Page 182 of Slack Tide Kill

Then Mercer killed him.

Sally shook it off. "I'm sorry, Gloria. I've got to get you out. Come on. If you … lean back, maybe I can–"

Mayhew's hand grasped Sally's collar with surprising strength. "Stop … him, Sally. Now. That is a … direct order!"

Sally looked into her eyes. Burning, as ever. They weren't in the same chain of command. Mayhew had no right to give her orders. But…

"I can't," she managed. "I have to–"

"Go!" Mayhew shoved and Sally almost fell, the water lashing her thighs. Mayhew still stared at her, and now she was like a mirror. Sally saw herself looking back.

This was the job. The role. The choice made again and again.

She nodded once and ran.

It was barely running, though. Running belonged to her past right now, another era, for someone with lungs that opened all the way and ankles that understood the ground. This was something rougher and uglier. Every step was pain, a battle against her battered body, her spinning head, the nausea in her belly.

Step after step she staggered through knee-high waves. She slipped on a silty rise, fell into the water, submerged beneath a crashing wave, then was back up and moving. Lightning flashed across the beach, bringing a punishing clarity to every detail of Dungeness: the skeletal fire tower standing like some ancient gibbet; the dark silhouette of the old lighthouse; a broken caravan roof spinning slowly in the water; and between her and the reactors, the shadow of Jack Mercer.

She pushed onward, lungs wheezing, one foot dragging, her mind turning too slow for the waves. Shadows seemed to throng beside her in the driving rain, keeping pace at the edge of her vision, men in long coats with sacks on their backs, faces wrapped in handkerchiefs. Owlers. Smugglers. Poling marsh boats into secret berths along the old drowned paths by night, carrying wool, brandy, bodies, secrets. They turned their heads as she passed, ancient secrets watching from the rain.

She blinked and they were gone, the shade of Mercer now staggering past the blasted box of the old Crab Shack. Maybe 15 yards, though he was picking up speed while she was flagging hard.

She stopped running to shout. "Mercer!"

His laugh carried back to her on the wind, deep and wild, but he kept moving. She'd never catch him now. There had to be another way.

"I know why you killed him," she bellowed into the gale. "Why you killed Richter."

His shadow halted, then twisted. She caught shifting glimmers of his white eyes, shining like lighthouse beams through the sea's fury.

"You did it for Reg!" The shouting made everything spin and turn silvery. "You did it for your father!"

Mercer laughed. "So you see me, little girl," he boomed back, his voice controlled as ever, like an actor on his final stage. "Finally! Reg Rook's bastard son. Can you even imagine?"

"My father was a … gambler and a drunk! My mother was lost to God. I know what it's like … to be alone, Jack!"

His laughter grew manic. "You don't know! They sent me away twice, Sally! Twice! Once as a baby. Once as a man. But I kept coming back. Can you explain that to me?"

A wave struck her hip and knocked her onto one knee. She fought her way back up. Mercer was in motion again, hobbling deep into the dark. She needed something more. Something that would make him stop.

"Reg was a bastard," she bellowed. "Your father. But what about your mother?"

Mercer kept laughing. "You don't even know who my mother was."

The beach roared. Water slashed her legs. He was right, Sally knew nothing. Just that his mother was also a child when she gave birth. Someone close to Reg, though. Someone who'd rejected Mercer once, just like Reg.

Then again? As an adult?

Her mind went blank and she forced herself forward into the storm. Names flashed through her head, lists on the whiteboard, stories told across the beach and the marsh, ghosts walking with their eyes and ears removed, ghosts haunting the living to make recompense for the–

She stopped. That was it! A woman haunted by the past, a woman who'd never listened to her long-lost son's pleas. A woman who'd been made to pay.

"Cagen!" she cried out. "Your mother was Nancy Cagen!"

The shape of Mercer stilled again. The only motionless thing on the beach.

"Reg's girlfriend," Sally gasped, striding closer. 10 yards? "Richter's aunt. You killed Richter for Reg. But you killed him for you, too. Because she loved her nephew … more than you!"