“Is that horrible of me?” Rose tipped her head to the side a little, reminding Mercy of Kaylie.

“I don’t think so. Your baby is your priority now, right? Your actions and decisions are based on what’s best for your baby . . . even if it might break your heart.”

Rose held perfectly still. “That’s exactly how I feel,” she whispered. “I can’t go any further with Nick until I know.”

“You’ll know soon,” Mercy said, remembering when she’d realized she loved Truman. “One day you’ll simply realize that he’s the right one.”

“I hope so.”

“How long do you have left?” Mercy asked.

“Three months.” A dreamy smile filled her sister’s face.

Mercy was glad to see her sister’s happiness about the baby. The thought of the challenge of her being blind and raising a baby gave Mercy anxiety but not Rose.

“I hope . . .” Rose trailed off, a thoughtful look on her face.

“You hope what?”

“I hope as an adult, my child will look back and be grateful to have a mom who was different. I’ll learn as much from her as she does from me.”

“Her?” Mercy jumped on the pronoun.

Her sister laughed. “No, I’m not hiding the sex. I’ll be as surprised as everyone else. But in my mind, I think of it as her.”

Mercy did too. “She’ll be lucky to have you as a mom. What will you do about your preschool when the baby comes?”

“I’m going to close up for the summer. I usually do anyway, but I don’t know what I’ll do in the fall. Mom has offered to watch the baby while I teach, but if possible I would like to bring the baby with me. I’ll know better what I’m capable of once she’s born.” Rose leaned toward Mercy. “Just promise you’ll be in town the week I’m due. Seriously . . . I don’t want to have this baby at the farm. Even if Mom is a skilled midwife.”

“I promise. You’ve also got Mom and Dad as backup drivers. Nick too. You could even call Kaylie or Truman or an ambulance, if it comes to that. There are a lot of options.”

Rose sat back, her face clearing as she nodded. “True. I’ve had dreams that I can’t get there and it’s just me and the baby alone at the farm. Something is wrong, and I can’t take care of her.”

Mercy reached across the table and took Rose’s hand. “That won’t happen. No apocalypse is scheduled before the baby is to be born.”

Her sister laughed, and Mercy sighed in relief, but part of her brain immediately started to make plans in case a national crisis happened before Rose’s baby was born.

I’ll bring Rose to my cabin. Shit! The cabin won’t be done by then.

Her heart sped up and her lungs tightened.

I’m unprepared. Rose’s baby could suffer because of it. I need to check my medical supplies—

Stop it.

Mercy took deep breaths and searched for a different topic. “Are you familiar with the Hartlage family?”

Rose finished her grilled cheese sandwich as she considered the question. “First names?”

“Corrine and Richard.”

Her sister shook her head. “I don’t recognize them. Do they have something to do with you getting a cat?”

“They own the home I was at this morning. That’s where I found the cat.”

“They’re the missing family?”

“Yes. Do you know Kenneth Forbes?”

Understanding flashed. “I do. He’s in a wheelchair, right? Got thrown from a horse and can no longer walk.”

“That’s him.”

“He’s an SC. Whole family is.”

Sovereign citizen.

“No wonder he didn’t want to talk to me this morning.” Mercy sighed. “I don’t care what he believes. I just want to find out what happened to this family.”

“Is this missing family related to the bones found at the road on March Mountain?”

“We don’t know yet. It’s possible. Hopefully we’ll find out soon.” Mercy checked the time. “Do you need a ride home?”

“No, Dad is at the feed store. He said he’d drive me when I was ready.”

Mercy pictured her father exchanging gossip and shooting the breeze with the other men who tended to congregate at the feed store. The constantly brewing free coffee probably had a lot to do with the frequent gatherings. How many times did I wait for him to finish his conversations when I was little? As a kid she had explored every inch of the feed store to fight her boredom. Sometimes there had been baby chickens to hold. Mercy could still feel the yellow fluff under her fingertips. Those had been the best days.

Mercy hugged and kissed her sister goodbye and headed toward her vehicle. She was tempted to wait and see her father, but it wasn’t the right time yet. He’ll let me know when he’s ready to accept me back into the fold. It’d already been six months. It’d been fifteen years and six months since they’d parted ways because she’d refused to live under her father’s iron fist. Hopefully it wouldn’t take much longer.

Truman called as she drove back to her office. “How’s your day?” she asked.

“Good. Only one bar fight so far.”

“Already?”

“It’s five o’clock somewhere. Say, I wanted to ask you if you’ve ever received a letter from a sovereign citizen claiming you owe them money for trampling on their rights.”

Mercy grinned. “Not me personally, but I saw a few when I worked in the Portland office. We had a few judges get them.”

“I got one from the guy I pulled over with the fake ID and plates yesterday.”

“Awesome! How much money does he want?”

“Three million.”

“You just made my day,” she stated. The letters had been a big source of amusement at her old office. “Did he use a funky signature?”

“Yep.”

“The lure of never paying taxes is very strong. People will subscribe to any scheme, no matter how convoluted it is.”

“Do I need to do anything about this?”

“No, but email me a copy. I’ll file a report and check the FBI’s records to see if your guy has done anything else. SCs love to create stacks of paperwork and bog down the legal systems, but they rarely take physical action.”

“According to your brother Owen, this guy is also creating and selling diplomatic licenses.”

“Isn’t that like Owen, to keep that little piece of illegal activity to himself?” Mercy wasn’t surprised. Her older brother wouldn’t report someone unless physical harm had happened. “Sounds like I need to open an investigation. Get that letter to me, and I’ll go from there.”

“He’s being arraigned tomorrow. I plan to be there.”

“Let me know if anything else crops up about him.”

“Will do.” He sounded relieved. “I love you. I’ll miss you tonight,” he said in a husky tone.

His voice sent good shivers up her spine, and she ended the call. She blew out a breath and leaned back in her seat.

What was my life like before Truman Daly?

She barely remembered. She recalled faint memories of quiet evenings in front of the TV and weekends full of work on her cabin. Now he was an element of her life as routine as breathing and eating. She’d been comfortably independent and alone for a long time until Truman showed up and disrupted her normal. She’d fought her growing need for commitment for months, worried that loving him would mean losing herself.

How wrong she had been.

Thank God he was persistent.

ELEVEN

“You found the Hartlage girls’ dental X-rays but not the parents’?”

That evening Mercy questioned Dr. Harper, the forensic odontologist, in the room where the remains were being studied. The dentist had two skulls sitting near the computer screen where she was talking to Mercy. One was the tiny skull. Mercy tried not to look at the destroyed teeth; she’d seen them enough. The skulls had haunted her dreams.

“We got lucky when we called a pediatric dentist,” said Dr. Harper. “Hopefully we’ll find out that the parents were patients at one of the dental offices where I left a message. The adult skulls had dental work done, so somewhere there are records. I was happy to have found the kids’ dentist on the eighth phone call.”

“What about patient privacy laws?”

“The dentist hesitated because of those. I had your boss give him a call. He convinced him.”

Jeff could talk anyone into anything.

Mercy looked at the computer screen in front of Dr. Harper. To her eye, it showed a jumbled mess of small gray films that had no rhyme or reason. “How did you take those precise X-rays of the teeth? You don’t have that kind of dental equipment at this location, do you?”

“I called in a favor,” said Dr. Harper with a sparkle in her brown eyes. “A local dentist I graduated with from dental school let me use her machine. Saved me from driving back to Portland just to take films.”

“Smart.”

“Always.” Dr. Harper turned back to the screen. “Now,” she said in a teaching tone of voice. “Across the top of my screen are Alison Hartlage’s films I received from her dentist’s office.”

“Tiny little films,” remarked Mercy. The images showed white-and-gray shapes that she knew were teeth. How does Dr. Harper know which teeth they are?

“Normal for a child of this age. Below those are the films that I took on the smallest skull.”

“You took a lot more films.”

“It’s typical for pediatric offices to only take two or four films of the molars at Alison’s age. I shot a lot of views of the skull’s teeth for our records.”

Even Mercy’s unpracticed eye could see the broken and jagged teeth on Dr. Harper’s recent films. Anger tightened her throat. “Fucking asshole,” she whispered.