Before He Preys. Блейк Пирс
of Ellington’s wife with any hints of jealousy, so why this woman?
Because she’s causing everything to change, she thought. That boring little routine I was falling into and growing comfortable with is starting to crumble.
“What are you thinking?” Ellington asked.
Mackenzie shook her head and looked at her watch. It was only one in the afternoon. Pretty soon, her absence would be noticed at work.
“I’m thinking I need to get back to work,” she said. And with that, she turned away from him again and walked out of the room.
“Mackenzie,” Ellington called out. “Hold on.”
“It’s okay,” she called out to him. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”
She left without a goodbye, a kiss, or a hug. Because even though she had said it, things were not okay.
If things were okay, she wouldn’t be fighting back tears that seemed to have come out of nowhere. If things were okay, she wouldn’t still be trying to push away an anger that kept trying to claw its way up, telling her that she was a fool to think that life would be okay now, that she was finally due a normal life where the haunts of her past didn’t influence everything.
By the time she reached her car, she had managed to bring the tears to a stop. Her cell phone rang, Ellington’s name popping up. She ignored it, started the car, and headed back to work.
CHAPTER THREE
Work only provided distance for a few more hours. Even when Mackenzie checked in with Harrison to make sure he didn’t need assistance on the small wiring fraud case he was working on, she was out of the building by six. When she arrived back at the apartment at 6:20, she found Ellington behind the stove. He didn’t cook often and when he did, it was usually because he had idle hands and nothing better to do.
“Hey,” he said, looking up from a pot of what looked like some sort of stir-fry.
“Hey,” she said in return, setting her laptop bag down on the couch and walking into the kitchen. “Sorry I left the way I did earlier.”
“No need to apologize,” he said.
“Of course there is. It was immature. And if I’m being honest, I don’t know why it upsets me so much. I’m more worried about losing you as a partner than I am about what this might do to your professional record. How messed up is that?”
He shrugged. “It makes sense.”
“It should but it doesn’t,” she said. “I can’t think about you kissing another woman, especially not in a way like that. Even if you were drunk and even if she did initiate things, I can’t see you like that. And it makes me want to kill that woman, you know?”
“I’m sorry as hell,” he said. “It’s one of those things in life I wish I could take back. One of those things I thought was in the past and I was done with.”
Mackenzie walked up behind him and hesitantly wrapped her arms around his waist. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Just mad. And embarrassed.”
Part of Mackenzie feared that he was being dishonest with her. There was something in his posture, something about the way he couldn’t quite look at her when he talked about it. She wanted to think it was simply because it was not easy to be accused of something like this, to be reminded of something stupid you’d done in your past.
Honestly, she wasn’t sure what to believe. Ever since she’d seen him walking by her office door with the box in his hands, her thoughts toward him were mixed up and confused.
She was about to offer to help with dinner, hoping some normalcy might help them to get back on track. But before the words could come out of her mouth, her cell phone rang. She was surprised and a little worried to see that it was from McGrath.
“Sorry,” she said to Ellington, showing him the display. “I should probably take this.”
“He probably wants to ask if you’ve ever felt sexually harassed by me,” he said snidely.
“He already had the chance earlier today,” she said before stepping away from the sizzling noises of the kitchen to answer the phone.
“This is White,” she said, speaking directly and almost mechanically, as she tended to do when answering a call from McGrath.
“White,” he said. “Are you home yet?”
“Yes sir.”
“I need you to come back out. I need to speak with you in private. I’ll be in the parking garage. Level Two, Row D.”
“Sir, is this about Ellington?”
“Just meet me there, White. Get there as quickly as you can.”
He ended the call with that, leaving Mackenzie holding a dead line in her hand. She pocketed it slowly, looking back toward Ellington. He was removing the pan from the stove, heading to the table in the little dining area.
“I have to grab some to go,” she said.
“Damn. Is it about me?”
“He wouldn’t say,” Mackenzie said. “But I don’t think so. This is something different. He’s being really secretive.”
She wasn’t sure why, but she left out the instructions to meet him in the parking garage. If she was being honest with herself, something about that didn’t sit well with her. Still, she grabbed a bowl from the cabinets, spooned some of Ellington’s dinner into it, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Both of them could tell that it felt mechanical and forced.
“Keep me posted,” Ellington said. “And let me know if you need anything.”
“Of course,” she said.
Realizing she hadn’t even yet removed her holster and Glock, she headed directly for the door. And it wasn’t until she was back out into the hallway and heading for her car that she realized that she was actually quite relieved to have been called away.
She had to admit that it felt a little cliché to be slowly creeping along Level 2 of the parking garage across from headquarters. Meeting in parking garages was the stuff of bad TV cop dramas. And in those dramas, shady parking garage meetings usually led to drama of some kind or another.
She spotted McGrath’s car and parked her own car a few spaces away. She locked up and strolled down to where McGrath was waiting. Without any formal invitation to do so, she walked to the passenger side door, opened it, and climbed in.
“Okay,” she said. “The secrecy is killing me. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong per se,” McGrath said. “But we’ve got a case about an hour or so away in a little town called Kingsville. You know it?”
“Heard of it, but never been there.”
“It’s about as rural as you can imagine, tucked away in the last stretch of backwoods before all of the commotion and interstates of DC take over,” McGrath said. “But it actually might not be a case at all. That’s what I need you to go figure out.”
“Okay,” she said. “But why couldn’t we have this meeting in your office?”
“Because the victim is the deputy director’s nephew. Twenty-two years old. It looks like someone tossed him from a bridge. The local PD in Kingsville say it’s probably just a suicide, but Deputy Director Wilmoth wants to make sure.”
“Does he have any reason to believe it was a murder?” she asked.
“Well, it’s the second body that’s been found at the bottom of that bridge in the last four days. It probably is a suicide if you want my opinion. But I had the order passed down to me about an hour ago, straight from Director Wilmoth. He wants to know for sure. He also wants to be informed as soon as possible and he wants it kept quiet. Hence the request to meet with me here rather than in my office. If anyone saw you and I meeting