Page 37 of Hell and Halos

And I can't remember if he's looked like this all night or if it just happened, but it takes several seconds for his new reality to hit.

But when it does, it lands hard.

There is no easy way into that bunker.

No shortcut. No key under the mat, no override, no Cash Ashby muscle or Cash Ashby money that punches through a code only Savannah knows. You have to get past the steel doors, then a thirty-foot shaft carved into Montana bedrock, then an elevator car, then another set of doors.

I can almost see the math in his head. What kind of brute-force effort will this take?

He allows himself this surrender. This one small defeat. Lets it settle over him like dirt over a grave.

But he doesn't wallow. Cash Ashby has never been the wallowin' kind. He breathes out once through his nose, then he just pulls out his phone, taps the screen, and waits. When someone picks up he says, "Jagger, bring me a crowbar. I'm upstairs."

He taps the screen again and the call is over, just like that, and his gaze passes over me like I'm furniture he's already accounted for, already moved around in his head to where he wants it, and it lands on Wyatt.

"Down in Eleanor's old office," he says, "there's a flat file cabinet on the back wall. Third drawer down. There are blueprints in there of the house. Bring 'em up here. Let's see what the fuck we're dealing with."

Wyatt nods in a big and slow motion. Like a man who learned a long time ago that the fastest way through a thing is to just do it and not ask, and then he's movin' toward the door without a word, boots heavy on the floor, and he's gone.

Cash looks across the room and I follow his eyes over to Mercy. She's tucked up in Savannah's overstuffed chair with her knees to her chest, and she's holdin' the shotgun that, last time I noticed, was on the floor of the closet.

She's not quite aimin' it, but not quite not, either. She's got it propped on her knees, barrel only marginally pointed in a deliberate direction. But if I had to guess, I'd say the sight was lined up with her eye. She looks like Dusty at the Badlands gate. Like that chair is her post. Like she drew a shift and she's workin' it.

"Legion," Cash says, "she should probably go to bed."

I start to agree. I start to open my mouth and put words together that will make sense. Sentences about trauma, and sleep, and bein' nine fuckin' years old in a room full of grown men with secrets they're still buryin'.

But Mercy doesn't give me the chance.

"Bed?" The word comes out of her like she's never heard anythin' so offensive in her life. "Bed!"

And whatever quiet thing was holdin' her together—whatever thin wire of shock and exhaustion had been keepin' that feral, furious little girl in check—it snaps clean in two, and she's off the chair, and on her feet, and the shotgun's still in her hands, and God help us all.

"I'm not going to bed!" She looks between us, chest heavin', eyes lit up like a brushfire. "Who is that guy? He bought us ponies! All those ponies! He was assigned to me! My guidance counselor called him my benefactor!" She says the word like it tastes wrong, like someone put a church word in a trash mouth and she caught it. "Assigned, Legion! Assigned!"

I am actually taken aback that her vocabulary contains words like assigned and benefactor, so I don't reply.

Cash does, though. "Mercy." Patient and soft. The same voice he uses to gentle horses. "Clearly you can see that we're in the middle of something here. Something I don't want you to be a part of."

It's a bold fuckin' move, talkin' to her like that. Like he's layin' out facts she already understands and just needs reminding of. Like this is a job site and Cash is her foreman and Mercy is the new hire who forgot the safety rules.

But the oddest thing is that she does get what he's sayin'. She gets it completely. Her chest is still heavin', shotgun still in her hands, and she looks Cash dead in the eye and says, "Cash. I was tied up, kidnapped, and stuffed into a trunk. That motherfucker doesn't get to just do that shit and… and get away with it!"

This is when it hits Cash and I at the same time.

Mercy wasn't sittin' in that chair bein' traumatized. She wasn't waitin' for someone to unpack her wounds and fill them back up with psychological bullshit about how none of this was her fault.

No. She was waitin' for Marcus White Jr. to step out of that elevator so she could blow him back in.

"Mercy," I say, takin' over because I feel like this is my role here. "Marcus won't be gettin' out of here alive. That's a fact. But sister, you are wildly overconfident about your role in that outcome if you envision yourself as the one gettin' the job done. You are gonna have to get in line."

"Legion," Cash snaps. "Could you please not encourage this type of⁠—"

But his words are cut off by the sound of a moving elevator car. A motor comes to life and Cash and I turn in unison, starin' at the elevator doors past a flank of prairie dresses.

"He's comin'," Mercy whispers.

The shotgun comes up, her cheek findin' the stock like she's done it a thousand times, which she hasn't—I know damn well she hasn't—and her eye settles at the sight with the kind of focus that's runnin' on pure nerve.