“But you did,” Frederick said. “And now you’re here. Which is pretty brave.”
Mercy nodded unsteadily. “Maybe. I only knew that I needed to come. I have a friend in New Orleans. We work together. She knows . . . everything. She’s the one who helped me find the therapist. And she’s the one who bought me a plane ticket, reserved me a rental car, hijacked me from work, drove me to the airport, and left me there.”
“She’s a good friend, then,” Frederick said with a genuine smile. “My girlfriend”—he rolled his eyes—“which feels ridiculous to say at my age. She’s the one who nudged me to go to therapy. She’s a nurse. Pediatric, but she volunteers with veterans. Does equine therapy with them, along with my other daughter. Sally heard one of the vets talking to another about meditation and she did the research for me. It’s helping.”
He glanced over at Daisy. “Both my daughters give back. Daisy is active in the community here. She gives her time to the community center, LGBTQ youth, animal rescue, and has organized sponsorship of a 5K run for leukemia research. I’m proud of her. Proud of both of them. Not something I can take any credit for, though.”
Daisy’s heart ached and broke. “I don’t know about that,” she said, her voice on the rusty side of husky. “You were all about civil rights and protecting the defenseless when you practiced law. You took us to volunteer at soup kitchens and we picked up trash in the park and visited nursing homes.” How could she have forgotten those days? She remembered them now. Sitting on her dad’s lap as he read to the elderly at their bedsides, standing on a box to stir a stew at the shelter . . .
He shook his head. “All that was your mother.”
“No. It was you, too. I remember.” Now.
“After she died . . . well, it was hard.”
“You had three kids, Dad. A baby with a disability. The oldest was wild. And the middle one, while ninety-nine percent awesome, was an occasional handful.”
His lips twitched. “Occasional,” he agreed, and then his expression darkened. “And then we went to the ranch, where I put you in prison, too.”
“That was a bit over the top,” Daisy allowed, because it had been a prison. To deny it was to negate this entire conversation that seemed like a giant step forward. “You may have gotten a little obsessed, but . . .” She shrugged. “People say the same about me.” She pointed to the mural wall. “At least I come by it honestly.”
Frederick blinked at her for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed, a great booming sound that Daisy hadn’t heard in so long. Not since her mother died, she realized. Certainly not after Donna had come into the picture. The woman had been poison—to all of them, including her own daughter. At least Daisy had still had her father. Taylor had been denied hers for her entire life.
“I guess you do,” he said, wiping his eyes. Daisy wasn’t sure it was all from the laughter, so she moved to the sofa, sitting next to him, and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
He stiffened as if he was surprised, then relaxed, curling his arm around her and hugging her to his side. “For what?”
“Coming as soon as I said I needed you.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Always. I will always come when you need me.”
“Oh!” The sound came from Mercy, who’d discovered the paintings Daisy had left on the easels from Friday night, when she’d given Gideon a paintbrush.
Mercy lifted the canvas from the easel, her movements slow, her expression stunned. And devastated. “Did Gideon . . . ?”
“Yes,” Daisy said simply.
Mercy stood there, staring at the face Gideon had painted from memory. Mercy as a little girl, sitting in a field of happy daisies.
“I remember this day,” she whispered. “I was nine. He was almost thirteen. We little kids went on a school trip into the forest, and Gideon was one of the helpers. We were supposed to be learning to pick herbs for the healer, but I got sidetracked and found the flowers. They were so pretty.” She looked over at Daisy with a sad lift to her lips. “But the field was of bright red flowers. He made them daisies.”
Daisy’s heart squeezed. Gideon had included her in his painting, too. “What happened that day?”
“You sound certain that something did,” Mercy said, tilting her head curiously.
“Not certain, but Gideon had a look on his face while he was painting. Like it was bittersweet.”
“It was the last time I saw him before his ascension. His thirteenth birthday,” she clarified. “We’d been told not to go to the flower fields, but I thought they were so pretty and I kind of wandered off. Gideon found me and . . .” She swallowed again and carefully returned the canvas to the easel. “He took my punishment that day.”
“Which was?” Daisy asked very quietly, because Mercy seemed very fragile.
“A week in the box.”
Daisy exhaled, sensing her father going still. “The box?” she asked.
“It was like a little outhouse. You got water and a little food every day. It would have been a little food for me at nine. Because he took my punishment, he got the same amount.”
“They starved him,” Daisy whispered.
“Essentially, yes. It would get hot in there, even in the mountains. It was summer. When they came to get Gideon, he was so thin. He must have sweated off fifteen pounds that week. They took him out on the seventh morning, cleaned him up, and got him dressed for his ascension party later that day.”
He was fighting for his life by the end of that day, Daisy thought, marveling at Gideon’s strength, even as a boy.
Mercy sank into the chair Daisy had vacated, her hands clutched tightly in her lap. “It was the last time I saw him. The next morning I found out that he’d killed Edward McPhearson, stabbed Ephraim Burton in the eye, then escaped with my mother’s help.”
Daisy glanced up at her father. “And then poor Eileen ended up with Ephraim after that. She was ‘given’ to him. That’s the man she ran away from.”
“What do you know about Eileen?” Mercy asked sharply.
Daisy hesitated. “I think Gideon wanted to tell you.”
“He told me that he thinks she’s dead. I wanted to demand to know what he was talking about, but Zandra needed our help. Now I want to know and he’s not here, but you are. Zandra said Eileen’s name, but she called her Eileen Danton. Her last name wasn’t Danton.”
“Give me a second.” She typed a quick text to Gideon. All ok here. Mercy asking about Eileen. Okay to tell her what I know?
His reply came quickly. Yes. On way back to you. Will take you to ER.
Relief flowed over her. He was okay. She wanted to get more information, but she could wait until he arrived. And talking to Mercy would be a decent distraction.
“All right then.” Daisy resettled herself on the sofa next to her father, Brutus in her lap, and told Mercy about Eileen and the Dantons. “He loaned her the money for a bus ticket. Rafe Sokolov, the man who owns this house, is a major crimes detective for SacPD. He investigates assault and homicide. He went to Portland today, trying to trace her steps.”
Mercy’s forehead furrowed for a moment, studying Daisy in a puzzled way until she nodded, understanding dawning in her eyes. “Her locket. That’s how you knew it was her. Gideon called me Thursday and told me that a locket had been found with ‘Miriam’ engraved on the back. He was worried it was mine.”
“Because your name is also Miriam and he knew you’d escaped,” Daisy said, more for her father’s benefit.
Mercy’s eyes widened. “Oh. Gideon said a woman was attacked and tore the locket from around her assailant’s throat. That was you? That’s how you met?”
Daisy nodded. “Rafe’s mother, Irina Sokolov, had been trying to set us up for six months, but we kept evading her. Thursday night changed everything.”
“Gideon’s mentioned her a few times,” Mercy said. “Irina. He said she mothers him.”
“She mothers all of us,” Daisy said with an affectionate smile. She almost added that Irina would mother Mercy, too, but she wasn’t sure how long the woman would be here.
For Gideon’s sake, Daisy hoped she’d stay a good while.
A knock at the door had her running to check the peephole. Gideon. She opened the door and her heart hurt once again. He looked . . . weary. Beaten.
Oh, Gideon. What happened? But she didn’t ask. She took a step forward and, being careful of his sling, looped her arms around his neck. He shuddered out a breath, his good arm coming around her as he buried his face against her throat.
He smelled like smoke. “The fire trucks were going to his house,” she said.
“Yes.”
Her heart sank. “Was everything destroyed?”
“No. Tom and I beat the flames back until the fire department arrived.”
Okay, she thought, mentally clenching her teeth. “You, um, fought a fire?”
“Tom did most of it.”
“Who’s Tom?”
“Agent Hunter.”
“Okay. What did you find, Gideon?”
“I didn’t find anything,” he muttered against her skin. “I’m benched.”