Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3) by Brett Battles (most inspirational books of all time TXT) 📗

He picks up his briefcase from the floor and puts it on the desk. From inside the bag, he extracts a cell phone that looks very much like the one hidden in the file cabinet in his home office.

He types in a message and sits down, presumably to wait for a response.

Jar and I share a look, then I lift my bag onto the table. Bergen had two cellphones in his pants pockets, both of which we took with us, but not before we’d used his face to unlock them and reset the passwords.

I wake up both phones. The first is devoid of notifications. The home screen of the second one, however, shows seven text messages have arrived, all from the same number.

I return to the table and show it to Jar.

She fast-forwards the video from Chuckie’s office until we reach the live shot again. He has been sending messages about every fifteen minutes. Seven in total.

I open the message thread. Starting from the earliest:

Need confirm re tonight

Followed by:

Important. Need answer.

And:

Now. Please!

And:

Where are you?

And:

Need confirmation!

And:

Answer me!

Then finally:

You had better have a damn good reason for not responding!

I could ease his tension by simply answering, On for tomorrow, but that does not fit into our plans. We want the confirmation to be a physical thing that can be found by investigators with little effort. Besides, it’s kind of fun to let him stew for a while.

It is almost nine p.m. when he finally leaves the dealership. Instead of heading home, he continues south, past downtown. When he reaches Lyons Lane, he turns right.

Oh, crap.

That’s Bergen’s neighborhood.

Sure enough, the dot on our tracking app weaves its way onto Dewer St.

I rush across the room, grab my jacket and helmet, and head toward the garage door. If I ignore the traffic laws, I should be able to get there on my motorcycle in four minutes. Hopefully I can reach the house before Chuckie gets inside. If not, things could get messy. I don’t want messy.

As I reach for the door handle, Jar says, “Wait.”

I move over to the table to see what’s up.

The dot is passing by Bergen’s house at a crawl. I expect it to stop, but it keeps going at the same speed, as if Chuckie is looking for a place to park. Which wouldn’t make sense. We’ve been at the house several times now, and each time there was plenty of street parking.

The dot picks up speed. At the next intersection, it makes a U-turn and heads back toward Bergen’s house. Now I think he will stop.

But no, he just drives past Bergen’s place again. When he reaches the end of the block, he turns toward Central Avenue and cruises off at normal speed.

When we left Bergen’s place, we turned off all the lights, wanting it to look like Bergen wasn’t home. Thankfully, it looks like it worked.

We watch Chuckie’s dot head north on Central, and then turn toward his house.

Four minutes later, the Mustang is parked in his garage.

We switch to the camera feed in the kitchen. Kate stands in front of the running microwave, shooting glances at the side door. The timer dings a moment before Chuckie opens the door, and she pulls out a plate full of food.

“Hi, honey,” she says as he steps inside. “Dinner’s ready whenever you are.”

If he’s noticed the family is not waiting for him at the dining table, he makes no mention of it. The only thing he says is, “I’m not hungry.” He walks past her and heads straight to his office. After closing the door, he locks it.

“Was that my parents?”

Jar and I look up.

Evan is standing just inside the hallway. I don’t know how long he’s been there because we never heard him leave his room.

He steps into the living room. “That sounded like them. It was, wasn’t it?”

Jar touches a button that turns her screen black, and I smile. There are only three ways I can deal with this: lie, reply with a half truth, or be completely honest.

In most situations, either of the first two would be the way to go. Maybe one of them would work on Evan, but I’ll never know because my gut tells me to go with option three.

“Yes,” I say. “Your father just arrived home from work.”

I can feel Jar look at me in surprise.

Evan’s brow furrows. “How did you hear that?”

“I’ll tell you, if you really want to know. But I’d like to ask you a question first.”

“What question?”

“What do you know about your father’s activities when he’s not home?”

“I don’t know. Work stuff. Meetings. That kind of thing.”

That’s not exactly what I was going for, so I decide to be a little more direct. “Why did you and your friends visit the scene of that fire last Friday night?”

He blinks, caught off guard. “How did you—”

“Why, Evan? Was it just to check it out because you thought it would be cool?”

He shrugs, like maybe that’s the answer.

“Or was it something more?”

He glances at me, and then away. My question hitting closer to the truth than he wants.

“All right,” I say. “How did you even know about it? It wasn’t in the paper or on the internet yet.”

Another shrug. “I don’t know. Someone heard about it, I guess.”

“Who heard about it? Was it you?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

Looks like we’re playing semantics again, because it’s obvious to me he’d known something ahead of time.

“You want to know how we can hear what’s going on in your house?” I say. “Because we’ve bugged it.”

“What?” he says, eyes widening.

“Should we talk about this first?” Jar whispers.

I shake my head and say to Evan, “We’re investigating the Mercy Arsonist, trying to find out who he is.”

It’s very telling that Evan does not respond with why would you need to bug our house for that? Or my family has nothing to do with that. Instead he asks, “You’re with the police?”

“I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you that we’re not with the Mercy