Without Mercy (17 page)

No!

Blackness swam before her eyes. Pain ripped mercilessly through her body.

No! No! Oh, dear God, no!

She clawed desperately. Wildly.

Help!
she silently cried, kicking, writhing.
Oh, sweet Jesus, someone please, please help me!

Pain rocketed through her. Light splintered behind her eyes. Bursts of horrid, brilliant color. Her lungs were so damned tight, and she couldn’t think, could barely flail.

Please…

But it was too late.

She felt her life oozing away, blackness creeping over her.

Her hands fell limp at her sides.

The fingers around her throat clamped even tighter, crushing her airway.

Somewhere high overhead, the owl hooted and flapped his great wings, but she couldn’t see or hear him. The only sound was the rush of blood in her ears. The only vision was the shadowy face of her assailant.

In those last few seconds of consciousness, Nona Vickers realized that she’d lost more than her virginity this night; she’d also given up her life.

CHAPTER 14

Cooper Trent woke up in a foul mood.

After a restless night, he gave up, rolled out of bed, and slammed shut the window he’d cracked open, thinking that the cold mountain air would help him sleep. Not that it mattered, as this old cottage was so poorly insulated that the elements tended to seep right through the walls.

Daylight was hours from splitting the night sky, but that was just too bad. He wasn’t going to spend another second tossing and turning and wondering what the hell he was doing here. He thought about what he’d discovered in the past few months, and it wasn’t much. Something was going on beneath the surface of this institution, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it.

Some of the students had opened up to him about Lauren Conway. In his phys ed classes, he’d done a few lectures about stress and relaxation, leading students to talk about things that bothered them. In two classes, the topic of Lauren’s disappearance had come up. Student opinion seemed to fall in two categories: those who thought she had been killed by the school while trying to escape, and those who’d thought she made it. “I like to think that she got away from
this school and away from her parents. I can just see Lauren living in some city somewhere with a job and her own apartment. She’s living a life and laughing at Blue Rock,” Maeve Mancuso had said, and her friends Lucy and Nell had agreed.

“Even though she was a TA and had come here voluntarily?” Trent hadn’t been able to follow Maeve’s reasoning.

“Yeah, well, that was probably the first step into breaking away from her family.”

“She was twenty. Of age.”

Maeve’s frown had indicated he didn’t know anything. “Some parents run your life forever. Just ask my older sister!”

Maeve had an unrealistic theory, one that lacked foundation. If Lauren had escaped these mountains last November, she would have been spotted by someone in a nearby town or seen hitchhiking on the interstate.

Trent hadn’t pressed the issue with Maeve and her friends. To argue vehemently or in any way remind them that he was an authority figure would undermine their trust, and he needed the kids to open up to him if he was ever going to find out what had really happened to Lauren, which was, of course, his real reason for taking the job at Blue Rock.

Trent had also overheard a few conversations suggesting that a group of students had formed some kind of secret club. “They meet after dark, and you have to be handpicked to join.” This he’d gathered from the buzz in the boys’ locker room. It sounded like a fraternity, but he’d found no evidence that the school was involved. Though he didn’t agree with all of Blue Rock’s policies, so far the teachers and staff seemed to be true to their mission. Blue Rock was a school dedicated to helping at-risk kids find their way back to their families and God. Some of their practices seemed extreme, but no school activity could account
for Lauren Conway’s disappearance. Kidnapping and murder were not a part of the curriculum.

And the faculty was tight-lipped. Stiff. Which didn’t help him at all.

Trent wished he had something more definitive to report back to the Conways, since they’d hired him to find their daughter, but so far, he’d come up pretty damned empty-handed.

Scraping a hand over his whiskered jaw, he walked to the window, then snapped the shades open. What was the story with those dogs, barking in the middle of the night? They’d shut up after a while, but they’d shot all chances of sleep to hell.

He tossed on yesterday’s jeans and his faded flannel shirt. Then, before making a pot of coffee, he pulled on a pair of comfortable boots, worn and battered from his rodeo days years ago.

Sometimes, when he was restless, he’d visit the animals. He would stop at the horse barn first, then wander through the pens of chickens, goats, and pigs before stopping at the kennels. He missed having his own small herd of horses, or, at the very least, a dog. So far, he hadn’t replaced Buster, a dog that had been part German shepherd, part boxer, and God knew what else. Loyal and true, Buster had been known to be afraid of his own shadow.

Stretching, he heard his back pop, reminding him of how many times he’d been thrown into the dirt of a rodeo ring. He missed that life. Once, living among horses, cowboys, dust, and leather had been a part of his future, but then things had changed abruptly when his femur had snapped in two places.

So, now, here he was, living a life that wasn’t what he’d planned, lying through his teeth as he did it. His leg had healed, his wounded pride not so much, and though he was healthy, athletic again, he’d hung up his spurs.

Who cared?

It was all ancient history.

Right there with Jules Delaney, and he’d been reminded of her a lot lately, what with her half sister now in his charge. What were the odds of that?

He snagged his jacket from a peg near the door and patted a pocket out of habit, forgetting for a split second that he’d given up smoking years before.

At Jules’s insistence.

He felt his lips twist wryly when he thought about how he’d almost started the habit again once they’d broken up. Then sanity had prevailed. Withdrawal from nicotine was a bitch; he never wanted to go through that again.

No stars this morning.

No coyotes yipping or howling.

Not even a bat flying by as he pulled on his work gloves and headed toward the darkened stable.

Calm and peaceful, a light snow was falling in thick white flakes to drift against the buildings and catch in the eaves, where icicles had already formed. The place looked like a Christmas card.

But that sense of serenity was short-lived.

The second he opened the door to the horse barn, he knew something was wrong. The energy inside was all wrong. He flipped on one row of lights. The gray mare, Arizona, was snorting and shifting in her stall, and Plato, a Tennessee walker, usually a calm gelding, had pushed his head over the top rail of his box. Plato’s eyes were wide and white-rimmed, his chestnut coat quivering.

Creeeaaaak.
The noise was soft and low, unnatural.

And there was a smell that didn’t belong here.

Over the powerful, warm scent of horses and the acrid odor of urine was another, underlying smell of something darker. Blood?

Trent scraped his gaze over the interior, past the sacks
and barrels of grain and the walls where bridles, halters, and pitchforks hung. Nothing was out of place. And yet … He started toward the ladder leading to the hayloft, then broke into a run.

“Shit!”

Just beneath the opening to the upper floor was the crumpled, naked body of a man. Trent hurried around the body to examine the face. Prescott. One of the TAs, Andrew Prescott. Blood had pooled around his head, and he wasn’t moving.

“No. Ah, Jesus!” Bending on one knee, Trent felt for a pulse and found the faintest of beats at the kid’s neck. He was breathing, his heart beating, but he was in bad shape, the gash on the back of his head gaping, one arm bent at an impossible angle from his fall. “Hang in there, kid,” Trent said, and scooped up the wireless phone cradled near the stalls. He punched in 911 and hoped to God help would arrive in time to save the boy’s life.

“Come on, come on,” he said, praying the connection would go through.

“Nine-one-one. What is the nature of your emergency?”

“Send an ambulance!” he ordered. “Better yet, life flight. I’ve got an injured student at Blue Rock Academy, and I’d say it’s critical. We need to airlift him to the hospital. He’s unconscious, a lot of blood, maybe bleeding internally.” He rattled off the address of the school, gave the operator his name and position, then barked out, “Tell them to hurry!”

“Sir, stay on the line and—”

“I can’t. Just get a medical team to the school, fast!” He hung up and punched the number of the clinic, and the call was forwarded to a groggy Nurse Ayres. “It’s Trent. Get to the stables ASAP. Drew Prescott’s been injured, bad.”

“Have you called Reverend Lynch?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep.

“Hell, no! I’ve called nine-one-one and now you, so haul ass with your medical supplies over here, now. He’s fading fast.”

Trent hung up before she had time to argue, then hovered over the boy. He knew first aid and CPR and various emergency procedures, but he also recognized death when he saw it coming, and Prescott was damned close.

“Hang in there,” Trent said to the injured kid as he found a saddle blanket to cover him. “You just hang the hell in there. Come on, Drew. You can do it. I know you can.”

But he was lying.

The kid was slipping away. Fast.

Within minutes, Ayres arrived, toting a hefty first-aid kit. She was on her knees at Drew’s side in an instant. “Did you find a pulse?” she asked Trent.

“Very slight, but it’s there.” Trent watched as she gloved up and set to work examining the student.

A moment later, Lynch’s long strides carried him into the stable. His clothes still looked pressed, his damned hair combed, though his beard shadow gave his usually neat soul patch a ragged appearance. “What’s going on here?” he demanded, seemingly outraged at the sight of the injured student.

Trent shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

“Why in the world is this boy out here? And where are his clothes?” Lynch turned his face away from the unconscious student, his gaze scraping the interior of the stable. “What’s this?”

“What?” Trent looked up from Drew Prescott’s bloodless face to see the spot where Lynch was looking, a smear of blood mixed with straw. In his concern for the boy, he hadn’t noticed the stain that was separate from the wide puddle of blood beneath Drew’s head. “Don’t touch it,” he said to the director, who was bending low over the stain. “Leave it for the police.”

“I could use some help here!” Ayres said. Kneeling beside the boy, she was lifting Drew’s arm from under the saddle blanket to take his blood pressure. Trent took the corner of the blanket while Lynch, worry lining his brow, closed his eyes and, lips moving silently, appeared to pray.

“What happened here?” Ayres asked.

“I found him when I came to check on the horses.” Trent gave her a quick rundown of what he’d discovered.

“Why were you out here so early?” the director asked as he opened his eyes again, his prayer finished. Silent accusations hung in the musty air.

Hell! Trent didn’t have time for this, not now. “Look, our first priority is to take care of this guy, get him the medical attention he needs.” Trent wasn’t afraid of being a scapegoat. Let the reverend, so quick to point blame, think what he wanted.

“He’s breathing at least.” Nurse Ayres talked through her inventory. “ABC. Airway, breathing, circulation. Wound seems to be clotting, but he needs oxygen. More blankets. Hydration. I need the neck brace in case there’s spinal injury, and the backboard. We can’t move him anywhere until his cervical spine is immobilized.”

The stable door banged open.

Bert Flannagan, all five feet ten inches of suppressed fury, swept inside with a rush of wintry air. Rifle in hand, he marched down the aisle between the stalls. “What the hell is going on here?” he asked. “I saw the lights—” His breath whistled between his teeth as he caught sight of Drew Prescott’s motionless body. “For the love of Saint Jude, what happened here?”

“We don’t know,” Trent said.

Flannagan’s hard expression didn’t alter. “Is he alive?”

“Barely.” Ayres was all business as she carefully applied pressure to the patient’s open wound.

Trent’s jaw tightened. Time was of the essence. “Life flight is on its way.”

Lynch’s head snapped up. “You phoned for help?”

“That’s right. Couldn’t stay on the line, though.”

“Call them again!” Ayres ordered, her voice urgent.

The reverend’s cool facade cracked. “You should have spoken to me first; this wasn’t your call—”

“Shut up, Tobias!” Ayres’s eyes flashed angrily. “Trent did the right thing. This boy needs to get to a hospital, fast.”

Lynch argued, “But there’s a protocol.”

“Screw protocol!” The nurse’s face was beet red with fury. “This kid’s got a broken ulna and radius, a helluva head injury, and God only knows what else inside!” She shook her head in disgust. “Let’s not have a student die on us if we can help it. Especially while we’re discussing protocol.”

Lynch cupped his chin in one hand and closed his eyes in surrender. “Fine.”

Disgusted, Ayres turned to Trent. “We need to get him warmed up and stabilized until the medevac copter gets here. We need a backboard and oxygen from the clinic. Yes, it would be easier on him to bring those things here. Oh, and I can start an IV line.”

“We could drive him to the nearest hospital,” Lynch suggested, beginning to understand the severity of the situation.

“Two hours away? With a head wound?” Again she pinned Trent in her stare. “You’re sure they’re sending a helicopter?”

“I told them it was necessary. No other quick way in here.”

“Those flights get grounded in foul weather, and there’s already some snow falling, a storm predicted.” Flannagan strode to the windows where the first streaks of gray light penetrated the night sky.