Merciless Read online

  “They’ll come to get us, when we can see him?” Kilraven asked, glancing at Joceline as if it were a given that she’d go in, too.

  “I’ll send a nurse,” he promised. “He’s an FBI agent, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Kilraven replied. “One of the best.”

  “We do a big business in gunshot wounds in our emergency room,” the doctor said with a heavy sigh. “Sadly there are more guns than trauma surgeons in this area.”

  “One day that will change,” Kilraven said.

  The doctor only smiled. “Not in my lifetime, I’m afraid. I’ll get back to work. They just brought in a child of seven, victim of a drive-by shooting.” He shook his head. “In my day, drugs were only whispered about. There was no wide-scale distribution, no gangs with guns, no…” He shrugged. “It was a less tolerant world, but far less violent.”

  “They did this experiment,” Kilraven said quietly. “I read about it. They put rats in a confined area until they were so crowded that they could barely move. They became aggressive and began attacking the others and even cannibalizing them.”

  The doctor nodded. “We are too many, with too few resources, in too little space in cities on this planet. Nature has a way of thinning the population without any help from us.” He glanced toward the emergency room. “However, I must add that I prefer nature’s approach. Guns and knives are messy.”

  “I agree,” Kilraven said. “I’ve seen my share of the results.”

  Nobody added that he’d helped a few criminals into emergency rooms.

  The surgeon smiled reassuringly and went back to work.

  Joceline was trying to avoid letting Kilraven see her tears.

  “Hey, now,” he said in a teasing tone. “Don’t do that. Never let them see you cry.”

  She laughed with a hiccup and brushed at her eyes. “He’s an awful boss,” she muttered. “Keeps me working late, throws things, insults me…”

  “Jon insults you?” he asked, shocked.

  “He asks me to make coffee,” she scoffed. She brushed away another tear. “Imagine that!”

  “He’s just tired of threatened lawsuits from visiting attorneys who have to drink the coffee the agents make,” Kilraven explained.

  “Then they should stop letting Murdock make coffee,” she pointed out.

  “That’s been suggested,” he replied. “At the same time, they mentioned dirt and shovels…”

  “There’s a large potted plant in our office that could use a jolt of fertilizer,” she mused. “However, Agent Murdock is far too large to plant in it.”

  “We could…” he began enthusiastically.

  She held up a hand and glowered at him. “Please! This is a hospital!”

  “Just a thought.” He sighed. “I bring my own coffee now when I visit Jon at his office, though.”

  At the sound of her boss’s name, she relaxed a little. “I’m glad he’ll be all right.” She hesitated. “I guess I should get going.”

  “You can see him first.”

  She was uncertain. “You and Winnie should go in.”

  “Winnie will say that you should,” he said with a gentle smile.

  “Thanks,” she murmured huskily and wouldn’t look up.

  Kilraven didn’t say what he was thinking. Joceline and Jon had been antagonistic toward each other for a long time. But there was one night when they’d actually gone to a party together, about four years ago. The Bureau had been providing protection for a young woman who was dating a foreign dignitary’s son, and avoided a kidnapping. She’d insisted that Jon, the agent in charge of the case, come to her birthday party and bring a date. So Jon had made Joceline go with him. He hated parties. He hated socializing. So did Joceline. But she went.

  Funny, Joceline had acted oddly afterward and tried to quit her job. Jon had talked her into staying. He hadn’t said much about the incident, just that he’d had way too much to drink and Joceline had been forced to drive him to the hospital. It turned out that someone had spiked Jon’s drink with a hallucinogenic drug, trying to be funny. The culprit, a foreign dignitary’s son, had fled the country shortly thereafter and never returned.

  He hadn’t thought about that for a long time. His brother never drank as a rule. He was very straitlaced. Today, it had hurt terribly to see Jon lying on a gurney with blood seeping from the wound on his back. He loved his brother. Cammy was going to go ballistic. She’d lived in fear of this all during Jon’s career in law enforcement. She kept rosaries everywhere, even in the glove compartment of her car, and she prayed constantly for his safety. At least she wasn’t driving herself to the hospital or there might be two tragedies. Kilraven would have gone to get her, but he’d been afraid to leave Jon—as if by his own physical presence he could keep Jon alive.

  The nurse beckoned to them a nerve-racking few minutes later. Neither Kilraven nor Joceline really believed that Jon wasn’t going to die. They had to see him for themselves, to be sure.

  He was in a hospital gown, but his chest was bare. He was white as a sheet. There was dried blood on his firm, chiseled mouth. He was laboring to breathe, even with the tube that ran out of his chest to drain off the fluid. There was a drip feeding from a tube on a pole into his arm. There were oxygen tubes in his nostrils and he was hooked up to half a dozen monitors. His long, jet-black hair was tangled on the pillow. His eyes were closed.

  Besides the beep of the monitors and the electronic sounds, there was only the sudden jerk of Joceline’s breath, almost a sob, which she quickly smothered.

  “He’d hate having his hair tangled,” she said quietly.

  “Yes.”

  He glanced at her, noting that she didn’t have much more color in her face than Jon did in his. She was gripping her purse as if she feared it might escape.

  “He’s one tough customer,” Kilraven told her comfortingly. “And I do know something about gunshot wounds. I’m sure he’s in a lot of pain, and it will take time for him to recover. But he’s going to live, Joceline.”

  She swallowed her fear and nodded slowly. “Yes,” she agreed.

  “Tomorrow he’ll be telling the nurses how to do the drip and threatening the doctor to try to get out of the hospital.”

  She nodded again. It was so painful to see him like that. He was such a strong, vital man…

  Kilraven was watching her covertly. It surprised him to see her at a loss for words, to see her so frightened. Perhaps she was thinking about the shadowy man in her life who went missing overseas. Markie’s father.

  Markie. He felt a sudden sinking worry. “Going to step out for just a sec,” he told her, and moved out of the ICU unit to make a quick phone call.

  Joceline barely noticed. Her hand went out to smooth the thick, long, tangled black hair on the pillow. She recalled another time when she’d touched it, felt its cool silkiness, clung to it as feelings rose so high that she thought she might die of them. He didn’t remember. It was a good thing. She didn’t want him to remember.

  “Don’t touch my son!”

  She froze, jerking her hand back, as Cammy Blackhawk came into the room. She glared at the younger woman as she moved to the bed, her back to Joceline.

  “Jon,” she whispered. “My poor, poor boy!”

  She bent to kiss his forehead, and fought tears. She smoothed back his hair and stared at him for a long moment. Then she turned to Joceline, all cold dignity and hostility.

  “You have no right to be in here,” she snapped.

  Joceline didn’t argue. She looked one last time at Jon before she turned and left the cubicle.

  “Where are you going?” Kilraven asked, surprised to meet her in the hall.

  “I’m leaving,” Joceline said, very pale but composed. “Life goes on. Your mother is in there,” she added stiffly.

  “Oh, God, now the real torment begins,” he groaned. “She’ll stand the staff on its ear and they’ll threaten to hang her from a window by a sheet!”

  She laughed suddenly.


  “Don’t let her worry you,” Kilraven said in a low tone. “She’s not what she seems. Honest.”

  Joceline didn’t reply. “I hope he does well.”

  “He will. I’ll call you myself if there’s any change.”

  She nodded. “Thanks, Kilraven.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Joceline, I’ve had Rourke stake out your son’s preschool.”

  “What?” she exclaimed, going white.

  “Monroe made threats,” he reminded her. “We can’t prove it so we can’t have him arrested. He’s being watched, that’s all I can say. But your son may be on the firing line. He has to have protection. So do you.”

  It was horrifying to think that Markie might end up in a hospital bed, victim of some deranged criminal. “Surely, not! He’s just a child!”

  “So was Melly,” Kilraven reminded her with a grim expression, speaking of his daughter who had been killed. “She was barely three, when—” His voice broke.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him. “Truly sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t bring her back, and it won’t protect your son, either,” he added. “Rourke will. So tolerate him.”

  She grimaced.

  “You don’t have to like him. I know he’s a pain. But he’s the best private security I know.”

  “All right.”

  He studied her for a moment. “You never bring your son to work. You don’t have a photo of him on your desk. But you obviously love him very much.”

  “Don’t speculate,” she bit off.

  He was just staring at her. Not even blinking. “I’m not speculating.”

  “I keep my work life and my home life separate,” she said stiffly. “I’m somewhat defensive about my status,” she added, and averted her eyes.

  “So you don’t draw attention to it.”

  “Yes,” she said quickly, anxious for an answer that would shut him up.

  “I get it.” He didn’t press her. But he was getting some very interesting vibrations running underneath the casual conversation. “Don’t worry about your boss,” he added gently. “He’s in great hands.”

  She looked toward the glass cubicle, where Cammy Blackhawk was still smoothing her son’s hair and talking to him. “I noticed.”

  “I meant the doctor,” he mused.

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t know about Cammy’s past, and I won’t tell it to you,” he said surprisingly. “But there’s a reason she’s the way she is. Try not to take her attitude too seriously.”

  “She loves her son. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “She does, but she’s micromanaging his life. Or she’s trying to.”

  “She wants the best for him.” She pursed her lips and her blue eyes twinkled suddenly. “She wants him to have the best fashion advice money can buy.”

  “He’d do a lot better with a woman who could play video games with him.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Joceline said firmly. “I have one man in my life. I don’t need another.”

  “Your son’s father went missing in action, you said.”

  “Yes.”

  “I still have contacts in active military circles,” he said, watching her with uncanny closeness. “I could have them do some checking.”

  She dropped her purse. She bent and picked it up. “Sorry, it’s been an unsettling day,” she said. “I’m clumsy. No, thanks, it’s already been checked out. He disappeared in those mountains where they think the remnants of Al-Qaeda were hiding in a secret base. They were certain that he was killed, they just were reluctant to tell me.”

  She hadn’t looked up once.

  “I see,” he said.

  She was hoping for an interruption when Winnie Sinclair came up with two cups of coffee. She handed one to her husband. “You’ve had a long day, you should go.”

  “Yes,” Joceline said gratefully. “You’ll call me, if there’s any change?” she added worriedly.

  “Of course we will,” Winnie assured her.

  “The assistant D.A. asked about you,” Kilraven said. “She’s still hoping you might jump ship and go to work for her,” he added, teasing.

  “There might be a real possibility of that,” Joceline said on a heavy sigh. “They’re talking about cutting staff in my office. Betty has seniority, so if one of us is cut, it will be me.” She shook her head. “This has been a bummer of a day.”

  Kilraven frowned. “They’d never let you go.”

  She smiled sadly. “They’ll let anybody go, if they have to. I don’t have any illusions about being the best administrative assistant on earth.” She sighed. “Now I have to worry about that and my boss, and my son…”

  “Not about Markie,” Kilraven assured her. “Rourke will make sure no harm comes to him. Or to you.”

  Joceline ground her teeth together. “Okay.”

  “And Jon will be all right,” he added.

  She bit her lip. “He had blood on his mouth.”

  “Joceline, he was shot in a lung,” he reminded her. “He would have been spitting up blood when they found him. Thank God he was in sight of a main street when it happened!”

  “Yes,” she whispered, hurting as she considered how frightening and how painful it would have been, to have experienced what her boss had—to be shot in the back.

  “Now go home to your son,” Winnie said gently. “He will keep you from brooding too much.”

  “The chief brooder is in there.” She indicated the cubicle where Cammy was still sitting with Jon. “He does it much better than I do.”

  “He’ll be fine. Just keep the office together until he recovers,” Kilraven told her.

  She smiled. That was optimistic. She had to be optimistic, too. “Okay. Do you know any really good defense attorneys, by the way?”

  Kilraven blinked. “Not really, but I can ask around. Why do you need one?”

  “I don’t, yet. As long as Rourke stays out of sight.”

  Kilraven chuckled. “He is a piece of work, isn’t he?”

  “Saved your butt, my darling,” Winnie reminded him with a hug.

  He returned it and kissed her hair. “Yes, but he was being obnoxious.”

  “It’s what he does best.”

  “He’ll keep Markie safe,” Kilraven reminded Joceline. “He’s good at what he does.”

  “Which would be what, exactly, when he isn’t returning favors for you?” Joceline asked curiously.

  “Never you mind,” he said firmly. “That’s need to know, and you don’t.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  She smiled at both of them and sent one last, worried glance toward where Jon Blackhawk lay, so quiet and still, before she left the waiting room.

  “Something’s fishy,” Kilraven murmured.

  “About what?” Winnie asked.

  He didn’t tell her. He had his suspicions, all wrapped up in mystery and Joceline’s reticence. But he was going to do some digging, when he had time.

  He and Winnie went back to ICU to join Cammy.

  “Has she gone, that awful girl?” Cammy asked angrily.

  “She’s his right arm at work,” Kilraven reminded her firmly. “She’s stood by him when half a dozen other women would have run screaming out the door.”

  “I don’t like her. She’s not a moral person.”

  “What if she’d ended the pregnancy, would that make her any more moral in your eyes, Cammy?” Kilraven asked coldly. “What if it had been you, pregnant with Jon?”

  Cammy swallowed, hard, and averted her eyes. Her jaw tightened. He was provoking nightmares and she couldn’t even tell him. She couldn’t tell anyone. She smoothed Jon’s hair. “He looks so pale.”

  “His system has been through a shock,” Kilraven reminded her. “Been there, done that.”

  “Yes, I know, my dear,” she said gently, and she hugged him. “I’m sorry. I’m being terrible. I was so worried…” Tears stung her eyes.

  He hugged her. “Jon’s going to be fine.”


  “Yes.”

  He sighed. “I thought the murders were neatly wrapped up. But there’s a new trail emerging. I just found out that the guy we think did this,” he indicated Jon, “has a brother-in-law who may also have been involved in Melly’s death.”

  “What?” Cammy exclaimed, horrified.

  “That’s not all. Now he’s after Joceline’s little boy.” He wasn’t certain of that, but it was a good guess.

  Cammy was conflicted. She didn’t like that Joceline person. But she loved children. Anybody’s children. “That’s too bad.”

  “It is.”

  “She doesn’t have a live-in boyfriend or someone who could protect him?”

  “Joceline lives alone. But I sent Rourke to watch the boy.”

  “Rourke.” She rolled her eyes. “Well, on the other hand, he is a bachelor and of an age to marry.” She was thoughtful. If Joceline married Rourke, she’d move to South Africa, far from Jon. She smiled. “Perhaps they might like each other.”

  Kilraven didn’t reply. He could see wheels turning in Cammy’s mind, and suddenly he felt sorry for Rourke.

  Joceline dropped her things off at her apartment. She was going to be late getting Markie, but she’d phoned and the owner, especially under the circumstances, told her to take her time that she’d be glad to wait. She’d heard about Jon’s shooting on the news. She was very sorry. Not nearly as sorry as Joceline, who was sick and worried out of her mind.

  If he died, how would she live with the secret she kept? It gnawed at her like a dog with a bone. She was so upset that her hands shook as she locked her door and went out to get into her car. She thought she saw a shadow move, but she was certain it was her imagination. She was so much on edge, she was seeing things.

  She tried to put Jon’s condition in the back of her mind. She didn’t want to upset Markie. She thanked the owner profusely when she picked up Markie at the day care center. He had new drawings to show her. “This is my teacher,” he said, showing her a sketch he’d done, which was crude but recognizable. “And this is a dog that came to the playground. A man came in a truck and took him away,” he added sadly. “Will they kill him?”