Read Online Sweet Mercy by Naomi Stone - Free Book Online

wouldn’t expect her here, but why tempt fate by staying out in the open any longer than necessary? She called out, “Tamara, we’re here! You ready?” She approached the stairway leading up to the bedrooms, listening for a response.
    “She’s in the office.” The strange voice behind her startled Rachel into whirling around to find Johnson standing there, one hand on Tom’s bare neck. Tom stood transfixed, staring blankly ahead. Tamara emerged from the office, carrying a coil of clothesline.
    “Oh, hi! There you are.” Tamara greeted her as if everything were perfectly normal, coming around Johnson and Tom to approach Rachel. “I need to keep an eye on you now.”
    “Tamara? What’s going on?” Rachel backed closer to the stairs.
    “She’s got her instructions,” Johnson said, “and makes a very good puppet too. She’s so capable, and so strong. She really believed her mother might be in trouble—until I reprogrammed her to be your guard.”
    Rachel whirled to run past the stairs and out through the kitchen entry—but she’d waited too long to realize her danger and make her move. Tamara caught her before she’d reached the kitchen door and the yoga instructor quickly overpowered her. Using a move she might have learned from watching TV crime shows, she threw Rachel flat on her stomach, sending her specs flying across the room, and then, with a knee on her back, trussed Rachel’s wrists behind her.
    Johnson continued speaking. “Thanks for bringing me such an efficient means of transportation. We’re going to take you away and our friend Tamara is going to baby-sit you while our teleporter helps me take care of some very important business. And you’re going to cooperate in this because Tamara’s mind will freeze up like an overloaded computer if you do anything to keep her from fulfilling the instructions I’ve given her.”
    Rachel struggled to turn her head toward Johnson—hard to do with her cheek pressed to the floor.
    “You’re insane,” she told him. “Seriously. You think any of this will make your life the tiniest bit better or happier?”
    The man’s bland façade cracked as he scowled furiously at her. “Hurt her,” he told Tamara, who immediately jerked back on Rachel’s bound arms. She gritted her teeth against the wrenching pain.
    “This isn’t about happiness,” Johnson went on. “It’s about payback.”
    ~ * ~
    Fluke returned to the penthouse suite accompanied by a small caravan of carts laden with a mini-buffet steered by hotel staff. It had taken him some time to arrange for the midnight snack with the hotel’s night chef. Amazing how a few hundred dollars in gratuities could overcome objections to going off menu. Rachel had been snoring lightly when he’d slipped out.
    He hoped she hadn’t had time to wake and wonder where he’d gone.
    He ushered his procession into the suite and left them to set up the array of dishes, beverages and flowers while he went to the bedroom to wake Rachel.
    He found the rumpled bed empty and turned to check the bath with a rising sense of misgiving—he heard no sound of water running—and found that room empty too. He returned to the living room of the suite. The hotel’s crew had departed, leaving a fabulous buffet in place. Fluke dropped his specs over his eyes and opened a channel to call Rachel. Maybe she’d decided to explore on her own.
    He got no response to the call, so he pinged the team’s night secretary. “Can you get a fix on Rachel Connolly’s location?”
    “According to the logs, she’s with you.”
    “Not at the moment.”
    “Ah. Just got a new entry showing she pinged Tom Stanton for transport—some emergency involving her housemate. I’ve got a fix on her specs, showing her at her home address right now.”
    “Thanks. She’s not responding to my ping. Is anyone in position to check on her?”
    “Tom just checked in. He reports everything under control, says Rachel’s busy calming a hysterical