Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3) by Brett Battles (ebook reader with built in dictionary txt) 📕

the other boy enter the RV first. After his brother disappears inside, Evan looks back at us for a third time before he, too, enters the vehicle.

Five minutes later, the Winnebago is gone.

“Want to take a walk?” I ask.

“Yes, please,” Jar replies.

Evan has left us a message in the sand.

THANK YOU

It’s nice to be appreciated, but the words are not making me feel as good as they should, because all I can think about is how crappy his life must be.

And no, that’s not a tear gathering in my eye. That’s…dust.

Like a sudden breeze, I feel Liz appear beside me. Follow them, she whispers.

I take a breath and close my eyes. This is supposed to be a vacation. I’m not sure Jar will want—

“We should follow them,” Jar says.

I swear these two must have meetings behind my back.

But the truth is, I think we should follow them, too.

After I snap a picture of Evan’s message, we walk back to the Travato, pack up, and head out.

Evan’s father’s name is Charles Price.

He seems like the kind of guy who’d go by a nickname, though. Maybe Chuck. Possibly Charlie. Definitely not Chas.

Let’s call him Chuckie, shall we?

We know Chuckie’s name because Jar looked up the Winnebago’s license plate in the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles database, and hunted down the driver’s license for the man listed as the owner. The picture on it is definitely that of Evan’s father.

Unless they’ve moved, Chuckie Price and family live in Mercy, Colorado. Jar tells me the town is in the farm-covered plains in the eastern part of the state. The last census put the population at a bit more than twenty-six thousand. A decent size. Big enough to be called a small city and support an array of fast-food joints, a Walmart, a county hospital, and four grocery stores.

There are three high schools in town—Mercy High, the big public school; St. Catherine’s, a private Catholic school; and Grover High, the alternative school for those who can’t attend one of the others for whatever reason. I only mention these because when searching Chuckie’s name, Jar came across an article in the Mercy Sentinel—the local newspaper—about the Mercy High football team, which includes a line that mentions Charles Price as one of the volunteer coaches.

Six kids with the last name of Price attend the Mercy school district. As a sophomore at Mercy High, Evan is the oldest. Behind him comes a girl named Marina, who’s a freshman, then a boy named Cody in seventh grade at Richmond Middle School. Next are a girl and a boy—Brooke and Sawyer—both in fifth grade, and finally a boy named Lucas in kindergarten. Brooke and Lucas attend Pierce Elementary, while Sawyer goes to Riverside.

Sawyer is Evan’s brother. We know this because the parents listed on both of the boys’ records are Charles and Kate Price. The parents of the other four kids are Steven and Melissa Price. Maybe they’re relatives of Evan’s family, or maybe they just happen to have the same last name.

Jar has been trawling for only easy-to-find info, so she hasn’t discovered anything about Evan’s mom other than the woman’s name. She can dive deeper later if we think it’s necessary.

Honestly, I’m not even sure what she’s already learned is necessary.

We don’t know what our end game is here. Are we only following the Winnebago to make sure Evan isn’t punished again tonight? Or is our goal to make sure Chuckie learns to stop treating his kids like trash? That seems like it could be a longer-term project and I’m not sure we can commit to that.

The problem is, it’s not in Jar’s and my nature to turn our backs on someone in Evan’s situation. Which is why we follow the Prices all the way to Albuquerque, New Mexico, reaching the city just before noon.

Instead of staying on the I-40, the Winnebago transitions onto the I-25 when it reaches the middle of town, and heads north for a few miles before exiting and pulling into the parking lot of a McDonald’s.

I use the opportunity to stop half a block away at a gas station to fill up. The Prices are on the move again before I’m done. New Mexico has mandated no eating inside restaurants for the foreseeable future, so the Prices’ order would have been to go.

On their way back to the interstate, they drive right past the gas station. I notice Evan sitting by the rear window, staring outside. I worry he might’ve seen me, but if he did, I’m sure I would have noticed some kind of reaction. He was simply sitting there, as if he was looking through this world into an entirely different one.

When our tank is full, we pick up some lunch ourselves and head out. No need for any rush, after all. The tracker tells us exactly where the Winnebago is.

The land north of Albuquerque is a wide open space, covered with scattered brush that rises no more than a few feet above the ground, and bordered on either side by mountains. The view is both monotonous and beautiful.

Soon enough, we reach Santa Fe. The city sits nearly two thousand feet higher than Albuquerque, which means the temperature is several degrees cooler here than where we stopped last.

My assumption is that the Prices will stay on the I-25 all the way to Colorado, but you know what they say about assumptions.

Just before the interstate bends to the southeast, the Winnebago exits and heads north into town. We follow.

We’ve been off the freeway for almost ten minutes when Jar says, “They’re turning.” She’s looking at her laptop, keeping tabs on the tracking bug’s location.

“Stopping somewhere or onto a street?”

“Hold on…stopping. Gas station.”

I turn off the road two blocks before the station and work my way through the neighborhood, until I’m approaching the main road again just a block away from the Prices. Twenty meters shy of the intersection, I pull to the curb.

Though a building blocks our view,