At His Mercy by Alison Kent

Chapter One
     
    No matter how many times Lise Kimball
told herself the dread in her stomach was nothing, the pressure
increased exponentially with every mile she drove. Her life was
packed, tossed, and squeezed into her SUV, and there was no way
around it.
    Her right rear tire was going
flat.
    For the last half hour, her steering
wheel had been pulling and the loud thumping noise whirring louder.
Finally, she'd accepted the inevitable and put on her flashers,
hoping to avoid a rear-end collision while creeping along the break
down lane.
    She knew the mechanics of changing a
tire, but since this would be her first time and she was going to
have to unload a lot of boxes to get to her spare, she had her
fingers crossed the tire would hold until she reached the highway
exit ahead.
    The fact that the night was
dark as burned oil and the oasis ahead well-lighted had her
encouraging the steel belted radial to hang in there. And while she
was at it, she promised any greater power listening that she would
never again trust her vehicle’s maintenance—or any part of her
life—to someone who twisted that trust to suit his needs.
    Wouldn’t her soon-to-be-ex enjoy seeing
her battling a car jack and a tire iron?
    She wondered how Mark had reacted when
the divorce papers had been served at his law office this morning.
And then she laughed, the sound tinged with the hysteria she’d been
trying to keep at bay.
    She didn’t need to wonder. She knew,
and pictured him so clearly her stomach clutched harder, nearly
making her sick.
    The tic in his jaw as he ground it. The
strain around his mouth as he pressed his lips tight. The set of
his shoulders as he held himself in check. Save for the shows of
emotion presented to the juries deciding his clients' fates, Mark
Kimball's public persona was ice.
    No, he’d strike out later. At the
racquetball court. On the freeway between his firm’s downtown
Atlanta location and their suburban home. At her. Never with his
fists, of course, but with words.
    And he was so, so good with words. As
good as he was with silences. As good as he was with his body which
he shared only when in his best interest to do so.
    Yeah. She’d had enough. Or rather, she
hadn’t had enough.
    It had been weeks, months since the man
who’d sworn ten years ago to cherish her until death did them part
had visited her bed. Last she'd looked, cherishing went a lot
further than seeing to her material needs and whims as he pleased.
    A master manipulator, Mark
Kimball.
    But that was all behind
her. In front of her stretched the rest of her life and, hallelujah, the
beautiful highway exit ramp. She limped down its length, following
the blacktop to the stop sign and the beacon of lights which had
beckoned her.
    The lights turned out to be big square
halogens mounted on tall pines ringing the parking lot of a
restaurant and bar. Across the intersection, the exit ramp became
an entrance ramp, feeding back into to the highway. Signs indicated
a right turn would take her into a town called Danport.
    She didn’t need a town. With patience,
the bright lamps shining, and her upper body sculpted and
strengthened by months spent in the care of Mark’s personal
trainer, she’d be fine.
    Because really. If she couldn't change
a tire by herself, she wasn't going to make it very far on her
own.
    #
    The screen door catching behind him,
Donovan True stepped off the bar’s back stairs and onto the parking
lot’s asphalt. He turned for the recycle bins, tossed a bag of
longnecks into the first, one of aluminum cans into the
other.
    Glass clanked and rattled, breaking,
cracking like a shot. The sound brought the two strays who lived in
the woods behind the building running as if Pavlov himself had
whistled. Both were mutts, one a beagle mix, the other a
coarse-haired terrier. Neither wore tags on their
collars.
    He hadn’t been able to get close enough
to check the collars themselves for engraving. And folks around
here weren’t into