Beg for Mercy by Jami Alden Read Free Book Online Page A

her contact lenses in. The TV was still on, and her half-eaten turkey sandwich was drying out on the coffee table.
    After three nights in a row spent staring into the darkness—her acid-soaked stomach clenched in a knot as she thought about Sean and the execution that had been scheduled to take place only a week and a half from today—her exhaustion had caught up with her.
    A guitar lick blared through the room, and Megan’s fogged brain registered that it must have been her cell that woke her. She staggered off the couch, squinting to see through her gummed-up contact lenses, and snatched the phone off her kitchen table.
    Even as she thumbed the button to look at the call log, the phone started ringing again.
Dev,
the display read. Megan’s stomach sank a little as she wondered what reason the girl would have for calling her at—she squinted at her watch—ten twenty-two on a Tuesday night.
    “Hey, Dev, what’s up—” she started to say around a jaw-cracking yawn, but she couldn’t get a word out before Dev’s voice cut her off.
    “Oh, thank God you answered. I don’t know what to do. You have to get over here.”
    The pure terror in Dev’s voice sent a shot of adrenaline through Megan’s veins and banished the last cobwebs from her brain. “Whoa, Dev, calm down and tell me what’s going on.” Megan took a deep breath, trying to calm herself as her mind raced with infinite ways a fourteen-year-old girl could get herself into deep trouble.
    She’d barely managed the thought before Dev’s next words froze her in the act of walking to the bathroom. “I think she’s dead, Megan. And there was so much blood.”
    “Where are you, Devany? Who’s dead?” Panic rippled through her limbs as she struggled to make out Dev’s explanation through her sobbing. She quickly removed her contacts and put on her glasses. “Dev, I can’t understand you. You need to talk more slowly.” She put the girl on speaker-phone to yank on warmer clothes and finally deciphered that Dev was home, that her aunt’s dog had gotten out and made a gruesome discovery in an abandoned trailer.
    “Did you call the police?”
    “No,” Dev said. “I didn’t know what to do—there’s no one here, and I’m so scared.”
    “You must call the police,” Megan said firmly.
    “But I don’t—”
    “You won’t get in trouble, Dev.” She knew why Dev was hesitating. In her short life, the cops at her house meant only bad news—her mom getting busted, Dev being taken away and moved to yet another new home. Megan couldn’t blame Dev for being reluctant. “I want you to hang up and call nine-one-one, and tell them exactly what you saw. Stay in your house with the door locked, and don’t open the door for anyone except me or the police.”
    Megan yanked on rubber rain boots, slid a waterproof shell over her shirt, and raced out to her car. She made it to Redwood Acres in a record seven minutes, figuring that if a cop tried to stop her, she’d just lead him straight to the murder scene.
    Because she wasn’t under any illusions that Devany had stumbled across anything else.
    She skidded to a stop in front of Dev’s trailer. There was no sign of the police, and both trailers on either side of Dev’s were completely dark. Megan jogged down the path to Dev’s trailer and banged on the door. “Dev, it’s Megan. Did you call the police?”
    She saw one of Dev’s brown eyes peek around the edge of the curtain that covered the door’s square window. With Megan’s identity verified, she opened the door for her to enter. Dev was trembling, mascara smeared under her eyes. The dusting of freckles across her nose stood out in stark relief against her ashen face, and she scrubbed her pierced nose with the sleeve of her flannel shirt. Gone was the tough-talking fourteen-year-old Megan knew. Dev’s usual attitude had disappeared, leaving behind a wide-eyed, gangly girl who was scared out of her mind. Dev cradled Skeeter in her arms as if