Chapter Twenty #2
These bikers all have the damn disease.
He opens his mouth.
Sophie looks up. “Don’t even start.”
Legend stops.
Royal glances between them while Becki quietly closes her hand over his beneath the table.
Sophie says, “I need to see it.”
Legend’s fingers flex once against the tabletop before he finally nods. “Okay.” Doesn’t smile, but the tension in her shoulders eases enough to matter.
Twila notices too. Her foot brushes mine beneath the table.
Not accidental.
I look at her.
She keeps reading.
Sneaky woman.
Sophie lays two financial sheets beside Amos’s old donation record. “These payments line up with the same charitable pool I found before. What we didn’t have was this.”
She taps MERCY HOUSE.
“A residential program for girls sitting inside that network.”
That’s the new piece. Nobody has to say it.
Kaylee sits near the end of the table beside Bullet.
Not beside Sophie or Becki.
Bullet.
Their chairs are almost touching. She looks better than she did when we pulled her out of old Pearly Gates. Still pale and bruised, still aware of every doorway, but her hair is clean and she’s upright in a borrowed sweatshirt with both feet tucked beneath the chair.
Bullet hasn’t moved more than six feet from her since we walked in.
Nobody comments about them. Nobody needs to.
Twila picks up the old fundraiser photograph. “Kaylee.”
The scrape of chairs around the table stops.
Twila notices and gives the men a look. “Just looking.”
Bullet doesn’t look at us.
He looks at Kaylee. “You good?”
She nods. “Yeah.”
Twila moves slowly and lays the photograph flat on the table instead of handing it to her.
“You don’t have to answer anything.”
Kaylee looks down. Her eyes move across donors, volunteers, and smiling church people before stopping on one face.
Every bit of expression leaves hers.
Bullet leans forward. “What?”
Kaylee raises one finger and points.
Crowley.
“He prayed over us.”
Nobody speaks.
Twila’s voice stays soft. “At Pearly Gates?”
Kaylee nods. “Sometimes.”
Bullet’s forearms come off his knees. “Did he touch you?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
Relief doesn’t come, not with the way she’s still looking at Crowley’s smiling face.
Twila asks, “What did he do?”
Kaylee swallows. “He came in.”
“To where?”
“The room.”
“What room?”
Her eyes flick toward Bullet.
He holds one hand out, palm up.
She takes it.
“He’d come in and pray.”
“Over who?”
“All of us.”
My stomach drops.
Twila doesn’t change expression. “Were you free to leave when he was there?”
Kaylee stares down at the photograph. “He knew.”
Twila waits.
Kaylee’s fingers tighten around Bullet’s.
“He knew everything.”
That changes the room.
Crowley being dirty ain’t news. The Kings figured that out a long time ago.
What changes is Kaylee. A living survivor putting him inside the room where she was being held, more than once, and saying he knew she couldn’t leave.
Not a stolen file. Not something we found breaking into church property. A witness.
Kaylee keeps staring at his picture. “They made us kneel when he came.”
Bullet looks like he wants to tear the table apart with his bare hands.
Twila notices. “So he was there more than once.”
“Yes.”
“Did they call him Reverend while he was there?”
“We all knew him.”
Twila nods. “Okay.”
She slides the photograph away, and Kaylee’s breathing eases almost immediately.
Then Cider reaches across the table.
“Wait.”
Royal turns. “What?”
She isn’t looking at Crowley. Her attention has locked onto somebody behind him, half cut off by the edge of the photograph.
A woman. Mostly one shoulder and an arm, with her hand resting against the back of a folding chair.
Cider leans closer. “The hand.”
Royal’s entire attention shifts to her. “What hand?”
She points.
The woman’s left hand is hard to make out in the grainy photograph, but something crosses the skin. Scar tissue maybe. A dark line running from the base of her thumb toward her wrist.
Cider touches the same place on her own hand.
“The woman.”
Royal moves closer but catches himself before crowding her. “Cider, you remember her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is that Mercy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she there when…”
Becki puts one hand on Royal’s arm. “Baby.”
He stops.
Cider’s breathing has already gone shallow. “I said I don’t know.”
Royal immediately backs away. “Okay.”
Her gaze stays locked on the picture.
“She smelled like roses”
What little noise remained in the room disappears.
Twila looks at her. “You remember that?”
“Roses.”
Royal’s face drains. “You remembered that before.”
Cider nods, her finger still hovering over the photograph. “The hand. She touched my hair.”
Nobody says anything.
What the fuck do you say to that?
Legend takes the photograph and angles it beneath the light. “Can we identify her?”
Sophie shakes her head. “Not from this copy.”
Royal looks at me. “Club tech?”
“Can scan it. Maybe clean it up.”
“Do it.”
I nod.
Then Twila slides the Mercy House deed into the center of the table.
“We got something else.”
Royal reads the heading. “Mercy House.”
Cider stares at it.
Becki whispers, “Oh.”
Sophie takes the page. “Residential program for girls.”
Kaylee makes a small sound.
Bullet turns toward her immediately. “What?”
She looks at the paper. “They said Mercy.”
Twila leans forward but doesn’t move the deed any closer. “As a person?”
Kaylee slowly shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“What did they say?”
Kaylee closes her eyes while Bullet’s thumb moves once across her knuckles. When she opens them again, her voice drops.
“If somebody got in trouble, they said she’d get sent to Mercy.”
Every hair on my arms rises.
Royal repeats it quietly. “Sent to Mercy.”
Kaylee nods. “Sometimes the girls would cry.”
Twila looks at Cider.
Cider looks terrified.
“You think that’s what you remember?” Royal asks, softer this time.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“Could Mercy have been this place?”
“I don’t know.”
Kaylee whispers, “Could’ve been both.”
Everybody turns toward her.
She shrinks a little deeper into the borrowed sweatshirt. “One of the girls said Mercy sees everything.”
Bullet’s fingers close tighter around hers.
That ain’t creepy at all.
Twila glances at me, and Wren’s drawing flashes into my head. The faceless woman beside Prickle with MERCY written beneath her.
Nope. Not putting my seven-year-old’s imaginary deer in the middle of this room yet.
Legend taps the property address. “We check it.”
Sophie looks up. “Today?”
“Yes.”
“Mercy House?”
“Mercy House.”
We still don’t know how much of Pearly Gates is active, who is moving girls, where those girls are going, or how many people are buried inside this network. But this address is real, tied to the same financial chain, and close enough to put boots on.
Royal reaches for his cut. “I’m in.”
Legend looks at me. “You.”
“Yeah.”
Then Twila.
I look at her, and the old instinct rises before I can stop it.
Tell her no. Keep her here where I know she’s safe. I swallow it. “You coming, Deputy?”
Her eyebrows lift. “Yes.”
“Bring your gun.”
That small proud smile appears.
Bullet doesn’t move.
Legend notices. “You staying?”
Bullet glances at Kaylee. “Yeah.”
No explanation.
Kaylee’s shoulders lower.
Legend nods once. “Stay.” He looks at Sophie. “Don’t even dream about it.”
She crosses her arms.
Becki places her hand on her baby bump.
That’s settled.