Carla Neggers: Abandon

“It was a juggler.”

“Same difference.”

“You misbehaved, as I recall.”

He shrugged. “I always misbehaved. When I started climbing mountains, I did better. When I came back from Vietnam, I had a lot on my mind. I’d spend days at a time on the ridge. Then Harry and Jill died up there.”

“You’re a hero to a lot of people, Gus.”

“Just did what I had to do. That’s what you’re doing now, isn’t it?” He looked at her with those penetrating blue Winter eyes of his. “Beanie, what do you want?”

“Want?” She heard her voice crack and looked away from him. “I don’t even know. Right now, sitting here with you in front of the fire is good enough.”

“You’re thinking about quitting, aren’t you?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Retiring, not quitting. I never expected to go out of the courtroom on a board. I always knew one day I’d come back here. Gus, I want to be here listening to the loons and growing tomatoes.”

“You’d miss locking people up.”

“That’s a simplistic reduction of what I do.”

He grinned. “You’d miss your gavel.”

She rolled her eyes. He was baiting her, enjoying himself. Trying, she thought, to get her going, distract her. “I will not miss my gavel. One day, Gus, I swear -”

“One day when you’re up here for a court break, you can explain to me what you do.”

“You know what I do.”

“I know who you are. There’s a difference.”

He leaned back on his elbows. “We’re going to grow old together, Beanie Peacham.”

She smiled at him. “I hate to tell you, Gus, but we’ve already started.”

The glasslike lake reflected the dark evergreens along its shore and the grays of dusk. Mackenzie, changed into dry jeans and packed for her trip back to Washington, jumped from an exposed rock to a bigger one at least ten yards into the water. She was just below the clearing where Jesse had taken Cal – and where, it turned out, Bernadette had carved out a lot for her.

If she didn’t make her peace with this place now, Mackenzie thought, she never would.

She heard a movement on shore behind her, but this time it wasn’t a knife-wielding lunatic. Rook emerged from the cover of the pines and hemlocks, dressed casually and as striking as ever.

Mackenzie grinned at him. “I can’t go anywhere without the FBI following me.”

“You marshals.” He jumped lightly onto her rock without teetering even a little. “Enough room here for the two of us.”

“Always so confident.”

“Did you break open more of your wound jumping into the water earlier?”

She angled a look at him. “You saw me?”

“T.J. brought binoculars. He wanted to check out the loons. Says you count as a loon all by yourself -”

“Where is he now?”

Rook gestured back toward Bernadette’s house. “He’s saying goodbye to Gus and Judge Peacham. He’s catching an earlier flight to Washington. He can pave the way with our superiors.”

“Meeting with the big guns of the FBI?”

He nodded.

“You’re still one of their rising stars. T.J., too.” She dipped a toe in the water, which felt colder than it had out by the dock. “Jesse could have killed Beanie yesterday.”

“Mac -”

“The only reason he didn’t is because he wanted her to delay me, so he’d have more of a head start. It didn’t do him any good.” She pulled her toe out of the water, remembering Jesse Lambert’s eyes yesterday when she’d confronted him. But she pushed the image out of her mind and continued. “Beanie says she had no intention of making it easy for him to kill her. She was going to fight back with whatever she could reach.”

“She might have succeeded,” Rook said.

“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Mackenzie put her hand on his arm, feeling his warmth and strength. “I love it up here, Rook.”

He nodded. “I know you do.”

“But Chief Delvecchio likes me. He says it’s a bad sign and he probably should have his head examined.”

“He knows you’re good. And smart.”

“I became a marshal for a lot of reasons, Rook. My father’s accident, Nate’s influence, the action, a chance to prove myself – maybe all of them weren’t good reasons, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll end up back on a college campus one of these days. But right now, the service is where I want to be.”

“Mac.” He touched his fingertips to her lips. “You don’t have to explain to me.”

“I fell hard for you, Rook. You know that, don’t you? That night in the rain, when I thought you worked for the IRS or something.”

He smiled. “You have to work on your FBI radar.”

“I should have known. You were so damn good-looking and sexy out there in the rain, and such a hard-ass -”

“I shouldn’t have dumped you the way I did.”

“It was the right thing to do. That’s why you did it – not because of ambition or anything else.”

He lowered his mouth to hers.

“If T.J.’s out on the dock with his binoculars -”

“Do you care?” Rook kissed her softly, obviously not caring if anyone was watching. “I love you, Mac.”

“Rook…Andrew…” Mackenzie almost lost her balance on the rock. “If we fall into the lake, we’re not going to make our flight. Then we’ll have even more explaining to do in Washington.” She grinned at him. “My ghosts await my return. Sarah says she can give me another two months before I have to find my own place. I don’t know about Nate, though. He’s not convinced I won’t attract some other creep to the place.”

“Then you still need a place to live.”

“I do.”

“Brian’s moving out. I’m renovating. Suppose we see what happens?”

“Just one thing.” Mackenzie slipped her arms around Rook and kissed him again. “The Cupid wallpaper stays.”

Carla Neggers lives in rural Vermont with her husband and their two children. Since completing her first novel at the age of twenty-four, she has written over forty books and has appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.