, including our Special Agent in Charge. They bite their fingernails when we’re on dangerous cases.”

  The woman smiled. “I had two children and I couldn’t afford to put them in day care, so I stayed at home until they started school. Then I couldn’t find day care I could afford afterward, so I started my own business.”

  Joceline smiled. “A wise solution.”

  The woman nodded. She drew in a breath. “If you have to be late like this again, just call me. I have a girl who left to raise her own children. She’d be happy to keep Markie and she’d pick him up for you. Would you like her phone number?”

  “Yes,” Joceline said at once, and wondered how she’d afford it.

  She wrote the number down and gave it to Joceline. She smiled. “It won’t cost you an arm and a leg.”

  “Your fees are unbelievably reasonable,” she pointed out.

  The older woman chuckled. “Because I had to afford day care myself,” she replied. “I thought there should be a way to make it affordable to people on strangled budgets.”

  “I’m very grateful.” Joceline grimaced. “My budget has gone past strangled to near homicide.”

  “You could ask that handsome boss of yours for a raise.”

  “How do you know he’s handsome?” she asked.

  “His picture was in the paper after he and another agent caught one of the human traffickers they were looking for. Makes me sick what some people can do to helpless poor people in the name of profit. Imagine, using little kids in brothels…” She smiled. “Sorry, I hate people who exploit children. I tend to stand on a soapbox on the subject. I’ll get Markie for you.”

  She brought the little boy out a couple of minutes later.

  “Mommy!” Markie laughed, holding out his arms to be taken. “I learned how to draw a bird. Miss Ellie taught me! She said I did it real good!”

  “You’ll have to show me. Tell Mrs. Norris good-night.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Norris,” he said obediently, and smiled at her before he did a nosedive with his face into his mother’s throat and held on tight.

  “Thanks,” Joceline said.

  The older woman shrugged. “Men have no idea how tough it is on women who work,” she replied.

  “None at all,” was the quiet reply.

  “I had fun!” Markie said when they went into the small, sparsely furnished apartment and Joceline put the three door locks in place. “I got to show you my pictures!”

  He handed her a file folder.

  She sat down, worn to the bone, and opened it with no real enthusiasm. What she saw shocked her.

  “Markie!” she exclaimed. “You drew this?”

  “Yes! I saw that bird outside and I drawed him.”

  “Drew him,” she corrected absently.

  “It’s a…”

 
“…a goldfinch,” she said for him, noting the bright yellow color of the small male bird and its subdued black markings. In the winter, the coat would turn from yellow to the dull green that characterized females.

  “You like birds,” he said, leaning on her knees while she looked through the drawings. “You got all sorts of books about them. And binoculars.” He rubbed his head against her arm. “Couldn’t I look through the binoculars again? I want to see if we got any of these birds at our house.”

  “We probably don’t have goldfinches,” she replied, because there was no room in her budget for the special seed that constituted the best finch feed. It was outrageously expensive.

  “You could cook some bread for them,” he said. “You cook real good.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart,” she said, and bent to kiss his thick black hair.

  “I like pancakes. Couldn’t we have pancakes?”

  She looked at his rosy cheeks, his big eyes, his sweet expression. He was her whole life. Amazing how he’d changed it, from the first time she looked at him. “Yes,” she said, indulging him as she always did, probably too often. “Bacon and pancakes and syrup. But only because I’m so tired,” she added.

  He smiled. “Thanks, Mom!”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The other drawings were also of birds. Just sketches, but they showed great promise of a talent that could be developed. She needed to find him an art teacher if he continued to have interest in the subject.

  But that would cost money and she had nothing left over at the end of the week. She sighed. At least she had Markie, she reminded herself. The rest was just superfluous.

  3

  The public defender, Harris, was trying to get his client a job. It wasn’t really his concern, but the young man in question was just twenty years old and already had a wife and a small child. He’d been prosecuted on a bank robbery charge, which put him in the crosshairs of the FBI. He was arrested, charged, jailed, prosecuted and convicted. Now he was out on parole for good behavior after some spectacular legal footwork by this attorney. It had been one of Jon’s cases.