Abandon (9 page)

She surprised herself with a laugh. “Hard for me to think I’d regret sleeping with you, even if you dumped me ten minutes later. I might kick myself on a certain level, but another, no way.”

He smiled. “Still feel that way?”

“I rarely change my mind.”

“Mac.” He brushed a few stray curls off her forehead and let a knuckle drift across her mouth. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt any worse today. I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner to back you up.”

She tried to smile. “You’re not making it any easier for me to think you’re a snake in the grass.”

He kissed her softly. “Good. I’m not big on snakes.”

He didn’t wait for her to respond, and moved past her, opening the door to the lake house. Mackenzie walked in, grateful that she didn’t fall flat on her face, and he didn’t end up carrying her, after all.

J
esse washed the dried blood off his hands in the brown-stained sink of a gas station bathroom more than an hour’s drive from the lake where he’d slashed Mackenzie Stewart. He’d taken a little-used trail out to a side road before the cavalry could hunt him down. An organic farmer who supplied area restaurants with fresh produce picked him up. Jesse got the spiel about eating organic.

The blood mixed with the hot water and the crud in the sink.

“Hey, at least blood’s organic.”

His voice sounded hollow, and his reflection in the dirty mirror made him look like a cadaver. Violence wore him out, drained him in a way nothing else did. The level of brutality he could summon at will shocked him every time. He didn’t know where it came from. His well-to-do, respectable family in Oregon had seen the propensity for violence in him early, how a violent outburst would settle him down, calm him. He hadn’t had anything to do with them—or they with him—since he’d dropped out of high school and headed east.

Until today, he’d never hurt anyone in the mountains. But the conniving Harris and Cal had left him with no other choice. Jesse was so pent up with anger, he needed to blow off some steam. He wanted his money, along with their little insurance policy to get him out of their lives and never to return—whatever it contained. Pictures, DNA, fingerprints, bank accounts, addresses of properties he owned, names. His
life.

If he was caught searching Judge Peacham’s property for the money and materials, he had to be sure no one linked him with her, her ex-husband or her no-account friend Harris.

There were easier ways, perhaps, to accomplish that mission than by attacking the female hiker that morning, but he’d succeeded in throwing off the police. They were hell-bent on finding a scary, unhinged lowlife who struck women at random.

He hadn’t gotten any of his first victim’s blood on his hands. But she hadn’t kicked him, either.

He dried his hands with a stiff brown paper towel, crumpled it up and tossed it into an overflowing, filthy trash can. Too late to worry about leaving behind DNA. One speck of blood in the sink, and the cops would trace it back to Miss Mackenzie, figure out he’d been there washing up.

But he’d planned for that in the hours after confronting Harris Mayer.

J. Harris Mayer.

J
for
Jackass, J
for
Jerk
…

Actually, the
J
stood for John. How anticlimactic was that?

Jesse pushed back the uncomfortable reality of just how close he had come to messing up today with the redheaded marshal, and focused instead on the task at hand.

It was past ten, dark and chilly. He unzipped the backpack he’d hidden in a cluster of rocks off one of the trails above the lake, after he’d attacked the hiker. She’d come damn close to tripping over it—as good a reason as any to pick her to stab. He could have killed her on the spot, but alive, she’d be able to confirm any description of him if he had to attack again.

A shrink might call that a rationalization to commit violence, but whatever. It had worked.

The backpack was filled with supplies, although there was nothing the police could trace back to him should they have managed to get to it before he had. His decision to head down from the hills to the lake carrying only his assault knife had paid off. Agile, not weighed down by gear, he’d made a quick getaway.

He pulled out clean hiking pants, a clean shirt and clean socks. Horn-rimmed glasses with plain lenses. A Red Sox cap. He was in Red Sox country—when people saw his cap, they wouldn’t think,
Oh, that must be the man who stabbed those two women today
.

The beard was a problem, but he figured dealing with it now would only draw more attention to him. Go into a gas station bathroom with a beard and come out with one, no one would notice. Come out without one, everyone would notice.

Once transformed into a respectable-looking, inexperienced hiker—not the fit, half-mad hiker police were looking for—Jesse slung his backpack over one shoulder, exited the bathroom and bought a Coke and a bag of Frito’s, with silent apologies to his organic farmer, and left the gas station.

He noticed splattered blood on his right hiking boot.

Deal with it later. Stay focused.

He walked down the pitch-black road, the scattered houses near the gas station giving way to impenetrable woods. He heard animals rustling in the brush. Bats swooped across the starlit sky. The air was cool now, but the wind had died down and the mosquitoes hadn’t yet found him.

After a half mile, he came to a trailhead and indulged in a moment’s relief when he saw that his rented BMW was still there. An expensive car parked at a trailhead this far from the crime scene shouldn’t be suspicious, but even if police checked out the BMW, they would discover it was rented to a small, law-abiding Virginia consulting firm.

Fifteen minutes later, a chubby couple in their late forties welcomed him into their bed-and-breakfast, a Victorian gingerbread house just off a tiny village green.

Not exactly where police would expect a deranged slasher to spend the night.

Jesse was in no mood for good cheer, but when the couple smiled at him, he smiled back. “Great day to be out in the mountains. I hope I’m not too late?”

“Not at all.”

Nothing in their manner indicated they’d heard about the knife attacks and the search for the man responsible.

The husband, who sported a beard of his own, led Jesse upstairs to a cottage-style room with its own bath. “Breakfast starts at eight,” he said, “but if you want it earlier—”

“Eight’s perfect. Thank you.”

“Are you hiking tomorrow?”

“I’m climbing Mount Washington.”

The man nodded with approval. “Good for you. I used to climb it once a year, but I have a bad knee. Got to keep going while you can, I always say. Your first time up Mount Washington?”

No. He’d climbed it at least a dozen times. But Jesse smiled and tried to look humble, even a little nervous. “It’s my first visit to the White Mountains.”

“Mount Washington’s a challenging climb. People often underestimate it. Tomorrow’s supposed to be decent weather, although you never know. You can start out in sunny, seventy degree weather, and by the time you’re on the summit, the fog’s rolled in and you’re fighting seventy-mile-an-hour wind gusts.”

“I hope that doesn’t happen to me.”

When he was finally alone, his door shut and locked behind him, Jesse poured a bath, making the water as hot as he could stand. He dumped in half a bottle of a fancy bath and shower gel. It didn’t smell too girlie, and it foamed up nicely.

While the tub filled, he trimmed his beard. He’d shave in the morning. If his hosts asked, he’d just say it was for good luck climbing big, bad Mount Washington.

He rinsed out the sink and turned off the tub faucet, then lowered himself into the hot water. He sat in the bath until his skin was fiery-red and wrinkled and his mind was clear. He returned his focus to where it belonged, on betrayal, on men who would cut deals with him and then try to double-cross him.

J. Harris Mayer.

Calvin Benton.

Jesse conjured up their faces and recognized how much he had come to hate both men, and he didn’t back off from that surge of raw emotion, the sheer violence that churned inside him.

“Bastards,” he whispered. “Who do they think they are?”

When he climbed out of the tub, he used two thick, white towels to dry himself off, then slathered on the entire contents of the little bottle of body lotion that came with the room. His skin was soft and pampered looking—not that of a man who’d just stabbed two women and made a mad dash over hill and dale to avoid the police.

He wiped the steam off the mirror with a corner of his towel and gazed at his reflection, less cadaverous now. He could acknowledge what he hadn’t been able to for the past hours.

“You failed, ace.” He leaned in close. “You didn’t complete your mission. Whatever ol’ Harris and Cal have on you, they still have.”

That and his money.

They still had the million dollars he was owed.

Jesse stood back from the mirror and dropped the towels onto the floor. For forty-two, he looked good. Hard. Fit. Mackenzie Stewart was fit and knew a few moves, but luck and luck alone had spared her today.

Don’t think about her.

But he pictured the shape of her breasts in her pink swimsuit, and he had to exhale to release some of the tension mounting inside him again.

“Stay on task.”

Something had happened to his voice. It wasn’t as strong, because he was thinking about the girl marshal, the water dripping from her hair, the vibrant blue of her eyes.

Jesse tightened both hands into fists, kept his gaze on his own reflection.

A nice, cool, even million wasn’t chump change. It was real money.
Damned
if he was going to let those two bastards blackmail him. It was his money, and he wanted it now. On his terms.

His identity, his money.

He needed to center himself, regroup, figure out what to do. If he didn’t cooperate with Cal Benton, would the cagey SOB keep the money and his insurance policy? Or would he go to the FBI? Would he try to use the information he had on Jesse to get
more
money?

Anything was possible. Jesse knew he had to press forward, and so he would.

In the meantime, he thought, turning from the mirror, he would give himself tonight to indulge in his fantasies about his redheaded girl marshal.

R
ook produced a dented aluminum percolator from a lower cabinet in Bernadette Peacham’s simple kitchen and set it on the gas stove. He needed coffee, and soon. He’d passed a bad night in a small upstairs bedroom just big enough for a double bed and chest of drawers. It adjoined the room where Mackenzie had slept. He’d heard every move she made, every soft moan of pain—and a loon. The bird’s plaintive cry had woken him after he’d finally dozed off. It was a long time before he’d gone back to sleep.

Mackenzie yawned in her seat at the rectangular table alongside a shaded window. Behind her was a picture window with a view of the lake, where the rising mist was slowly burning off in the morning sun.

She pointed at the coffeepot. She’d pulled on shorts and a sweatshirt, but looked as if she could crawl back to bed. “Beanie’s had that pot for as long as I can remember.”

“It must be a hundred years old.”

“Fifty, anyway.”

The percolator required dismantling. Rook pulled it apart and set the pieces on the scarred Formica counter. Sunlight streamed through the windows. It was a beautiful summer morning—a good day for canoeing and a long walk on a lakeshore trail.

He added water to the stained line, then set the pot on the stove and found a can of inexpensive coffee in the refrigerator. Using the scoop inside, he dumped some of the contents to another stained line, inside the filter basket.

Mackenzie yawned again. “You forgot to put the cover on the filter. Once the coffee starts to perk, you’re going to end up with a mess.” She stretched out her legs, wincing, but not, he noticed, going as pale as she would have just twelve hours ago. She gave him a cheerful smile. “I don’t like grounds in my coffee.”

Rook pulled off the pot lid, put on the basket cover, replaced the top and turned on the gas stove. The burner came on with a
poof,
and he adjusted the flame. “It’d be a lot easier to run to a doughnut shop.”

“There are no doughnut shops around here. Closest one is…I don’t know. Fifteen, twenty miles, anyway.” She pushed back her hair, the curls more pronounced this morning. “You’d never make a good caretaker. Just as well you’re a mean SOB FBI agent.”

“I’m not mean.”

“I meant to say professional. A professional federal law enforcement officer.”

“How long do I let the coffee perk?”

“Exactly eight minutes, according to Beanie. If it boils, we’ll end up with rotgut. I can’t drink rotgut. I’m injured.”

He cast her a skeptical look. “You’re not
that
injured.”

She grinned at him, unrepentant. “What have I been saying?”

But she
was
injured, and Rook could see that fact had her more off balance than she wanted to acknowledge. She’d had an encounter with her own mortality yesterday. Her training as a marshal had helped her survive the attack, but it would only help so much in dealing with the emotional aftermath.

And she was new to law enforcement, he remembered.

He hoped her relative inexperience would help her deal with yesterday’s trauma rather than make it more difficult, but he realized he didn’t know her well enough to gauge her reactions. Maybe Gus Winter did. Or Carine. Or, back in Washington, Nate.

Rook was well aware he was the outsider among the people of Cold Ridge.

Mackenzie rose stiffly and pulled open the refrigerator. “Have you ever been in a knife fight?” she asked without looking at him.

“No. Not a knife fight.”

She glanced back at him. “Other kinds of fights?”

“None I didn’t walk away from.”

“And not all on the job, I’ll bet.” She reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a glass bottle of milk from a local dairy, setting it on the table. “I don’t like knives. The idea of stabbing someone—anyone—bothers me. But this guy yesterday? He likes knives. He likes being up close and personal.” She returned to the refrigerator for orange juice. “He liked seeing me cut.”

The coffee bubbled and Rook turned down the heat even more. “He stabbed the hiker and ran. He didn’t stick around to make sure she was dead or to savor the moment. With you, he had no choice but to run.”

“I don’t know, I got wobbly after I kicked him,” Mackenzie said. “He could have found his knife or grabbed a hammer from the shed—I’m not sure I could have stopped him.”

“You’d have found a way. He probably realized that.”

“I just don’t think I looked all that scary.”

Rook wasn’t fooled by her matter-of-fact tone. Now that she was safe, the stark reality of what had happened was starting to hit her. “Maybe you should talk to someone,” he suggested.

“Maybe we should find this guy.”

“No argument from me, but you’re hurt, Mac. At least give yourself today to rest.”

“I do better when I stay busy.”

He didn’t respond. She poured orange juice into a small glass and drank half in a single gulp. He remembered how he’d noticed her red curls on that rainy night in Georgetown. Then her blue eyes. Her freckles. And her shape, he recalled. She worked at her conditioning—running, weights, martial arts—and was at a high level of fitness, but she’d never carry a lot of muscle.

Not for half a second had he pegged her as a marshal. On that warm summer night, chatting while the rain pelted on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop, he’d just thought the pretty redhead across from him had been destined to cartwheel into his life. In some ways, he still did.

“I have a tentative doctor’s appointment this afternoon.” She sounded barely resigned to the idea. “When’s your flight back to D.C.?”

“Tonight.” He could easily reschedule, but she’d know that. “It was supposed to be an uneventful, quick trip up here.”

“Feel free to go about your business.”

He checked the clock above the stove. Another two minutes before the coffee was done. “Trying to get rid of me, Mac?”

“There’s no point in wasting more of your weekend up here, and if you still want to find Harris—well, he’s obviously not hiding out here at Beanie’s.”

“What about the man who attacked you?”

“If he’s mentally unbalanced, he could have forgotten he stabbed me by now.” She looked out the side window, the shade shifting in the light morning breeze. “I’m not as woozy as I was yesterday. If he has anything else in mind for me, I can defend myself.”

When the coffee was ready, Rook filled two mugs, handing one to her. She thanked him, then headed out to the screened porch, hesitating a moment before making her way down to the dock.

He debated his options. Give her space? Follow her?

It was a beautiful morning, and she needed a few days to rest and get back on her feet. But she wouldn’t want to take them. She’d want to get out into the woods and find the man who’d attacked her and the hiker, and who’d scared the hell out of her friend.

Carrying his coffee with him, Rook walked out onto the porch and down through the cool, dew-soaked grass to the dock. He hadn’t slept well, and he needed a shower, not to mention at least a half a pot of coffee.

“Nasty stuff, this brew,” he said as he joined Mackenzie at the end of the dock.

She squinted at him and smiled. “It is pretty bad.”

“Any snakes in this lake?”

“Not poisonous ones.” She drank more of her coffee, shifting her gaze back to the water. “Rook, am I part of some FBI investigation?”

“Mac…”

She looked at him again. “I’m serious. Am I?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Bernadette?”

He took another sip, wondering how old the can of coffee was.

Mackenzie sighed audibly. “Not answering. Okay, fine. I understand. Thanks for sticking around last night, but you can go on back to D.C. Take an earlier flight.” Her tone wasn’t harsh. “There’s nothing for you to do here.”

“I have a few people I should see while I’m here.”

“FBI buddies?” She dumped the last of her coffee into the lake. “Maybe it should only have perked for six minutes. I forget.”

Taking her mug with her, she walked back to the porch, stumbling on the steps. If he pointed out her unsteadiness, Rook figured she’d just tell him she needed a second cup of coffee. Or breakfast. Or more marshmallows. Anything to keep him at bay.

But she’d be like this anyway, he realized. He had nothing to do with it. She was independent, determined, impatient with her own vulnerability and her reduced capacity to get out there and hunt their fugitive—a frustration he could well understand.

When he returned to the kitchen, she was cracking eggs into a cast-iron frying pan on the stove. “Carine brought enough food for a week, never mind a weekend. If there’s one positive about yesterday, it’s that I was here, not her.” She grabbed another egg, cracked it, tossed the shell back into the carton. “And Harry. Nothing happened to him.”

“I can finish up breakfast.”

“My turn to wait on you.”

She rinsed her hands at the sink and dried them on a dish towel hung on a drawer handle. Rook eased in behind her and grasped her right wrist, avoiding her injured left side. “Mac.” He didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry. I was a damn heel.”

She sucked in a breath, which made her wince in pain. “Apology accepted.” She angled a look up at him and grinned suddenly, a flash of pure mischief in her very blue eyes. “Bastard. So, where were you and Harris on Wednesday? I figure you were in the hotel bar, and you saw Bernadette and me together, realized we were friends and decided then and there you had to dump me.”

Rook kissed the top of her head. “You’re going to burn the eggs.”

“I’m going to burn
you,
” she replied. “Am I close to describing what happened? If I hadn’t gone to that damn party, we’d have had dinner together. I probably wouldn’t even have been here yesterday to get sliced.”

“You’re speculating.”

“So? I’m on pain medication. I’m entitled. And you’re not going to confirm or deny that you canceled dinner because you found out that Beanie and I are friends.” She flipped the eggs, which were fast turning to rubber. “So, are you going to reschedule your flight and leave early?”

“Not going to let up, are you?”

She just smiled at him.

Rook made toast to go with the eggs, which were at least as bad as his coffee. He wasn’t leaving early. He’d check with the investigators for any new lead on their fugitive slasher. He’d told them yesterday to let him know if J. Harris Mayer turned up anywhere. But it was a long shot, and they had to look at the evidence. Harris wasn’t their priority.

Rook wasn’t even sure if his missing judge was
his
priority. But Harris had left many loose ends, and the timing of his disappearance was, if nothing else, provocative. Rook’s job wasn’t to investigate the attacks yesterday; it was to locate Harris.

Time to get back to Washington and step up the search for his AWOL judge.

Mackenzie ignored the pull of pain in her side as she pushed through ferns to a narrow trail her attacker must have followed yesterday. The police had already been here with search dogs. But she wanted to satisfy herself; she couldn’t just sit on the porch and swat mosquitoes.

Rook, of course, was right behind her. He hadn’t left for Washington yet. And he still hadn’t explained his reasons for being in New Hampshire. “I knew you were tight-lipped even before I realized what you did for a living,” she said without looking back at him. “A straight-arrow type. Not a rule breaker.”

“Are you a rule breaker, Mac?”

“I haven’t been in law enforcement long enough to know.”

“I’m talking about personality.”

She glanced back at him at last. If there was a sexier man on the planet, she didn’t want to meet him. But if Rook wasn’t on her heels, Gus Winter would be. He would pester her nonstop about overdoing—and he wasn’t as good-looking. “I’m creative and results-oriented. How’s that?”

Rook smiled at her. “Sounds like an academic’s spin.”

Was
that
why he’d dumped her? Because he’d heard she wasn’t a by-the-book type? But she hadn’t gotten into hot water in her six weeks in Washington…Nate. Had he suggested to Rook that she might not be his type? Which would mean her connection to Bernadette
wasn’t
the reason for the breakup by voice mail?

If only Rook was just some sexy guy she’d dated a few times who’d decided it wasn’t going to work out. But it was worse than that. She liked him. She enjoyed his company.

Over and done with.

What she wanted now were answers. Why was he in New Hampshire, why was he looking for Harris Mayer and who was the man who had attacked her yesterday?

Would he attack someone else because she’d failed to take him down?

Mackenzie pushed her way through another patch of knee-high ferns growing in the light shade of the birches and beech trees along the lake. Her side ached, but she was doing much better than when she’d rolled out of bed, thinking she’d have to face Rook with dark circles under her eyes and her hair sticking out. Breakfast had helped. She wasn’t going to collapse in front of an FBI agent, especially not one she’d almost slept with.