Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) - Karen Rose Page 0,34

in the community by tattooing their chests with the cult’s symbol—two children kneeling in prayer beneath an olive tree, all under the wings of an angel holding a flaming sword. “Well,” she said, stalling for time as she considered her response.

Mercy’s brother Gideon had gotten his tattooed over, choosing a phoenix to cover the symbol of the cult’s cruelty. Liza had seen Amos’s tattoo when a hospital physician had pulled his gown aside to listen to his heart. She hadn’t realized that Abigail would associate all tattoos with oppression.

“Well,” she said again, “not all tattoos are bad. Not like in Eden when the boys were forced to get them. I got mine because I chose to.”

“But why?” Abigail pressed.

Liza tugged her blouse a little farther down so that Abigail could see more of the tattoo. “It’s a rose and a musical note, twined together. For my mother and sister. Mom loved roses. Lindsay played the piano. So I got their favorite things inked over my heart.”

“Oh.” Abigail seemed to consider this. “Did it hurt?”

“A little. But it was worth it to me.”

“Do you have any tattoos, Mercy?” Abigail asked.

“No,” Mercy answered. “I’m kind of like you, kiddo. For me, a tattoo is a bad memory of Eden. But you remember my friend Miss Farrah? The one who lives in New Orleans?”

Abigail nodded. “Does she have one?”

“She does. Hers is a shield with her fiancé’s name. He’s a police officer, so that’s why the shield. Like the shape of a badge. Mr. Karl has a tattoo, too.”

Abigail’s eyes widened comically. “He does?”

Mercy nodded. “From when he was in the army. So not every tattoo is bad.”

Abigail bit her lip. “But what if the person is bad? Are all their tattoos bad?”

Liza lifted Abigail’s chin so that their eyes met. “Who do you mean?”

“Brother DJ. He had another tattoo that wasn’t of the Eden tree.”

The hairs on the back of Liza’s neck lifted, her intuition shouting that this was important. “What did it look like?”

“It was letters. A long word.” Abigail moved her hand in the shape of a rainbow. “Across his back. I saw it once,” she admitted in a small voice that sounded guilty.

“How did you see it?” Liza asked. “Were you guys swimming or something?” She hoped it was something that innocent. She hadn’t considered that DJ Belmont might have touched her Abigail. Fury flared at the very notion.

Abigail shook her head hard and fast. “No. We didn’t swim. At least we girls didn’t.”

“It wasn’t proper for women and girls to show any skin,” Mercy said. “Luckily we were usually living up high enough that it didn’t get terribly hot in the summer.”

“Oh. Wow.” That shouldn’t have surprised Liza, based on what she’d heard about the fanatical restrictions in Eden. “So how did you see his tattoo, Abs?”

She kept the question casual, but Abigail wasn’t fooled. Her eyes narrowed and she clamped her lips shut.

“Nobody’s going to be angry with you,” Mercy said quietly. “You’re safe with us.”

Abigail swallowed hard. “I saw a bunny and I wanted to pet it. But it ran away.”

“So you chased it?” Liza prompted when Abigail said no more.

She nodded miserably. “It ran into the smithy.”

“DJ was the blacksmith,” Mercy offered. “He was Edward McPhearson’s apprentice before Edward took on Gideon.”

Liza knew how that story ended. McPhearson had been a sexual predator and had tried to rape Gideon. Gideon had fought back and killed the man accidentally. The community had nearly beaten Gideon to death as a result. They might have, had his mother not smuggled him out of Eden that very night. He’d been thirteen, his Eden tattoo still raw from the artist’s needle.

Liza wondered if DJ had been molested by Edward during his apprenticeship, but that was a question that was definitely inappropriate for Abigail’s ears.

“Did you chase the bunny into the smithy?” Liza asked.

Abigail’s face went pink as a peony. “I started to, but I saw Brother DJ in there. He was standing at the forge and the fire was hot. Kids weren’t allowed in there. He took off his . . .” Her face flushed even darker.

“He took his shirt off,” Mercy said softly.

Abigail nodded. “I wasn’t supposed to look. Not at a . . .”

“A man,” Mercy supplied. She glanced at Liza. “The genders were kept very separate. Women weren’t supposed to speak to or even look at men unless they’d been spoken to.”

Liza swallowed her sigh. Abigail’s information was more important than any indignation over Eden’s repression of