Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) (14 page)

Your turn. Where is my mother? Can you find her or not? Details…now!

She didn’t doubt for a minute that the CIA agent was capable of stringing her along. But she could play that game too. She’d hold back future information until he delivered on his promise.

Footsteps started up the long flight of stairs. Mercy flipped shut the laptop, scooted it under the bed and slipped out of her clothing. She wriggled into the lacy black cami and thong Peter had bought her on their honeymoon in Paris. She spritzed on a little perfume, sat on the edge of her bed and waited.

A smiling Peter walked through the door seconds later. He balanced a silver tray with food and Champagne glasses on one hand, palm up like a waiter. His other hand gripped a bottle of
Dom Perignon
by its gold-foil neck.

Mercy stood up and took the tray from him and rested it on the bedside table.

Peter set down the champagne, tugged loose his tie, gave her a cocky eyebrow lift. “Not in bed yet?”

“I wanted to wait for you,” she said. “I like to watch you undress.” Then, because the timing was perfect, she couldn’t pass up reminding him of the one thing that displeased her about their new home. “Particularly now that we have separate suites and hardly ever see each other.”

Peter grimaced. “I haven’t been around as much as I had hoped. I’m sorry. The job; it’s a bear.”

She perched on the bed again, giving him a good view of her breasts, the nipples barely covered by a delicate screen of lace. “Well, it’s good that you’re here now.” And it occurred to her that she meant it. She really did. She wanted to make this marriage work.

He sucked in a breath as he took in the length of her legs, following them from her pedicured toes on up, stopping right where she knew he would—her boobs. “I don’t know why I ever leave this room. God, you’ve got great tits!” he growled.

She smiled. “Care for a sample?”

Tossing off his shirt he came to her. He pulled her up into his arms, splayed his hands over her bottom, lifted her up and against him. His erection felt lovely through what remained of their clothing. She was suddenly hot, and needy, and ready.

When was the last time she'd felt like this? When had sex no longer been fun and become routine—the last item on a daily to-do list? Then a weekly obligation. Now something that happened once or twice a month. When had she stopped looking forward to making love?

When you cheated on me, Peter
.

“I can’t look at you without getting hard,” he moaned, nuzzling her hair.             

She forced troubling memories aside. Uninhibited, satisfying sex would go a long way toward calming her raw nerves and repairing the breach between them. It would be their first time in the new house. Special.

Peter stroked a finger up between her thighs, and she caught her breath. Covering her mouth with his, he nudged aside the thong’s thin strand of lace and began to probe the moist folds of her flesh with his fingers. She whimpered, looking forward to a delicious, multilayered orgasm.

“You’re mine,” he whispered in her ear, as if re-staking his claim. He shoved her back onto the bed, tugged the thong down her legs and off, tossing it aside.

Leaning over her, he spread her legs and started playing with her clit, wiggling his fingers in a tick-tock motion that made her think of a metronome. “That-a-girl. Come big for Daddy,” he coached.

She clawed at his chest wanting to shriek at him:
Shut up and get inside me!
This wasn’t foreplay, this was torture.

She hungered for an orgasm. A whopping big, earthquake of one that ignited her blood and rattled her teeth. It had been so very long since she’d had a decent one.

Mercy closed her eyes to concentrate. A mistake.

While Peter’s finger was at work, her subconscious conjured up an image of a man licking her down there. To her horror, the face was not her husband’s.

“Ah!” Mercy’s eyes flew open.

Peter stared down at her with that possessed look he got moments before he came. 

“What?” he gasped.

“Nothing.” What was wrong with her? Thinking of a criminal like Sebastian Hidalgo at a moment like this. “I want you NOW!” she cried.

He grinned. “Damn, you’re hot tonight.”

But instead of entering her, he reached for her arms and yanked her off the warm mattress and onto her feet. 

“Come here, you sexy bitch.”

He was being playful, but she didn‘t like the name calling.
Bitch
. That was the word he used in private conversation to put down women he thought were cheap or ignorant.

“Peter, don’t—”

“You’ll like this,” he promised, dragging her by the hand across the chilly tiles toward the Spanish oak dresser that had come with the house.

The huge mirror hung on the wall over the furniture. It caught their naked reflections, flesh flushed with sexual energy. A quiver of excitement ran through her. But the derogatory word still echoed, poisoning the air.
Bitch. Bitch…bitch.

He’ll make it right, she thought. If she let him do what he wanted, he’d bring her to glorious climax. She’d forget everything else. This was just his way of having fun, feeling manly.

Peter spun her around, tucking her bottom into his crotch, facing her toward the mirror. “Nice, huh? Look at us.” He fondled her breasts, leaning over her from behind, and stared, transfixed, over her shoulder at their reflection in the mirror.

She tried to relax again, resting her head back against his shoulder to enjoy the erotic image they made. But it reminded her of a porn flick. Another woman was in the mirror. Her lover was a stranger.

Peter leaned around her and swept his arm across the top of her dresser, clearing it. Jewelry boxes, silver comb and brush clattered to the floor. A perfume bottle smashed on the tile.

“Peter!”

“Fuck, you make me hot!” He bent her forward, over the bureau. Her head cracked against the glass. The sharp wooden edge of the furniture bit into her hip bones with bruising force.

“Stop!” she cried.”You're hurting me. Let me go.”

He covered her mouth with his hand to stifle her cries.

“Good, huh? You like it rough, bitch?” Wedging a knee between her thighs from behind, he spread her legs and thrust into her.

He wasn’t strong enough to pin her down for long. Three hard humps were all he managed before she shoved him off. 

But he was already coming. Staggering toward the bed, he fell into the sheets, holding himself and grinning in erotic male bliss as he spurted.

Mercy glared down at him, watching him enjoy the final spasms of his ecstasy as he rolled around on her bed, destroying her sheets. Only then did the truth hit her.

The real reason she’d felt confused and shocked by his performance tonight had nothing to do with her being prudish, or even that it was painful. The problem was—Peter Davis had a very limited repertoire. Bumping her from behind while indulging in a rape fantasy had never been part of it.

This was a newly acquired trick. She was willing to bet he hadn’t discovered it while perusing sex manuals or porn films, which he detested. He must have thought she'd like it because someone else he'd been with had thought it fun.

Her heart hammered in her chest. “I don’t even want to know who it is,” she hissed.

“Huh?” He stared up at her, his eyes still glazed over. Could the man really be as clueless as he looked?

“The woman who taught you that!” she screamed.

Peter rolled away from her, burying his face in a lace-trimmed pillow, still panting, his body flushed with adrenaline. “Fuck, why are you spoiling something that good?”

For a diplomat
, she thought,
you’re doing a crappy job of being diplomatic.

“Damn it, Peter, you’ve never done
that
to me before.”

“Good grief, of course we--”

“No! Never!”

Propping himself up on one elbow amid the tangle of sheets, he glared at her with open hostility. “I get excited. I try to show my wife that she turns me on. Suddenly it’s the Spanish Inquisition. Give it a rest, Mercy.”

She lost it. “You bastard!” Grabbing him by the ankles she hauled him naked off her bed. “Get out!”

His ass hit the floor with a satisfying thump. He lay there staring up at her, still managing to act shocked and innocent. “You can’t be serious.”

“This is
my
suite. You said it was. Now I’m telling you to get the hell out.”

16

A little after midnight Lucius Clay finally ran into the two coyotes. He’d been told by more than one person in the border towns that either one could give him names. The men crouched on a ridge overlooking the Rio Grande but stood up when they saw him approach. They hadn’t expected company, and neither looked pleased.

He could see they thought themselves pros. They'd brought plastic garbage bags to protect their customers’ shoes and outer clothing after ordering them to strip down. To one side lay a pile of inflated inner tubes for their customers to grab hold of so the river would be less likely to sweep them away in its punishing current. The river claimed dozens of would-be crossers every year.

Lucius moved closer.

The two men waved pistols threateningly at him and shouted, “
Vayase
! Go away!”

He ignored their warnings and strolled closer, raising his hands in the air to show he wasn’t holding a weapon.

With their dark pants and shirts and
mestizo
complexions, they didn’t need to smear themselves with mud to make themselves less visible. They looked penniless, but he knew different. The going rate had risen to $2,000 for each man, woman, or child they guided across the treacherous water. Another thousand for safe passage to Houston, Phoenix, or Los Angeles—where disappearing into the city’s multi-ethnic population would be easiest.

There, and in dozens of other cities across the U.S., with the help of fake ID’s, illegals earned minimum wage, but it was a life-saving fortune for the families they’d left behind. The new workers lived Spartan lives in the U.S., sent as much money home as possible to wives, parents and other family members. Eventually, by working two or three jobs, putting aside every possible penny, they might buy a small business, enabling them to sponsor other family members. But not everyone made it across the river or much farther.

Some young men—and now, more often, women too—had to try six or seven times, getting caught by border guards and sent back to their desperate families again and again. Or they might lose their crossing money to disreputable coyotes, crooked police, or highway gangs that preyed upon northern-bound travelers, knowing they carried large sums of cash. Those who didn't drown sometimes struck out across the desert without water or food, never to be seen again.

These were the risks you took when your babies were starving. Or so wetbacks had told him.

A coyote could grow rich fast, moving sometimes as many as a dozen men and women on a single night. There was more money in this business than anything else an uneducated Mexican man could do.

Lucius didn’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. Not the coyotes, the greasers, or their starving brats. He’d come for a different reason.

“I’m not the police,” he told them in Spanish, “don’t worry. Not DEA either.”

His gaze settled on their reliable old Colt revolvers. Probably they'd still shoot even if they got soaked in the river. Beyond the guides, he could now make out seven or eight figures squatting in the grass, nearly invisible in the night’s black-on-black shadows. Men and women and, based on the annoying high-pitched whine he now heard, at least one child.

Lucius focused only on the coyotes. One tall and thin, no hips. The other round as a sapodilla fruit.
Laurel and Hardy coyotes. Funny stuff.

The skinny one waved his gun at Lucius. “You reporter? No story for you here, man. Go.”

“I’m not a reporter. I just want information. Can we talk?” He was being 'Pleasant Guy' now. Lucius had many useful personas.

“Nothing to say,” Hardy grumbled.

Lucius felt the solid weight of his Glock tucked into the rear waistband of his pants, under his jacket. The metal pressed in just above his tailbone. “I have goods I want moved,” he explained, still so very friendly.

“What goods?” Hardy asked.

“We don’t do drugs,” Laurel broke in. “
Los Commederos
run the drugs in these parts.”

Everyone knew if you infringed on EC territory, the gang would hunt you down, spend ample time torturing you then slit your throat and sell your mutilated body back to your family for a Christian burial.             

“I’m not interested in drugs,” Lucius said. “I have guns, grenades, explosives that must be handled carefully. By professionals such as yourself.”

The two exchanged looks. Laurel shook his head and turned back to Lucius. “Too dangerous, man. Immigration police are pussies. Homeland Security, FBI, CIA— we don’t mess with.”