7:03 P.M. Monday, December 8: Las Vegas
He was at his computer, reading his emails, when he saw the yellow glow of headlights flash briefly against the thin off-white curtains that hung over his window. At more or less the same time, he heard the sound of the garage door going up, followed by the quiet hum of a car engine and the soft crunch of wheels over gravel as she parked her car in the garage.
He checked the clock on his computer, noting that it was just a couple minutes past seven, which meant that, contrary to what she told him, she was still at the Las Vegas crime lab when he called her. He speculated that she had been caught in rush hour traffic on her way home, which was why it had taken her a long time to get back.
That girl just works too damn hard for her own good, he thought with a shake of his head as he stood up from his computer chair, and made his way down to the ground floor, just in time to hear the front door open as she stepped inside and out of the cold December air.
He stood at the top of the stairs, and crossed his arms as he watched her shake off her jacket. "I thought you said you were on the way back home when I called?"
Mercy looked up at him, blinked momentarily, and crinkled her nose while waving her hand at him. "I had some business to take care of, okay? I'm sorry I lied to you, but we were in the middle of looking at the evidence when you called. Besides, I couldn't just leave them simply because you called me."
He smirked then. "You're not in boarding school anymore, Merce. You don't have to ask permission to leave."
She rolled her eyes as she walked past him up the stairs, heading towards her room. "I know I'm not in boarding school anymore, but at least I remember the rules of common courtesy, Alec."
Alec Marvail winced slightly at the way she said his name. There's something afoot, he thought as he followed his younger half-sister to her room, though he stopped at the doorway while she went in. "Why do you sound so snappish?" He grinned. "Is it that time of the month again?"
Mercy turned around to glare at him. "What is it with you men that you blame female aggressive tendencies on 'that time of the month?' For your information, the hormone that triggers PMS in females is present in our systems only once a month; in men, it's present all the time."
"Where did you learn that?"
"Long story."
"You are a bitch, did you know that?"
"And you're a bastard, so we're even."
Now Alec knew something was up. When he called her a bitch, she always smiled sweetly at him and said that she was taking it as a compliment. But now she was not doing that - rather, she was throwing insults right back at him. "Why are you so tetchy, eh? You've been like that ever since we left Washington."
"You really want to know?" Mercy's bland voice echoed to him from her bathroom, where Alec knew she was changing out of the clothes she wore to work and into something more comfortable.
Even though Alec's gut screamed at him not to push the question, his curiosity got the better of him, so he had to ask. "Yes."
Mercy walked out of the bathroom wearing a pair of rather worn cotton jogging pants, a loose T-shirt, and a pair of white slippers. She fixed him with a withering stare, and said: "The air is cleaner in Sheffield."
Alec winced. His instincts were right after all. It had nothing to do with work, and it certainly had nothing to do with PMS. Oh no, it had everything to do with something that was a lot more personal: Ami Tejada.
When he did not respond, Mercy rolled her eyes in what he recognized as a supreme look of annoyance before she strode past him, her legs carrying her quite quickly out of the room and down to the ground floor. "Merce, I can explain-"
"There is nothing to explain," Mercy cut in, not looking at him as he jogged after her towards the kitchen. "I mean, how could you be so stupid? 'The air is cleaner in Sheffield'... You should have known better!"
Alec watched as she whipped out a saucepan from one of the shelves, wincing again when she put it on the stove with a bang. She's really mad now, he thought. "Merce, I really didn't think she would take it that way. I thought she'd be delighted to be living in Sheffield."
Mercy crossed to the other side of the kitchen, throwing the door of the refrigerator open a tad more violently than she was supposed to. Luckily, none of the eggs that Alec knew were arranged along the shelves on the inside door of the fridge rolled out. "That's the whole point, Alec: you didn't think. You know that she loves the Philippines; you know that you should have asked her first about living in Sheffield instead of there; you know that you should always, always consult her first before you make a decision that could change her life - but do you do that? No: you just went out there, bought the house, and decided to tell her two fucking days before the wedding that she isn't going to be living in the country she grew up in almost all her life - without, mind you, asking her first if that was what she wanted."
Days of frustration and anger finally came to a head, and Alec snapped. "What was I supposed to bloody do then!" he demanded angrily as Mercy strode back to the stove, emptying one of the jars of pasta sauce she had made back in Washington and taken with her to Las Vegas. "Let her go back to that sorry dump of a country?"
Now that ticked Mercy off. She paused in the middle of chopping the sprigs of rosemary she was going to throw into the sauce, which she had left on the stove. She turned her head slowly, her eyes flaring with angry fire. "Don't you dare say that ever again, Alec Marvail."
Alec knew that tone: it meant that Mercy was really, really angry, and that if he went on any further, he'd have a lot more on his plate than just his favorite half-sister angry at him for her best friend's sake. Besides, the knife in her hand was starting to look just a little too shiny.
He swallowed, trying to get his temper under control. After counting ten breaths to calm down, he said, in a low, controlled tone: "I just thought that she would be happier in England. Sheffield's beautiful."
"I know Sheffield's beautiful, but that's not the issue here," Mercy said as she swept up the chopped rosemary in her hands, and dumped the whole lot of it into the sauce. Taking a wooden spoon from one of the drawers nearby, she continued, "She would love to live in England. Hell, she'd live in Tibet, as long as she was with you. But the thing is, you didn't ask her first, when you should have."
Alec watched as Mercy stirred the now-simmering sauce, noticing her more violent emotions slowly bleeding out of her. "Ami loves the Philippines," she continued. "She has family there, and friends too. She's got a life there, and she did very well without you in that life. You can't just ask her to give up something she's known for a longer time than she's ever known you."
Alec sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. "I know, I know. It's just that..." He groaned. "God Merce, she didn't have to call off the wedding!"
Much to his relief, Mercy offered a small smile - a rather ironic one, but a smile all the same. "I think she had every right to call off the wedding, for the meantime, at least, after what you said. I'd have done the same thing too, if Tony had done the same thing."
"What, you mean the bloke has proposed already? How come I didn't know about that?"
Mercy narrowed her eyes at him, though there was no danger in her eyes now. "He did not, Alec. It's only been what... Six months? And don't change the subject." She turned the flame of the stove off, and headed back to the fridge.
Alec walked to the stools that were arranged around the middle counter of the kitchen, grabbing plates, cutlery, wineglasses, and an opened bottle of red wine along the way. "What am I supposed to do then? Neither you nor I know where she is. What if she gets in trouble again?"
It was an unpleasant thought, but it had occurred to him more than once before. The incident with Landowe had taught him never to let Ami out of his sight, but now, she had virtually disappeared from right under his nose.
And all because I was a being an arse and just had to do something incredibly stupid, he thought morosely as he poured himself and his sister a glass of wine each. He drained his glass in one gulp, and proceeded to fill it again as Mercy approached with a colander filled with steaming spaghetti noodles - she had placed the colander under a hot water tap, and ran hot water over the cold-from-the-fridge noodles, thus reheating them, but not overcooking them.
"Oh, I don't think you need to worry about her," Mercy said, her voice a cheerful tone that told Alec she knew something he didn't. "Wherever she is, she's fine."
Now was Alec's turn to glare at his sister, his green eyes flashing at her through the steam that rose from the spaghetti noodles she placed on his plate. "You know where she is, don't you?"
"Of course I do," Mercy, replied as she sat across the counter from him, taking a sip from her wine as she ladled pasta sauce over her spaghetti noodles and sprinkled some slivers of parmesan cheese over it all. She popped a sliver of the cheese into her mouth before adding: "I'm her best friend, after all."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Alec demanded. "I'm her fiancé; I have a right to know where she is right now!"
"Um, I think you're her ex-fiancé now - as far as I can recall, she gave the ring back to you."
"I am still her fiancé, damn it! And I have a right to know where she is."
"I'm not telling you. She made me promise not to tell you, and personally, I think she's right. Let's just say that I know where she is, and that she's perfectly safe."
Alec groaned, resisting the urge to just bury his face in his dinner and suffocate himself to death. He should have known Mercy would know.
"Oh come on Alec, cheer up!" Mercy said brightly. She chewed her mouthful of pasta, swallowed, and smiled at him as he looked at her. "At least you know that she's safe. There's nothing to worry about: once she cools down a little, everything will be back to normal."
"It's not the same as having her with me," he muttered, ladling sauce over his noodles and stirring them around lazily.
Mercy snorted. "I think it's better that the two of you have some time to cool off. If I have to spend one more night under the same roof with you two when you're in one of your 'moods,' I think I'd go crazy. At least Tony and I have the decency to go to his place when things get a little hotter than usual."
Alec glared at her, but after a moment, he smirked, and shook his head. "Maybe you do have a point there, Mercy."
"Of course I do. I always do."
"Watch your ego, Mercy."
"Alec? Just shut up and pass me the wine."