A Merciful Secret Read online

  PRAISE FOR KENDRA ELLIOT

  “In Elliot’s latest gripping novel the mystery and suspense are top-notch, and the romance embedded within will quench love story junkies’ thirst, too. The author’s eye for detail makes this one play out more like a movie rather than a book. It can easily be read as a standalone but is obviously much better if the prior three are digested first.”

  —Romantic Times Book Reviews on Targeted (4 stars)

  “Elliot’s latest addition to her thrilling, edge-of-your-seat series, Bone Secrets, will scare the crap out of you, yet allow you to swoon over the building romantic setting, which provides quite the picturesque backdrop. Her novel contains thrills, chills, snow and . . . hey, you never know! The surprises and cliffhangers are satisfying, yet edgy enough to keep you feverishly flipping the pages.”

  —Romantic Times Book Reviews on Known (4 stars)

  “Elliot’s best work to date. The author’s talent is evident in the characters’ wit and smart dialogue . . . One wouldn’t necessarily think a psychological thriller and romance would mesh together well, but Elliot knows what she’s doing when she turns readers’ minds inside out and then softens the blow with an unforgettable love story.”

  —Romantic Times Book Reviews on Vanished (4½ stars, Top Pick)

  “Kendra Elliot does it again! Filled with twists, turns, and spine-tingling details, Alone is an impressive addition to the Bone Secrets series.”

  —Laura Griffin, New York Times bestselling author

  “Elliot once again proves to be a genius in the genre with her third heart-pounding novel in the Bone Secrets collection. The author knows romance and suspense, reeling readers in instantaneously and wowing them with an extremely surprising finish . . . Elliot’s best by a mile!”

  —Romantic Times Book Reviews on Buried, (4½ stars, Top Pick)

  “Make room on your keeper shelf! Hidden has it all: intricate plotting, engaging characters, a truly twisted villain. I can’t wait to see what Kendra Elliot dishes up next!”

  —Karen Rose, New York Times bestselling author

  ALSO BY KENDRA ELLIOT

  MERCY KILPATRICK NOVELS

  A Merciful Death

  A Merciful Truth

  BONE SECRETS NOVELS

  Hidden

  Chilled

  Buried

  Alone

  Known

  BONE SECRETS NOVELLAS

  Veiled

  CALLAHAN & MCLANE NOVELS

  PART OF THE BONE SECRETS WORLD

  Vanished

  Bridged

  Spiraled

  Targeted

  ROGUE RIVER NOVELLAS

  On Her Father’s Grave (Rogue River)

  Her Grave Secrets (Rogue River)

  Dead in Her Tracks (Rogue Winter)

  Death and Her Devotion (Rogue Vows)

  Truth Be Told (Rogue Justice)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Oceanfront Press Company

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542047869

  ISBN-10: 1542047862

  Cover design by Eileen Carey

  To Megan and new beginnings

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  Mercy thought it was a deer.

  But it was a girl who burst out of the brush along the dark road and into the headlight beams of her SUV. She stomped on the brakes and jerked the steering wheel to the right. Spinning sideways, her vehicle shuddered as her tires bounced along the snow-packed ruts of the road’s shoulder. It rocked to a stop, and she clung to the wheel, gulping for breath.

  I didn’t hit her.

  Hands slammed against her driver’s window. “You’ve got to help me! Please!”

  Red smeared the glass, and terror shone in the girl’s wide eyes.

  Someone hit her and left.

  Mercy threw open her door, and the shivering girl lunged into her arms. “Please help her! She’s dying!” Her hands were red with blood, and streaks of it covered her cheeks. She couldn’t have been older than ten, and her short-sleeved T-shirt was deadly wrong for the freezing night air. She grabbed the front of Mercy’s coat and yanked her toward the road. “She’s this way!”

  “Wait! Are you hurt?” Mercy snagged the child’s wrist and examined her bloody hand, and then turned the girl’s face toward her, searching for a source of the blood. The child fought to get out of her grip.

  “It’s not my blood! I’m not hurt, it’s my grandmother! She’s dying!” Her feet scrambled as she tried to pull Mercy away from her vehicle. “You’ve got to help us!”

  “Where is she?”

  “This way!” Her gaze pleaded with Mercy to follow.

  Her heart racing, Mercy firmly led the girl to the rear of her Tahoe and grabbed a duffel bag from the back. “Won’t it be quicker to drive to your grandmother?”

  “The shortcut through the woods is fastest.” The child froze and eyed her bag with hope. “Are you a doctor?”

  “No.” Mercy pulled out her cell phone. No service. Dammit. “Did you call 911?”

  “We don’t have a phone.”

  Who doesn’t have a phone these days? She took a closer look at the girl. She needed a haircut, and her jeans were two inches too short. Her face was thin, with delicate features, giving her an elfin cast. “My mom has one, but she’s not home. Can you hurry, please?”

  Her terrified eyes nearly broke Mercy’s heart. “I need one more thing.” She glanced around at the towering pines on both sides of the road. Ten minutes earlier she’d left her cabin, but she was still in some of the densest woods on the east side of the Cascade mountains. The road rarely had traffic, and since it was nearly three in the morning, she knew no one else would be coming. She returned to the driver’s side and grabbed her purse with its hidden weapon pocket and gun, wishing she’d worn her shoulder holster.

  She slid the purse inside the duffel and looped the heavy-duty strap over her shoulder. She adjusted her balance for its heavy weight. “Let’s go.” The girl spun and dashed through the snow toward the brush where she’d first appeared. Mercy remotely locked her truck and fis
hed a flashlight out of the duffel’s end pocket.

  I’ll do what I can and then go for help.

  The first aid kit in the duffel wasn’t the type bought in a Walmart. She had scalpels, surgical thread, needles, epinephrine, and lidocaine in addition to the usual assortment of bandages and tape. She mentally took inventory of her duffel as she darted into the forest after the girl. Emergency blanket, fire starter, headlamp, hatchet, tarp, protein bars, water-purifying tablets. Mercy knew better than to blindly plunge into the woods without supplies.

  She pointed her flashlight after the girl. She’d vanished. Mercy’s beam scanned the brush where she thought the child had gone. “Hey! Wait up! Where’d you go?” I don’t even know her name.

  The elfin face suddenly appeared in the light. “Hurry!”

  Mercy jogged after her, her boots sinking into the six inches of snow. “What’s your name?”

  “Morrigan.” She dashed ahead of the flashlight’s beam, nimbly avoiding fallen branches and big rocks.

  Mercy tried to light both their paths, but Morrigan appeared to have the night vision of a cat. Mercy gave up and focused on not spraining an ankle. No one knows where I am. Her gut twisted at the thought, but she set it aside. Her boyfriend, Truman, and her niece Kaylie knew she’d gone to her cabin for the day, and her vehicle was parked on the side of the road. If someone looked for her, they’d find her.

  Hopefully in one piece.

  “Morrigan, what happened to your grandmother?” She pushed to keep up with the child.

  “I don’t know! She had blood everywhere.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “We’re almost to the house.”

  “We should have driven,” she muttered.

  “No, the road to the house twists way up to the north. This way is quicker. There it is!”

  Mercy raised the beam of her flashlight. Far ahead she could make out the outline of a small ranch-style home. A dim light shone in one window. No outside lights. She’d never known there was a home in the area. For years she’d driven the old rural road and never seen a hint that someone lived in this particular section of the woods. And I thought I valued my privacy.

  The girl dashed up a few crooked concrete steps and pushed open the door. “Grandma!” she shouted.

  Mercy paused at the bottom of the steps and checked her cell phone for service. Nothing. How am I going to get her grandmother to the Tahoe? I should have insisted on driving.

  She carefully entered the dark home, following the sounds of Morrigan’s soft sobbing. She turned on a light switch, but nothing happened. Her flashlight lit up each corner of the room, as she was unwilling to enter the unknown. It smelled of old dust, as if it’d been abandoned for years, but it was fully furnished and there were clear signs of habitation. A book on the end table. A mug next to a stack of magazines. To her right was a minuscule kitchen, its limited counter space crowded with a dish rack and slow cooker.

  “She’s in here!” Morrigan called. “Hurry! Please!” The fright in her voice pushed aside Mercy’s common sense, and she plunged down a dark hallway. Following the child’s sounds, she found Morrigan in a bedroom that was poorly lit by a hurricane lamp. Her grandmother sat in an ancient easy chair, its back reclined forty-five degrees. She was a very thin woman, her body barely taking up a fraction of the big chair. A quilt covered her from the neck down. Even in the dim light, Mercy saw it was soaked with blood.

  The woman’s head had turned ever so slightly as Mercy entered, and she made a pleading sound. Mercy’s fingers found another useless light switch, so she dropped her bag next to the overstuffed recliner and went down on a knee. Stop the bleeding. “Where are you hurt?” she asked as she gently took the woman’s wrist to check her pulse. It felt like the weak fluttering of a baby bird. The woman made more pleading sounds and tried to sit up. “Hold still,” Mercy told her. “Bring that lamp closer,” she ordered Morrigan. “And hold my flashlight so I can see better.” The girl obeyed, and Mercy caught her breath as she met the woman’s desperate gaze. She pawed Mercy’s arm, her fingers fumbling to grip the fabric of Mercy’s coat as their gazes locked. Her eyes were wet, her lids wrinkled with age, and her sounds grew more urgent.

  Can she speak?

  Mercy gasped as she slowly pulled back the wet quilt, and Morrigan’s grandmother let out a small cry.

  The woman had been slashed across the chest, abdomen, and upper arms. The weapon had cut right through her thin nightgown. The dark stains made obscene patterns across the fabric, the wounds continuously seeping.

  “Who did this to you?” Mercy couldn’t move. Her brain wouldn’t accept the brutal punishment that had been inflicted on the woman. The woman started to chant in a soft singsong voice, and Mercy couldn’t make out the words.

  “What happened to her, Morrigan?” she asked as she dug in her duffel for bandages.

  “I don’t know. I got up to use the bathroom and found her like this. That’s when I ran to the road for help.”

  Mercy pressed thick bandages against the wounds. They quickly grew wet with blood. There’s too much blood. She moved faster, using tape to bind the cotton in place. Her worry grew; she knew her small medical supply wouldn’t be sufficient. She quickly used up the last of her bandages. “Get me some clean towels or sheets,” she told Morrigan. The girl darted out of the room.

  Mercy took the woman’s hand, noticing it had more bleeding cuts. Defensive wounds? She forced a smile and looked into the worried dark eyes. “You’re going to be fine,” she said with a sinking feeling in her stomach. The woman continued to chant, and Mercy wondered if she was American Indian. She looks more Italian. “What’s she saying?” she asked Morrigan as the girl reappeared and dumped a stack of towels next to the chair. Mercy grabbed one and pressed it against the heaviest-flowing slash on the woman’s neck.

  The girl was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. I haven’t learned the spells.”

  Spells?

  “I don’t think it’s a bad one. Her tone isn’t angry.”

  I guess that’s good. “What’s her name?”

  “Grandma.”

  “Her real name.”

  The girl thought hard. “Olivia.”

  “Olivia,” Mercy said. “What happened to you? Who did this?” Olivia continued to stare, her lips still forming the foreign words. It doesn’t sound like Italian. Or any language I’ve ever heard before. The chanting stopped, and the woman’s breathing grew hoarse. She coughed, a deep hacking sound, and blood flew from her lips. Mercy pressed harder and directed Morrigan to apply pressure with another towel on the bleeding abdomen.

  She obeyed. “Is she going to die?” she whispered through tears.

  Mercy couldn’t lie. “I don’t know. It’s bad.”

  Olivia coughed, and more blood flew. She shakily raised her blood-covered hand to touch Mercy’s cheek. “Thank you.” The first words Mercy recognized.

  Her hand was warm and wet, and her fingers slid down the side of Mercy’s face as she held eye contact. The terror in Olivia’s gaze had evaporated, replaced with contentment.

  She’s leaving.

  “No! I won’t let you go, Olivia!” Mercy shook the woman’s shoulder. “Talk to her, Morrigan. Make her listen to you.” The girl started to plead with her grandmother, who turned tired eyes in her direction.

  Panic simmered under Mercy’s skin. She couldn’t call for an ambulance. Her only choices were to carry the woman to her Tahoe, stay here and continue trying to stop the bleeding, or get the vehicle and risk the long drive back to the house before taking her to the hospital. Mercy weighed each option. I’ve got to get the Tahoe. She got to her feet. “I’m going to get my truck.”

  Olivia’s hand shot out, grabbing her wrist. “Stay.”

  Mercy froze. And then slowly sank back to her knees, taking the bleeding hand again and holding the dying woman’s gaze. She doesn’t want to be alone. An inner calm flowed from the woman’s hand to Mercy’s and quieted her nerves
.

  I will do this for her.

  Olivia looked from Mercy to Morrigan and then closed her eyes. Mercy watched her chest rise four more times before it stopped.

  Numb, she held the woman’s hand and listened to Morrigan wail.

  TWO

  “Sorry about taking your clothes, Special Agent Kilpatrick,” a Deschutes County deputy muttered as Mercy dropped her coat, sweater, and jeans into his paper bag after changing in Morrigan’s bedroom.

  “No problem. I always have another set of clothing with me.” Once she’d gotten a look at her bloody sweater, she’d known the investigators would want everything she wore, but before she’d changed, the crime scene tech had photographed her in the stained outfit.

  Mercy had stood and stared straight ahead as the young man circled her, snapping photos. He’d moved closer to photograph her face, and she fought down the guilt that crawled up the back of her throat over her inability to save Olivia. Awkwardly he asked permission to cut a chunk of her hair. Mercy nodded and watched as strands of her long black hair, thick with congealed blood, fell into his waiting envelope. Then he’d taken out a swab, dampened it, and touched it to her face. Olivia’s blood was crusted on her cheek. The drying blood had pulled Mercy’s skin, and she’d briefly scratched it before comprehending what it was. It was still under her fingernails, even after the tech had scraped them.

  I did everything I could.

  A shiver shot through her muscles, making her entire body spasm as she watched the deputy seal the bag. He gave her a quick glance, sympathy in his eyes.

  She’d seen death up close before. Even clung to her brother’s hand as he’d passed.

  But this was different. Olivia’s need for human touch, her need for someone to stay and not let her slip into death alone, had ripped open Mercy’s heart.

  The moment would stay with her forever.

  She had sat with Olivia for a few minutes after she’d passed, and then Mercy had pulled Morrigan onto her lap and simply held her until she stopped crying and drifted off to sleep. She put a thick coat on the girl, carried her through the snow back to her Tahoe, and then drove until she found a cell signal. Exhausted, Morrigan had dozed in the back seat, her head bobbing on her chest. Mercy reported the death and tried to drive back to the house. She’d had to wake up Morrigan for directions. Morrigan had been right. The twisting side road to the little house took forever.