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CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

MERCY

I can’t watch. I know Ambrose kills Pastor Sullivan quickly because I hear the metallic shink of the blade and a wet gurgle and then a kind of puddling noise. When I glance over, my breath shaky, all I see is Ambrose, my savior and my demon, hunched over Sullivan’s supine body. I see Sullivan’s feet. I see a widening pool of blood.

My stomach turns, but there’s nothing to throw up, not really, and I swallow back the nausea. Then the wind blows the smell away, and I totter sideways, trying to clear my head.

Something wet nudges against my hand—it’s Max, looking up at me with big brown eyes, his tail wagging furiously. He looks like a completely different dog from just a few moments ago.

“Hey, boy.” I scratch between his ears and walk over to Reverend Gunner’s SUV, Max trailing behind me. Glass from the broken windshield glitters everywhere, looking like stars in the sunlight.

The briefcase that holds my hostage money is lying in the dirt. While Ambrose works a few yards away, filling the air with the most horrible noises, I pick it up .

It’s light. Too light to hold $250,000 worth of bills.

My stomach turns again, but this time it’s with rage. The same blinding, iridescent rage I felt earlier, when Ambrose was taunting Reverend Gunner, telling him to run and letting him escape. I squint out at the horizon, bright in the morning sun, and I can see Gunner moving in the distance, limping and slow.

No wonder Ambrose wasn’t worried.

I throw the briefcase on the car and snap it open. It’s empty.

“What were you going to do?” I whisper softly, watching Gunner retreat. Pastor Sullivan had a gun. Did they think they could just shoot Ambrose?

After he shot me?

The thought turns my blood cold. Colder than it’s been.

I snap the briefcase shut and hurl it out in the desert with a scream, all my tension erupting out of me. Max nudges at my thigh. The terrible wet noises behind me stop.

“Mercy.” Ambrose’s voice is calm, soft, reassuring. “He’s not going to go far.”

“He was going to let me die.” I whirl around without thinking and then gag when I see Ambrose crouching in the dirt surrounded by glistening viscera. He frowns as he stands, wiping his knife on his pants. Roxi looks up at me, her snout covered in blood.

“What do you mean?”

“There was no money.” Blood pounds in my head. “He thought you had kidnapped me for real. You told him you were going to kill me if he didn’t pay, right? But he wasn’t interested in saving me.”

“Humanita,” Ambrose says. “This whole thing was a ruse to murder these two pieces of shit.”

“But he didn’t know that!” I squeeze my arms around my chest. “I thought—I thought some part of him would think I was worth saving. ”

Ambrose frowns and walks over to me. “You are worth saving,” he says softly, brushing my hair back, smearing me with more blood. “Why do you think I’m here?”

His black eyes search my face. He doesn’t look human right now. Doesn’t feel human. But for the first time since my parents died?—

Someone actually cares about me.

“I love you,” I spit out.

It slams between us, cold and electric. I know I shouldn’t have said that.

“I—I don’t expect you to say it back,” I add. “I don’t expect you to feel it about me. I mean—” I gesture over at Pastor Sullivan. “Look at you. You’re the devil.”

“The devil can love,” Ambrose says quietly. So quietly I almost think I imagine it. “But that love doesn’t look like God’s love.”

I stare up at him, taking deep breaths even though it means I can smell the coppery stench of Pastor Sullivan’s insides. Reverend Gunner’s right-hand man. They shared everything, even me.

Now they’ll share the same sort of death.

“I feel sick,” I whisper.

“Because you’re human,” Ambrose says. “I’d be worried if you didn’t.”

A beat passes between us. The sun bakes down.

“Come on,” he says. “I need to get the meat to the blind to drain.”

The meat . That was how Sullivan treated me, wasn’t it? Like meat.

“And then we’re going to hunt down Sterling Gunner, and I’m going to show you just how much I fucking love you.”

I whip my head over to him, shock rippling through my body. But Ambrose has already turned around, stalking back to his prey. He hoists Pastor Sullivan’s body over his shoulder and glances back at me. “Come on,” he says. “We don’t want Gunner getting too much of a head start.”

“I thought you said we don’t need to worry about that.”

“We don’t need to worry about him getting to safety.” Ambrose whistles and starts walking off to the west, and I jog up so I can be at his side, rather than behind him. “But the dogs are getting antsy.”

I glance down at them, trotting alongside us.

“I still don’t understand why you let him go.”

“I told you, baby. I didn’t.” Ambrose glances at me, and his eyes flash dangerously. “It’s all part of the hunt. And I haven’t hunted properly in a long time.”

A million thoughts flash through my head. Like how often he does this. And whether or not he’ll ever hunt me.

“Stop worrying,” he says softly. “You don’t need to worry ever again, do you understand?”

“Not even about you?”

Ambrose stops. He doesn’t look at me, but straight ahead, and my heart palpitates.

“Mercy,” he says. “You’re mine , remember?”

A different kind of heat flushes through my body and pools between my thighs. I should not be feeling that out here, in this moment. “Yes,” I mutter.

“Well, I don’t kill what’s mine. I protect it.”

I suck in my breath.

“Now let’s get Sullivan situated so we can focus on the real prize.” Ambrose moves forward again, his cowboy boots scraping against the dirt. “You don’t have to come with us if you don’t want to.” He smiles, and he really does look like the devil. “But I hope you do.”