Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3) Brett Battles (online e reader txt) 📖

she says, “You know where the key is. Just go on in anytime.”

Looks like we won’t have to stay in the Walmart parking lot tonight.

But once again, we have a transportation dilemma.

The only kind of vehicle Jar has ever driven is a motor scooter. And while she can likely drive a full-on motorcycle, my Yamaha is too big for her.

Not sure if I’ve mentioned it or not, but Jar is small, like under one hundred fifty-two centimeters (five feet). She’s slight, too. Though I’m sure she could quickly learn how to drive a four-wheel vehicle, I’m not about to start giving her lessons today.

We drive the Travato to the farmhouse, pulling the Yamaha in the trailer. The property has plenty of places to park, but the one I like best is a spot behind the barn, where the camper can’t be seen from the road. Although the house has some furniture, it has no sheets or blankets or plates or silverware, so we’ll probably be spending our nights in the Travato when we’re out here.

We’ll figure out how to hook up electricity and water to the camper later. For now, we just roll the bike off the trailer and ride it back into town. But we do not return to the Walmart parking lot, where the truck is. We go to the duplex, where we’ve been given permission by Mr. Hansen to leave the bike in the garage.

To get back to Walmart, we walk.

It’s maybe a mile and a half and doesn’t take that long. Even so, by the time we reach our truck, the sun has set.

Since we’re here, we go inside Walmart, pick up a few things, and load them into the covered bed of the truck. Next we hit a fast-food drive-thru and head out of town.

As we leave Mercy, Liz joins us in the cab.

I tense.

She usually doesn’t show up just to hang out. But for the first kilometer past the city limits sign, that seems to be exactly what she’s doing.

I’m starting to relax a little when Jar quickly sits up and says, “Look.”

She points ahead to the right, at a flicker of orange-yellow light between some trees, maybe a kilometer away.

A fire.

Could be someone burning trash, but it’s late for that.

A bonfire?

When Jar says, “I think we should check,” Liz’s presence dims. She doesn’t completely fade away, but I get the sense that what she wanted to tell me has been handled by Jar.

Which means those flames are probably not from a bonfire.

“Find us a way there,” I say.

If you’ve been on roads in farm country before, then you know they tend to be laid out in large grids to accommodate the fields. This means intersecting roads tend to be few and far between. And by the time Jar says, “There should be a road coming up in about seventy meters,” the fire is behind us.

I slow in anticipation, expecting a four-way intersection with another paved road.

“Right there,” Jar says, pointing not far ahead.

“Where? I don’t see it.”

But then I do. It’s a dirt road that only goes off to the right.

I take the corner faster than I would like, the pickup’s back end fishtailing on the loose dirt. Once I get us back under control, I stomp on the accelerator and the truck flies down the road, kicking up a cloud of dust behind us. I didn’t expect to put the pickup through this kind of workout so soon, but I’m happy it seems to be handling things without complaint.

The road passes through a gap in a row of trees that runs off to either side, like a giant wall. Which, in a way, is what it is. The line separates the fields fronting the road we were on from the fields fronting the road where we’re headed.

“Can you see the fire?” I ask.

Jar’s looking out her side window. “No, the trees are in the—wait. There it is. It looks…big.”

I’m tempted to push the pedal all the way to the floor, but we’re already going faster than we should on this kind of road in the dark, so I hold my foot steady.

Ahead, I see the ends of the fields on either side of us and know that’s where the next road must be. I ease back on the accelerator, and this time I’m able to make the turn without the truck threatening to flip over.

Back on asphalt now, I do shove the pedal to the floor.

I can see the fire now. It is big. Too big to be a controlled blaze.

“Two driveways away, I think,” Jar says. “About three hundred meters.” We pass the road leading to a farmhouse seconds later, and not long after that, Jar points again. “There, there!”

At the far reaches of the truck’s headlights, I see a mailbox on the right side of the road, and just beyond it, the beginning of a long driveway.

When I turn down it, my breath catches in my throat. It’s not just one structure burning—it’s three. A house and a barn and a small outbuilding. They are all separate fires, the land between them untouched by flames.

We race down the driveway to where the road widens into a large open area at the side of the house, and we skid to a stop near a Chevy Silverado. A middle-aged woman stands a few meters away from it, staring at the burning home. When she hears my door open, she looks over as if just realizing we’re here and runs to meet us.

“Please, he’s inside,” she says. “He should have been out by now.”

I look at the house. Except for the fact that it’s two stories, it looks a lot like the place we just rented. The flames are concentrated on the right side, at the back. Of the three burning buildings, it looks as if the fire here started last.

“My brother, he-he went in just a few minutes ago,” the woman says. “He wanted to make sure no one was inside.”

I start