Abandon

Sixteen

Mackenzie poured herself a cup of coffee and headed to her desk at the district U.S. Marshals office in Washington, D.C. After less than two months, she didn’t feel settled in yet, but it was her first duty assignment and she was committed to a three-year stay. She had managed to get up early and lift a few free weights and stretch, avoiding any doctor-forbidden moves that would pull on her stitches. Every day was an improvement, but that didn’t mean she was patient with her progress.

On her way downtown, she’d touched base with a New Hampshire state trooper working on the investigation into the attack on her and the hiker.

He’d had no news. It was as if her attacker had crawled out of a cave in the White Mountains with his assault knife and gone hunting. Members of the public were being urged not to hike alone, but not to panic, either. There’d been no other attacks, and any sightings of black-bearded, solitary men hadn’t panned out.

Maybe their guy was back in his cave, Mackenzie thought, setting her coffee on her desk and noticing a Saks Fifth Avenue box. There was no card on top. She opened up the box, unfolding tissue paper with a mixture of dread and amusement.

Inside was a new pink swimsuit. A very pink two-piece.

She quickly replaced the top. “Smart-asses.”

Nate Winter materialized next to her. Since he worked at USMS Headquarters in Arlington, Mackenzie assumed he was in D.C. because of her. Impending fatherhood, she noticed, hadn’t made him any less cut-to-the-chase.

“Hey, Nate,” she said, hoping he hadn’t seen the swimsuit or heard her muttering. “Here on business?”

“Here to see you, Mackenzie. I couldn’t get away or I’d have flown up to Cold Ridge.” He nodded to the Saks box with the barest twitch of a smile. “You’d have to worry if you got here this morning and didn’t find a little present on your desk.”

“I’m never living down the pink swimsuit. Never.” She tucked the box under her desk. “I’m going to exchange it for a solid black one-piece. One with a high neckline and a matching skirt.”

“You don’t think they really bought that suit at Saks, do you?”

She should have thought of that one. She laughed, shaking her head. “I get sliced, and these bastards pawn off a cheap swimsuit on me.” She sat down, spinning her chair around to face Nate. “So, what can I do for you, Deputy Winter?”

“How’s the wound?”

“Healing. I’m not on any pain meds. It was just one of those things. Stupid.”

“Not stupid. Give yourself a little credit.”

She sighed. “At least I wasn’t attacked while I was on duty, not that I’d ever go swimming on the job. I’d been telling all my doubters – of which there are many – that I’m more likely to get hurt off the job than on, and now we have the proof. If I’d been working at the college and gone for a swim at Beanie’s on Friday afternoon, this guy would have attacked me. I just wouldn’t have had a prayer.”

“I don’t know. You were feisty as a college professor.”

“But not as well trained,” she said.

Nate shifted slightly. He wore a dark gray suit, a contrast to the street attire of most of the field agents filling up the office. Mackenzie had rummaged around in one of her unpacked boxes for stretchy pants and a dark, lightweight pullover – and her shoulder holster. Carrying her weapon in a belt holster pulled on her stitches.

“This guy didn’t kill the female hiker,” Nate said.

“She says he told her he wanted her to suffer. If Gus hadn’t found her, she would have died of exposure.” Like Gus’s brother and sister-in-law, Nate’s parents, Mackenzie thought, then added, “I don’t know what he had in mind for me.”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe you just surprised him and he reacted. My point being we don’t know, and until we do -”

“Beware of speculating,” she finished for him.

“Stick to the facts. How’s Gus? I’ve talked to him, but it’s hard to gauge his state of mind. He wasn’t happy about seeing you bloodied – he made that clear.”

Mackenzie leaned back in her chair, comfortable with Nate Winter despite his senior status, his seriousness, his notorious impatience. With the attack in Cold Ridge, more people would become aware of her connection to him, and their mutual connection to Bernadette Peacham. Mackenzie didn’t know how Nate would react. Find a way to send her to Alaska, maybe?

“Gus is Gus,” she said. “He tried out a new recipe on me while I was up there. Some kind of marinated, grilled fruit over couscous. He says it’s Beanie’s influence. She was at the lake earlier in the summer and had him and Carine and little Harry over for dinner, said she’d been taking cooking classes here in Washington.”

“Beanie Peacham’s taking cooking classes?”

“I know. Worrisome.” But Mackenzie couldn’t maintain her humor, and seeing Nate brought the reality of what had happened on Friday – what could have happened – to the surface. “Nate, if anything had happened to Carine or Harry because of me…”

“It wouldn’t have been because of you. The worst thing you can do right now is let your mind spin around what might have been. What happened is bad enough in its own right.” His gaze rested on her, critical, appraising. “Are you sure you should be back here?”

“The doctor said it’d be fine. I just have to avoid heavy lifting for a bit.” She paused to give Nate a chance to reassure her that she was absolutely right, she’d be up for fieldwork in no time, but he didn’t. She got up, relieved there was no tug of pain to cause her to wince in front of him. “Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

She frowned at him. “Nate, what’s up? You didn’t come here to check on my stitches, and you’re not the one who snuck in this pink swimsuit.”

He looked uncomfortable, a rarity for him, and finally sighed. “Do you still believe the man who attacked you looked familiar?”

“Yes.” It didn’t surprise her that Nate knew. He could have found out from Gus or Carine, never mind law enforcement. “I keep trying to remember where I’ve seen him. I’ve checked my student records, fugitive cases I’ve worked on, everything I can think of. So far, no connections.”

“It’s not your job to find this guy. If the investigators in New Hampshire want your help, they’ll ask.” Nate regarded her more with the authority his job afforded him than with brotherly affection. “You understand that, right?”

“Did someone complain about me?”

“No one’s complained. I just know you, Mackenzie. You need to be smart,” he said bluntly. “Be patient.”

Mackenzie grabbed her coffee, trying to resist a surge of defiance. But she knew she wouldn’t. She gave Nate a cool look. “How smart and patient were you after you were shot?”

Almost a year and a half ago, he and a fellow deputy – his wife’s twin brother – were shot sniper style in New York ’s Central Park. Nate’s bullet wound, a graze to the shoulder, was relatively minor, but he hadn’t left the investigation to the FBI and his colleagues in the Marshals Service. He’d bulldozed his way into the middle of it. He’d met Sarah Dunnemore as a result and given up his solitary life, opened himself up to having a family of his own and all the risks that came with it, as he, orphaned at seven, understood more than most. But as far as Mackenzie could see, he had no regrets.

He said stiffly, “We’re not talking about me.”

“That’s for damn sure.” Mackenzie’s urge to stand up to him dissipated, and she grinned. “You weren’t wearing a pink swimsuit when you were shot.”

She thought she detected a spark of amusement in his eyes. “I remember that suit. It’s one bright shade of pink. Tough to miss you in the water.”

“I don’t think our knife-wielding fugitive ever saw me in the water. The shed door was open. I suspect he was on his way out or on his way in while I was underwater or something – I didn’t see him, anyway – and I surprised him. He tried to hide, but ended up attacking me.”

“Could he have slipped away without being seen?”

“If he’d waited until I went back into the house, he’d at least have had a better chance. He crouched in the brush alongside the shed. I heard him before I saw him. It’s filled with Japanese barberry – he could have gotten stuck with thorns. It had to be buggy there, too. Maybe he saw a snake. Whatever. He decided to jump me.”

“His thinking might not have been that organized.”

“The prevailing wisdom still is he picked the hiker and me to attack at random. He looked wild, but he also seemed in control of himself. I can’t explain it.”

“Gut feeling?”

“If you want to call it that.” Mackenzie was suddenly aware of Nate’s nearly two decades of experience in law enforcement compared to her months of training and mere weeks at her first assignment. “I need to figure out where I’ve seen him.”

“Adrenaline can do strange things to people.”

“So why not me? I know I could be imagining I’ve seen him before, but, honestly, I don’t think so.”

“It could just be a simple mistake. Mackenzie -” He broke off. “Never mind. I need to get rolling.” He nodded to her holster. “How’re you with a shoulder holster?”

“Terrible. That fraction of a second extra it takes to reach across my body for my weapon – I don’t know. I’ll try not to shoot myself.”

“Were you as big a pain in the ass as a professor?”

“Bigger.”

She’d known Nate and his two sisters for as long as she could remember. In those awful months after her father’s accident, Gus would bring them by the house with food, and they’d help with repairs that she and her mother couldn’t manage on their own. Harry and Jill Winter had died up on Cold Ridge before Mackenzie was born, but she knew that their children – Nate, Antonia and Carine – had faced a tragedy far worse than her own. She’d looked up to them, let them show her the route to survival.

But they’d never imagined her as a federal agent. Not one of them.

“No, don’t go,” she said. “Tell me why you’re really here.”

“Just to check on you.”

“Nate. I know you think I should have stayed at the college, finished my dissertation. But I got through training. I didn’t have your help or support there. I did it on my own.”

“I know you did, kid.” There was a measure of tenderness in his expression now. “I keep thinking of you as that little curly-haired redhead sitting in your father’s blood. Mackenzie, we all want what’s best for you.”

“What’s best for me right now is that you be straight with me.”

He started for the elevators, but she followed him.

“You know why Andrew Rook was in Cold Ridge, don’t you?” she asked.

Nate banged the down button, sucked in a breath through his teeth and regarded her with a big-brotherly impatience that was entirely familiar to her. “You’re relentless, Deputy Stewart. Always have been. I put that in my report about you.”

“Relentless is just another way of saying pain in the ass.”

“So it is.”

“Nate – what about Harris Mayer?”

He glanced away from her. “He’s late for a meeting with the FBI.”

“Rook?”

The elevator dinged. “You want to play with the big guns, Mackenzie? Here’s your chance.” The elevator doors opened, and Nate stepped inside, turning to her. “Rook’s all yours.”