Read Online Sweet Mercy by Naomi Stone - Free Book Online Page B

the spindle-back chair. Tamara, seated across from her, eyes closed, seemed not to notice, but then spoke.
    “Be still,” she said. “Focus inward. Breathe. If you try to escape you  know I’ll have to hurt you.”
    She sounded so much like herself—up until that last statement. Was she still in there? How much control did Johnson have over her? Over Tom? Wasn’t there some way they could fight him?”
    “I feel your distress.” Tamara spoke, still with her eyes closed, in apparent meditation. “Calm yourself.”
    “Of course, Tamara.” Rachel drew a deep breath, focused. “See, just like you taught me: deep breaths, visualizing peace, visualizing the light of compassion embracing me… Remember when I first came to you? How scared I was? Scrounging food out of back alley dumpsters?”
    “Yes…”
    “You were the only one who could deal with my fear even when it scared you too. You took it in and you calmed it and you showed me how to do the same. Do you remember?”
    “I remember.” Tamara’s voice seemed distant, abstracted.
    “You don’t want to hurt me now, do you?”
    “Of course not.” Some of her usual warmth touched Tamara’s voice. “But you know I must if you don’t cooperate.”
    “I know, Tamara. But I am cooperating. There’s not much else I can do stuck in this chair. He didn’t say we couldn’t talk, did he?”
    “No… He just said to stay with you, to stay calm, and to hurt you if you tried to get away.”
    “I promise you I won’t try to escape you. I know you’d feel bad about it if you had to hurt me. Wouldn’t you?”
    “You know I would.” Tamara looked and sounded just like her old self for moment, as she spoke, meeting Rachel’s eyes.
    “And you know I’m telling the truth right? You know I’ll stick right with you if I say I will.”
    “Yes…”
    “So, is there any reason we need these ropes?”
    Tamara frowned. “He said—”
    “Any reason I can’t use the bathroom sometime soon?”
    “No.” Tamara smiled. “I’ll have to stay with you, but if you give your word not to run away from me, that will be okay.”
    Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. Of course she’d keep her word. She couldn’t very well go off and leave Tamara alone in the clutches of the mad Johnson. But it looked like Tamara still had some initiative beyond the constraints of the instructions Johnson had given her. Just how far could they stretch those limits?
    ~ * ~
    “Hey, Mabel.” In a lobby seating arrangement in sight of the elevators, Fluke sat on the damask covered wing chair beside the one occupied by the woman. “How’s it going?”
    Mabel had come to attention when he exited the elevator, watching  his progress intently as he approached her, but now she looked confused. “I’m supposed to be inconspicuous,” she muttered to herself.
    “You are inconspicuous,” he assured her. “You’re very inconspicuous, but I’m very perceptive. I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay with you. I want to help you do your job.”
    “What are you talking about? What job? I’m here to play Bingo.” She looked around uncertainly. “I just felt like getting off my feet for a while before I head over to the casino.”
    “Sure. I know how it is. They run the games all night. No hurry. Still, you may be interested to know my companion has left the hotel.”
    “What? How? I’ve been right here and never saw her leave.”
    “You might want to let someone know she left from the heliport on the hotel roof sometime in the last half hour.”
    “Why would that possibly be of any interest to me, young man? Please leave me alone.” She made a shooing gesture at him and Fluke rose obligingly and moved off a few feet. He found a spot from which he could watch her in one of the decorative mirrors hung above a flower arrangement. Between the reflected leaves and blooms of large white peonies he observed Mabel take out her cell phone.
    Fluke used his specs to zoom in and record the