Fatal Mercy by Dan Padavona (freenovel24 .TXT) 📗

to the door and slipped his key into the lock. The door slid open on its own. The knob hung askew as if someone had taken a hammer to it.

“We go in slow and careful,” Aguilar said, holding his eyes until he acknowledged her.

He stood in the entryway and listened to the grandfather clock tick. All was silent inside the cavernous home, the shadows long and menacing. Aguilar reached for the light switch, and Thomas shook his head and placed a finger against his lips.

“Barlow is already here. Take her by surprise.”

The quiet was tainted. Like a sarcophagus with the lid sealed. The kitchen and study stood near the end of a long hallway. Stairs off the living room led to the upper landing and the master bedroom. Something shifted upstairs. A subtle movement.

Thomas rushed to the stairs before Aguilar snatched his arm. She pointed toward an open door at the top of the landing. Thomas’s old bedroom. His mother kept the door closed at all times, as though he’d died and his ghost haunted the upstairs.

Lined with pile carpet, the well-constructed staircase concealed their steps as they climbed. Thomas stared at the open doorway, then shifted his attention to the master bedroom at the end of the hall. His father was a heavy snorer. No sounds came from the bedroom.

Thomas spun inside his old room and motioned Aguilar through. The closet door was closed. His chest tightened as he opened the door and swept his gun through the darkness. When he turned, he noticed the disturbed blankets and bedspread. Neither of his parents would have climbed into his bed.

A sound came from down the hall. Inside the master bedroom.

Aguilar raised her eyes to Thomas before a floorboard groaned. They crept into the hallway with their guns drawn. The landing lay empty before them.

A moan came from inside his parents’ bedroom. Thomas and Aguilar hurried to the door and stood to either side. On Aguilar’s nod, Thomas twisted the knob and opened the door. Curtains blocked out the starlight. Two lumps beneath the blankets marked his mother and father. But Thomas sensed something wasn’t right. The moaning sound came again. It sounded muffled and faraway, as if it came from another room. Or the closet.

As Aguilar trained her gun on the closet and crept across the room, Thomas approached the bed. His father’s head lay on the pillow. He was certain Mason Shepherd wasn’t breathing until his father’s eyes popped open. He threw the covers off and sat up.

“Thomas? What is the meaning of this?”

“There’s someone in the house,” Thomas said, urging his father to be quiet.

Mason Shepherd creased his brow.

“You break into our house in the middle of the night, and you expect me to believe there’s a prowler?”

Thomas stared at the unmoving form beside his father.

“Mother?”

Lindsey Shepherd didn’t reply. Her body lay beneath the blankets with the covers pulled over her head.

Mason glanced between his wife and Thomas.

“Wake up, Lindsey,” Mason said, shaking her. “Your son is out of his mind.”

When Lindsey didn’t awaken, Mason’s mouth fell open. Panic twisted his face, and he jostled Lindsey with increased vigor.

The covers flew back. Thea Barlow sat up beside Mason Shepherd with an unhinged grin. Mason cried out and scurried from the woman. She produced the butcher’s knife before Thomas could react and stabbed the mattress just as Mason twisted away.

Thomas raised the gun.

“Drop the knife!”

Barlow lunged at Thomas, hissing like a feral cat as he opened fire.

The gunshots tore gaping holes in the woman’s chest and threw her against the headboard, where she slumped over and lay still. Her eyes never left Thomas as he shielded his father and helped him off the bed.

* * *

“Jesus,” Aguilar whispered, walking Thomas’s mother out of the closet.

The deputy supported Lindsey Shepherd as the older woman clutched her forehead. Lindsey’s scalp clotted with blood, and she wore the dazed look of someone who’d just awoken. Thomas snatched a towel from the bathroom and handed it to Aguilar, who pressed it against Lindsey’s head.

Mason’s legs trembled, and he stumbled twice as Thomas led him to his wife. The father’s body hummed with tension, as if he wanted to throw Thomas off and walk on his own. But he couldn’t support himself without his boy to hold him up.

Blood droplets stained Lindsey’s hands and shirt as Mason draped an arm around Lindsey and cried into her shoulder. She kept rubbing the towel over her bloody shirt and hands, desperate to rid herself of tonight’s memories.

When she saw Thea Barlow’s dead body in the bed, Lindsey screamed for a very long time.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

“You’re still in love with her.”

It’s not a question. Dr. Mandel’s statement causes sweat to trickle down Thomas’s brow. The room seems smaller today, the little office confining. Like his personal prison.

“Yes.”

One word. Hearing himself say it aloud is a punch to his gut.

“Does she know?”

Thomas lowers his head and studies his hands.

“I don’t think so. We haven’t spoken since the morning after I shot Jeremy Hyde.”

Dr. Mandal sets the pen and paper aside and sips her tea. When she stares at him like this, he’s unclothed, exposed. The secrets he conceals from himself, he cannot hide from her.

“Perhaps she wishes to move on and leave the past behind. It’s a challenge for people with Asperger’s to see the world from another’s perspective.”

“I don’t blame her for moving on.”

“And yet you still pursue this woman, despite her indifference toward you. Does that sound familiar to you?”

He chews his cheek until the coppery warmth of his own blood touches his tongue.

“Should it?”

She fixes her skirt and taps her fingers on her thigh.

“When you were a child, you believed you could control your own fate. You tossed coins into fountains and wished upon stars.”

Thomas nods.

“What did you wish for?”

With a shrug, Thomas says, “Nothing important, I suppose.”

“I doubt that’s true. You wished your parents would love you and show you affection.”

His eyes rise to hers.

“How did you…”

“Why