Carla Neggers - Abandon

“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.”

J. Harris Mayer owned a white-painted, black-shuttered brick house on a narrow, prestigious Georgetown street. As Rook stood in the front room, he could see the overgrown rhododendron that grew past its first-floor window.

Harris’s neighbors probably wished he had moved or gambled away the house. Rook and T.J. had checked with them, and they clearly hoped the FBI or the local police – someone – would find Harris dead of a heart attack. His disgrace wasn’t the issue so much as the shabby condition of his house. It needed paint, extensive repairs and a couple of guys with trimming shears and chainsaws to tackle the out-of-control greenery. The windows hadn’t been washed in years. Bees had built nests in various cracks and crevices.

But Rook and T.J. and two other agents hadn’t found Mayer dead in his bed or passed out on his kitchen floor. They’d arrived an hour ago, in the heat of the afternoon, having obtained a warrant to check the house for him. The scope of the warrant limited them to searching places where a person could have fallen ill or be hiding – a closet, a shower, not a desk drawer.

“He’s skipped,” T.J. said, joining Rook from the foyer. “He’s not here.”

Rook concurred. They’d gone through the house from attic to basement, alert to anything in plain sight that would lead them back to the judge for permission to conduct a more thorough search.

T.J. eyed a slender, curve-legged desk in a corner of the threadbare but elegant room. Everything needed dusting. The house smelled musty; the central air-conditioning hadn’t been turned down low enough to keep up with the heat and humidity. The family antiques throughout the house just emphasized that Harris’s was a life squandered. He’d gone off the tracks a long time ago, well before his public downfall. It had just taken a while for him to crash.

“Wish we’d found a receipt for a plane ticket to Fiji sitting on a desk,” T.J. said. “That’d get us in here going through this place with a fine-tooth comb. I don’t have a good feeling about our friend J. Harris, Rook.”

Rook sighed. “I don’t, either. We’ll just have to keep looking for him. I don’t know if a soup-to-nuts search here would help us, but I’ll see what we can do to get an extension on the warrant.”

“If Mayer had given us more to go on…”

“I should have pushed him harder.” T.J. shrugged, taking the setback in stride. “For all we know he was blowing smoke and got tired of it, just pulled out and headed for the beach – or he decided he didn’t want to face you once you figured out he was engaging in fantasy.”

“Maybe,” Rook said, determined to keep an open mind.

They left the house. Outside, uniformed Washington police officers provided scene security, in case the neighbors got curious about strange men bursting into the discredited judge’s house. A crowd hadn’t gathered. It was too damn hot, or people were just busy, or not at home, or didn’t want to be obvious about their curiosity.

“Whoa,” T.J. said. “Is that your redheaded deputy?”

“That’s her,” Rook replied through gritted teeth.

As a federal agent herself, Mackenzie had made her way through security, and stood at the bottom of the steps, her curly hair frizzing slightly in the heat. Rook remembered kissing her last night. What the hell had he been thinking?

T.J., who was known for his good looks, trotted down the steps to the brick sidewalk. “Deputy Stewart, right? I’m T. J. Kowalski.”

“Special Agent Kowalski – nice to meet you. Andrew’s told me about you. All good, of course.”

Using his first name, Rook knew, wasn’t intended to have an affect on him, but to charm T.J. Obviously it worked, because T.J. smiled at her. “Nice to meet you, too, Deputy -”

“Mackenzie,” she corrected. “I didn’t expect to find the FBI here. Did something happen to Judge Mayer?”

“Not that we know of,” T.J. said. “What’s your business here, Mackenzie?”

She glanced up at Rook, still on the steps, then shifted her gaze back to T.J. “Harris Mayer and Judge Peacham go way back. I don’t really know him.”

“That doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

“No, it doesn’t.” She gestured broadly toward the house. “No sign of him?”

T.J. hesitated a moment, as if he expected Rook to intervene – but Rook had no intention of diving into the middle of their exchange. Let Mackenzie wriggle her way out of this one. T.J. could handle her. “No,” he said. “No sign of him. The house is secure. He’s not in it. You know where he is?”

“Not a clue.” She squinted at him. “Well. I guess you answered my question for me. Again, T.J., nice to meet you.” She made a point of looking up at Rook on the steps. “Mind the heat, you two. It sneaks up on you.”