The sight made Mercy smile. And gave her the push to finish the story. “DJ told me Brother Ephraim was coming and that just . . . froze me. He’d told Mama to stay in the back of the truck, but she ran to me, just as DJ pulled out his gun.” She focused on Gideon as if he were the only one in the room, because he should have been. She should have told him this story when they were alone. When he could cry if he wanted. But then she understood that here, with his family and people he trusted, was the perfect place to tell him. They’d comfort him, even if she didn’t have any comfort left to give by the time she was finished.

“Mama threw herself on top of me,” she told her brother. “Tried to protect me. Said, ‘You promised!’ But DJ laughed. He said, ‘I promised to get you out. I never promised to let you live.’ Then he pulled her off me and shot me.” She touched her abdomen, where she still had an ugly scar. “Mama was screaming, but no one was there to hear us. He shot her next, in the same place. She fell, telling DJ that Ephraim would kill him for this, but he just laughed again.” She closed her eyes, for the first time allowing her conscious mind to replay the moment without interruption. She knew it by heart, because her sleeping mind replayed it all the time. “He said, ‘No, he won’t. He never does. He can’t.’”

Tom was typing on his tablet, his eyes never leaving her face. “And then?”

She pressed her lips together. Just a little bit more. “He told me to watch. And he shot her in the head.” She touched her temple. “Here. Then he threw her back into the truck bed.” She became aware of wetness on her neck and realized it was Rafe. He’d buried his face there and he was crying too, and suddenly she needed this to be over. “And then he left.”

Everyone was silent until Tom cleared his throat. “He . . . left you there?” he finally asked.

“Well, not right then. After he put Mama in the back of the truck, he came back for me, to finish me off, I suppose. But someone drove into the parking lot. A cop.” She frowned, the memory fuzzy. “Maybe? There were flashing lights and DJ thought they were cops. The car turned its headlights on us and it was so bright.” She could remember the brightness, how it hurt her eyes. The fear. The empty pit of despair. “DJ ran back to his truck and drove away. Eventually paramedics came. One was a woman. I remember her saying that I’d be okay, that they’d help me. And after that I woke up in a hospital bed.”

“They were not cops,” Irina said, her voice thick, her eyes red. “I know this part, because I was working in the hospital when you were admitted, Mercy. Not in your ward, but I heard about the girl who’d been left for dead in Redding and airlifted to us. The girl who had two lockets that had the decoration that my Gideon wore on his chest.”