SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 4:30 A.M.

Mercy crept down the stairs of Rafe’s house, hoping she didn’t make any floorboards creak. She needed room to pace. To meditate. Because Ephraim had been in New Orleans. He’d been watching her for almost a week.

She knew she should have been asleep, but even though she was completely exhausted, sleep had eluded her. Farrah had climbed under the covers in Sasha’s guest room still fully dressed, dropping off into a deep slumber before Sasha had finished readying the bedding. Mercy had managed to doze for what might have been an hour, but that nightmare had shocked her into full alertness.

Mercy hated that nightmare, the one where she saw her mother gunned down by DJ Belmont. She hated all the nightmares, but that one was the worst. If she’d been in her own apartment, she would have been in her kitchen, baking cookies for her brothers’ and sisters’ kids. Snickerdoodles were the overall favorite.

They’d made her family and she’d betrayed them. Stolen time they could have had with Gideon. And now she’d probably brought danger to their doorstep.

The nightmare had woken her, but it had been dread at the thought of facing John and all the brothers and sisters that had her staring at the ceiling. That and the knowledge that Ephraim had stalked her in New Orleans for a whole week and she hadn’t even known he was there.

He’d been in the same city as her family. Who at least by now knew to be careful, to watch the children more carefully. Gideon had called Farrah’s captain, who’d called John, who’d called Mercy a few minutes after two A.M. California time, frantically urging her to come home where he and all the sibs could keep her safe.

She’d broken down again, sobbing into the phone, confessing what she’d done. John, to his credit, had been stunned, but kind. He still didn’t know about Eden, but Mercy had told him enough that he understood her childhood had been traumatic. Finally John had told her that they loved her and to sleep, that they’d figure it out.

And through all the sobbing and confessing, Farrah had slept like a log, making Mercy envious. Farrah always slept like a log, while Mercy rarely slept at all. Especially recently.

She’d made the trip to John’s this past week on the pretense of delivering the dozens of cookies that she’d made when she couldn’t sleep. She hadn’t even been able to stay to watch his kids eat a single cookie, simply shoving the plastic container into John’s arms and running from the raw pity in his eyes. He’d seen the CNN newscast too, but she hadn’t been able to talk to him about it.

She couldn’t make cookies in someone else’s apartment, especially while they were sleeping, so she was punting to the next nervous-energy-burning activity in her repertoire.

I could have paced upstairs, Mercy thought, rolling her eyes at herself as she descended the last step into Rafe’s foyer. Farrah wouldn’t have woken up. Sasha claimed to also sleep like the dead, so it wasn’t like Mercy’s footsteps would have woken her, either.