Blake Pierce - Before He Covets

“Sorry to hear it,” he said, passing over it in a way that let her know he’d picked up on her unwillingness to talk about it. “My folks…they didn’t understand why I wanted this for a job. Of course, they were very strict Christians. When I told them that I did not believe in God when I was seventeen, they basically gave up on me. Since then, I’ve seen both of my parents to the grave. Dad hung in there for about six years after mom passed. Dad and I made some unstable sort of peace after mom died. We were friendly again before he died of lung cancer in 2013.”

“At least you got a chance to patch things up,” Mackenzie said.

“True,” he said.

“Did you ever get married? Any kids?”

“I was married for seven years. I got two daughters out of it. One is in college in Texas right now. The other is somewhere in California. She stopped talking to me ten years ago, right after she left high school, got knocked up and engaged to a twenty-six-year-old.”

She nodded, finding the conversation too awkward to continue. It was odd that he was opening up to her in such a way, but she appreciated it. Some of what he had told her made some sense, though. Bryers was a fairly solitary man, and that lined up with having had a strained relationship with his parents.

The information about two daughters that he rarely spoke to, though – that had been a huge revelation. It made some sort of sense as to why he was so open with her and why he seemed to enjoy working with her.

The next two hours were filled with scant conversation, mostly about the case at hand and Mackenzie’s time in the academy. It was nice to have someone to talk to about such things and it made her feel a little guilty for shutting him down he had asked about her father.

It was another hour and fifteen minutes before Mackenzie started seeing signs announcing the exit for Strasburg. Mackenzie could practically feel the air within the car shifting as they both switched gears, tucking personal matters away and focusing solely on the job at hand.

Six minutes later, Bryers turned the sedan onto the Strasburg exit. When they entered the town, Mackenzie felt herself tense up. But it was a good sort of tension – the same kind she had felt as she had stepped into the parking lot the night before graduation with the paintball gun in her hand.

She had arrived. Not just in Strasburg, but into a stage of her life she had dreamed about ever since taking her first demeaning desk job back in Nebraska before she’d been given a proper chance.

My God, she thought. Was that only five and a half years ago?

Yes, it was. And now that she was literally being driven toward the realization of all of those dreams, the five years that separated that desk job from the current moment in the passenger seat of Bryers’s car seemed like a barricade of sorts that kept those two sides of her apart. And that was just as well as far as Mackenzie was concerned. Her past had never done anything but hold her back, and now that she had finally seemed to outrun it, she was glad to leave it dead and rotting in the past.

She saw the sign for Little Hill State Park, and as he slowed the car, her heart quickened. Here she was. Her first case while officially on the job. All eyes would be on her, she knew.

The time had come.

When Mackenzie stepped out of the car in the Little Hill State Park visitor’s lot, she braced herself, feeling immediately the tension of murder in the air. She did not understand how she could sense it, but she could. It was a sort of sixth sense she had that sometimes she wished she hadn’t. No one else she had ever worked with seemed to have it, too.

In a way, she realized, they were lucky. It was a blessing, but also a curse.

They walked across the lot and to the visitor’s center. While fall had not yet fully gripped Virginia yet, it was making its presence known early. The leaves all around them were beginning to turn, teasing an array of reds, yellows, and golds. A security shack sat behind the center, and a bored-looking woman regarded them from the shack with a wave.

The visitor’s center was a lackluster tourist trap at best. A few clothing racks displayed T-shirts and water bottles. A small shelf along the right side contained maps of the area and a few brochures on fishing tips. In the center of it all was a single older woman a few years beyond retirement, smiling at them from behind a counter.

“You folks are with the FBI, right?” the woman asked.

“That’s right,” Mackenzie said.

The woman gave a quick nod and picked up the landline phone sitting behind the counter. She punched a number in from a scrap of paper sitting by the phone. As she waited, Mackenzie turned away and Bryers followed.

“You said you haven’t spoken directly with the Strasburg PD, right?” she asked.

Bryers shook his head.

“Are we walking in as friends or an obstacle?”

“I guess we’ll have to see.”

Mackenzie nodded as they turned back to the counter. The woman had just hung up the phone and was looking to them again.

“Sheriff Clements will be here in about ten minutes. He’d like for you to meet him at the guard shack outside.”

They walked back outside and headed for the guard shack. Again, Mackenzie found herself nearly hypnotized by the colors blooming on the trees. She walked slowly, taking it all in.

“Hey, White?” Bryers said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Why do you ask?”

“You’re trembling. A little pale. As a seasoned FBI agent, my hunch is that you’re nervous — very nervous.”

She clenched her hands together tightly, aware that there was indeed a slight tremor in her hands. Yes, she was nervous but she had hoped she was hiding it. Apparently, she was doing a very poor job.

“Look. You’re into the real deal now. You can be nervous. But work with it. Don’t fight it or hide it. I know that sounds counterintuitive but you have to trust me on this.”

She nodded, a little embarrassed.

They continued on without saying another word, the wild colors of the trees around them seeming to press in. Mackenzie looked ahead to the guard shack, eyeing the bar that hung from the shack and across the road. As cheesy as it seemed, she could not help but feel her future was waiting for her on the other side of that bar and she found herself equally intimidated and anxious to cross it.

Within seconds, they both heard the small engine noise. Almost immediately after that, a golf cart came into view, coming around the bend. It looked to be going at top speed and the man behind the wheel was practically hunched over it, as if willing the cart to go faster.

The cart sped forward and Mackenzie got her first glimpse of the man she assumed to be Sheriff Clements. He was a forty-something hard-ass. He had the glassy stare of a man who had been dealt a rough hand in life. His black hair was just beginning to go gray at the temples and he had the sort of five o’clock shadow bordering his face that looked like it was probably always there.

Clements parked the cart, barely regarded the guard in the shack, and walked around the bar to meet Mackenzie and Bryers.

“Agents White and Bryers,” Mackenzie said, offering her hand.

Clements took it and shook it passively. He did the same to Bryers before turning his attention back to the paved trail he had just come down.

“If I’m being honest,” Clements said, “while I certainly appreciate the bureau’s interest, I’m not so sure we need the assistance.”

“Well, we’re here now, so we may as well see if we can lend a hand,” Bryers said, being as friendly as he could.

“Well then, hop on the cart and let’s see,” Clements said. Mackenzie was trying her best to size him up as they loaded up on the cart. Her main concern from the start was trying to determine if Clements was simply under immense stress or if he was just as ass by nature.