Abandon

Thirty-Three

The cool breeze off the water made Mackenzie shiver, but it felt good. A year ago on a beautiful Saturday in August, she’d have been kayaking by now, contemplating what life would be like if the Marshals Service accepted her for training.

Now, she knew.

She started onto the bottom step of Bernadette’s screen porch, but saw the shed door propped open and headed down the slowing lawn. If Bernadette was preoccupied with Harris’s death and in a prickly mood after Gus’s revelation about Cal, she would turn to activity – to doing something useful. She’d mow, dig weeds, finally paint her flea-market table.

“Hey, Beanie,” Mackenzie called, in case Bernadette hadn’t heard her car in the driveway. “Gorgeous day, isn’t it?”

As she approached the shed, she resisted an outright shudder and pushed back the overpowering sense of dread she’d felt so often as a child when she’d get near it. She’d envision monsters in there in the dark, as if somehow the prospect of monsters would mitigate the blur of real memories she had – of her father’s blood and moans, of her own terror and guilt. Ever since that awful day when she’d found her father, her memories of what had happened were jumbled up with nightmares, trauma, fear and confusion over which of the images stuck in her head were real and which weren’t.

She heard a sound – a groan – and immediately drew her gun.

“Beanie – what’s going on?”

But there was no answer. Careful not to expose herself more than was necessary, Mackenzie moved toward the shed, the door swung open. She squinted against the bright sun and angled a look inside.

“Beanie?”

“I’m okay.” Bernadette’s voice was high-pitched, laced with fear. “He’s gone…”

She staggered into the doorway, her face ashen as she gripped her left shoulder with her right hand. Blood oozed through her fingers and down her wrist.

With her free arm, Mackenzie caught Bernadette around the waist and held on, taking her friend’s weight. “I’ve got you. It’s okay. Is anyone -”

“No one’s in the shed. He heard your car and ran.”

They edged out of the shed. Bernadette looked on the verge of passing out, but she rallied as she sat on the grass, her hand still clutching her shoulder.

“Who ran, Beanie?” Mackenzie asked.

“Jesse – Jesse Lambert.” Bernadette grimaced, sinking slightly. “Damn, this thing hurts. At least it’s not deep.”

“Let me see.”

Bernadette shook her head, with the authority of a woman accustomed to commanding a courtroom. But her eyes, normally a light green, were dark and glassy with pain and fear. “He says Cal will die if I -” She broke off, wincing in pain, then continued. “He wants something Cal stole from him. I don’t know. I couldn’t make sense of half of what he said.”

Mackenzie noticed something – a paper of some kind – stuck in Bernadette’s bloodstained hand. “Beanie, what’s that?”

She seemed confused. “What?” But she drew her hand from the wound in her shoulder. A photograph, smeared with blood, stuck to her palm. “Oh.” She stared at it, then pried it loose. “Here, see for yourself.”

Mackenzie made out the bloodstained image.

Cal’s blonde. She felt a pang of sympathy for her friend. “This Jesse showed the picture to you?”

“As if it were a trophy.”

“I’m sorry you had to see such a thing.” But Mackenzie shifted her attention to Bernadette’s wound, a slash across the meat of the shoulder and down to the collarbone. “Here.” She pulled off her jacket. “Use this for compression. Hold it as tight as you can against the cut. Okay?”

“He didn’t want to kill me. He could have, but he -” Bernadette stopped herself, taking the jacket, pressing it against her bleeding shoulder. “I can call the police.” She gave Mackenzie a weak smile. “As backup for you. I know – you are the police.”

“I can’t leave you. If he doubles back -”

“You won’t let him.” Bernadette staggered to her feet, pushing away Mackenzie’s hand and looking back at the shed. “This man…Jesse…I should have recognized him…”

Mackenzie stiffened. “Why, Beanie?”

But when Bernadette turned back to her, Mackenzie could hear her father arguing with a man twenty years ago.

“Find another place to camp, Jesse. You’re trespassing. Time to move on.”

She’d been hiding in the trees, playing spy. Her father and the younger man didn’t know she was there.

“You remember him now, don’t you?” Bernadette asked quietly, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “Your father kicked him off the property.”

“I know. I remember.” Mackenzie’s voice was just above a whisper. “He was worried about my safety – and yours.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Bernadette said.

Mackenzie forced herself out of the past. “It doesn’t matter right now. Andrew Rook is on the way. He shouldn’t be too far behind me.” She saw that Bernadette’s color had improved, and she seemed focused, able to handle a call to 911. “If he gets here before I’m back, tell him to meet me at the clearing we went to last Saturday.”

“Mackenzie -”

“I can’t take the time to explain now. Beanie, are you sure you can do this?”

“Yes.” She gave a faltering smile. “I know you marshals don’t like federal judges to get slashed, but please don’t worry about me. Just go, Mackenzie. Do what you have to do. Be safe.”

Mackenzie waited just long enough to make sure Bernadette wasn’t going to pass out on the porch steps before, gun in hand, she ducked through the brush, a barberry scratching her arm as she fought her way out to the trail along the lake.

A red squirrel scurried in front of her.

“Be out of here by noon or I call the police.”

Not a nightmare, she thought. A memory. But she felt the pull of her own healing knife wound and focused on the present. On finding Jesse Lambert, the man who’d attacked her, the hiker and Bernadette – and who’d tried to kill her father all those years ago, and just last week had succeeded in killing Harris Mayer.

Mackenzie knew she had to find Cal, because if he’d stolen from this man – this Jesse Lambert – then Bernadette was right.

Jesse would kill him.