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

The woman joins us a moment later.

“Is he all right?” she says. “Oh my God, is he all right?”

“Please, give them some room,” Jar says.

“I can’t tell if he’s breathing.”

“Ma’am, please.”

I can’t see if the woman has done what Jar asked, but at least she doesn’t say anything else.

When we reach the trucks, Jar helps me set the man on the tailgate of the Silverado. As soon as he’s lying down, the woman tries to move in again.

“Hold on,” I say, as gently as I can. “Let me check him first.”

“Are you a doctor?” Not an accusation. Hope.

Instead of answering, I check the man’s vitals. He’s breathing. His pulse could be stronger, but I don’t think he’s in imminent danger of dying on us. He could probably use some oxygen soon, though.

“We should call for an ambulance,” I say.

“They’re already on the way,” Jar says.

“Is he going to be all right?” the woman asks.

“He breathed in a lot of smoke so he’ll need treatment for that, but I don’t think it’s life threatening.”

The woman’s whole body seemed to sag in relief. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Before I can say, “You’re welcome,” I feel a cough coming on, so I nod and quickly move away before I hack up some of the smoke I brought out with me.

“Are you all right?” Jar asks, her hand on my back.

“I’m fine.”

“You were in there a long time.” She pauses. “I did not…enjoy that.”

I couldn’t have been in the house for more than three or four minutes, but it probably felt a lot longer to her.

“I’m sorry.”

“You had no choice.”

That’s another one of the things I love about Jar. She understands the world that she and I inhabit. We are not like most people. We don’t watch danger from afar. We face it head-on.

Which brings up something else I should mention. Do not ever try to do what I just did. I have trained for years to operate under intense pressure, and even with all I know, one wrong move and I wouldn’t have made it out of the house. You, most likely, would have collapsed inside. As much as you may feel the need to be a hero, dying won’t help anyone.

We hear the sirens for a good minute before two fire vehicles, an ambulance, and a pair of sheriff’s cars turn down the driveway to the house.

Which is also right about the time the back half of the house collapses.

Chapter Eight

If I obeyed my instincts, Jar and I would have left before the authorities arrived. But I was worried the man would take a turn for the worse, and if that happened, his sister would not have known how to help him.

My backup plan of slipping away in the subsequent chaos of the firefight is also thwarted, this time by the pair of sheriff’s cars that the deputies have parked at the end of the driveway, basically cutting off the isthmus to the main road.

And of course, after I’ve been checked by the EMTs and given some oxygen to be safe, the deputies want to question us.

This does not make me happy.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been questioned by the police before. I’ve even spent some time in the uncomfortable company of the FBI. But whenever possible, I try to avoid the attention of authorities. Unfortunately, today is not going to be one of those days.

The deputy’s name is Daniel Olsen. He’s around thirty-five, so a handful of years older than me. He’s a skinny guy for a deputy, but tall. The kind of guy I can easily imagine having played guard on his high school basketball team.

We’re standing near the police cars to avoid being in the way.

None of the structures are salvageable, so the firemen are focused more on keeping the fire from spreading to the nearby trees than stopping the buildings from burning down. It’s an act of kindness to the owners actually, saving them from having to spend the extra money on demolishing the parts of the house and other structures that wouldn’t have burned. Or maybe that’s saving the insurance company money. Whatever the case, it won’t be long before all three buildings are piles of charred rubble.

Olsen takes our names first. Matthew Dane for me, and Kara Chen for Jar. He then asks us to tell him what happened.

We tell him the truth. We spotted the fire and rushed here to see if anyone needed help, and we found the woman, Carla Wright, who told us the man—her brother, Harlan Gale—had gone inside and not come out.

“So you decided to go in after him?” Olsen asks.

“Yeah,” I say with a shrug.

“You could have gotten yourself killed.”

“Or I could have found him and brought him out…like I did.”

“You should have waited until we got here and let us handle it.”

“He would have been dead by then.”

Olsen isn’t trying to be an asshole. He’s only saying the things he should to someone who did what I did.

“You’re from around here?”

It’s hard to miss the I-don’t-recognize-you tone underlining his question.

I’d like to say something other than what I’m about to, but we’ve already started laying down the foundation of our faux history with our landlords, so it’s best to stick with what’s already out there.

“We just arrived today, actually.”

This is met with a raised eyebrow. “Today?”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve never been to Mercy before?”

“Just virtually.”

His eyes narrow.

“Online,” I clarify.

“Oh, right.”

I give him our spiel about web design, looking for new places to live and giving Mercy a try. It sounded a lot less suspicious when we told it to our property managers than when we say it to a cop.

“I’m guessing you have no idea who could have set the fires?” he says.

It’s kind of a trick question. Even though it’s obviously an act of arson, given the three separate fires going at the same time, no one has actually said as much to us. Would Matthew Dane, web designer, have guessed as much? I’m thinking no.

“They