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

place stays open until nine p.m., so it’s possible that’s when his shift ends.

Six-twenty, nothing.

Six-twenty-five, nothing.

Six-thirty, nothing.

Six-forty-three. “Movement,” Jar says,

I glance at her screen and see the dot representing the Accord exit the driving range parking lot and turn east onto Schoolhouse Drive, toward us. We duck below the dash until it passes by.

As I sit up, I say, “Chuckie?”

“Still at work.”

Looks like Bergen is our target for now. I pull out of the parking lot.

The Accord heads south on Central Avenue through downtown, then turns west onto Lyons Lane. This puts him in the part of town where the house he rents is located, which, to the surprise of no one, is where he goes.

I’ve closed the gap between us enough that I’m pulling to the curb just around the corner from his place at the same moment he’s pulling his Accord into his garage.

“Drone?” Jar asks.

I scan the neighborhood. We seem to be unobserved, but I don’t know this part of town at all and am not feeling confident. “Let’s go for a walk. Bring it with us, though. Just in case.”

The changing weather has lowered the temperature quite a bit, which works in our favor. In addition to our face masks, Jar is wearing a hoodie. She pulls the hood over her head, making it harder to see her face. As for me, I don my stocking cap, and pull it down until there’s only a narrow band between the bottom of it and the top of my mask for my eyes to peek out of. Pandemic anonymity at its finest.

We turn onto Dewer Street, staying on the side opposite Bergen’s house, and walk at a leisurely pace.

Though sunset is still over an hour and a half away, the menacing sky makes it feel like twilight. One benefit of the gloom: it allows us to see Bergen has turned on several lights inside his home. The windows along the front of his house aren’t very large, though, and I have a hard time making out much of anything through them. I don’t see any movement, so Bergen must be somewhere in the back.

When we reach the end of the block, we walk down the intersecting street toward the alley that runs behind Bergen’s house. I’m hopeful we can get a look over his fence at his place.

Just before we reach the alley entrance, a motorcycle rushes out, the driver skidding to a halt when he sees us.

“Sorry,” he says, his voice muffled by the face shield of his helmet.

He takes off again, but not before we see it’s Bergen.

I curse under my breath. “Send up the drone and watch where he goes,” I tell Jar. “I’ll get the truck.”

I run back to the pickup and then speed over to where I left Jar.

As she jumps in, she says, “Head to Central.”

I turn right and right again, all the while resisting the urge to shove the pedal to the floor.

“Do you still have him?” I ask.

“No. He moved out of range a few seconds before you got back. He was heading south.”

Now that we’re on the move, the drone’s range can expand.

After I get us back on Central, Jar picks Bergen up again at the far reach of the drone’s camera. He’s still southbound.

As we’re going through downtown, she says, “Lost him again.”

“Did he turn?”

“No, still straight.”

I say nothing more until we’re nearing the southern edge of Mercy. “I’m running out of city. Do I go straight, or…?”

A beat, then, “I-I don’t know.” She looks over at me. “I am sorry. He’s gone.”

I’ve been involved in dozens of mission failures over the years. A few have been substantial, but mostly they’ve been small. No matter which, though, it’s never a good feeling. And it’s doubly annoying when the failure is caused by the overconfidence of thinking all one’s bases have been covered. I was sure we’d be fine tonight. We have both Chuckie’s and Bergen’s cars bugged. What could go wrong?

What we should have done was taken an hour this afternoon and searched Bergen’s place. If so, we would have found his motorcycle and put a tracker on it. Then we would have had our bases covered.

Bottom line, I screwed up.

We drive through the neighborhoods at the south end of town, on the off chance we see his motorcycle parked somewhere. Of course we don’t.

To keep this evening from being a complete failure, we return to Bergen’s place and sneak onto his property via the alley. We’ve sent the drone aloft again and put it in sentry mode.

Bergen’s backyard is divided into two sections. The first is covered in concrete, and is meant to be a parking pad for a camper or a trailer, like the one over at the Prices’. It’s not being used for that purpose here, though. Mostly, it’s empty space. A smaller portion of the pad has been turned into a makeshift carport, consisting of an old portable cabana tent covering a section of oil-stained concrete where I’m guessing Bergen keeps his motorcycle. The other part of the backyard is covered by grass, with a few trees sprinkled around and some bushes growing next to the fence. It’s well maintained, to the point where I wonder if gardening is a hobby of Bergen’s.

Like the man’s car, the house does not have a burglar alarm, and though the back door does have a dead bolt, the only lock in use is the one in the handle. A few seconds’ work with my picks and we’re inside.

Since we don’t know how long Bergen will be away, we want to keep our visit short. We bug the place first and then do a quick search for anything that might be of interest.

The house is filled with cheap but functional furniture, and off-brand products that confirm his need to be frugal. Like the yard, it’s all very neat.

The only reading materials we find are some golf magazines. Probably from the range. Neither Jar nor I discover any golf