He flashed back to the moment he said similar words to another interfering pain in his goddamn ass.
His level of irritation rose twofold at the thought of the woman.
“Don’t mean no trouble, Sheriff,” Tommy drawled, looking at Dalton as if he were something pitiful. “I’m just here to offer support to a friend in need.” Tommy’s gaze turned to Mercy. “Wedon’t want poor Dalton to do something stupid and harm our sweet Mercy, do we?”
From the corner of his eye Santiago saw Dalton’s knife rise, the blade now pointing in Tommy’s direction.
A familiar revulsion rose in his throat.
He’d witnessed shit like this play out all over the world. Someone in a position of power—be it soldier, politician, crime lord, spiritual leader—would see something, or someone, they wanted and threaten annihilation of everything that man or woman held dear if that person didn’t hand over whatever it was they wanted.
In this situation, Tommy likely befriended Dalton, preyed on his trauma and insecurities, and in his more vulnerable moments offered the numbing effects of drugs. Once he was addicted and financially strapped, Tommy went after what he really wanted, knowing the man Dalton was before the drugs had the physical strength and mountain knowledge to have buried Tommy in undiscoverable scattered graves all over the mountain.
“Help me out a minute will you Mercy?” Santiago asked. “Will you let her do that Dalton?”
Dalton closed his eyes and shook his head, lowering it to rest on the top of Mercy’s thick head of black hair. “I can’t let her go, Sheriff. I know I’ve made some mistakes, but Mercy and the kids, they all I got.”
“And I’m not saying you gotta lose’em, but some things, Dalton…some things you hold the wrong way and you break’em forever. Right now though, all I want is to hear from Mercy.”
“I don’t want to lose you, baby,” Dalton whispered more to himself than any one of them. “All the goodness in my life I got because of you.”
“Baby, it’s okay,” Mercy said, rubbing Dalton’s arm. “If you can’t trust my word, at least trust the sheriff.”
“I do trust you Mercy, I trust you with my life. It’s just that I’m not?—”
“Not the man you once were. We all know that, Dalton,” Tommy said, moving closer.
Santiago maneuvered around until Dalton and Mercy were to his left and Tommy to his right.
“Tommy, you’ve been warned. You come any closer and you will experience some immediate, real-life consequences.”
Tommy stopped abruptly.
“Dalton, I’m gonna talk to Mercy a little bit, and unless your intention is truly to hurt her, I need you to toss the knife.”
Dalton tossed the knife away as if it burned and from behind, wrapped both his arms around his wife. “I was never gonna hurt you, Mercy. I just wanted the truth.”
“That’s a backward ass way to get the truth,” Roan snapped, retrieving the weapon, gun still at the ready.
“I’m sorry Mercy. He just got in my head and stayed there even when he wasn’t around. When Junior said he saw y’all kissing on the mouth the way mommies and daddies do?—”
Mercy pulled away from him, her tawny skin red with emotion.
“Go ahead and tell him Mercy. You can’t protect him, the kids, and yourself. Let’s see if he can once again be the man you need him to be.”
Mercy swallowed as she looked at Dalton. “I tried to be understanding. You were so excited to have a friend with money who accepted you, seemed to look out for you. He talked you into leaving your mechanic job at Simon’s to be a service manager at his cousin’s shop...then you started partying with him and his friends, coming home high, and all of a sudden me and the kids weren’t your first or even your second priority. You walked out on us and left the door open for the very devil. That kiss you’re all riled up about was him trying to force himself onme…andnow you tell me our son saw that!” There was anger mixed with her tears.
“You simple lying bitch,” Tommy said flatly.
“I might be simple in my needs, and I have been known to be a bitch on a few occasions, but I am Kevon Douglas’s daughter, and I’ll whoop your sorry ass now like I did then!”
Poor Dalton looked so confused. It was like he was waking up to a strange new world.
“What happened after you showed him, in the most appropriate way, to fuck off?” Santigo prompted.
“He gave me eight days to the minute to change my mind. If I didn’t, Dalton would lose his joband maybe accidently overdose in his grief, he said.”
“You’re panicked and desperate, Mercy. I know that’s how you need to spin what we were doing so that your husband won’t toss you out, but it’s a lie and you know it. You’ve been begging me for months to take care of you in a way that Dalton couldn’t, so don’t act like you’re the victim and what we were doing wasn’t 100 percent consensual.”
