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

“You both look great,” Kate says to her sons. “Grab your jackets.”

As they do this, she walks a few steps into the hallway and says in a raised voice, “Charles, we’re leaving.”

Chuckie turns from his desk and replies, “All right. Bye.”

I can see disappointment on Kate’s face, like she was hoping he might come out and give her more than a few words through the door. But there’s resignation in her look, too, the kind worn by someone who’s grown used to this kind of disappointment.

In the office, Chuckie is out of his chair now, standing next to the door, listening in the same manner his son did less than a minute earlier. I can’t tell if he hears Kate walk away, but he definitely hears the front door open and shut, because as soon as it’s closed, he leaves his office and moves to the end of the hallway. We don’t have a camera that gives us an angle on what he’s looking at, but it’s easy enough to guess that he can see out the front window from where he is, and probably all the way to the SUV Kate uses, which is parked at the curb.

The sound of an engine rumbles to life, then its pitch intensifies as the vehicle is put into drive. Before the noise completely fades away, Chuckie moves closer to the window, watching his family leave. He hangs there for a minute, no doubt to make sure they don’t suddenly return, then hurries back to his office, where he retrieves the hidden phone, turns it on, and stuffs it in his pocket. Next, he removes the envelope hidden under the file drawer and puts it in the other front pocket of his jeans.

Back in the hall, he locks up his office, rushes through the house and out the side door facing the garage.

Crap.

“Come on,” I say, and grab the keys to the truck and the bag containing our drone.

Jar snatches up her backpack and slips her laptop inside as we hurry out of the house. It’s not that we’re going to lose him. The tracker on his Mustang will let us know where he is at all times. But I don’t want to be too far behind him when he arrives at his destination. If this trip is secret enough that he doesn’t want his family to know about it, I don’t want to miss anything.

By the time I pull out of our driveway, Jar has the tracking app open. “He just turned north on Central Avenue.”

It takes two minutes before we have eyes on him. In another two, I’ve closed the gap between us and the Mustang to half a block.

The thought pops into my mind that maybe he’s having an affair. A hidden phone would be good for that, and meeting up with his lover when his family is otherwise busy would be ideal. But Chuckie doesn’t really need excuses like church to find some alone time. From what we’ve seen, he’s away from home twelve hours a day during the week, at a place where he’s the boss, and can come and go at will. If he wants to conduct a secret liaison, he could do it anytime.

And then, of course, there’s the paper the old guy gave him yesterday. Why would Chuckie be bringing that to a girlfriend or boyfriend?

No, wherever he’s headed has to be about something else.

Two blocks before he reaches the north end of town, Chuckie turns left onto Schoolhouse Drive. I slow to give him a bit more of a lead before I take the turn, too. The first few blocks are lined with homes, none too big, none too small. A nice neighborhood. Then again, I haven’t seen a bad one in this town yet.

I keep expecting Chuckie to pull up in front of one of the houses or turn down a side street, but he continues straight.

Soon, the houses give way to Timothy Morgan Elementary School, which in turn passes the torch to Mercy High School. The latter is spread out on both sides of the road. Most of the classrooms and buildings are on the left, and on the right are the gymnasium and fields for almost any sport you could think of. Attached to the gym is an indoor swimming pool that’s apparently available for the whole town to use in normal times. A temporary sign strung above the entrance reads:

POOL CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

The shutting down of the public pool is not surprising. Despite the obvious reluctance of many…Mercy-ites? Mercites? Mercians? Mercenaries? (Heh, heh. That last one’s funny.) Despite the obvious reluctance of many in town to take the pandemic seriously, a statewide mandate has meant in-school attendance stopped at least a month ago and all classes were switched to online.

Mercy High sits near the northwestern corner of town, and once we pass it, we enter an area of scattered homes and businesses with plenty of land between them.

A quarter mile on, Jar looks up. “He’s slowing.”

As I ease back on the gas pedal, the Mustang’s brake lights come on for several seconds before the car turns off the road to the right, into what appears to be a parking lot in front of a small building. Not a home. Some kind of business, I believe.

“Pull in there.” Jar points at a larger building on the driver’s side of the road, about sixty meters ahead.

I do as she directs.

A sign on the front of the building identifies it as Mercy Storage. Its parking area arcs around the front of the building and down both the east and west sides. Behind the structure is a fenced-in parking lot, about half full of RVs and boats on trailers and other vehicles people apparently don’t have room for at home.

The building has only one window, and it’s at the front next to the entrance. The room beyond it is dark, and a sign in the window reads OFFICE CLOSED.