Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3), Brett Battles [best books to read in your 20s TXT] 📗

With him is a balding man in his mid-forties, if not older. His stomach sits as firmly on his lap as the grimace resting on his face. I can see the latter because neither of them is wearing a mask.

As we near the fire, the man stands up and prods Evan to do the same. The older guy is a bear of a man—that stomach of his hangs off a body that has to be at least a hundred and ninety-six centimeters (six foot five).

“Evening,” he says. His voice is deep, scratchy. A smoker.

Jar and I stop on the other side of the fire, leaving a good four meters between us and them.

“We’re sorry to disturb you,” the man says. “It’s, um, my understanding that you helped my son.”

When the man says my son, Evan, who is standing behind him, looks at the ground as if wishing he was anywhere else but here.

“No big thing,” I say. “Just happened to be walking by.”

“Said he slipped and got trapped between a couple rocks and would have still been there if you hadn’t stopped to help him. Doesn’t sound like nothing to me.”

That does not sound anything like what I did.

But seeing no reason to dispel the kid’s lie, I say, “He’d have eventually worked his way out on his own. He wasn’t really in any danger.”

The man looks back at Evan, taps him hard on the arm, and nods at me.

As Evan moves closer to the fire, I notice a slight discoloration on the right side of his jaw. It could be just the flicker of the flames, but I don’t think so.

“Thank you for helping me,” he says.

“You already thanked me. You don’t need to do it again.”

“I’ll tell him what he needs to do and what he doesn’t,” Evan’s father says, a flash of his annoyance now directed at me.

I smile and make no other response.

The man takes a breath. “Sorry. The boy’s got me a little…. It’s all right. Look, I wanted to say thank you, too.”

He takes a step as if he’s going to walk around the fire to us.

Before he can, I hold up a hand in the universal signal to stop. “Don’t worry about it. Happy we could help.”

The man halts, seems to take in our face masks for the first time, then snorts a laugh. “Sure.” He nods back at a lump of something sitting on the picnic table. “The wife sent over some cookies. She made them this morning.” He forces a smile. “You have a good night now.”

He grabs Evan by the arm and heads into the darkness, toward the big Winnebago down the road. Before Evan completely looks away from us, several expressions cross his face that seem to say thank you and I’m sorry and…well, the last isn’t so much directed at us. It’s more a sense of impending dread. Like he knows his evening is far from over and the worst is yet to come.

When they are out of earshot, Jar says, “I do not like Evan’s father.”

“Don’t like him.” I say this unconsciously, my inner tutor popping out to help her with contractions.

To her credit, she doesn’t scowl at me like she probably should. “I don’t.”

“For the record, neither do I.”

We sit by the fire as the night continues to cool. At some point I go inside the Travato, warm up some chili on the stove, and carry our bowls back outside.

We talk little as we stare at the flames and eat. This is not unusual for us. Comfortable silences are more the rule than the exception in our life together. Only something’s not quite comfortable about this silence.

I don’t know about Jar, but I’m having a hard time not thinking about Evan and his father. Every once in a while, I catch noises coming from their campsite, nothing loud enough to determine the cause but they make me uneasy.

It’s nearly ten p.m. when we put the flames out and head inside the camper. As we do, I notice the fire at the Winnebago is still lit, so either they’re staying up late or letting the flames burn unattended, which is against campground regulations, not to mention common sense.

Jar and I break out the PlayStation and play Overwatch. Yes, we’ve brought it with us. Gamers gotta game.

Except my focus is divided and I keep getting killed. I can’t help but glance out the window every twenty minutes or so to see if the fire at the Winnebago is still going. It is.

After about two hours, when Jar says, “Maybe we should check,” I realize she’s been looking out the window, too.

Intuition, or maybe you’d call it suspicion, is a hazard of our day job. It would be great if I could turn it off when I’m not on a mission, but I’ve never found the switch. Right now, the feeling that something’s wrong is hitting both of us hard.

We leave the TV on and set it to play a movie on Netflix so that the screen will continue to flicker. In the glow, we grab a few items from one of the storage bins and head out through the driver’s door, which is on the opposite side of Evan’s Winnebago. Though it’s pretty cold out, we’ve opted to wear sweaters instead of jackets, as they will allow us to move a lot more quietly.

There are six campsites between us and the big Winnebago. In each is a cleared area with a fire ring and picnic table. The areas between the sites are dotted with a light cover of brush and the occasional tree. We stay low enough that our silhouettes are indistinguishable from the ground cover. We’re aided in this effort by the fact moonrise is still a few hours away.

The campfire by the Winnebago is still burning, though it’s beginning to lose strength. As we near, we can see the picnic table and some