Mercy Read online

  Presented with her first chance to get close to people in over ten years, Mia wanted to become totally immersed. It was why she had become obsessed with Allie and Cam, or at least this was what she told herself. She did not notice that she spent far more time looking at Cam's things than she did Allies, that for a full five minutes she had traced his monogrammed initials on a pressed white dress shirr. She did not notice that as she moved from room to room, she tried to seek out certain places--the snug hollow of an armchair, the spot in front of a dresser--where she knew Cam must have been.

  Mia had come to the house to get Kafka, but she was far more interested in spying. She'd checked the books on the nightstand-- Allie favored romance novels, Cam--to her shock--poetry; she'd sat, like Goldilocks, on all six different cushions of the living room couches. She'd even sprayed a line of Cam's shaving foam across her forearm and sniffed at it, trying to determine if that was the scent that had stayed with her all morning. And Mia, who was so sensitive to sounds that she could hear a fly brush a window screen and the moon shifting in the middle of the night, had become so absorbed in the contents of the bedroom that she had actually been discovered in the act.

  Cam took a few of the photographs from her and held them up to the light. Mia did not look at him. "You caught me," she said quietly. "I was snooping."

  To her surprise, Cam laughed. "And?"

  She raised her chin, figuring if she could not be brave about this she would never survive it at all. "You wear boxers, not briefs; you had more blond in your hair than red when you were little; you get your uniforms dry-cleaned in Hancock."

  "And Allie?"

  Mia plucked at the quilt on the bed. "I haven't gotten around to her, yet." The corners of her mouth lifted. "I found your stash, too. The travel magazines inside your tool chest."

  Cam took a second group of photographs from Mia's hands. It didn't bother him that she knew about the magazines, not nearly as much as it had bothered him yesterday to think of Allie knowing this. Maybe it was because he knew that Allie would not even begin to understand. You simply could not define freedom to someone who did not realize they were caged.

  "I read the article on Tibet," Mia admitted.

  Cam nodded. "Ever been there?"

  She shook her head. Stooping low, she took the last collection of spilled photographs from the floor. She leafed through a few shots of Allie as a young girl; a wedding picture of Cam, breathtaking in full Highland dress regalia. She seemed to be looking for something in particular, so Cam uselessly shuffled through the pile of photographs he held, as well, as if he could divine what she was missing.

  "Here," she said, holding out a photo of a lush green valley ringed by mountains, with an imposing white stone keep to the left. "I've been here."

  "You've got to be kidding," Cam said.

  "It's in Scotland, isn't it? Near Glencoe?" She ran her hand over the folded tartan blanket at the foot of the bed. "Is this the place where you're all from?"

  He stared into Mia's dark eyes, thinking this all hit a little too close to home to ring true, and folded his arms over his chest. "Prove it."

  Later, Cam wondered whether things might have worked out differently if Mia had been able to tell him the number of cobblestones in the front walk of the Great House, which he'd counted as a child when he was bored by the adult conversation inside; or if she had remembered that under the rosebush to the left of the gate was a small gravestone for an old terrier who used to stand guard beneath it. As it was, Mia simply shook her head. "It was a long time ago," she said, "and anything I would be able to remember is something I could have seen on a postcard." She shrugged lightly and stared at the skin at the base of his throat, which was so fine and white she could see the blue veins mapped beneath it. "I guess you'll have to trust me."

  That was the moment Cam thought it was possible he had seen someone who looked like Mia Townsend at Carrymuir, maybe the time he went when he was eight, maybe when he was eighteen. Perhaps she had walked with a lighter step; perhaps her hair was a little shorter, but surely he remembered that delicate carriage, those spiraling curls. And because he felt it was the only way to be perfectly sure, he leaned across Che inches between them and kissed her.

  She fit. Through slitted lids he saw that her eyes were still open and this became his goal: he wanted to see them drift shut. So he ran his tongue across the line of her mouth and kissed the edges. He was not thinking clearly. He told himself that if she tensed just the tiniest bit beneath his hands, he would break away. He told himself he would count to ten and see if this happened.

  At about the same time his heart began to beat again, one curl of her hair wound its way around his finger, as if it could will him to stay.

  Mia's eyes began to close and she wondered what in the name of God she was doing. Her blood was running fast, not simply because of this man with his big hands framing her face, but because she had known this was coming and now it had finally happened.

  Cam buried his face against her throat. For a man who longed to travel, who had known the comfort of a wife and a job and a mortgage, he had the strangest sense of coming home. He felt the vibrations of her voice against his lips, motions that hummed through him for several seconds before he realized they were words.

  "I have to go," Mia was saying. "I have to go now."

  Afraid she would stand up and run out the door and possibly straight out of this town, Cam reached for her hand. "I'll take you back to the flower shop," he said, the sounds thick and unfamiliar to his own ears.

  "I have my car."

  "Leave it," Cam said. "Allie will drive you back later."

  They stared at each other, unwilling to even suggest that this might happen again; that either one might want or not want the other to be in the same house another night. Finally Mia nodded, having based her decision on the fact that she could not stand knowing what Cam would say to Allie if she was not present in the room when he got there.

  He did not touch her while they were walking downstairs. He stayed a single step behind Mia, walking quickly to catch the scent she left behind. With every movement it got harder to believe that he had kissed a woman he hardly knew in his own bedroom, and he let the guilt grow. He had a wife that he loved. A murderer who still had to be arraigned. He did not know what he had been thinking. He did not want to acknowledge that he simply had not been thinking at all.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Mia scooped Kafka into her arms and headed for the front door. She paused at the threshold. "I need to know what you're going to tell her," she said, trying to sound glib and failing miserably.

  Cam let her walk out the door and then started to lock it behind them. "That I thought you were a burglar and pulled a gun on you. That I scared you to death."

  "Well," Mia said, moving to the police cruiser, "it wouldn't be a lie."

  After Allie had finished her bonsai wiring for the day, and had dropped Verona MacBean's centerpieces off at the library, she decided to visit Jamie MacDonald. She told herself that it wasn't really going against Cam's wishes. If anyone, like Hannah, asked what she was doing visiting a man Cam was going to book for murder--well, she'd just say he was family.

  She made him a nosegay of flowers that she thought might help: roses for love, marigolds for grief, violets for faithfulness, chrysanthemums for cheerfulness during adversity. She filled these in with statice and quaking grass. She knew it wouldn't be allowed in the cell, but even Cam couldn't object to having it hung on the swing lock outside. She waited until Cam's police cruiser had been gone from its spot for fifteen minutes. Then she checked her hair and brushed dried bits of petals off her clothes and began to walk down the street.

  Casey MacRae was the only person, other than the prisoner, inside the police station. Hannah had called in sick, and Cam was, as Casey put it, God knows where. "Hey," he said, looking up from a game of solitaire he was playing on the booking counter. "It must be MacDonald day at the station."

  Allie unbuttoned her