Hot Mercy (Affairs of State Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

pick him up?”
    Storey smiled, almost sweetly. “We’d be delighted, Detective.”
    Mercy watched, mesmerized, while the two of them made nice and saved a copy of Yegorov’s image for distribution by the police. She caught a glimpse of the oversized face of the cop’s watch: 3:42 a.m. Under the influence of mind-numbing fatigue, she succumbed to a vision of Kramer and Storey having makeup sex then shook away the just-too-awful image.
    Mercy watched the detective walk out of the room, closing the door behind him to leave Mercy and the agent from Red Sands alone.
    “This looks bad.” Storey reached out to touch Mercy’s cheek bone.
    She winced and pulled away. “Don’t!” Even the lightest touch irritated the inflamed skin and underlying bruising. She had intentionally avoided looking in the mirror in the ladies’ room when she’d used the toilet.
    “It needs cleaning, if not stitches. Did Yegorov do that to you?”
    “I went for a swim. The canal won.” Mercy coughed out a dry laugh. “Rock beats flesh every time.”
    The momentary tweak of one corner of the woman’s lips came close to a second real smile. “Seriously, Ms. O’Brien, let me take you home.” She bent forward, making sure Mercy met her eyes and was listening. “I owe you a little more information, and it’s nothing the DC police need to know. I can have a doctor meet us at your place to check out your boo-boos.”
    Boo-boos? Mercy eyed her skeptically. Margaret Storey didn’t look the mothering type. “And a lock smith?”
    “Good idea. And after we’ve taken care of that, I have a proposition for you.”

 
     
     
                                              4
     
    Talia stared at the writhing brown snakes that bound her wrists and ankles. Lying there, curled up on her side in ‘The Cold Place,’ she studied them for a long time before finally deciding they might not actually be alive. Or snakes. Maybe they were just dirty strands of hemp. Rope that moves, by itself? Why not. Then again, sometimes the snakes talked to her. She’d believe anything.
    Her head felt too heavy for her neck to lift. Her eyes too dry to blink, even if they hadn’t been swollen nearly shut. Fur had grown over her tongue. Her body blazed, a raging furnace, and then went so bitterly cold she couldn’t stop trembling. Chest, face, limbs—they all shrieked in agony.
    She tried to sit up but couldn’t even rise onto her elbows. So she just lay there. In the cold. Watching the snakes. Listening to the persistent hiss of their snaky-language, which meant nothing to her.
    She seemed to recall a struggle. No, that was too mild a word for what had happened to her. Attack—that was more like it. Yesterday? Or had it been months ago, years, or maybe just days? She found it impossible to track time. Then again, perhaps it was all a terrible dream—imaginary fists and shouting and pain, all of it a series of nightmares that had morphed into this murky present.
    But she didn’t think it had been a dream. The beatings felt even more real than the snakes. Rough hands restraining her. One brutal blow after another. They’d bludgeoned her head, her body. They’d used their fists then heavy, blunt objects, maybe even her own camera. She couldn’t be sure. But that wasn’t the worst of it. What came after, she tried not to remember.
    Whether hallucinations, dreams, or memories—they’d come and gone, come and gone. She could no longer separate the apparitions from reality although, at this moment, she felt relatively lucid. Except for the snakes.
    Damn snakes.
    Another place that wasn’t The Cold Place came to her with sudden clarity: East 53rd Street, Manhattan. Her apartment. A man in a wheelchair. He loved her. They’d argued. “Just don’t go alone, please.” He sounded resigned though, and a little sad. “It’s too dangerous.”
    The fog in her head brightened from a dense cinder-gray to pale mauve, clearing a